Waste Water-A Root Cause of Health Problems in the Black Belt Area of Southern Alabama

The New Yorker November 30, 2020 pp22-28|U.S. Journal| “TAINTED EARTH” “In rural Alabama, an activist shines a light on an insidious problem of poverty.” “A sewage-treatment lagoon in Hayneville leaks waste into yards and houses.” By Alexis Okeowo

image eji.org

Read the article for detail.

Systemic racism takes many forms much of it compounded by poverty. This story takes place in Collirene, Alabama part of southern Alabama known as “Black Belt, named for its rich, dark topsoil, which in the years before the Civil War made cotton the state’s main source of wealth.” Collitrene is part of Lowndes County “one of the poorest counties in one of America’s poorest states.” As it turns out beneath that topsoil is clay that drains poorly making some septic systems function poorly representing one of several ways in which raw sewage spills into yards or back into homes. Other sewage issues stem from straight piping and seepage from nearby sewage lagoons on the side of this small town largely inhabited by the Black population. Straight piping is simply having waste drain from the home via an unencumbered pipe into the yard. It’s estimated that “…[in] Lowndes County at least forty percent of households have an inadequate system or none at all.”

Raw sewage is full of disease-causing bacteria, viruses, and parasites that compound health issues like diabetes and high blood pressure of the impoverished residents living in these communities. According to Catherine Coleman Flowers, an environmental activist originally from the area, “Everyone’s got an asthma inhaler…All of us are sick.” According to Peter J. Hotez, the dean of the National School of Tropical Medicine (Baylor), “Other [parasitic] worms found in the region’s soil can damage the lungs and may encourage asthma.” “In fall of 2017, the Baylor researchers announced that they had tested a group of Lowndes residents who lived with poor sanitation and discovered hookworm in more than a third of them.” Making matters worse, a tenth of Alabamians were without health insurance as the Governor Kay Ivey has not opted to expand Medicaid citing budget issues although most of the expansion is paid by the federal government. Regardless, most health professionals and officials understand that the root cause of flagging health for these citizens is substandard waste management.

Local, state and federal government, Doug Jones (U.S. Senate) and Tom Sewell (U.S. House of Representatives) having been aware or made aware by activists have not been responsive or effective, until recently, in resolving this most basic issue despite having audiences with Elizabeth Warren, Cory Booker, Bernie Sanders in Congress. Some local officials blame the residents for choosing to live in these areas, not knowing how to flush a toilet, not knowing how to maintain a septic system or for not otherwise resolving the issue themselves. Some liken this issue to poor water quality in Flint, Michigan. The cost of upgrading a septic-systems is more than that average annual income in Lowndes County. It’s clear that not fixing the problem attracts dirty industry and otherwise inhibits good economic development. Those residing in this area that have jobs commute elsewhere.

Recently some state, federal and philanthropic (Kate Taylor and Tom Steyer) funds are helping resolve deficiencies by placing septic systems appropriate for the soil type or even connecting to a municipal sewage system. The cost is high. The article notes that similar problems exist in Alaska, Centreville IL and will be a problem as the tide rises on Miami-Dade County by 2040.

Sadly, with preexisting conditions, and big families cohabitating in small homes many residents or their relatives in Lowndes county are at risk for and a high rate have succumb to COVID. Pamela Rush, featured in The New Yorker article, one of the first residents to speak out on what many feel a shameful topic passed away from COVID. She had made her first ever plane trip at age 48 to Washington DC where she addressed Congress telling them about the conditions on her property where she lived in an old dilapidated single wide trailer. The county has “the state’s highest-per-capita death rate [from COVID].” “Governor Ivey…instituted a mask rule in mid-July, after three months in which the rate of new cases in the state increased nearly six hundred percent.”