This Commentary first was published in New York’s Times Union
By approving the NESE pipeline, Hochul opened the door to other fossil fuel projects.
Op-ed by Vanessa Fajans-Turner, Environmental Advocates NY Executive Director
Feb 18, 2026
In the past few weeks, emboldened by New York’s approval of the dangerous NESE pipeline, the Oklahoma-based Williams Companies has stepped up their push to revive the long-dead Constitution Pipeline proposal. This second pipeline project would slash its way from northeast Pennsylvania, across 125 miles of rural New York communities, almost to Schenectady.
And this time, they’ve got a new tactic. They aim to convince the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, a supposedly independent agency, to let the project bypass New York state review and go forward — even though New York regulators have already ruled that the project is too much of a risk to our water and environment to be allowed.
If they win, we all lose.
This isn’t just an attempt to resurrect an expensive and dangerous project that would further lock us into fossil fuel dependence. It is a direct test of whether states like New York retain any meaningful authority to protect their people, land and water — or whether that authority can be swept aside by the Trump administration any time powerful interests find it inconvenient.
For decades, Congress deliberately structured environmental laws to balance federal oversight with state expertise, because states are uniquely positioned to evaluate the impacts of projects on local watersheds, drinking water supplies, farmland, forests and people. State permitting is not a formality; it is how we ensure that the infrastructure we develop is safe and sustainable under real-world conditions.
The Constitution pipeline failed that test. In 2016, New York denied a critical water quality permit after Williams, the project’s developer, failed to prove it could protect streams, wetlands and drinking water supplies along the proposed route. That decision was upheld in court.
After losing once in court, the developer then tried another legal maneuver, arguing that New York gave up its authority over the project. But that failed, too, and in 2020 Williams scrapped the project, which led the court to dismiss their legal challenges as moot and direct FERC to dismiss the regulatory proceedings.
This seemingly put the final nail in the coffin. In other words, the law did its job.
But now, Williams has brought the project back from the dead. And since they know they can’t win a fair fight, they’re pressing Donald Trump’s oil- and gas-friendly regulators to ignore New York’s finding and allow them to construct the project anyway.
And now that Gov. Kathy Hochul has opened her mind to pipelines, the gambit could pay off. Last year, when Hochul convinced Trump to let the stalled Empire Wind project resume, it was widely feared that she’d agreed to greenlight these pipelines in exchange. She denied it, but here we are: The NESE pipeline is going forward and Constitution is back on the table, too.
New Yorkers are being told we must accept pipeline projects that have already failed state environmental review in the interest of “reliability” and “affordability,” while the clean energy that would actually stabilize prices and strengthen our grid is slowed or sidelined.
But the choice between reliability and affordability and clean energy is a false one. It’s our dependence on fossil fuels that’s increasing energy costs, pollution-driven health impacts and climate damage. New gas infrastructure will make it all worse.
Clean energy is faster to build, cheaper to operate and more resilient over time. And every delay in the energy transition — and every new investment in long-lived gas infrastructure — pushes real affordability further out of reach.
If this latest maneuver succeeds, it wouldn’t just mean polluted water and higher costs. It would show that environmental protections can be overridden any time they produce an outcome that powerful politicians or well-connected companies dislike.
New Yorkers should not stand for having our laws and courts brushed aside to deliver political favors to oil and gas executives, at the direct expense of our health, our environment, and our economic future.
