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The federal government has approved the state’s environmental review of replacing the Tappan Zee Bridge, a development that Gov. Andrew Cuomo said today was a milestone for the project.

“This was really a big hurdle,” Cuomo said in a conference call with reporters this morning. “This could have stopped the project.”

The announcement means the state can move forward with designing and ultimately building a new bridge, Cuomo said.

There’s still the matter of a federal loan and developing a funding plan for the state’s share of the project as well, which has been pegged as much as $5.2 billion.

Cuomo has said no fixed dollar amount — or fully developed funding plan — has been determined because the variables of both the federal loan and the final design have not been determined.

The environmental review of the bridge project was move forward after the Obama administration approved its fast-tracking nearly one year ago.

The state released a draft environmental impact statement in January and held public meetings on the project in February and March, receiving more than 3,000 written comments on the DEIS.

Cuomo, a Westchester County resident when he’s not in Albany, made a major public showing this past summer of working on the bridge replacement, lining up dozens of public and elected officials to support it.

He dispatched his top aide, Secretary Larry Schwartz, to handle local Westchester and Rockland county concerns, and hired Brian Conybeare, a well-known former anchorman for News 12 to be the public face of the project.

“We’re focused,” Cuomo said in the conference call. “We’re working seven days a week.”

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