On Wednesday, three days after a well-attended local protest against the proposed Byhalia Connection oil pipeline in South Memphis, the Shelby County Commission is scheduled to take up the proposed sale of two properties that lie squarely in the path of the pipeline.
The pipeline would cut across the well field of the subterranean Memphis sand aquifier, source of the area’s drinking water, as well as bisect an area populated largely by low-income Black residents.
The properties being considered for sale are owned by the county, having been seized on account of their prior owners’ default on property tax payments. A resolution on Wednesday’s Commission agenda would, if passed, approve their sale, presumably to Valero Energy Corporation and Plains All American Pipeline, for the amount of the unpaid tax liability, $11,363.00.
A companion resolution on Wednesday’s Commission agenda would make the sale possible by amending a moratorium on selling the properties that was voted by the Commission last October.
But the administration of County Mayor Lee Harris is reportedly considering asking that the resolutions be withdrawn from the agenda — an outcome that would itself need majority approval by the attending commissioners.
And County Commissioner Reginald Milton, chair of the body’s Delinquent Tax Property Committee and the author of the moratorium on the two properties, is expressing “grave concerns” about relaxing the moratorium to approve their sale.
In an echo of remarks made by former Vice President Al Gore at Sunday’s protest rally, Milton said the pipeline companies “have not yet made a serious commitment to the affected area” in that the proposed purchase prize is a “pittance” compared to the billions worth of value the companies would reap from construction of the pipeline.
Gore noted on Sunday that, when completed, the proposed pipeline would pump 17.6 gallons of petroleum fuel every day, amounting to a daily delivery worth $24 million. He compared that sum scornfully to the million dollars or so that, at most, the pipeline companies have so far “sprinkled on the path of least resistance” in payments to property owners for the sale of their properties and the granting of easements.
As was noted in February when the Commission last considered the sale of the two county-owned properties, ultimately tabling the issue, some 90 percent of the property along the proposed pipeline path has already been purchased by the companies.
“I think the companies should make a far greater investment in the community, a commitment on the scale of $100,000 or so at least, rather than for us to let them go a such a bargain-basement price,” said Milton, who seconded Gore and other other rally speakers on Sunday in being apprehensive about effects of construction on the neighborhood and the environmental hazards presented to the Memphis aquifer by an oil pipeline bisecting its well field.
