Tennessee native and former vice president Al Gore is scheduled to travel to Memphis Sunday to speak out against the Byhalia Pipeline.
Gore is scheduled to speak at 3 p.m. Sunday at Memphis’ Mitchell High School.
This, according to members of a Facebook group, The Climate Reality Project, who oppose the pipeline. Organizers said they will livestream the former vice president’s speech.
Byhalia, according to its website, is a crude oil pipeline that is supposed to run nearly 49 miles from Memphis to Marshall County, Mississippi. The pipeline, the website went on to say, will connect the Diamond Pipeline with the Capline Pipeline.
The Diamond Pipeline provides the Valero Memphis Refinery with crude oil to produce gasoline and jet fuels. The Capline Pipeline, meanwhile, runs between Central Illinois and the U.S. Gulf Coast.
Members of the group Memphis Community Against the Pipeline (MCAP) said on their website that the people behind the pipeline seek “to profit $7B in yearly revenue while risking the drinking water of the community and forcibly taking private land.”
The team promoting the Byhalia Pipeline, meanwhile, did not return The Tennessee Star’s request for comment before Wednesday’s stated deadline. But they said on their website that safety matters most.
“We work to involve a wide variety of community leaders and experts in this project and its safety — from environmentalists and scientists to city and county officials. We meet or exceed local, regional and federal safety standards as we construct and operate our pipelines. We train employees and work with local emergency response crews, to react to potential incidents quickly and safely,” according to the Byhalia Pipeline website’s Frequently Asked Questions page.
“Before construction begins, the Byhalia Connection Pipeline team considers multiple factors, such as potential protected species, prominent environmental features like wetlands and waterways, as well as schools, recreational facilities and historic and cultural sites. We collaborate with engineers and environmental scientists, community leaders and regulators to weigh these different factors and select the best route before a single piece of pipe is placed in the ground.”
Gore, on Facebook, has already objected to the Byhalia Pipeline. He said it “would further increase global warming pollution while threatening black neighborhoods and drinking water sources.”
In a separate Facebook post, from last month, the former vice president said that “building more fossil fuel pipelines is reckless and many proposed routes are racist.”
Gore did not explain how the proposed routes are racist.
– – –
Chris Butler is an investigative journalist at The Tennessee Star. Follow Chris on Facebook. Email tips to [email protected].
Go to his farm and buy a $100 thousand cow and he will pasture it, for you, for $25 thousand a year.. He still is the cattle business isn’t he?
Memphis and Albert. Now there’s a matching pair.
Old Algore- the snake oil salesman…at it again!