If you’ve been paying attention to news at all, you’ll know crime is down in Memphis.
Yes, it’s a national trend. But, like, who cares. Falling crime in Memphis is good news no matter where it comes from.
Total crime across the city fell 13.3 percent from 2023 to 2024, according to data released from the city at year’s end. Crime was down in every ZIP code in the city, except for 38131 and 38152.
Credit: city of Memphis
Those two are head-scratchers. (We’re not data experts, so we’re not equipped to label them “aberrations” or whatever.) But 38131 is a neighborhood wedged between Memphis International Airport to the south and I-240 to the north. Last year saw 54 crimes there, and that’s up 42 percent from 2023.
The other area — 38152 — is on the eastern part of University of Memphis campus, encompassing Ball Hall, Campus Elementary School, and big parking lots. Across a big ditch there, nice homes stand in the same ZIP code along Grandview. Last year saw 57 crimes there, and that’s up 83.9 percent from 2023.
The city did not give any details on the crimes in these areas, aberrations or no. In his weekly newsletter Friday, Memphis Mayor Paul Young said, “We are working on it!”
In addition to that year-end report, you can track Memphis crime now with two (new to us) crime stats dashboards.
The first shows Memphis crime year to year. The Crime Analytics dashboard shows unfiltered stats on 40 different types of crimes (from credit card fraud to murder) in three major crime categories — property crimes, personal crimes, and crimes against society.
In total, there were 101,363 total crimes in Memphis last year. Of those, 10,642 were deemed violent crimes. There were 42,647 property crimes, 299 homicides (235 of those were murders), and 9,821 car thefts.
Credit: city of Memphis
Pulling way back, though, the dashboard shows a map of concentrations of crime. We know you can likely overlay a map of poverty and other factors over the crime map and get commanding results. We’re not here to issue judgments about anything. But (and you knew that was coming) you can see, objectively, where the most crime happened in Memphis in 2024.
Another dashboard, also maintained by the city of Memphis, shows weekly crime stats. This one does not give as much detail, like locations, nor does it break the crimes down much beyond the surface. But it still gives an interesting look at the state of the city.
Credit: city of Memphis
For example, over the last seven days (as of Monday, Jan. 6th), 835 crimes were committed. The seven days before that, 827 crimes were reported. Aggravated assaults (152) led all crimes as of Monday, with robbery (40), and rape (5) following.
On one metric — though — the dashboard somehow makes the city’s homicide count feel more real. It seems hard to fathom 299 homicides for a community in one year. It can also seem perfectly reasonable to have 299 homicides in a city the size of Memphis. But when the dashboard reports three homicides over the last seven days (and four homicides the week before that), the data seem more personal — these were people — and sad — these were someone’s family and friends.
Children will be what they see. So, be mindful of your daily habits because they etch memories on the soul of a child. And as children grow up, good or bad, your influence frames the template for their future.
I was born in South Memphis on Wellington Street between South Parkway and Essex Avenue. The year was 1967. It was a Black neighborhood composed of working people. Like my father, the men taught school. They drove trucks or worked as janitors, factory laborers, and preachers. The women worked as teachers like my mother or served as social workers, nurses, maids, and cooks. Court-mandated integration was in motion, so a few parents on the block also worked government jobs that were once exclusive to white employees.
Photo: Courtesy Alice Faye Duncan
When I stop to consider their influence, I know that my Black neighbors laid a sturdy foundation for my personhood. Besides manicured lawns, starched collars, and a determination to succeed, they modeled compassion, courage, and conviction that contributed directly to my writing life. In South Memphis, I lived surrounded by history makers and champions for justice.
ROLL CALL! Attorney George Brown lived on my street. He served as the first Black judge on the Tennessee Supreme Court. Bishop J.O. Patterson Jr. lived two doors from my house. He was one of three Black members elected to the first Memphis City Council. As a council member, Patterson helped to negotiate an end to the Memphis sanitation strike of 1968.
My friend, Big Mane, lived across the street. Ed Redditt was his father, and he worked as a detective for the local police department. On the day that Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. was murdered during the strike, it had been Officer Redditt’s job to keep watch over King when the leader visited Memphis to support the garbage workers.
As an only child who was encouraged to speak at the dinner table, I had parents who were both big readers and talkers. Frequently, they discussed the history and impact of the neighbors on our street. I listened with great interest as my parents shaped me into a small image of themselves. Unfortunately, my loquacious qualities did not translate well in school. My first-grade teacher complained that I talked too much.
While South Memphis was my world on Monday through Saturday, the landscape changed on Sunday mornings. Mama would dress me up in Sunday clothes. And while Daddy usually stayed home to sleep, Mama drove to North Memphis in her sputtering yellow Beetle, where we worshiped with Black parishioners at St. James AME Church. Our pastor, Henry Logan Starks, was tall like a tree. He wore an Afro and taught Black History from the pulpit.
My mother held Pastor Starks in the highest regard because he inspired the congregation to pay rent and light bills for striking sanitation workers in 1968. Pastor Starks also marched with the striking workers. He helped them strategize to earn higher pay and safe work conditions. When Dr. King was almost killed during the Beale Street riot on March 28, 1968, it was Pastor Starks who selflessly towered over Martin like a human shield.
My parents sang the praises of Pastor Starks. They taught me to honor the brave history makers that peopled my neighborhood and the Black Memphis community at large. However, Henry Starks’ influence has been the most personal. As a champion for nonviolence and the uplift of children, he practiced the power of affirmations. At the end of every church service, small children would run like cattle for the vestibule to shake the pastor’s hand and hear him declare, “YOU ARE SOMEBODY!”
Thirty to 40 children stood in line every Sunday. Henry Starks never turned to leave until he shook each hand, raised a peace sign, and blessed each child with an affirmation.
YOU ARE SOMEBODY!
I am 56 years old. I write books about Memphis and Black history. My parents served me a template for this life. Now I celebrate what was honored in my home. I celebrate what was honored in my church. And while I don’t remember the sound of my pastor’s voice, I remember how Henry Starks made me feel. He was a light on my path and I believed his sacred words.
I AM SOMEBODY!
Alice Faye Duncan writes award-winning books for children. She is the author of Memphis, Martin and the Mountaintop; Coretta’s Journey; and Evicted—the Struggle for the Right to Vote. Visit her at alicefayeduncan.com.
The Sterilization Services facility on Florida Street. Credit: Google Maps
A class action lawsuit filed Wednesday claims a group of South Memphis residents have suffered cancer, miscarriages, spinal disorders, and more from toxic emissions from Sterilization Services of Tennessee (SST).
The company uses ethylene oxide (EtO) in its South Memphis facility to sterilize medical equipment. The gas is odorless, colorless, and is a known carcinogen. The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) recently found levels of the chemical around SST were now 20 times above standards for acceptable risk.
The EPA held public meetings in Memphis last year to warn residents but said there was little they could do immediately. However, the EPA issued new rules to reduce EtO emissions in April. But companies like SST would likely have 18 months to comply with them if approved.
The new lawsuit was filed, in part, by New York City-based personal injury firm Napoli Shkolnik. The firm has represented clients in connection with the Flint, Michigan, water crisis and water contamination lawsuits from Camp Lejeune in Jacksonville, North Carolina. J. Luke Sanderson, with Memphis-based Wampler, Carroll, Wilson & Sanderson, will also represent clients in the SST suit here.
The Memphis lawsuit seeks awards for damages, a jury trial, awards for legal fees and litigation costs, and more. It lays out charges on four counts — ultra hazardous activity, gross negligence, negligence, and on charges that label the facility a public and private nuisance.
“As a direct and proximate result of [SST’s] emissions of [EtO] over the course of the last [roughly] 45 years, the South Memphis community has been severely damaged — a manifestation of defendants’ conscious, disregard, and reckless indifference to the human life and health and wellbeing of those in the community,” reads the lawsuit. “[SST] has knowingly admitted this volatile, highly flammable human carcinogen into the air of South Memphis, poisoning many thousands who live, work, go to school, and pray in the surrounding community.”
The suit lists three companies as defendants. SST, its parent company, the Virginia-based Sterilization Services Inc., and their parent company, the publicly traded Altair Engineering Inc.
If the lawsuit is granted class-action certification, the list of plaintiffs could swell. For now, seven living plaintiffs who live or lived in South Memphis near the facility have sued. One of them also sued on behalf of her deceased son.
Anita Albury was diagnosed with breast cancer in 2017, the lawsuit says. She is also suing on behalf of her son, Lenoris Buoy Jr., who was born with a spinal disorder and passed away in 2022. They lived just over a mile from SST.
Morgan Franklin suffered from miscarriages, according to the suit, and lived under two miles from SST from 1984 to 2010. Linda Lane was diagnosed with myeloma in 2005 and lived less than a mile from SST from 1987 to 2007.
Reginae’ Kendrick was diagnosed with brain cancer in 2008 and has lived less than three miles from SST since 2003. Larry Washington was diagnosed with stomach cancer in 1999 and lived less than a mile from the facility from 1980 to 2005.
Everett Walker was diagnosed with non-Hodgkins lymphoma in 1982 and has lived just over two miles from SST since 1976. Beatrice Whitley was diagnosed with leukemia and lived less than three miles from SST from 1977 to 2016, the suit says.
However, a state study of the area earlier this year found no significant cancer clusters.
“This cancer cluster investigation did not provide evidence of increased amounts of leukemia, non-Hodgkins lymphoma, stomach, or breast cancers clustered near the Sterilization Services of Tennessee facility compared to a group of residents away from the facility,” reads the report. “Just because we cannot find evidence of increased rates of cancer that are associated with EtO does not mean there may not be increased risk.”
Lawmakers have urged the company to voluntarily reduce EtO emissions at its South Memphis facility. If it has, the company has yet to announce it publicly. The Shelby County Health Department said in an FAQ that the company has indicated it will make any changes before the new EPA requirements go into effect.
Tennessee’s attorney general pushed back against federal rules to reduce emissions of ethylene oxide (EtO), even though the gas is suspected of increasing cancer risks in South Memphis.
EtO emissions from Sterilization Services of Tennessee in South Memphis could pose a cancer risk to those living in the neighborhood around it, according to the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA).
The agency found the gas to be 60 times more toxic than previously believed. The gas is odorless and colorless, and is used at Sterilization Services to clean medial equipment. The EPA wasn’t aware emissions could raise cancer rates until 2016.
However, a recent study of the area around the facility found no cancer clusters. But the study and its results were questioned by some, including the Southern Environmental Law Center.
Many in Memphis have clamored for action in the matter, including the Memphis City Council, which issued a resolution asking the company for help in January. The Shelby County Health Department has said there’s little it can do because the company is in compliance with all laws on EtO emissions.
The EPA issued new rules to rein in EtO emissions in April. Those rules are under review, pending a period of comment from the public.
Tennessee AG Jonathan Skrmetti said Tuesday he’s against the new rules because they would harm the medical device industry.
“These proposed regulations will significantly reduce the nation’s capacity to sterilize medical devices,” Skrmetti said in a statement. “If the [Biden administration] moves forward with this proposal, the shortage of available medical devices will hurt both patients and healthcare professionals.”
Skrmetti led a coalition of 20 other states’ attorneys general in responding to the EPA’s proposed rules. The letter claims EtO is used to sterilize about 20 billion medical devices a year and there are no substitutes.
The new rules would “force the adoption of new, untested technologies to sterilize medical devices.” So, the EPA should do away with the new rules “to avoid disruption to healthcare across the country.”
New rules issued from the federal government this week could drastically cut hazardous emissions from facilities like Sterilization Services in South Memphis.
The company uses ethylene oxide (EtO) in its Florida Street facility to sterilize medical equipment. The gas is odorless and colorless and the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) wasn’t aware emissions could raise cancer rates until 2016.
The EPA says EtO emissions from the facility could pose a risk to those living in the neighborhood around it. The agency held public meetings in Memphis last year to warn the residents but said there was little they could do.
Since that meeting, officials with the Shelby County Health Department (SCHD) and the Tennessee Department of Health (TDH) reviewed areas around the company’s facility looking for clusters of cancer. That investigation found no heightened cases of leukemia, non-Hodgkins lymphoma, stomach cancer, and breast cancer.
Local officials said little could be done to mitigate emissions from Sterilization Services since the company was in complete compliance with current EPA rules. In January, the Memphis City Council passed a resolution asking the company to initiate voluntary measures to curb emissions. It’s unclear whether or not it did. Locals said action would only really come with new EPA rules.
Those proposed rules arrived Tuesday and the EPA said they could cut EtO emissions from facilities like Sterilization Services by up to 80 percent.
“EPA’s number-one priority is protecting people’s health and safety, and we are committed to taking decisive action that’s informed by the best available science,” said EPA Administrator Michael S. Regan. “These proposals build on EPA’s extensive outreach to communities across the nation and reflect close coordination among key federal partners. Together, they would significantly reduce worker and community exposure to harmful levels of ethylene oxide.”
The EPA outlined two new proposals for 86 facilities that use EtO to bring emission levels below standards for elevated cancer risk. One would set stricter pollution controls and mandate advanced motoring methods to ensure those controls are working. The facilities would report their findings to the EPA twice a year. If the rules are approved, they would have 18 months to comply.
Another rule would introduce mitigation measures to decrease risks for workers who use EtO. It would outlaw EtO use where alternatives exist in museums, archival settings, beekeeping, the production of some cosmetics, and musical instruments. For companies like Sterilization Services, the new rule would reduce the amount of EtO it could use in sterilizing medical devices and require the use of personal protective equipment.
“This more protective standard proposed by the EPA will significantly lower emissions from Sterilization Services of Tennessee,” said Dr. Michelle Taylor, director and health officer for SCHD. “Once the new EPA rule is in effect, the health department will work with the EPA to enforce the newly adopted standard.”
SCHD has requested a public health assessment and a health consultation from the federal Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry (ATSDR) to identify health risks related to EtO and other chemicals in the area surrounding the Sterilization Services facility.
The EPA will host a webinar on the new rules on May 1st at 7 p.m.
For more information on EtO emissions, visit the EPA’s website.
The Memphis City Council wants Sterilization Services of Tennessee to start curbing its harmful emissions now, rather than waiting for a mandate from the federal government.
The company, on Florida Street in South Memphis, emits ethylene oxide (EtO), an odorless, colorless gas used to sterilize medical equipment and other materials. EtO is a carcinogen and the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has warned that residents around the facility are at a higher risk of getting cancer.
An EPA review of EtO found it it to be 60 times more toxic than previously believed. The agency did not learn the chemical could lead to higher cancer risks around emitting facilities until 2016.
An EPA risk assessment of Sterilization Services published in October found that if 1 million residents around the facility breathed air with EtO all day every day for 70 years, 100 of them would be expected to develop cancer due to the exposure. However, the agency couches the projection, noting it “cannot predict whether an individual person will develop cancer.”
City council member Dr. Jeff Warren said Tuesday most of the company’s EtO emissions are not released through a smokestack. Rather, they are “fugitive emissions,” released through doors and “just the natural operations of the business,” Warren said.
Caroline Freeman, director of the EPA’s Region 4 (which includes Memphis) told council members two weeks the agency was concerned about the situation in South Memphis. As of October, however, the company had not installed new EtO pollution controls and had no plans for new controls, according to the EPA.
However, Freeman told council members the agency is working on new regulations for EtO emissions and hopes to issue a new rule on them this year. But the Clean Air Act gives companies two to three years to comply with new rules, according to council research.
On Tuesday, a council committee unanimously approved a resolution asking the company to start work on the issue soon. The resolution wants Sterilization Services to immediately begin working with the EPA, the state of Tennessee, and the Shelby County Health Department “to halt fugitive emissions, in lieu of waiting for the passage of federal regulation as the health and safety of Memphians continues to be at risk.”
“This particular company has multiple locations across the country,” Warren said Tuesday. “In some of the other locations, they are already moving to initiate activities to limit fugitive emission. What we’re doing here is … asking them to initiate those same interventions that they they’r putting in other sites across the country.”
The resolution also asks for the named government agencies to keep citizens updated with information about the company and its emissions.
Most members of the council’s Parks and Environment Committee signed on as co-sponsors to the resolution. Council member Edmund Ford Sr. got the heart of the matter saying the move was “very important because it puts in the air something we don’t want for our people.”
The pollution in
the author’s old
Detroit zip code mirrors that of 38109 in South Memphis. (Photo: Emma Lockridge)
Two communities have the same harmful chemical emissions but with extremely different responses and outcomes. As noted in this paper’s cover feature last week, residents of South Memphis recently received the startling news that they might be exposed to cancer-causing chemicals from Sterilization Services of Tennessee, a company in their Memphis 38109 community that sterilizes medical equipment.
Oh, the irony. Damage some people with toxins to protect others with clean equipment.
The Environmental Protection Agency shared the dire news at a community meeting that ethylene oxide (EtO), a known carcinogen, was being released into the air by the company. As expected, shocked and outraged citizens demanded to know the health impact and when the toxic exposure would cease. “You should move,” said one government official. It was pointless advice, as if the people could just pick up and move during these tough economic times. They also received a bunch of bureaucratic hurry-up-and-wait-for-relief responses.
Sterilization Services of Tennessee is based in a community that is home to a population of 96.6 percent Black and 1.8 percent white residents. The median home value is $67,000 and median household income is $31,067.
(Photo: Emma Lockridge)
In comparison, a company called Cosmed Group LLC, based in Erie, Pennsylvania, also sterilizes medical equipment using the same chemical, EtO. Instead of making people move, that company added new controls that became operational in August of this year. Cosmed installed a wet scrubber and a combo water balancer/catalytic oxidizer to control emissions from their facility, based in zip code 16510.
As a result of these changes made by Cosmed, the risk level for residents in their “Erie, PA, facility area has decreased,” according to information on the EPA’s website. The population of Erie is 86 percent white and 9.7 percent Black with a median household value of $105,200 and median household income of $53,021.
It is frustrating, but not at all surprising, to see the disparate outcomes in these two communities. The white community received relief while everything remains uncertain for the Black community.
As a recent frontline environmental justice organizer in Detroit, I became acutely aware of how Black people are more likely to breathe toxic air. The community I left behind in the Motor City remains the most polluted in the sate of Michigan, with more than 27 industrial facilities spewing harmful chemicals into my area on a daily basis. In fact, my community was known for being the most polluted in the state. It was impacted by steel mills, a water and sewerage treatment facility, a biosolids company that baked human waste into fertilizer, asphalt plants, a huge automotive plant, a lime production facility, and a massive oil refinery, plus a freeway adjacent to our subdivision.
(Photo: Emma Lockridge)
Mirroring residents in South Memphis, we had a wide range of diseases and illnesses related to toxic air. I was diagnosed with non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma and asthma, and had to undergo a kidney transplant. My health maladies were not unique. They, in fact, were ubiquitous in our zip code.
As a concerned citizen, I have met with residents of South Memphis who live near Sterilization Services. Hearing their health stories felt like I was sitting at home in a community meeting. My heart ached as I fought back tears. I also was impressed and uplifted by their resolve to keep fighting for a healthy outcome. But why do Black people always have to agitate for everything, even life itself? Our life expectancy should not be determined by our zip code.
“The redlining that occurs in our communities is the same boundaries polluters use to set up facilities in our area,” said Justin J. Pearson, co-founder of Memphis Community Against Pollution. “We live in sacrifice zones.”
Clean air advocates often predict dire consequences regarding the increase in global warming. What they have missed is Black people are already the canaries in the catastrophic environmental coal mine. It is unconscionable to sacrifice the health of a group of people so that others may benefit.
The EPA, government agencies, and industrial facilities must work to develop timely and permanent solutions to end toxic deaths and promote good health outcomes in Black communities. If a company in Erie, Pennsylvania, can solve a pollution problem for white people, it can be done here too by Sterilization Services for Black people in South Memphis.
Emma Lockridge is a veteran news reporter who focuses on the environment and social justice initiatives. Formerly based in Detroit, she also is a photojournalist who has had exhibits of her impactful images.
Sterilization Services of Tennessee in South Memphis is at the center
of an Environmental Protection Agency investigation. The EPA is
warning people who live near medical sterilizing plants about potential health risks from emissions of ethylene oxide (EtO), a chemical
widely used in their operations. (Photo: Tennessee Lookout/Karen Pulfer Focht)
Leona Golster loves her home in South Memphis, but sometimes it’s hard for the 78-year-old to breathe on her front porch.
Every now and then, the wind blows the smell of chemicals from the Sterilization Services of Tennessee (SST), a facility that uses ethylene oxide (EtO) to sterilize equipment for businesses throughout Tennessee.
“Smells like they’re burning something,” she said, pointing to the building less than a mile away from her home.
For the past few decades since the facility moved into her community, Golster has gone inside to escape the smell or wore a mask to sit outside.
Not much was known about EtO when the SST facility was founded in 1976, and the Shelby County Health Department’s air program granted the facility permits to operate in 1985. And while SST is following the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s current rules and regulations, officials have since learned that a lifetime of exposure to EtO, a known carcinogen, could lead to long-term health impacts should current emissions continue.
Leona Golster sits on her porch but is sometimes forced to go inside to escape the smell of burning chemicals from the nearby Sterilization Services of Tennessee. (Photo: Dulce Torres Guzman)
Once, the smell bothered her, but “not like it used to,” she said.
She loves her home, a one-story brick house. She moved into this house in the 1960s after marrying a man she met at a club.
“He was a man, I tell you. He was a booga bear,” she recalled.
She raised her children there, three of whom are now deceased. Her two oldest daughters died from health complications as adults.
“She never did stop working,” she said of her second-oldest daughter. “We went to church, that Sunday she came home and died that evening. I gave her to the Lord, I said there ain’t nothing I can do, that’s God’s doing.”
Her youngest daughter died of pneumonia at 4 years old.
And since her husband died from a work-related accident seven years ago, Golster has lived alone, enjoying the quiet, seemingly abandoned neighborhood. Many houses are in disrepair, while others have been gutted.
After becoming aware of new information on EtO, the EPA announced outreach efforts to the communities living near the SST facility to inform them of the dangers in constant EtO exposure. EPA officials met with residents on October 18th.
Houses near Sterilization Services of Tennessee at 2396 Florida Street in South Memphis are at the center of an EPA investigation. (Photo: Tennessee Lookout/Karen Pulfer Focht)
About 292 households are located near the facility, according to the Memphis Community Against Pollution (MCAP). Although the EPA is supposed to be doing outreach to the neighborhood, MCAP volunteer Angela Johnson found few residents that knew about EtO or the EPA’s current involvement.
“If you don’t know it’s there, you don’t know it’s there,” she said.
As for Golster, she is often annoyed by calls asking to purchase her house, which she intends to live in for as long as she can.
“I stay to myself. I’ve been here for a long time. Nobody bothers me,” she said.
The toxic effects of EtO
EtO, a colorless and flammable gas, has long been used to make other chemicals and products like antifreeze and plastic bottles, as well as sterilizing medical equipment and some spices to prevent contamination from bacteria and viruses, according to the EPA. And while EtO emissions at permitted levels today were not considered dangerous, studies have since shown that a lifetime of exposure could lead to long-term health impacts, including elevated cancer risks.
Breathing air containing EtO is the main method of exposure, since it is unlikely to remain in food or remain dissolved in water long enough to be eaten.
As a known human carcinogen, studies found that years of exposure to EtO could lead to non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma, myeloma, and lymphocytic leukemia. For women, long-term exposure increases the risk of breast cancer.
Growing up around EtO can lead to devastating effects for children.
Studies have shown that as children’s bodies develop and grow, they are much more susceptible to the toxic effects of EtO. As a mutagenic, EtO can damage DNA and can lead to long-term neurological effects.
And because children are likely to play outside more often than adults are outside, they are more exposed to EtO, said Courtney Roper, assistant professor of environmental toxicology at the University of Mississippi.
Since the EPA is now investigating the negative impacts of EtO, changes in regulations may follow. The EPA announced its intentions to propose strengthening current regulations around EtO while taking into account risk to those exposed.
But this could take years, said Roper.
“It’s not going to be like, ‘Oh, tomorrow you have to change this,” even when regulations are in place, since facilities are given a set amount of time to kind of get into compliance,” she said.
And while some facilities across the country are already working to reduce EtO levels and working with local and state health departments, said Roper, SST has not indicated it will do the same.
An SST spokesperson offered no comment when this story originally ran early last month.
So you live near a toxic chemical plant, now what?
The larger picture of course, said Roper, is how environmental racism remains a factor in South Memphis. Memphis, a majority-minority city, has for decades carried the burden of housing area industries emitting pollution.
Over the past two years, Memphis Community Against Pollution, previously known as Memphis Community Against the Pipeline, gained national attention for resisting construction of the Byhalia Pipeline and for efforts to use eminent domain in a historically Black community to acquire the necessary property.
Critics of the Byhalia Pipeline accused the developers of following a playbook for environmental racism by targeting Black neighborhoods that seemingly lacked the political power of wealthier, primarily white areas.
Although plans for the Byhalia Pipeline were withdrawn, the environmental justice movement drew attention to the repeated pattern of industries producing pollutants operating in low-income, predominantly Black neighborhoods.
In Memphis there are 66 facilities contributing to cancer rates four times higher than the national average, with half located in South Memphis, according to the Energy News Network.
The area also has high asthma rates, has been deemed a hot spot for air pollution, and has received a failing grade in terms of air quality from the American Lung Association.
The SST facility is among those polluting factors, and while the EPA is currently conducting community outreach and planning to inform residents about the dangers of EtO exposure, it did not indicate what other actions will be taken beyond changes in regulations.
Once residents are made aware, the low-income community will most likely be unable to leave their homes to avoid further exposure.
“That’s the environmental justice aspect of situations like this, where individuals that don’t have the desire or ability to move from being near that facility are kind of like, ‘Well, I live by a facility that may be causing cancer,’” said Roper.
“So it’s definitely a challenge and there are no resources that I am aware of in place to support something like individuals moving after getting notice of this. It’s more on a federal side of just letting people know of the situation than tangible funds to change it,” she added.
And right now, the SST facility is in compliance with federal and state regulations, “so there’s no way to enact an expectation that they pay people to move,” she said.
Without changes in regulations, consistent pressure from community groups could enact swifter change. MCAP members and volunteers are currently enacting their own outreach efforts in South Memphis to alert neighbors. Roper has been collaborating with MCAP in learning more about the effects of EtO.
Memphis officials and the Shelby County Health Department are also working to alert residents and collaborating with the EPA.
“Shelby County Health Department has requested a cancer incidence study of the area surrounding the Sterilization Services of Tennessee facility from the Tennessee Department of Health to identify any higher-than-expected cancer rates among the population in that community,” said spokesperson Joan Carr, when she urged concerned residents to attend the EPA’s public meeting.
A home near a polluting plant is still a home.
Although Golster was unaware of the negative effects simply by living near pollution, she doesn’t plan on leaving any time soon.
Most recently she celebrated her 78th birthday and her grandson paid for her nails to be done. She proudly sat on her porch next to empty chairs, showing off her brightly colored nails and braided hair.
Her 11 grandchildren often come by for a visit, so she is not often alone.
“They some booga bears too,” she said.
EPA to South Memphians: Leaving your homes is the best option.
At Monumental Baptist Church in South Memphis, local residents lined up to tell federal officials how cancer possibly linked to their environment had taken their loved ones, friends, and family.
EPA officials flew into town to inform residents of the possible deadly consequences of living near Sterilization Services of Tennessee, a facility that has been located in the neighborhood since 1976.
The company uses EtO to sterilize items as disparate as medical equipment and spices. It operates under the necessary federal and local permits and no protective measures are required to prevent EtO from escaping into the nearby community, including those who worked nearby and children who attended nearby schools.
But in the last few years, EPA officials have learned that EtO was more dangerous than they previously knew. Breathing the chemical may have increased the risk for cancer and other health risks, with risk increasing due to proximity.
Children are also more susceptible, said Daniel Blackman, an EPA administrator responsible for overseeing four states, including Tennessee.
Controlled emissions are regulated by equipment designed to prevent EtO from escaping the facility, but fugitive emissions — or emissions that escape the facility — cause the most risk and are not covered under current regulations.
“Risk in Memphis is high and we’re very concerned about that risk,” said Blackman.
EPA officials also noted how there was little residents could do to minimize their risk beyond leaving their homes in South Memphis. There are no air filters that could protect them inside or outside their homes, and spending more time indoors does not reduce their risk.
“The best solution to reducing this risk is to reduce the amount of currently not regulated EtO, fugitive emission that is going out of this facility,” said Caroline Freeman, EPA air and radiation division director.
“As a matter of fact, spending less time near the facility would in fact reduce your risk,” she added.
On October 18th, EPA officials addressed residents’ concerns. The Shelby County Health Department director, Dr. Michelle Taylor, also attended.
As soon as the presentation was finished, residents from the affected neighborhoods, Riverside and Mallory Heights, left their church pews to stand in line and address the EPA officials directly.
Maxine Thomas, a South Memphis resident, walked to the microphone, carefully balancing on her cane as she asked how residents were expected to protect themselves.
“What are we going to do? Just die?” she asked. “I want to live a long life. I’m 83 years old.”
Another resident told officials she was born and raised near Sterilization Services of Tennessee, and she lived close enough that she could throw a rock at the building from her backyard. Although she later moved away, she later developed breast cancer, and several of her neighbors had also have had cancer.
“Some of us have lost parents. I lost my father,” said resident Carolyn Lanton.
Due to the cancer risks, EPA officials and the Shelby County Health Department are looking into how many cancer cases were connected to the residents in the area. The department is also working on creating resources for residents without the means to get tested for cancer, said Taylor.
“We are already working with all of our hospital partners in deep conversations about the number of resources that we will be able to bring there. We know that there are a lot of people in the community who are either uninsured or underinsured, don’t forget about that,” said Taylor. “So we have a lot of people, and a lot of that has to do with what’s going on at the state level, the fact that we are not a Medicaid expansion state. Don’t get me started on that.”
The EPA is also planning to propose new regulations targeting EtO emissions in the coming months, and a final proposal is expected in 2023. Once the regulations are set, the Clean Air Act allows facilities two to three years to comply with the requirements and the EPA has been encouraging facilities to work on reducing current emissions levels.
But residents asked why they were still being asked to take on the risk of living near a cancer-causing facility that only employed eight workers, they noted. Others complained that EPA officials had offered few solutions.
“We need something done now. We can’t keep dying for some [profit],” said Adrian Ward, a resident.
“We don’t need nothing but a solution to the problem. Ask them to move somewhere else less populated,” he added.
The problem is, said EPA officials, that Sterilization Services of Tennessee has not broken any regulations and has all the necessary permits. While the facility is one of 100 in the nation, the Memphis facility is one of 23 with higher risk — and no law prevented the facility from moving into a primarily low-income, Black community, a notion that many community activists have labeled as environmental racism.
“We have been dying disproportionately, and what we’re being told is to wait. We can’t afford to wait,” said Justin J. Pearson, co-founder of Memphis Community Against Pollution. “It’s that we are being sacrificed for polluters. We are being sacrificed for their profits, and we are being sacrificed because people in positions of power are not caring about our lives.”
“The Sterilization Services has got to go,” he said.
“It’s easy for you to say what you said, and I agree with the majority of why people are here. I think the challenge is that’s not how this process works,” Blackman retorted, adding that communities needed to challenge local zoning laws in order to make the facility move.
Pearson then addressed the EPA panel directly about their efforts to inform the community about the risks they inherited just by living in South Memphis.
“You have failed to adequately inform this community of what’s going on,” he said, adding that MCAP volunteers sent out thousands of flyers and text messages.
The community cannot wait on new regulations, said Pearson, and MCAP planned on continuing mobilization efforts to enact swifter changes.
“This is the movement that we’re talking about, and we need you to go back to Atlanta and do your job well and know that you’ve got Memphis to support you,” he said.
“But we don’t have time to wait,” said Pearson.
This story was written by Dulce Torres Guzman for Tennessee Lookout and originally published on tennesseelookout.com in two parts, which can be found here and here.
Beginning in late 2020, there was a blast of publicity regarding the possibility of a massive redevelopment of South Memphis — two different and competing redevelopments, actually. More of that anon.
This is a sprawling territory — including ZIP code 38126, statistically the most impoverished area anywhere in Memphis — that unquestionably needs an economic shot in the arm.
Photo: Jesse Davis
Besides containing large pockets of the most bleakly underserved parts of Memphis, South Memphis — “Soulsville,” in the larger generic sense — is also the home of some of the city’s most important landmarks: LeMoyne-Owen College, a pedigreed HBCU (historically Black college and university) that has produced no small share of the city’s influential movers and shakers; The Four Way, a venerable eatery and meeting place that has nurtured luminaries and grassroots politicians alike; and the Stax complex, source of so much of Memphis’ musical history and still functioning today as a museum and training ground for would-be musical avatars.
Soulsville is home to the Stax music legacy among other landmarks. (Photos: Jesse Davis)
The name “Soulsville” derives mainly from the Stax legacy, and it continues to serve as a descriptor of the South Memphis area and its citizenry at large. The people who live in this domain constitute the very textbook description of an underserved population.
The proposed map for the South Memphis TIF district (Photo: Courtesy CRA/SNDD)
Milton’s Method Reginald Milton, a member of the Shelby County Commission from the area and a community organizer for the last 22 years, has served on several boards, as commissioners tend to do. One of them was the board of the University Neighborhoods Development Corporation (UNDC), focused on the area around the University of Memphis.
Not too many years ago, that area, including the lengthy Highland Street artery that borders the university on its western side, was served by a few hit-or-miss storefronts and collegiate haunts. Nothing you could call a development as such — certainly nothing that was in sync with an educational institution that was ever upgrading and expanding from its roots as a small teachers’ college into the formidable research university that it is today.
But then the UNDC was granted a TIF (tax incremental financing) that accelerated the active recruiting of new businesses to serve the area. A TIF is one of three basic financial means by which local or state governments can incentivize investment, the others being arrangements for a PILOT (payment in lieu of taxes) and a TDZ (tourism development zone). Usually, it is an individual business that is granted a PILOT; the recipient is freed, during a given period, from what would be the usual property tax obligations. A TDZ allows for the state sales taxes within a project area to be rerouted, during a set number of years, into the development of the project.
A TIF functions more or less like the TDZ, except that it is granted not by the state but by local government, and the tax deferment applies to the incremental rise in property taxes collected within the project area during the TIF period (usually 15 years or less). Under legislation passed by the Tennessee General Assembly in 1998, TIFs are approved, first, by a local CRA (Community Redevelopment Agency) and then by the two basic local funding authorities, in the local case, the city of Memphis and the Shelby County Commission.
If all goes well, the tax base within the project area will rise, and the additional tax revenues arising from that will be poured back into the project area, not into the general fund of city or county.
Recent TIFs have been approved in Shelby County for the Uptown area, for the Binghampton community, and, as aforementioned, for the University of Memphis area. The latter TIF, after a slow start, succeeded spectacularly, resulting in a much elongated Highland strip, replete with storefronts and upscale apartment housing from Poplar down to Southern.
Reginald Milton remembers: “I was on the UNDC board when they got the TIF. And I realized the tremendous benefit the TIF would provide. I saw how you can build up Highland around the university community. And I wondered if you could do something of that magnitude here in South Memphis.”
Before becoming a community organizer per se, Milton had developed his civic consciousness as a neighborhood specialist for the city of Memphis. “That’s what really got me into this. I realized that the city was really trying to help, but the reality was my job was to go and sit in community meetings, listen to the people, and go home and write it down. They would say, you know, there’s drugs in our neighborhood. Okay? Did not know that. Write that down and then go and file it in File 13.We weren’t bad people. It’s just, we weren’t doing anything.”
Milton left his city job and began doing hands-on work with several small community groups in South Memphis. “My task was to work with these community groups and show them that their problems came from working individually. You’ve got maybe 10 neighborhood associations. This association has 10 members; another might have 15 members,” Milton says. “Individually, you’re all trying to work with the city. You’re powerless that way.”
Reginald Milton working the phone from the laundromat owned by his South Memphis Alliance (Photo: Jackson Baker)
That effort saw the birth of the South Memphis Alliance (SMA), a grouping of such associations, which Milton founded and runs today as executive director.
“My goal, as a community organizer, was to somehow convince these nonprofits that it made sense to create a larger nonprofit, where they will sit on a board and be the voice, the face of South Memphis. And we would legitimately be so because we were from a community.”
Over the years the SMA became a functioning organization with income sources from adjuncts like a laundromat which shares a parking lot with the nonprofit’s headquarters on South Bellevue.
The component organizations of SMA range in area from Annesdale-Snowden to Longview Heights to Rozelle to the Soulsville Neighborhood Association to Shadowlawn. Says Milton: “You had all these organizations that were really doing a decent job. Alone, they weren’t doing the maximum possible job, though. Understandably, all these organizations had to be focused on their own leaky roofs.”
And, with a TIF in mind, Milton would join this conglomerate to others — to form the SoulsvilleUSA Neighborhood Development District (SNDD).
Coming together to form the district would be SCORE CDC, LeMoyne-Owen College CDC, Memphis Black Arts Alliance, Memphis Music Magnet, Soulsville Foundation, and SMA itself. Milton emphasizes that his role was that of facilitator; the district members elect their own officers.
Board of SoulsvilleUSA Neighborhood Development District (Photo: Jackson Baker)
A Tale of Two TIFs While Milton was putting together his conglomerate, another major player was expressing interest in organizing for a TIF in South Memphis.
This was J.W. Gibson, a prominent contractor and developer, who had already been responsible for numerous building projects. Gibson, through his Southeast Regional Development Corporation, had a somewhat different and larger TIF effort in mind, extending to a few areas — the South Main complex, the Medical District, Victorian Village — that were, technically, outside South Memphis proper.
Gibson’s premise was based on the old axiom that “it takes money to make money” and that for a TIF to work properly it should contain some already operating magnet areas to attract potential new investors.
And, in December 2000, he was the first to get his application in to the CRA for its appraisal.
Milton was still involved in the process of sounding out all his community agencies on collaborating in the TIF process. Gibson’s application upped the ante for him.
“We had to ensure that our body had the broad support of the community. We couldn’t just arbitrarily say we represented the community. We held numerous town hall meetings to get their approval to go speak on their behalf,” Milton says.
“Our reasoning for not turning ours in at the same time as J.W.’s was very clear. Until we met with every community that would be represented in our TIF district, we could not turn in an application. We made it clear to the CRA we would not do so.”
Milton’s group reached out for expert advice, hiring Andy Kitsinger, chief designer of Development Studio, an organization which specializes in the kind of by-the-bootstraps economic effort that the newly formed SNDD was seeking.
Kitsinger had acquired his experience and demonstrated his chops by assisting in several other projects, including a successful and functioning TIF in Binghampton. Once on the Soulsville job, Kitsinger saw the developing TIF as one that was “aimed at creating stability, at preventing displacement of the existing population and spurring the development of affordable housing.”
“We worked a long time at getting input from the South Memphis community, getting a sense of their highest priorities, which included blight remediation and affordable housing,” Kitsinger says.
Finally, the SNDD was ready with its proposal and submitted it to the CRA in April. “It put a lot of pressure on them to make a decision,” recalls Milton. The usual situation for the CRA was that the agency would receive a single application for a single project area. Here it was having to deal with two groups — Milton’s and Gibson’s — submitting overlapping applications for approval.
“I didn’t see it as competition,” says Milton. “My theory was that it was twice as good to have two organizations wanting to do something for the community, but the CRA had never experienced that before.”
Complicating the predicament was the fact that one mayor, Lee Harris of Shelby County, was publicly endorsing the Gibson project, while another, Jim Strickland of Memphis, was encouraging Milton and SNDD. “He understood the necessity for the community to control this. He got the idea what we were trying to do,” Milton says.
Even today, Milton and Gibson, the impresarios of the two separate TIFs, do not speak ill of each other. Yet they were definitely rivals, and their missions, while overlapping, did operate on different premises.
Gibson made it clear that, without specific magnet areas already functioning in a target area, “your baseline is extremely low,” making it “extremely difficult to attract investors.” Hence, his insistence on a larger territorial spread, consisting of some 8,000 parcels, some already generating significant revenue.
J.W. Gibson and Senchel Matthews of Southeast Region Development Corporation (Photo: Jackson Baker)
The Specter of Gentrification Milton renders his point of view this way, recalling a recent trip to Nashville. “As members of the County Commission, we get invited to a lot of places outside Shelby County. It’s always the same. They invite us to this very nice new hotel they’ve built, and at some point we’re sitting outside relaxing. And across the street is always a Starbucks, and two people come jogging. I swear it’s the same two people, I don’t care what city it is, it’s the same two people.
“And our host is saying very proudly, ‘Look at this area. Look how beautiful it is. Just five years ago, I wouldn’t have been caught dead in this neighborhood.’ I mean, here he was an elected official and he didn’t want to come into the area, which I’m sure he represented. And I asked the question, I said, ‘Could you tell me what happened to the local mom-and-pop businesses here and the residents?’ That man looked at me like I cursed his sister out. Because he never thought to talk about that. The fact was, those folks were moved out when they brought those glossier things in.”
What Milton was evoking was the specter of gentrification. “What happens is, in the effort to make an area better, you end up moving the poor out and into a more stable neighborhood. And because they arrive in massive numbers, you destabilize the community. So you’ve got dislocation on both ends,” he says.
“Water always goes downhill. It takes the easiest route. If you’re a business and you want to develop in an inner city community, the best way to do it is to buy up a lot of land in the area, push everybody out, and you can do your development. The hardest thing would be to try to actually go in there and work with the community.”
That’s one way of seeing the dilemma of economic development in an underserved area. To change the community by importing new business or super-charging the environment with up-to-date brick-and-mortar construction is, as Milton suggests, to risk transforming it and displacing its population. We’ve all seen — or even lived or worked in — such changed landscapes. (Hello, Edge District. Hiya, Cordova and Hickory Hill.) Such areas can once again become economic liabilities in the course of time.
Reginald Milton is urging what he acknowledges is basically an “experiment.” Can a poor community lift itself by its own bootstraps? Can it discover within itself the means to regenerate its prospects? In one of his discussions with the CRA, he recast the initials forming TIF this way: “The Indigenous First.”
In the end, the CRA — faced with having to choose between J.W. Gibson’s ambitious model and development expertise and the carefully coordinated community structure of the SNDD — decided upon a uniquely Solomonic solution. It would anoint neither the Gibson project nor that of Milton’s group. Maintaining that both projects were too large as conceived, the CRA produced its own territorial map, consisting of roughly 4,000 parcels, and proclaimed a TIF project under its own auspices.
Gibson, disappointed at the outcome and at the snail’s pace by which the necessary approval of the CRA’s TIF by the City Council and County Commission has advanced since its unveiling last fall, is skeptical of the agency’s reasoning. He points out that the CRA, which contended that a project of 8,000 parcels would stress out its staff, had forwarded out an Uptown TIF involving some 7,700 parcels.
Milton, too, sees something disingenuous in the CRA’s solution — though in a different sense. “Basically, the CRA said, ‘Well, we’re just going to create our own map, and we’re gonna design it on community organizing and outreach,’ which just so happens to have been everything we did. They literally took all our data and our design and copied it. They took it and made it their model. And they reduced our size by just a little. It was basically SNDD’s model.”
But Milton sees in the outcome the cause for a declaration of victory on his group’s part. He and the SNDD board, chaired by Rebecca Matlock Hutchinson of SCORE CDC, are official advisers on the project to CRA, though it is the agency itself that will direct things.
And Gibson has an open invitation to align himself with the CRA model. He and his associate Senchel Matthews are keeping their powder dry on a South Memphis Revitalization Action Plan — including a long-desired grocery store complex — which, to some degree, will undoubtedly come to fruition in part or in parcel.
Meanwhile, the CRA-crafted TIF — the Soulsville TIF — is finally about to hit the council and commission calendars for the final approval stages. There was some symbolic preliminary action last week in the commission on a $1 million grant to be shared by the SNDD itself and three of its components— the Memphis Black Arts Alliance, PURE Youth Athletics Alliance, and SCORE CDC. This funding, through the federal government’s American Rescue Plan, is technically unrelated to the TIF, but it does have the look of a favorable omen.
Beyond a Thursday-morning tweet from the Memphis Police Department, no new details have yet been released of an apparent school shooting at Cummings K-8 Optional School in South Memphis.
The school is just south of Elmwood Cemetery in the College Park neighborhood. It is close to Lemoyne-Owen College and Chandler Park.
