Memphis: Refuse to Shake Rattle and OIL

Memphians, have you missed tap water this week? The sweet, artesian, non-contaminated, pre-plastic, and pre-industrial water that is safely tucked inside our forty-million-year-old Aquifer? The aquifer that Roy Van Arsdale, professor of geology at the University of Memphis, says “...is one of the best in the world in terms of thickness, aerial content, quality of water.”

Memphians, perhaps you now understand how much we take this buried treasure for granted. The temporary water crisis, caused by frozen pipes, required us to boil water, buy limited supplies of bottled water at gouged prices, and take sponge baths. However, it could be so much worse. Imagine the chaos, imagine missing that tap water, for years... or indefinitely. 

That is what will happen when a pipeline running crude oil at 1500 psi, twenty-five miles through the ground in South Memphis above our aquifer, fractures and contaminates our life-sustaining pure water. It will be a matter of time before a spill occurs, and once they build the pipeline, there will be no one and nothing to stop it. Concerns over the dangerous Byhalia pipeline are legitimate, despite whom the Big Oil Propaganda machine pays (and bribes) to convince you. More than 1,650 individual leaks have occurred in the U.S. since 2010, as pipelines spilled more than 11.5 million gallons of oil. It will be a matter of time until it happens here.

There are many more reasons to oppose this project besides jeopardizing our water supply. The pipeline will run through a historic Black neighborhood with high homeownership rates. It would displace residents and homeowners of their homes by eminent domain (currently, homeowners are battling in the court system to keep their land) rather than invest in the community. This is what environmental injustice looks like. 

Lastly, Memphis, we are situated along the New Madrid Fault line. An earthquake will happen here one day, and a crude oil pipeline damaged from such an earthquake will be devastating to rescue efforts. Future generations will look at this time and wonder how we could have been so foolish to build along an aquifer and faultline. 

We demand our local, state, and federal governments oppose the Byhalia Pipeline, a subsidiary of Plains All American Pipeline. We demand laws are created to protect our Aquifer. We demand justice for the homeowners whom Plains ‘All American’ is attempting to displace.

Memphis refuses to shake, rattle and oil.