Years before the company Plains All American proposed an oil pipeline in Memphis, the company obtained what’s known as a “Nationwide Permit 12” from the Army Corps of Engineers. It allowed the pipeline company to skip public input, because the Corps assumed the project would not harm the environment.
“They did not communicate with the community,” said Angela Johnson, of Memphis, and “they were taking away generational land that belonged to people in our community.”
Johnson spoke during one of several public meetings held by the Army Corps to reexamine the use of Nationwide Permit 12 for oil and gas pipelines. The Corps cited concerns about environmental justice, climate change and drinking water — along with the now-defunct pipeline project in Memphis — in its public notice for the review.
“Nationwide permits are a type of general permit and are designed to regulate with little, if any, delay or paperwork certain activities in federally jurisdictional waters and wetlands,” the Corps explained.
In addition to dodging public comments, pipeline developers have been skipping environmental assessments through this process.
“It’s an absolute crime for the people who have to live with these projects, forever,” Heath Frantzen, of San Antonio, said during a meeting. Similar to Memphis, the Texas city sits above an aquifer that supplies local drinking water.
Amanda Garcia, of the Southern Environmental Law Center, says this isn’t an academic question in Tennessee, since the state’s largest utility, the Tennessee Valley Authority, is planning two gas pipelines right now.
“It’s important for Tennesseans in particular to have a voice in this process, because we have seen unjust and unwise pipeline proposals in the past and we’re seeing them going into the future,” Garcia said.
TVA is planning to build new gas plants at its Cumberland and Kingston sites. Two major pipeline companies, Kinder Morgan and Enbridge, have already requested permits from the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission — these companies both submitted objections to FERC last month when the agency considered a new rule to review greenhouse gases before approving new pipelines.
The Corps, which did not directly respond to a request for comment, said in its review that it wants to restore science, quoting President Biden’s 2021 executive order that directs federal agencies to review regulations and “commence work to confront the climate crisis.”
Climate justice is also an important consideration for the communities most affected by pipelines, according to Garcia.
“The effects of climate change — the flooding, the severe heat — those types of effects are going to disproportionately affect people of color and low-wealth communities,” she said. “Those are the communities that are also being left out of the process of these pipelines and being burdened with the direct impact of them.”
The written comment period ends Friday, May 27.
The Corps said it’s formally reviewing this permit to see if changes are needed before to it expires in 2026.
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