Millennium Pipeline Co. has just begun work on a new pipeline that will significantly increase the amount of natural gas that is available to the New York metro area. The project will replace 182 miles of existing lines with wider and higher-capacity equipment.

Kenneth Austin, Millennium's vice president and general manager, said that most of the existing line is 10 inches in diameter and will be replaced with 30-inch pipe. According to the Journal News, the pipeline will run from upstate Corning to Montebello.

The project will start in the area near the border of Rockland and Orange counties and is expected to take about two years to complete.

The Millennium Pipeline is part of Northeast '07, which includes a series of pipelines and interconnections stretching from the Canadian border in the north into New York City in the south, New Jersey to the west and New England to the east.

As you may recall, environmentalists and citizen groups successfully fended off a previous plan that would have placed a 36-inch pipeline across the Hudson River at Haverstraw Bay and terminating in Mount Vernon. It is unclear at this point whether similar opposition would be mounted again.