The problem of White Supremacy - Spinoff from Buffalo Shooting thread

MEMPHIS — It’s rare for a Black community ba notch a win against a large industrial polluter, but that’s what happened on this city’s south side.


Residents stood up to a proposal by two oil and gas industry giants to build a pipeline under their properties and forced them to back down. When the news broke last year in July, the rejoicing began.


But it didn’t last long.


Just two weeks after Valero Energy Corp. and Plains All-American abandoned their pipeline bid, the Tennessee Valley Authority announced its plan to truck millions of tons of contaminated coal ash through south Memphis for nearly 10 years and dump it in a landfill there. And there was nothing residents could do to stop it.


What happened in south Memphis is another example of how industries constantly work to fight their way into communities of color already teeming with pollution — and get their way more often than not.


By spring this year, earthmovers were crawling on a mountain of the toxic pollutant and dumping it into trucks with sealed cabins to protect the drivers against breathing it.

Every weekday, the convoy rolls toward Interstate 55, starting a 19-mile procession to dump waste laced with mercury, arsenic and other contaminants at a landfill in south Memphis and cover it with dirt.


Diesel trucks operated by a contractor, Republic Services, will make 240 trips per day to remove 3.2 million cubic yards of coal ash — about 4 million tons — through an environmental justice community that already faces heavy industrial pollution from nearby oil and gas refineries, pipelines, freeways, rail yards and trash dumps.

Residents, conservationists and local politicians who oppose the plan say that the TVA — the nation’s largest public utility — failed to consult them adequately or seriously consider less harmful alternatives……

https://www.washingtonpost.com/clim...8/19/tennessee-valley-authority-memphis-coal/