Prompted by the allegations that the state of Alabama’s wastewater management program discriminates against Black residents of rural Lowndes County, the US Department of Justice has launched on Tuesday its first ever Title VI environmental justice investigation involving a recipient of department funds.
Located in the so-called Black Belt, Lowndes County, the unincorporated rural area between Montgomery and Selma, is overwhelmingly poor and African-American and is not connected to municipal sewer systems, relying on private septic tanks.
Announcing the investigation into the alleged disparate impact of waste disposal, Assistant Attorney General Kristen Clarke stressed that sanitation is a basic human need and that not one American should deal with inadequate access to safe and effective sewage management that exposes him to risk of illness and other serious harm.
The allegations against Alabama and Lowndes County could place them in violation of Title VI of the 1964 Civil Rights Act, which bars discrimination on the basis of race by any entity receiving federal funds.
The investigation by the department’s Civil Rights Division will be looking into the Alabama Department of Public Health and the county health department’s policies and practices that may have limited the black residents’ access to adequate sanitation systems.
They will try to establish if, by doing so, they’ve forced the black residents to disproportionately and unjustifiably bear the risk of adverse health effects associated with inadequate wastewater treatment, such as hookworm infections.
Baylor University’s 2017 study attributed a hookworm outbreak in the county to poor sanitation, indicating that more than 30% of the residents had tested positive for hookworm, drawing criticism from the UN Special Rapporteur on Extreme Poverty and Human Rights.
President Biden signed in his first week in office an executive order establishing environmental justice offices at the DOJ and the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) whose main scope is to deal with the disproportionate health, environmental, economic, and climate impacts on disadvantaged communities.
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