By Margaret Renkl, The New York Times, August 16, 2021
Something wonderful happened in Memphis last month: Community organizers in the city managed to stop a crude-oil pipeline from running beneath the historic neighborhood of Boxtown as well as several other predominantly Black communities along its projected 45-mile route.
The Byhalia Connection pipeline was to be a joint venture by Plains All American Pipeline and Valero Energy. As The Commercial Appeal in Memphis reported in March, Plains All American was already plagued by environmental problems, including a major oil spill on the California coast in 2015. Meanwhile, closer to Memphis, a leak of crude oil and benzene — a known carcinogen — occurred in 2020 near the place where the proposed pipeline was set to join an existing storage site.
Despite these companies’ terrible safety records, the proposed pipeline, which was first announced in December 2019, would have routed it directly beneath a fragile sand aquifer that supplies much of the drinking water in Shelby County, Tenn., where Memphis is.
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