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A County Where the Sewer Is Your Lawn

Ms. Flowers is the founder and executive director of the Alabama Center for Rural Enterprise, which works to address issues of poverty and race.

A lack of proper sewage systems in rural Alabama is exposing people already living in extreme poverty to health hazards like hookworm, and denying them dignified living conditions.Credit...Justin Sullivan/Getty Images

MONTGOMERY, Ala. — In Alabama’s Black Belt, along the road from Selma to Montgomery where civil rights activists fought for voting rights, there’s a glaring problem that’s all too often overlooked — a lack of working sewer systems.

The Alabama Department of Public Health estimates 40 to 90 percent of homes have either inadequate or no septic system. And half of the septic systems that have been installed aren’t working properly.

Many homes here rely on straight PVC pipes that carry waste from houses to open pits and trenches that often overflow during heavy rains, bringing sewage into people’s yards where children play.

The situation isn’t much better in towns connected to relatively functioning sewer systems. Heavy rains and floodings, which seem to be intensifying because of climate change, overwhelm weak sewer systems, forcing sewage to back up in people’s homes, and contaminating drinking water.

The problem has real effects on people’s health. A 2017 report in The American Journal of Tropical Medicine and Hygiene found that among 55 adults surveyed, 34.5 percent tested positive for hookworms, which thrive in areas of extreme poverty with poor sanitation. Hookworms are not deadly, but they can impede physical and cognitive development in children, and expose victims to intestinal illnesses.

I have worked on these issues for years and seen firsthand how devastating they are for residents.

Pamela Rush, a disabled mother of two children, aged 9 and 15, desperately wants to leave her mobile home in an unincorporated part of Lowndes County because she believes her family’s health is in jeopardy.

I recently visited her home, which reeked of mold and mildew. A PVC pipe carried sewage away from the house, but wasn’t nearly long enough to stop sewage from ending up in her yard. Sewage was visible just inches from the home.

Ms. Rush constantly worries that the pipe will clog and sewage will back up into her home. But she worries even more about her 9-year-old daughter, who sleeps with her, and must use a ventilation device, commonly used for sleep apnea, so she’ll get enough oxygen.

Ms. Rush doesn’t know what impact her living conditions are having on her daughter. But on a monthly income of $958, there’s no way she can afford to leave, or fix the waste disposal problems. She feels trapped.

These issues are so egregious that the United Nations is taking notice. Philip Alston, the United Nations special rapporteur on extreme poverty and human rights, is examining the situation in the United States.

In December, on a trip to Alabama I helped coordinate, Dr. Alston said he had never before seen such horrible sewage problems in the developed world. . He told a reporter from AL.com: “There is a human right for people to live decently,” and that government must provide “the essentials of life, which include power, water and sewage service.”

In a statement on the trip, Dr. Alston noted: “The State health department had no idea of how many households exist in these conditions, despite the grave health consequences. Nor did they have any plan to find out, or devise a plan to do something about it. But since the great majority of white folks live in the cities, which are well served by government-built and maintained sewerage systems, and most of the rural folks in areas like Lowndes County, are black, the problem doesn’t appear on the political or governmental radar screen.”

Why is this problem so severe in Alabama’s Black Belt? It has a lot to do with the fact that the dense, dark soil — which worked well for growing cotton during the slavery and sharecropping eras — is not very permeable. So it doesn’t easily accommodate conventional septic systems.

And money is also an issue. Sewer systems can cost $10,000 to $30,000. But from 2015 to 2016, the median household income in this area was only about $27,000, which puts a conventional sewage system out of reach for most people.

Local governments have scant resources, and the state has not provided help. In fact, for years the state pursued criminal prosecutions against people who had straight pipes after they were investigated by the Alabama Department of Public Health. Though such prosecutions decreased in the last decade, the fear remains. And prosecutions can still occur.

Prosecuting Black Belt residents for sewage issues further marginalizes people who’ve faced a long legacy of oppression. The prosecutions harken to the era of convict-leasing when African-American men were arrested and incarcerated, often for no valid reason, and then forced to work for corporations without compensation.

Alabama needs to stop criminalizing rural people who cannot afford on-site sanitation, determine the extent of the problem statewide and provide funding for families to receive on-site septic systems that work.

My organization, the Alabama Center for Rural Enterprise, is working with members of Congress to fund a comprehensive nationwide study of inadequate and unaffordable wastewater treatment. The policy recommendations that we are seeking include funding for innovation in affordable wastewater treatment technologies that employ renewable energy strategies. Senators Cory Booker of New Jersey, Shelley Moore Capito of West Virginia and Doug Jones of Alabama have introduced two bills aimed at addressing rural wastewater problems that Congress ought to pass.

The people of the Black Belt are descendants of African-Americans whose labor and bodies were exploited for the wealth of others. They should be able to live with dignity.

Catherine Flowers is the founder and executive director of the Alabama Center for Rural Enterprise and the rural development manager at the Equal Justice Initiative.

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