William J. Kemble reports in The Daily Freeman that Esopus is the latest town to request that the state Department of Environmental Conservation lead the environmental review of the Pilgrim Pipeline project, not the Thurway Authority. At a Dec. 7 meeting, town board members joined the towns of Ulster, New Paltz, and Catskill, and the city of Kingston, asking for the DEC, not the Thruway Authority, to do the environmental review on the $553.2 million, 178-mile pipeline project that would run dual pipelines from Albany to New Jersey moving Bakken crude and natural gas largely along the I-87 corridor. In Greene County, the proposed project veers east of Route 9W west of Sleepy Hollow Lake in Athens, and then back near the interstate around Leeds-Athens Road. After Catskill, the pipeline veers west of the interstate briefly around Cauterskill Road. In Ulster County, 40 miles of pipeline would cross Saugerties, the town of Ulster, the city of Kingston, Esopus, Rosendale, New Paltz, Lloyd, Plattekill, and Marlborough. Councilwoman Diane McCord spoke at the meeting against Thruway environmental review. “The New York state Thruway is going to make (millions) of dollars on this,” she said. “I think they’re going to be pretty biased to make sure everything goes smoothly in that direction,” she said. Read the full story in The Daily Freeman.