File – On February 21, 2019, heavy rain fell on the front yard of Charlie Mayholcomb, a resident of Lowndes County, Hayneville, Alabama. Holcomb keeps his grandchildren away from the vestibule because he fears pollution from a malfunction of his home wastewater sanitation system. On Tuesday, November 9, 2021, the Department of Justice published an environmental justice survey on the county’s long-standing wastewater sanitation issue. This left some residents with sewage in their gardens. (AP Photo / Julie Bennett, File)
Montgomery, Alabama (AP) — The US Department of Justice announced on Tuesday that it has launched a historic environmental justice investigation into a long-standing wastewater problem in a poor county in Alabama.
Federal prosecutors in the ministry’s civil rights department have unfairly risked hookworm infections and other adverse health effects associated with improper wastewater treatment as state and local health departments discriminate against black residents in Rounds County. Officials said they would investigate whether they were liable.
“Hygiene is a fundamental human need and everyone in the United States should be at risk of illness and other serious harm due to inadequate access to safe and effective sewage management. Not, “said Assistant Secretary of Justice Kristen Clarke.
Officials said the Alabama Department of Public Health and the Lawns County Health Department must operate on-site wastewater treatment and infectious disease and outbreak programs in a safe and impartial manner. “State and local health authorities are obliged to protect the health and safety of all residents under federal civil rights law,” Clark said.
Justice Department officials said Alabama officials were working together, stressing that they had not reached a conclusion as to whether there was evidence of racial prejudice in the state and county federal-funded health sector.
A spokesman for the Alabama Public Health Service said he could not comment on the pending investigation. “ADPH is committed to working with research agencies to resolve this issue as quickly as possible,” Ryan Easterling wrote in an email.
This is the Department of Justice’s first Title VI Environmental Justice Survey of one of the Department’s funding sources, and federal authorities address discriminatory environmental and health implications through the enforcement of national civil rights law. Since that is our top priority, we have suggested that there will be more in the future. Civil Rights Division.
The wastewater problem is well documented in Lowndes County, where at least 26% of people live in poverty.
The Blackbelt region of Alabama was named after the dark, rich soil that once produced cotton plantations, but depending on the type of soil, traditional septic tanks where wastewater filters the ground may work well. It Is difficult.
Severe poverty in the region and inadequate municipal infrastructure are causing problems. It was usually the homeowner’s responsibility to maintain the septic tank while the municipality maintained the sewage system. Some homes in rural counties still have a “straight pipe” system that drains sewage from home to garden untreated.
Charlie Mayholcomb of Heinville sent raw sewage to her home and overwhelmed a child’s swing in her yard in the Associated Press in 2019, backing up and overflowing her small city sanitation system. I explained how to do it.
“They had to come and pump it out of my garden with a pump truck,” Holcomb said. “In my tub, it’s backing up. The sewage ran around the house.”
According to a 2018 Baylor University study, about one-third of the county’s population was tested positive for low-level hookworms, an intestinal parasite that normally spreads through human feces. .. This is most commonly found in non-industrial countries in the Southern Hemisphere. State health officials have challenged the findings due to the small sample size and methodology used.
DOJ Announces Environmental Justice Survey in Alabama County | WGN Radio 720
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