"Our goal is to receive our FERC approval as early as March 2014. If that happens, our plan is to begin meter station construction in April 2014," Stockton says. "That will take six to seven months to complete. We'd begin offshore construction in April as well. That will be a six-month process."

The proposed pipeline would interconnect with a 12,000-ft, 26-in. proposed pipeline that National Grid plans to install in Flatbush Ave. from Floyd Bennett Field to Avenue U, says Karen Young, a National Grid spokeswoman. Because the National Grid portion is under the city's jurisdiction, it does not need FERC approval but is pending city approvals, she says.

National Grid is also building two 1.6-mile pipelines under the Rockaway inlet and within an already approved cable right-of-way, Young says. One line is meant to connect with the proposed Transco project. The other connects National Grid's existing distribution systems in Brooklyn and Queens to each other, providing a back feed for both areas, she says.

But the Transco project, like several other pipeline extension projects in the Northeast, has been criticized by environmentalists, area residents and other groups. They say that the Rockaway project puts public health and safety as well as the environment at risk and that there are better and safer alternatives.

"The location of the pipeline doesn't make sense," says Martha Cameron, a coordinator of the grassroots Coalition Against the Rockaway Pipeline. The project runs through a large portion of Gateway National Recreation Area, the National Park Service's 26,000-acre region of marshes and wildlife sanctuaries for more than 300 species. "If anything goes wrong with this pipeline, there is a very real possibility that that area will be threatened," she says.

The project is also in "the area precisely where Sandy came through," Cameron adds.