CAMPAIGNERS saluted a victory over “environmental racism” at the weekend as an oil company abandoned plans to build a pipeline through an aquifer supplying water to predominantly black neighbourhoods in Memphis, Tennessee.

Byhalia Connection said on Saturday it would not construct the 49-mile pipeline in Tennessee and Mississippi, citing “lower US oil production due to the Covid-19 pandemic.”

But Memphis Community Against the Pipeline activist Justin J Pearson said the climbdown was “an extraordinary testament to what Memphis and Shelby County can do when citizens build power towards justice.”

Campaigners had waged a long battle against the pipeline, pointing out it ran over the pristine Memphis sand aquifer, supplying drinking water to a million people, in an active earthquake zone. 

They held multiple rallies and won public support from high-profile figures including former vice-president Al Gore, who slammed the plans as a “reckless, racist rip-off,” noting that “the impact of environmental harms have been disproportionately placed on black communities, brown communities.”

The proposed line ran under neighbourhoods including Boxtown, which was founded as a community of freed slaves. A land agent for Byhalia had described Boxtown as “the site of least resistance,” which campaigners said was a reference to poorer communities’ lesser ability to protect themselves from polluting activities.

Lawsuits challenged the pipeline’s approval by the US Army Corps of Engineers and public pressure resulted in the Shelby County Commission, a local authority, declining to sell two patches of land needed for construction — an obstruction Byhalia had legal options to challenge but which complicated the process.

Southern Environmental Law Centre lawyer Amanda Garcia said the pipeline’s cancellation was “a victory for the people of south-west Memphis, for the city’s drinking water, and for environmental justice.”