RACE, ENVIRONMENT cited in opposition to pipline.

MEMPHIS — Clyde Robinson treasures the acre of land he inherited, a verdant space tucked into a cul-de-sac in a south Memphis neighborhood, surrounded by houses and trees beside a railroad track.

For more than five decades, he nurtured it while his relatives lived in a home on the property, then maintained the land after a fire destroyed the house. The 80-year-old retired cement mason pays the taxes and cares for the property in Boxtown, a neighborhood that began as a community of freed slaves in the 1860s.

Now he finds himself defending it.

Robinson’s land is coveted by Valero Energy and Plains All American Pipeline, and their joint venture, the Byhalia Connection. They want to build an underground, 49-mile pipeline to carry crude oil to the Gulf Coast, which they say will bring jobs and tax revenue to the region. The pipeline would run through wetlands and under poor, predominantly Black neighborhoods like Boxtown, named after residents used material dumped from railroad boxcars to fortify their homes.

Robinson isn’t alone in thinking it’s a bad idea. The land sits over an aquifer that provides drinking water to more than 1 million people. Environmentalists and the local Democratic congressman see an opportunity for the Biden administration to reverse the industry-friendly policies of former President Donald Trump.

Robinson has refused an offer of $8,000 for an easement on his property and is fighting the project in court.

“My dad says, ‘How are they going to take what’s mine?’” said Marie Odum, Robinson’s daughter. “It’s just not fair.”

The Byhalia Connection would link the east-west Diamond Pipeline through the Valero refinery in Memphis to the north-south Capline Pipeline near Byhalia, Miss. The Capline, which has been transporting crude oil from a Louisiana port on the Gulf of Mexico north to the Midwest, is being reversed to deliver oil south through Mississippi to refineries and export terminals on the Gulf.

Environmentalists, activists and local politicians say the companies are putting oil profits ahead of the people who live along the pipeline’s path. Some fear a spill would endanger waterways and seep contaminants into the Memphis Sand Aquifer, which gives Memphis its slightly sweet-tasting drinking water. The pipeline connector would traverse well fields that pump water from the aquifer into the water system.

In a letter to the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, the Southern Environmental Law Center said the clay layer above the aquifer “has several known and suspected breaches, holes, and leaks.”

Opponents say Boxtown, where homes had no running water or electricity as recently as the 1970s, was chosen because residents are Black and low-income.

Pearson and others bristled when a Byhalia Connection land agent said during a community meeting that the pipeline developers “took, basically, a point of least resistance” in choosing the path.