STEVE COHEN COMMITTEE ON THE JUDICIARY

9TH DISTRICT, TENNESSEE SUBCOMMITTEES:

2104 RAYBURN HOUSE OFFICE BUILDING
WASHINGTON, DC 20515
Congress of the United States CHAIR – CONSTITUTION, CIVIL RIGHTS AND
CIVIL LIBERTIES
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FAX: (202) 225-5663 Washington, DC 20515-4209 CRIME, TERRORISM AND HOMELAND SECURITY
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________________ COMMITTEE ON TRANSPORTATION

167 NORTH MAIN STREET AND INFRASTRUCTURE
SUITE 369 SUBCOMMITTEES:
MEMPHIS, TN 38103 AVIATION
HIGHWAYS AND TRANSIT
TELEPHONE: (901) 544-4131 RAILROADS, PIPELINES AND HAZARDOUS
FAX: (901) 544-4329 MATERIALS
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WWW.COHEN.HOUSE.GOV COMMITTEE ON SCIENCE, SPACE

AND TECHNOLOGY
SUBCOMMITTEES:
INVESTIGATIONS AND OVERSIGHT
RESEARCH AND TECHNOLOGY
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COMMISSION ON SECURITY AND COOPERATION

IN EUROPE (U.S. HELSINKI COMMISSION)

February 22, 2021

The Honorable Joe Biden

President of the United States
1600 Pennsylvania Avenue NW
Washington, D.C. 20500

Dear President Biden,

Thank you for your administration’s commitment to urgently address climate change and to
center environmental justice in your response.1 Within your first 100 days, you have already
undertaken ambitious and necessary executive actions to protect communities’ clean air and
clean water and to address the COVID-19 pandemic and economic crisis that is
disproportionately affecting Black, Indigenous, and Latino communities across the country.

As you take immediate action to address the climate crisis, I write to ask your administration to
direct the Army Corps of Engineers to rescind its recent verification of the use of the Nationwide
Permit 12 for the proposed Byhalia crude oil pipeline that would threaten the drinking water and
disrupt the property rights of predominantly Black neighborhoods in my district.

1
“Executive Order on Protecting Public Health and the Environment and Restoring Science to Tackle the Climate
Crisis,” The White House, https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefing-room/presidential-actions/2021/01/20/executive-
order-protecting-public-health-and-environment-and-restoring-science-to-tackle-climate-crisis/.
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.2 As stated in an article recently published in
Moyers on Democracy, “This battle isn’t just about people who are living and drinking the water
now. It is thinking more generationally, what is going to happen 25, 50 years from now to this
pipeline?”3 And as former Vice President Al Gore tweeted on February 20, 2021, “Building
more fossil fuel pipelines is reckless and many proposed routes are racist. I stand with those
opposing the Keystone, DAPL, MVP, Line 3, and Byhalia pipelines.”4

To ensure that the Corps appropriately considers the concerns of the Black communities whose
drinking water and property will be directly affected by the siting of this proposed crude oil
pipeline, I urge your administration to require the project proponent to undertake an individual
permitting process pursuant to Section 404 of the Clean Water Act.

In addition, as a member of the Water Resources and Railroads, Pipelines, and Hazardous
Materials subcommittees of the House Committee on Transportation & Infrastructure, I urge
your administration to review and reconsider the propriety of using the fast-track Nationwide
Permit 12 for risky and unnecessary new oil and gas pipelines. This administration should not
provide fast-track approval for fossil fuel infrastructure projects while our planet faces an
existential climate crisis. As the Byhalia crude oil pipeline project so clearly shows, the use of
Nationwide Permit 12 for new fossil fuel infrastructure cuts the concerns of local Black,
Indigenous, and Latino communities out of the permitting process. Our government should do
everything possible to help us to move away from dirty oil and toward cleaner sources of
renewable energy, while not repeating the unjust siting decisions of the past that have
overburdened our Black, Indigenous, and Latino communities in Memphis and across the
country.5

The Byhalia Pipeline project smacks of environmental injustice. A Texas company known as
Plains All American and its business partner Valero Energy Corp. propose building a high-
pressure crude oil pipeline across a pristine drinking water aquifer in an active earthquake zone
in Memphis, Tennessee, and northern Mississippi. That aquifer provides drinking water to more
than one million people.

2
Just this week, the local Valero refinery—Valero is a partner in the Byhalia pipeline project—shot hellish “orange
and white hot” gas flares into the air in the same Southwest Memphis neighborhoods where its proposed pipeline
would run. See https://www.commercialappeal.com/story/news/2021/02/16/valero-memphis-fire-flame-refinery-
during-winter-sky/6762146002/ (“Memphis-based writer Melonee Jinaki took note of the environmental concern for
South Memphis, writing, ‘Nothing to see here. Just a Memphis refinery contaminat[ing] air, soil, and water in
adjacent South Memphis, predominately Black community with sudden (and regular, according to reports)
unannounced gas flare and contributing to global warming during a historic winter storm.’”)
3
Burroughs, Asa, “When a Community Says No to Big Oil,” Moyers on Democracy,
https://billmoyers.com/story/when-a-community-says-no-to-big-oil/
4
Gore, Al, Twitter, https://twitter.com/algore/status/1360703896012914697
5
A 2017 report by the NAACP and the Clean Air Task Force found that Black people are 75% more likely to live
near a polluting facility such as a refinery, and/or gas-powered and coal-burning power plants.
https://www.naacp.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/11/Fumes-Across-the-Fence-Line_NAACP_CATF.pdf.
If built, the pipeline will cross a municipal wellfield that supplies drinking water to local Black
residents in Memphis. The pipeline route cuts through several Black communities in southwest
Memphis, including the Boxtown community, which got its name after formerly enslaved people
used scraps of materials and wood from train boxcars to build homes there in the late 19th
century. Southwest Memphis is already burdened by dozens of industrial facilities, and
subjecting those Black communities to more environmental degradation is wrong. A land agent
for the pipeline company offended many Black community members by stating that the company
chose to site the pipeline in southwest Memphis because it is “the point of least resistance.”

The recent decision by the Army Corps to verify the pipeline company’s use of Nationwide Permit
12—which occurred within the first few weeks of your administration—perpetuates this unfair
approach to siting fossil fuel infrastructure by cutting communities out of the permitting process.
Further, the proposed pipeline threatens the sole drinking water source for Memphis and Shelby
County, Tennessee. According to a report provided to the Corps shortly after it made its decision,
due to the vulnerability of the aquifer in the area, groundwater containing highly mobile
contaminants could reach drinking water wells serving Black neighborhoods in southwest
Memphis in a matter of years, not decades as some suggest.
This is particularly concerning as it is very difficult to remove oil from the soil and groundwater
once it has been released. Given that the pipeline crosses through the southwest Memphis
community’s wellfield, it fails to comply with General Condition 7 under Nationwide Permit 12
(which prohibits activities “in proximity” to public drinking water intakes), has more than minimal
adverse impacts on clean water, and is not in the public interest.

Your leadership is instrumental to protecting the rights of our communities to clean drinking water
and a livable climate. To ensure that you achieve your administration’s goal of centering
environmental justice in our nation’s response to the climate crisis, I urge you to take immediate
action to direct the Army Corps to rescind its Nationwide Permit 12 verification of the Byhalia
Pipeline project, and to reevaluate the propriety of the use of Nationwide Permit 12 for new oil
and gas pipeline infrastructure across the country.

I sincerely appreciate your attention to this matter and look forward to working with you on these
important issues.

As always, I remain,

Most sincerely,

Steve Cohen
Member of Congress