Plains All American Pipeline announced last Friday that the company would abandon plans for the proposed Byhalia Connection oil pipeline, which would have linked two existing oil arteries, the Diamond Pipeline and the Capline Pipeline, to pump oil from southwestern Tennessee to Marshall County, Mississippi.
As a reason for the move, the company cited low U.S. oil production resulting from the still-ongoing COVID-19 pandemic. That sounds like half a reason to me, especially considering they dropped that piece of news near the end of business on the Friday before the Independence Day holiday weekend. A fuller version might be, “Given the current low oil production in the U.S., the pipeline just wasn’t worth the hassle.”
And there was hassle. The project received overwhelming opposition from a broad coalition of local and national parties. Local activists, members of local government, and even former Vice President Al Gore voiced their opposition to the proposed pipeline. The Southern Alliance for Clean Energy opposed it, as did Protect Our Aquifer, and the Memphis Community Against the Pipeline group was created to do the same.
The reasons for the opposition were twofold — namely that the pipeline would have been built across the Memphis Sand Aquifer, the source of our famously pure drinking water, and that, in Memphis at least, it would have gone through a predominantly Black neighborhood, a move that some critics claimed was intentional and an example of environmental racism.
Earlier in the year, Memphis City Councilmen Dr. Jeff Warren and Edmund Ford submitted a resolution opposing the plan. To quote Flyer news editor Toby Sells, “The resolution says African Americans were and are 75 percent more likely to reside near ‘toxic’ oil and gas infrastructure. It points to data from the Journal of the National Cancer Institute that living within 30 miles of this infrastructure increases the risk of developing cancers including lymphoma, lung cancer, breast cancer, colon cancer, and prostate cancer.”
It’s true the Byhalia Connection project would have brought some dollars to town. Someone’s got to be paid to build the thing, after all, but that would have been a one-time, temporary gain — paying off on a gamble against long-lasting consequences. There are no quick fixes for a community saddled with unfair health burdens — or for a tainted aquifer.
One million people get their clean drinking water from the Memphis Sand Aquifer, and we all owe a debt of thanks to the activists, organizers, political figures, et al. who spoke up against the pipeline. Certainly, there may never have been a problem with it. I can’t claim to know the future. It’s worth noting, though, that Memphis is within the radius of the New Madrid Seismic Zone. Also, I can’t help but think of the short video that made the rounds on social media over the weekend. In the clip, shared by Manuel Lopez San Martin, a section of the Gulf of Mexico was ablaze due to the rupture in an underwater pipeline. I hope to never see the Mississippi River alight with flames. With that image in mind, in a zone with known seismic activity, an oil pipeline above some of the cleanest drinking water in the country does not sound like a recipe for success.
So yes, the risk was far too great for such a small reward — a reward to be reaped by a few. It takes time for water to filter through the aquifer — a long time — and that investment of time creates a shared resource to which we should all have an equal claim and responsibility to protect. But it’s those who organized and attended rallies, circulated and signed petitions, wrote letters to local leaders, started hashtags on Twitter, and generally refused to give up who took on that responsibility. To them, I offer my wholehearted thanks. I also can’t help but be impressed at the organization and determination on display. So I say that congratulations, too, are in order.
It’s no small thing to stand up to power, and I wonder what other activism might be inspired by this victory.
Jesse Davis
jesse@memphisflyer.com
