Boxtown and the Pipeline

80-year old Clyde Robinson treasures the acre of land he inherited in Boxtown, a neighborhood just south of Memphis that began as a community of freed slaves in the 1860s. For more than five decades, his relatives lived in a home on the property. While fire destroyed the house, he still cares for the property, paying his taxes and tending to the land. Now he finds himself defending it.

Robinson’s land is wanted by Valero Energy and Plains All American Pipeline, and their joint venture, the Byhalia Connection. They want to build an underground, miles long 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. The land sits over an aquifer that provides drinking water to more than one million people.

The Byhalia Connection would link the east-west Diamond Pipeline through the Valero refinery in Memphis to the north-south Capline Pipeline near Byhalia, Mississippi. 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. Robinson has refused an offer of $8,000 for an easement on his property and is fighting the project in court. “My dad says, ‘[h]ow are they going to take what’s mine?’” said Marie Odum, Robinson’s daughter. “It’s just not fair.”

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 drinking water. The pipeline connector would traverse well fields that pump water from the aquifer into the water system. And the aquifer’s clay layer is already known to have leaks and breaches; if the pipeline should fail, contamination of the water supply could be imminent.

Opponents suspect environmental racism—the practice of placing toxic factories, landfills and other polluters in minority neighborhoods and indigenous areas, where residents are often politically voiceless and only realize the danger after people get sick. They say Boxtown, where homes had no running water or electricity as recently as the 1970s, was chosen because residents are Black and low income.

During a recent rally against the pipeline, activist Justin Pearson said the project radiates racial injustice. “Black lives matter when we are in our homes and our children are outside playing on our land.” 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, but Byhalia Connection spokeswoman Katie Martin said the comment doesn’t reflect the company’s views. “What should have been said is that we really, truly look for the least collective impact to the community,” Smith said.

Project officials have reached deals with some landowners on the planned pipeline’s route. A few holdouts, like Robinson, have been taken to court. The pipeline’s lawyers are seeking eminent domain, long invoked by governments to claim private property for public-use projects. Robinson’s lawyers say no statute in Tennessee gives a company the right to take property for moving oil from one refinery to another. Circuit Court Judge Felicia Corbin Johnson said during a hearing that she has concerns about whether the pipeline company can claim eminent domain.

The Southern Environmental Law Center and others also have opposed the Byhalia Connection’s approval using Nationwide Permit 12, which helps fast-track pipeline construction by allowing developers to skip an environmental assessment and public comment period on projects that cross rivers, streams and wetlands if they can show their project will have minimal environmental effects.

Plains All-American has said construction could begin within months, though the ongoing legal battle may delay that. US Rep. Steve Cohen, a Memphis Democrat, has asked the Biden administration—which already canceled the presidential permit for the much-disputed Keystone XL pipeline—to tell the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers to rescind the Byhalia Connection’s permit. “The proposed Byhalia Pipeline would impose yet another burden on Black neighborhoods in southwest Memphis that have, for decades, unfairly shouldered the pollution burdens of an oil refinery, and coal- and gas-fired power plants,” Cohen wrote.

Byhalia Connection representatives say the pipeline will make refineries along the artery more efficient and poses no threat to the aquifer. “Our pipeline is going to be typically 3 to 4 feet underground, and the drinking water segment of the Sand Aquifer is far deeper than that,” said Martin, the pipeline project’s spokeswoman. ‘Plains All-American has owned and operated pipelines in Memphis without problems, and measures will be put in place to ensure the aquifer’s safety,” Martin said, adding a promise of jobs and tax revenue. “Our goal for this project is to safely and responsibly build and operate a pipeline that will be a long-term benefit to the community,” Martin said.

Byhalia Connection has given more than $1 million to the Memphis community for various causes. But Robinson says no amount of money or talk will convince him to give up what’s his. Ambling across the land one recent sunny day, he picks up trash with a stick that he leans on to trudge up a hill. He talks about dreams of building a senior care center or a children’s playground someday.

The points of view presented in the excerpt above illustrate some of the current issues related to building through established communities and the desire to update and make more efficient the infrastructure of the United States. Some common points of view that people have about this type of issue are:

  • Proponents of these kinds of projects believe that they can be major job creation projects and can be major regional economic contributors. Likewise, a positive aspect pointed to by proponents is that the crude created by establishing pipelines within the US creates a more reliable product for refiners to process. Instead of relying on product from Mexico or Venezuela that may or may not come in or may or may not be of the highest quality, US-built pipelines offer safe and consistent refining that can support US jobs. Finally, this is a more efficient option for the economy in that it should lower the costs of production and allow for overhead costs to come down since the source of crude will be closer to refining facilities.
  • Opponents of these kinds of projects point to many environmental concerns, including the extraction and transportation of one of the most damaging forms of fossil fuel (bitumen), causing the potential for toxic run-off where there currently exists no threat. Additionally, it’s been shown with past pipeline projects that jobs may be abundant at the onset of the project, but eventually, those jobs dwindle to low numbers. Most of the longer term support jobs also tend to be minimum wage positions, which cannot support a family. While it may be a more efficient method of transportation than rail or truck, there are still impacts to the environment, with carbon emission being a concern. Opponents point out that they believe more sustainable (long-term), good-paying jobs could be created with investments in green energy.

Now that you’ve completed the reading, pick ONE of the following prompts to craft an essay:

  • VIEWPOINT 1: Without jobs, Americans suffer; rebuilding the infrastructure is one way to ensure jobs for people in local communities.
  • VIEWPOINT 2: The economy must take a back seat to the environment and individuals, as without a clean country to live in, all Americans suffer.

You may only CHOOSE ONE viewpoint above (use the viewpoint you select, appropriately paraphrased and without attribution, as your thesis). Trying to combine both points of view into one essay will earn you a ZERO. In other words, I expect you to take a position and defend it. Once you’ve settled on one point of view, do additional research to defend your position. Chapters 20 and 21 of your text may provide you with some useful background and terminology. Some things you should consider when organizing your thoughts:

  • What are the ethical issues presented in the reading?
  • Is this a case of environmental racism? Why or why not?
  • What ethical responsibility would/do you have now that you know about this situation? In other words, what would you do if you knew this was happening in your home town? What if you were Clyde Robinson?
  • How can you apply the sociological imagination to this scenario to better understand what’s happening?
  • Have there been any recent developments on this case, and if so, what are they?