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- The efforts to protect the aquifer.

Tonight, on "Behind the Headlines."

[upbeat music] I'm Eric Barnes at The Daily Memphian.

Thanks for joining us.

I'm joined tonight by Sarah Houston, the newly appointed, the newly hired Executive Director for Protect Our Aquifer.

Thanks for being here.

- Thank you so much for having me.

Excited for my first "Behind the Headlines" appearance.

- Yeah, great.

And along with Bill Dries, reporter with The Daily Memphian.

Sarah, let's start.

You've been on the board of, I believe, of Protect Our Aquifer, and I guess a founder, the founder, Ward Archer has been on the show before.

The organization was started four years ago.

Give us the quick, 30-second version of what Protect Our Aquifer does and what your mission is, and then we'll go deeper into all of that.

- Sure, sure.

So our mission is to protect, preserve, and conserve the Memphis Sand Aquifer.

That is the primary source of drinking water for the city.

So we're looking at kind of some of the short-term issues that pop up now and then and making sure that those are handled, but then we're also looking at the long-term sustainable management and what that really looks like for Shelby County and really the states beyond our area.

- And one of the first things we'll talk about is the pipeline, the Byhalia Pipeline Connector that has been proposed.

I'm going to go to Bill to give us kind of a status update for people who have been following it and what the pipeline is and where it stands right now.

- Well, if you'll remember late spring there was what amounted to a truce or a delay in votes that the Memphis City Council was taking on an ordinance that it had as well as a joint ordinance and the county commission delayed its final votes on an ordinance that would have changed the unified development code regulations to put in a 1,500-foot setback for pipelines like the Byhalia Connection Pipeline.

The city council action, which was put on delay, formed a board to review certain pipelines.

That's still in flux as we talk now.

Dr. Jeff Warren, the city council member who's sponsoring it, along with Edmund Ford, Sr., has a rewrite that he will present to the council when it meets at its first meeting in July.

And we might also add that on The Daily Memphian politics podcast with County Mayor Lee Harris, he made clear that he wants the county commission to not delay the votes on this any further, that he wants a decision one way or the other when the commission meets in July and would prefer that the council settle this as well.

- And I should say, excuse me, before we go back to Sarah, that we have reached out, I've reached out to representatives from All Plains American.

Did I say that right?

The-- - Plains All American.

- Plains All American, knew I was saying it wrong, which is proposing the pipeline, wants to build a pipeline.

We have not heard back from them, and that may be partly because they're in this kind of quiet period.

We will try to get them on the show eventually.

And I do have some of their points of view.

So we sort of balance out this conversation.

And we will talk about more than the pipeline, but your concerns, Protect Our Aquifer's concerns about the pipeline.

There are other pipelines in Shelby County, right?

There is, I think by industry estimates, 600 miles of pipelines.

Why this one?

Why stop this one?

- This one right now is the biggest concern because the proposed route goes directly through a well field.

Well fields are where our wells are drilled into the aquifer and are extracting water for that local community.

And the pipeline route goes right in between two wells.

So if there were to be any leak, and we all know that most pipelines do eventually leak, that's going to have direct impacts to that community's water supply.

Remediation's costly.

You have to have the equipment onsite and prepare for a leak immediately.

So that's just not good practice to have a crude oil pipeline routed directly through your municipal well supply.

That's one of the biggest glaring issues.

And really through this process, we've seen, they've had to go through quite a few permits, but none of these permits have taken our drinking water supply into account.

They've considered surface water impacts, they've considered wetlands impacts, they've considered general things with just land development, but not our aquifer system below that could impact the drinking water supply for Southwest Memphis.

- So let me read from Brian Ross, Vice President of State Affairs for the Consumer Energy Alliance.

They are an advocate for the pipeline.

They would counter, I think in part, and they've been out there talking about the pipeline, that 99.99% of deliveries reach their destination without incident.

There are high standards, there's already a federal process.

There's a state process.

Are there weaknesses in that process beyond they're not looking at the aquifer, but I mean, what do you look at and say, well, there have been leaks before.

- Right.

- There have been leaks, but I think most people don't realize how many pipelines there are, how many pipelines are in Shelby County.

They're everywhere.

They don't leak constantly.

- No, thank goodness.

[laughing] - Yeah.

So again, what's the weakness in the existing framework?

- So right now, we all rely on oil and gas for our day-to-day lives.

And there's no getting around that.

Putting in new infrastructure for this oil and gas industry is not on the position of Protect Our Aquifer.

We would like to see our current infrastructure maintained, ensure that pipelines that have been in the ground for 30, 40, 50 years, majority of pipelines' lifespan is 50 years, and most of the pipelines that are in Shelby County today are about reaching that lifespan.

And we would like to see that infrastructure strengthened, but then with the new proposed pipeline, that 0.1%, I mean, that could be a catastrophic impact to our water supply.

Would that have economic repercussions for MLGW?

Would they have to shut down wells, drill new $1 million wells elsewhere?

Would that come back down to the rate payers?

Would that be paid by Plains All American?

There's a lot of economic issues with that as well.

- Let me bring in Bill.

- Is the issue here the route of the pipeline or is it the pipeline itself?

- Yes.

[laughing] I think it's multi-faceted, so the route is troublesome.

Like I said, the well field is of concern.

The pipeline, again, we wouldn't like to see additional new oil and gas infrastructure.

And additionally, the Nationwide 12 Permit that was one of the federal government permits that the pipeline had to secure gave this pipeline, this private company, the power of eminent domain.

And so we've seen there are some landowners that do not want to sell easement rights to this pipeline company and they are now in court.

And so while that doesn't have a direct aquifer connection, it is about this environmental injustice and this burden on this community that doesn't really have the resources to fight a billion-dollar company.

So it's shown some weaknesses in these processes that protect our aquifer is obviously looking at the vitality of our aquifer, but also just the health of our community too.

- Plains All American has indicated that they are looking at other routes.

One of the ones that's been talked about is a route that would take this through Collierville, where I believe there is an existing pipeline.

- Correct, right.

- How do you feel about that?

- So we've recently learned of the Collierville Pipeline, which connects current Point A, which is the Valero Refinery, to the Terminus in Mississippi, just south of Collierville.

So there is an existing pipeline.

From our understanding, it's 10 inches in diameter.

Proposed Byhalia Pipeline is 24 inches in diameter.

So it wouldn't have the same capacity.

We would be interested to see is that an alternative route where you don't have to break up and dig up brand new ground?

Use an existing easement, existing pipeline.

Is upgrading a potential option instead?

So I think those are things that we would like to hear as a serious alternative to a brand new piece of infrastructure.

- As things stand now, without what the city council is considering, without what the county commission is considering.

Without those, is there a place in the process for a pipeline that requires action by a local body?

Is there a local play in this as things stand now?

- Right now we have the Shelby County Groundwater Quality Control Board.

[laughing] That's under the purview of the Shelby County Health Department.

That board was formed in the '90s, and it has some tasks in their ordinance, in their charter to deal with issues like that.

But as the years, the decades have gone by, that board has kind of taken less and less of a deep dive into some of these types of proposed projects.

There's not a lot of communication with that board, Land Use Control Board, Plan Development Code.

So there are things we could pull from today, but they don't really have the same strength that they did when they were first put into place.

- What about Memphis Light, Gas, and Water?

Obviously, water's part of the name of that group, and the Light, Gas, and Water Board has indicated that they are interested in what this is all about.

- Absolutely.

Memphis Light, Gas, and Water most definitely has this opportunity to give us a little bit more insight of what they're thinking as far as the impacts of their municipal well field.

Like you said, W is that last letter in that acronym, and we would like to see MLGW take a stance and give us their concerns to see if this is something that could potentially impact their operations in the long run or if this is something that they support.

- And Bill will correct me where I get some of this wrong, but the original version of the city council ordinance that Jeff Warren and Edmund Ford, Sr. proposed was very broad.

I mean, it was, I'll read from my notes.

That would have generally prohibited new construction of any pipeline, storage tanks, other underground infrastructure that could hold hazardous liquids, including oil and gas.

And the industry pushed back and said, look, you couldn't even do repairs without going through this.

You couldn't fix something at a small pipeline, and they used the example of FedEx, and that was kind of their worst case scenario, is that that FedEx could be shut down, the airport can be shut down because you couldn't do basic maintenance of existing pipelines.

Warren backed off that.

He scaled down the ordinance that's being discussed right now.

That's a little more targeted to new construction.

But do you all want that old one in place?

I mean, do you all want much more, back to what you're talking about, about what's the role the MLGW, the Groundwater Control Board.

Does there need to be much more restrictions, much more oversight.

But again, back to your original point, that weighs the aquifer in every decision, maintenance, new, old, et cetera.

- I, to the first question, no, I don't think that first ordinance draft was the right ordinance.

I think it was too limiting.

We are a large urban area.

We have a lot of industrial users, we've got gas stations all over the place.

We want to be able to ensure that our community can maintain current infrastructure and grow.

But when it comes to that larger question of would we want more of that oversight, short answer, yes.

I think that that really broad view was really an attempt to be kind of a band-aid in this longer-term discussion of how do we really take our aquifer resources into consideration?

And that question, I think we're currently having conversations with city council, county commission, Shelby County Health Department, T Deck.

And what does that look like?

Right now in the short term, having this better strength hold throughout Shelby County.

And it's not about every single shovel that goes into the ground, but really what are these impacts to the current existing pollution sites?

'Cause we have quite a few of those in Shelby County.

And then how do we mitigate any future development to ensure that, especially, our wellhead protection plan areas are protected.

- I'm going to segue away from pipelines.

Although we may come back to that and talk about you mentioned other polluted sites.

Protect Our Aquifer, when Ward Archer and others started, it was very much in response to issues at the old Allen Power Plant, where TVA built a new plant.

The old plant is there.

There was some degree of waste and of-- - Coal ash.

- Coal ash, thank you very much, that had seeped into the ground.

They then we're going to drill into the aquifer for the water needed for the new plant.

And it sort of became clear, to the surprise of many, whether or not they were for or against it, that they really didn't need anybody's permission.

They could just do that.

I mean, apparently I could just drill in my backyard into the aquifer if I so chose.

That was four years ago that your organization was formed.

What has changed since then in terms of the management and oversight of, let's start with the old Allen Plant and the coal ash and the waste there, and then too, just the drilling into the aquifer by individuals or businesses or industry.

- Right, so great question.

So I'll kind of go backwards actually.

So when they drilled those five freshwater wells, when TVA drilled them on their Allen Fossil site plant, or where it was decommissioned, like you said, that was primarily to use for cooling water for the new combined cycle plant, but they had done a complete 180 from their original plan for the source water being the local wastewater treatment plant and do an extra step of treatment from that water.

But that's a really great recycling of water.

It's going to reduce the need for pumping out water from our drinking water supply and purely using for cooling.

No one's drinking this, no one's bathing in this.

So that original plan, everybody was like TVA, great idea.

We'd love to see that.

And then, like you said, they kind of went through the Shelby County Groundwater Quality Control Board.

They had to file permits.

Filed the permits, paperwork was filled out right, check, check, check.

Got the permits, drilled the wells.

So those wells are installed.

But it was a major concern that they're right next to where you've got this seeping coal ash that contains arsenic, lead, and fluoride, hundreds of times above EPA-safe level limits.

And so T Deck stepped in and actually asked for a pump test, a study with University of Memphis Caesar.

- Where you used to work.

- Yes, where I used to work.

And USGS, US Geologic Survey.

And so they did that pump test and found that when you're running those wells, you're starting to see the draw down happen.

You're starting to see that arsenic getting pulled down as water is getting pumped up.

And so now the permit has been amended to say that these wells can only be run in emergency use.

So if MLGW cannot provide the water.

So to your point, what has improved, that kind of was a glaring, Shelby County Groundwater Board, wouldn't you all notice something like this and maybe investigate before issuing the permits?

So since then, there has been one kind of rewrite revision session of the groundwater regulations, Groundwater Control Board regulations, that have kind of reinvigorated the group a little bit.

So now they're a little bit more well attended and they're happening more regularly.

And if you were to decide to drill a well in your backyard, you would have to file a permit.

But for the most part, it's just about ensuring that the top of the well isn't in a flood plain zone so you could have stormwater accidentally go down into the aquifer and just some basic kind of engineering things like that.

So that's kind of helped to reinvigorate the board.

It's still not kind of up to snuff with the original ordinance that was from the 1990s.

So that has been a good thing moving forward.

- I'll bring Bill.

- And also, I think it's important to talk about this.

And I think we talked about this when you were with Caesar.

We really don't have a map of the water source that is below us and actually is not just within the borders of Memphis but covers much broader area.

And Caesar got some money from part of one of the rate hikes at Light, Gas, and Water to go about better mapping that.

And that's been a little while since that happened.

So put on your Caesar hat for me.

[laughing] And tell me where that effort is to actually know more about the aquifer.

- Yeah, absolutely.

And I mean, that's a really exciting study because it's kind of like the first micro scale look at our aquifer and that clay layer that's atop it.

And I joke that we should be Protect Our Aquifers because we have more than one here.

[laughing] We've got this shallow aquifer right below our feet, and that's where most of our rainfall would seep into, unless it runs off to surface water.

But that's where a lot of our lower quality polluted water actually is, is in that shallow aquifer.

But then we have this amazing thick clay layer above our drinking water supply.

And so what that study is doing at the University of Memphis is looking at that clay layer and trying to discover where there are gaps in that clay layer, where there's that direct connection between our polluted shallow aquifer and our not polluted beautifully wonderful Memphis aquifer water.

So right now they're gearing up for year four.

It was originally approved as a five-year study.

So it was 1.05% rate increase.

And so each project has about 20 projects going on.

So it's lots of little microscopes kind of all over the county, looking at different issues.

And so right now we're gearing up, they, they.

They are gearing up for year four.

And each one of these projects takes between two and four years.

So we've had the first round of findings, and that really just kind of helped lay the land on a lot of these things like hydraulic conductivity.

How long does it take a water droplet to move through these different types of sediment?

So we can plug that into a model and get much better, more accurate understandings of what's going on.

So those findings are out.

They've got another round of findings coming out later this summer into the fall.

And that's going to give us an even closer look at operations at Davis Well Field, operations at Shaw Well Field, and kind of help MLGW understand better ways to manage those well fields to extend their life and ensure contamination plumes aren't making their way towards them.

- Right, and Protect Our Aquifer started with a totally different issue and has now become really a more general player about something that for all of the city's history of environmental activism from the interstate that was to go through Overton Park water never really became a significant part of that movement until the TVA well controversy.

- Right, yeah, absolutely.

And I think, like I said, we've had this protective clay layer, our system moves very, very slow.

The majority of water that you drink at home fell as rain 2,000 years ago.

So it's been traveling through these fine sands, being filtered out.

It's been this out of sight, out of mind amazing water source.

So we really haven't had to worry about it.

But time's kind of catching up with us.

A lot of the pollution that we are worried about, and TVA is an example, those coal ash pits, they were dug in the '50s.

So it's taken that long for this coal ash to migrate down.

And so we're really seeing the impacts of legacy pollution that we're going to have to figure out how to deal with as it's slowly making its way farther and farther down.

- To that point, I mean, the water and the notion of sort of taking it for granted.

I mean, I remember before I even moved here, people would talk about Memphis has the best water, and it does, the drinking water is great.

And if you haven't been anywhere else, there are a lot of cities that isn't like that.

I mean, the water is just not good.

But then it also has become a kind of economic development.

A point of businesses should locate here or relocate here because the water is very clean.

I remember having one of the local brewery, somebody from there on talking about how look we can just throw in de-chlorinate the water and we can make beer with it.

If you're in Denver, if you're in Seattle, it's more costly and it has to be handled differently.

Nashville's the same way.

I've forgotten the name, but he was from High Cotton Brewery, talking about how in Nashville they would do all this work to their water.

It's very expensive.

So that is a potential for certain types of industry to relocate or build here and use that ultra clean water.

What is your stance on, say, the chamber or EDGE or just the economic development efforts of the city and state and the county selling our water?

Is that okay if regulated, or would you rather they really weren't pushing the water as a resource, as an economic development resource?

- Everything's multifaceted, I always say that.

So right now industries aren't paying for water.

They can come in, they can drill their wells, and you usually have to get a permit for that.

But once the wells are in, it's really just operation maintenance.

They're not paying for the actual water.

And like you said, it is extremely clean water.

And so that's one of the reasons industries like to come to Memphis, and they have to do zero to minimal treatment to get it to the quality they need for their operations.

So it is extreme, like you said, attractive feature of Memphis.

So Protect Our Aquifer's stance is development has to happen.

We're seeing a lot of it in Memphis right now.

We've got this kind of pulse in the city, which is really exciting, but how do you work that equation?

If you think about the aquifer as a bank, if you're constantly pumping water out, your bank account's going to get a little low.

And the good thing about us is we're never going to run out of water because we have a ton of it below our feet.

But what you can get is the sands will de-saturate.

You're not going to have any water to kind of keep that sand buoyant and they can collapse on themselves.

And that's when you get issues of subsidence, you get land sinking, you get foundations cracking, you get issues.

[laughing] And so how can we also consider recharge?

As we pave over with more impervious surfaces, like concrete and roofs and things like that, that's reducing that natural ability for rainfall to infiltrate and get into our aquifer system.

So one thing that Protect Our Aquifer is concerned about and would like to see more of is that green infrastructure, that pervious surfaces and having interlocking pavements and things like that.

- And do you get pushback on that?

- Not so far.

I think there's a whole lot of unknown of how to implement.

What are the financing mechanisms?

What is maintenance looks like?

Those are issues we want to figure out with our elected officials.

- Because some people hear that, and they say that sounds great, but it's expensive.

Building construction costs are already through the roof, or it's more regulation.

I mean, so I'm curious how much pushback you get on those.

- We haven't really been very vocal about that yet.

We've really, up until two weeks ago, we never had a full-time employee.

So I'm the very first one.

[laughing] So we've been a pretty scrappy organization, just kind of putting out fires where we can.

So we're really developing a lot of those stances, those white papers, having these conversations in a broader scale, so there's no pushback yet.

[laughing] - The reception among politicians, city council, county commission, the mayors, I mean, what has that reception been like?

- So far, I mean, everyone I think is really concerned and is in a really learning phase.

There's not a lot really known about our aquifer system, and really what are those issues?

I don't think people truly understand what the issues are.

So going back to economic development and extraction of water, we would like to see Memphis to continue, grow, and expand, but how do we bring that equation, make it more level, bring that recharge in?

- Last question, with apologies to Bill, but last question.

The aquifer is not limited to Shelby County?

It is not limited to Tennessee.

There's Mississippi, DeSoto County, Arkansas.

It is a big aquifer.

How do you protect the aquifer in these other areas that are beyond the control of local government?

- That's a wonderful question.

[laughing] I think that that's something that we have formulated our five-year strategic plan starting this year, going through 2026.

And in that, our objective number four is build support and awareness for a regional groundwater trust.

So I don't think there's an easy definition of what that really looks like, but in starting to talk with our neighbors in Arkansas and Mississippi and Louisiana and Kentucky.

It spans eight states, with the largest user being Memphis in Shelby County.

But we've seen Mississippi v. Tennessee happen.

We've seen a Supreme Court case over water happen.

How can we start bringing these different partners together?

What are their issues and concerns?

And talk about that on a larger scale.

- All right.

That's all the time we have.

Thank you for being here, and thank you for joining us.

Remember, you can get past episodes of the show on wkno.org, or you can look for it on YouTube, or you can get the full podcast of the show on The Daily Memphian site, the WKNO site, or wherever you get your podcasts.

Thanks, and we'll see you next week.

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