Melanie Lekocevic in the Greene County News reports that Athens and Coxsackie are the latest municipalities to prefer that the NYS Thruway Authority does not act as lead agency for the proposed Pilgrim Pipeline project. Two pipelines are proposed to run from Albany to New Jersey, largely along the Thruway’s right-of-way, but veering away from the Interstate in Athens and Catskill. The company behind the project prefers that the Thruway Authority is the lead agency in the project’s State Environmental Quality Review process, or SEQR, since the state Department of Conservation, the usual arbiter of environmental decisions, would not have a financial incentive to rule in favor of the proposed pipeline. Albany, Kingston, and Newburgh, and the counties of Greene, Albany, Ulster, and Rockland, have all so far opposed having the Thruway Authority as lead agency in the review process with the Greene County towns of Athens, Catskill, Coxsackie, and New Baltimore, and Albany County's Coeymans also against a Thruway review. Read the full story in the Greene County News.