Lawmakers call on Biden to stop pipeline
Concerns rise over environmental effects
Twenty-eight members of Congress signed a letter urging President Joe Biden to intervene before the construction of the Byhalia Connection pipeline moves forward.
Specifically, members of the U.S. House of Representatives including Steve Cohen, Alexandria Ocasio-cortez, and Ayanna Pressley are asking the president to re-evaluate the use of a Nationwide Permit 12 issued by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers.
The permit allows companies to fasttrack construction of a project through geographical features like rivers and streams on the basis of the project having a minimal environmental impact.
A Nationwide Permit 12 was approved in February for the Byhalia Connection, a joint project between Plains All American Pipelines and Valero Energy.
A portion of the roughly 49-mile long crude oil pipeline that would connect the Valero refinery in South Memphis to a storage terminal, also owned by Valero, in Marshall County, Mississippi, runs through a low-income, predominately Black neighborhood in South Memphis.
The letter, penned by Cohen, calls into question whether the Corps of Engineers should be granting Nationwide Permit 12 to oil companies who are seeking the permit for pipeline construction.
With that particular permit, Cohen wrote, there is an implied assumption of limited environmental impact.
But Cohen, environmental advocacy groups, and community members argue the environmental impact of the Byhalia Connection is anything but insignificant.
“The nationwide permitting process allows applicants to obtain fast-track permission to cross rivers and streams, avoiding public input as well as project-specific scrutiny of environmental harm,” Cohen wrote.
The use of a Permit 12 by the fossil fuel industry, Cohen wrote, is no longer appropriate, given the growing impact of climate change.
The Boxtown community in South Memphis, where the pipeline would be placed four feet underground, is already home to dozens of industrial companies with operations that emit pollutants into the atmosphere.
This portion of the pipeline would also run directly over a Memphis Light, Gas & water wellfield.
Should the pipeline burst, Memphis’ drinking water supply would likely be affected, environmental groups say.
Grassroots efforts by the Memphis Community Against the Pipeline have attracted support from national figures like former Vice President Al Gore, who is a Tennessee native, and celebrities like Danny Glover and Jane Fonda. Those figures have, in turn, helped thrust the Memphis-based pushback against the pipeline into a national conversation.
Cohen’s letter is the second iteration of its kind. The congressman previously wrote a letter to Biden urging his interference in the permit process in late February.
The following members of Congress added their signatures to Cohen’s letter: Ocasio-cortez, Pressley, Alan Lowenthal, Ann Mclane Kuster, Pressley, Barbara Lee, Bonnie Watson Coleman, Carolyn B. Maloney, Cori Bush, Eleanor Holmes Norton, Emmanuel Cleaver II, Grace Meng, Henry “Hank” Johnson Jr., Ilhan Omar, Jamaal Bowman, Jerrold Nadler, Jesús “Chuy” Garcia, Jim Cooper, Marie Newman, Mondaire Jones, Nanette Diaz Barragán, Nydia Velázquez, Pramila Jayapal, Rashida Tlaib, Raúl Grijalva, Robert “Bobby” Scott, Ted W. Lieu, and Earl Blumenauer.