DoJ to investigate Alabama’s sewage failures over possible discrimination
Four years after a shocking discovery revealed hookworm in the US’s rural south, the justice department has announced it will investigate sanitation failures in Lowndes county, a majority Black county in Alabama.
“Sanitation is a basic human need,” said Kristen Clarke, assistant attorney general for the justice department’s civil rights division, on Tuesday. “Bold action is needed to ensure that no one in this country is unjustifiably subjected to illness or harm resulting from inadequate access to safe sewage services.”
The crux of the federal investigation is whether access to sanitation systems in Alabama’s Lowndes county is based on race. The DoJ will examine whether the state and county health departments violated the civil rights of Black residents in Lowndes county, by blocking their access to adequate sanitation systems, thereby increasing their risk of a host of health problems such as parasitic infections.
“We will conduct a fair and thorough investigation of these environmental justice concerns and their impact on the health, life and safety of people across Lowndes county, Alabama,” said Clarke.
A 2017 study found that hookworm, an intestinal parasite which was once widespread in North America but had not been detected in the US since the 1980s, was thriving in Lowndes county. The study was conducted by researchers from the Baylor College of Medicine, working together with the non-profit Alabama Center for Rural Enterprise (now called the Center for Rural Enterprise and Environmental Justice).
Located between Selma and Montgomery, Lowndes county is one of the poorest in the US. The median household income is roughly $30,000 and 70% of the population is African American. Most of the homes are not connected to the city-run sewage systems, leaving residents to install private septic tanks that can cost up to $15,000. With more intense rainfall, the septic systems are prone to overflow and malfunction, with the cost of upkeep falling on residents.
“For generations, many residents have had little choice but to resort to the practice of straight piping,” Clarke said, referring to the practice of relying on pipes and ditches to guide sewage away from the home, into the open areas immediately surrounding it. Often, it means that households live with raw sewage in their backyard.
The clay-like soil in this region is unsuitable for absorption and drainage. During heavy rain and floods, the disease-containing fecal waste and other raw sewage remains on the surface of the soil or back up into people’s sinks, toilets and bathtubs.
Residents of Lowndes have been raising the alarm for years, prompting the United Nations special rapporteur on extreme poverty and human rights to criticize the dire lack of adequate sewerage in 2017.
“The justice department is committed to fully enforcing our federal civil rights laws to address the legacy of environmental injustice that we face across the country,” Clarke said. “That commitment includes the failure to provide basic wastewater infrastructure, in historically marginalized and overburdened communities of color.”