Magda Perez, right, owner of Prime Meat sandwich shop on Mermaid Avenue in Coney Island, Brooklyn, serves a customer on Wednesday, July 24th, 2019. National Grid has not installed a gas meter at her new location.
Photo: Peter Foley for The Wall Street Journal

The utility hasn’t been processing requests for new or expanded service since the spring. Three months ago, Magda Perez, owner of Mermaid Prime Meat in Coney Island, Brooklyn, moved her business to a new location on the same block it had been for six years.

So she found a work around, arranging with her new landlord to use his existing gas line in exchange for an increase in her monthly rent rate.

“I need my stove to be working,” Ms. Perez said.

National Grid has refused a total of more than 2,000 requests for service since May, when the state rejected the Williams Pipeline proposal, a 23.5-mile pipeline that would stretch from Pennsylvania through New Jersey to the Rockaways in Queens. The new pipeline, the utility says, would work in conjunction with and increase the capacity of the existing Transcontinental pipeline. It would allow National Grid to provide new or expanded service, the utility says.

New Jersey and the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation denied permits for the pipeline proposal earlier this year over concerns, which included contaminating wildlife habitats and disrupting sediments that would pollute water quality.

The Department of Environmental Conservation said in a May letter to the company submitting the pipeline proposal that “the construction of the project would likely have significant water quality impacts in New York.”

National Grid, which services much of New York, Massachusetts and Rhode Island, said it is not presently in moratorium status. Meanwhile, it is not processing applications in Brooklyn, Queens and Long Island from industrial, commercial and residential customers due to the stalled pipeline proposal, a spokeswoman for the utility said in a statement.

Consolidated Edison Inc. issued an official moratorium earlier this year on new natural-gas hookups in Westchester County, saying increased demand for natural gas strained the existing transmission pipeline.

Officials in Westchester said the moratorium put a halt to new development and public housing projects.

National Grid said it receives about 8,000 applications a year from commercial, industrial and residential consumers in Long Island, Brooklyn and Queens for new or expanded service. If the pipeline project does not get approved at all or is substantially delayed, applications cannot be processed and “customers will have fewer options to heat their homes and run their businesses,” the National Grid spokeswoman said.

New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio opposes the new pipeline for environmental reasons.

“I think we have to be moving away steadily from fossil fuel infrastructure and focus on conservation and focus on renewable resources,” Mr. de Blasio, a Democrat, said in a radio interview with WNYC last Friday.

Mr. De Blasio said it seemed strange that National Grid is unable to service customers now when construction would have put the pipeline at least three years away from completion.

Thomas Grech, president of the Queens Chamber of Commerce, said the lack of compromise between politicians and National Grid over the pipeline is stifling economic growth.

“There’s really no plan short or medium term to address this,” Mr. Grech said. “You can’t be sous chef without the gas. You can’t have a restaurant without the gas.”