Mr. Maisano argued for more study of the project.
On that score, a new study of the projected costs of the House version of reform offers some chilling numbers.
The state's Long Island Power Authority announced that it was inviting proposals for a study of the project, at the direction of Gov. George E. Pataki.
To emphasize that decision, the board of New Jersey Transit voted to spend $4.9 million on an environmental impact study of the project.
But on Wednesday, Mr. Cuomo and Thomas Madison, executive director of the State Thruway Authority, endorsed further study of the project.
Mr. Nadler failed to kill a $6 million study of the project that Congress approved earlier this year as part of the largest public-works program in the nation's history.
Mr. McPartland said he supported the extension along the freeway and was set to introduce a proposal to finance a new study of the project.
A study of the project couldn't prove beneficial changes in residents' health because neighborhood-specific data, such as obesity rates, wasn't available, James said.
The bank said it would conduct an "expanded review and analysis of the project design and construction" of the pipeline and perform another environmental study of the project.
"The goal of the participants should be to design an explosive with a militarily significant yield," read the "operating rules", unearthed by the nuclear historian Dan Stober in a recent study of the project published in the Bulletin of the Atomic Sciences.
