Oil pipeline builder agrees to halt eminent domain lawsuits

MEMPHIS, Tenn. (AP) — A company seeking to build a disputed oil pipeline over an aquifer that provides drinking water to 1 million people agreed verbally Tuesday to stop pursuing lawsuits against Tennessee property owners who refused to sell access to their land for construction.

Plains All American Pipeline spokesman Brad Leone said the company will put an agreement in writing with the Memphis City Council to set aside lawsuits filed against property owners fighting the Byhalia Connection pipeline. Leone spoke at a council committee meeting in which members discussed a proposed city law making it difficult for the pipeline to be approved and built.

Plains is part of a joint venture with Valero Energy to build the Byhalia Connection, a 49-mile (78-kilometer) underground pipeline linking the east-west Diamond Pipeline through the Valero refinery in Memphis to the north-south Capline Pipeline near Byhalia, Mississippi. The Capline, which has been transporting crude oil from a Louisiana port on the Gulf of Mexico north to the Midwest, is being reversed to deliver oil south through Mississippi to refineries and export terminals on the Gulf Coast.

Plains and Valero say the project will bring needed jobs and tax revenue to the Memphis area. Byhalia Connection has secured permission from Tennessee and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers to build the pipeline.

The planned route would take the pipeline over the Memphis Sand Aquifer, which provides slightly sweet drinking water to 1 million people the Memphis area. It is part of a large aquifer system that lies beneath eight states and provides water for farms, factories and homes.

Environmentalists, lawyers, activists and politicians who oppose the pipeline are worried an oil spill would cause contaminants to seep into the aquifer and endanger Memphis' drinking water. In a...