Gore: Put stop to the reckless, racist Byhalia pipeline
On Tuesday, when the Memphis City Council votes on an ordinance to protect the city’s pristine water supply, it will be choosing between the future health and well-being of Memphis and the future profits of two Texas oil companies trying to seize the property of Black citizens in Southwest Memphis to transport $9 billion of crude oil per year from the fracking fields in Texas to tankers in Louisiana for export.
There are three reasons why the Council should vote to protect Memphis’s people and drinking water, despite the objections of the pipeline companies: (1) it is reckless; (2) it is racist; and (3) it is a rip-off.
First, it is reckless to bury a huge high-pressure oil pipeline directly over the crown jewel of the city: the Memphis Sand Aquifer, one of the purest aquifers in the world and the sole source of drinking water for all of Memphis.
Incredibly, they also want to tunnel directly through a vulnerable “wellfield zone” – one of several places where the protective clay layer above the aquifer is breached and the aquifer especially vulnerable to contamination.
A spill there would be utterly catastrophic.
Moreover, the region stretching from Memphis to New Madrid, Missouri, is the most dangerous earthquake zone east of the Rocky Mountains. Three of the largest earthquakes in U.S. history hit here early in the 19th century – ringing church bells in Boston.
As a senator representing Memphis 30 years ago, I held hearings on the risk of another big quake here. The seismologists said it’s a matter of when, not if.
The two oil companies pushing this reckless project – Valero and Plains Allamerican – have both been charged for their reckless negligence. In 2015, a Plains pipeline ruptured in California, spreading oil over nine miles of the Santa Barbara coast. Plains has also been prosecuted for 10 other pipeline spills in four states and in Canada for one of the largest ground-based oil spills in the history of North America.
Meanwhile, Valero’s large refinery is already the worst source of toxic air pollution in Shelby County, with most of the pollution carried into Southwest Memphis. Last year, Valero spilled 800 gallons of crude oil near the planned route of the Byhalia pipeline.
These companies’ assurances of safety would be laughable if their records were not so dangerous.
Second, it is racist because the proposed route intentionally snakes through the 97% Black communities of Southwest Memphis, where residents are already suffering a horribly disproportionate and dangerous level of pollution and a cancer rate four times the national average. It is a textbook example of environmental injustice.
When the companies were asked why they chose this route, they said Southwest Memphis was “the point of least resistance.”
But that was a miscalculation. Two longtime property owners in Boxtown, Clyde Robinson, and Scottie Fitzgerald, refused to sell the rights to their land and fought back hard. Members of the community, led by Justin Pearson, Kathy Robinson, and Kizzy Jones, rose up to organize an impressive movement. NGOS and pro-bono lawyers joined to help them.
Third, it is a ripoff. Memphis bears all of the risks while the pipeline companies get all the benefits. All the oil will go to foreign countries and will spew more global warming pollution into the Earth’s atmosphere, further worsening the climate crisis.
I urge the City Council to reject the notion of being yet another rubber stamp for this project and to vote to approve the ordinance that will help stop this racist, reckless ripoff.
Al Gore is the 45th Vice President of the United States and represented Tennessee in the U.S. Senate from 1985-1993. He is the founder and chairman of The Climate Reality Project, a non-profit devoted to solving the climate crisis.