Lowndes County Sanitation Disparity

Lown­des Coun­ty in rur­al Alaba­ma is home to impor­tant events of the Civ­il Rights Move­ment and is also one of the poor­est coun­ties in the U.S. The coun­ty is 715 square miles and is sparse­ly pop­u­lat­ed with a pop­u­la­tion of rough­ly 10,000, of that 7,000 are black res­i­dents, spread between six to sev­en towns. The coun­ty cur­rent­ly faces a health cri­sis as up to 90% of house­holds have poor or fail­ing waste­water sys­tems, which results in sewage back­ing up into homes, feces col­lect­ing on laws, and waste dis­charg­ing into neigh­bor­ing fresh­wa­ter sys­tems. Since the coun­ty is poor, it lacks the tax base to afford a munic­i­pal san­i­ta­tion sys­tem to con­nect and con­trol the waste­water in the area. The state of Alaba­ma man­dates that those not on a munic­i­pal line invest in a pri­vate waste man­age­ment sys­tem. These sys­tems are expen­sive to imple­ment and main­tain, with some cost­ing more than $20,000 and many house­holds in the coun­ty earn­ing less than this a year. Fur­ther, the area has dense soil mean­ing con­ven­tion­al sep­tic sys­tems are incom­pat­i­ble, so a “mound sys­tem” is rec­om­mend­ed. This sys­tem uses piles of dirt to fil­ter the waste, but the high water tables of the region and intense rains erode the dirt, and the sep­tic sys­tem fails. 

In addi­tion to cli­mate change exac­er­bat­ing the issues of ero­sion of the sep­tic sys­tems and increased flood­ing that fur­ther con­t­a­m­i­nates the area with sewage, home­own­ers can be penal­ized for not hav­ing a work­ing san­i­ta­tion sys­tem. It is a crim­i­nal mis­de­meanor with con­se­quences vary­ing as a $500 fine, evic­tion, or arrest. This fur­ther per­pet­u­ates the cycle of the finan­cial bur­den on the com­mu­ni­ty for costs and tech­ni­cal issues of the sep­tic sys­tems due to the lack of invest­ment into rur­al waste­water infra­struc­ture from fed­er­al and state gov­ern­ments. The lack of san­i­ta­tion ser­vices has also led to a lack of oth­er com­mu­ni­ty ser­vices due to the infes­ta­tion of waste in lawns and streets. In 2017, there was a pres­ence of hook­worms in more than a third of Lown­des res­i­dents which sparked con­cern from lead­ers. Cur­rent solu­tions to the san­i­ta­tion cri­sis include a new sew­er line that will serve sev­en­ty res­i­dents in a town the size of a thou­sand which will be fund­ed by the U.S. Depart­ment of Agri­cul­ture. The U.S.D.A. is also fund­ing a $2.3 mil­lion project to pro­vide sep­tic sys­tems bet­ter engi­neered for the local soil for a hun­dred homes. Fur­ther progress includes com­mu­ni­ty lead­ers using grants to research alter­na­tive sewage treat­ment meth­ods that don’t rely on pub­lic lines and encour­age sewage to break down eas­i­ly. The san­i­ta­tion prob­lem per­sists, how­ev­er, as fund­ing is lim­it­ed and lit­tle atten­tion is drawn to Lown­des Coun­ty due to its rur­al loca­tion and assump­tions that devel­oped coun­tries do not face a lack of sewage management. 

CEE sub­jects: Envi­ron­men­tal Engi­neer­ing, Water Qual­i­ty and Health, Envi­ron­men­tal Pol­i­cy and Sus­tain­able Infrastructure

• If fund­ing was unlim­it­ed, what would you sug­gest as a solu­tion to the san­i­ta­tion prob­lem of Lown­des Coun­ty? Now, with lim­it­ed fund­ing resources, what would you sug­gest be a solu­tion to the prob­lem? What con­sid­er­a­tions of the com­mu­ni­ty should you include to ensure the solu­tion is inclusive?
• Do you think more could be done to help Lown­des Coun­ty res­i­dents? If so, what, and if not, why?
• Reflect back on your own com­mu­ni­ty. How does your com­mu­ni­ty com­pare to a typ­i­cal town in Lown­des? What are the sim­i­lar­i­ties and dif­fer­ences in the chal­lenges that every­day res­i­dents face and/or char­ac­ter­is­tics of residents? 
• Pri­or to this case study, did you think that such a prob­lem exist­ed in the U.S.? What assump­tions or bias­es went into your ini­tial deci­sion and how might those assump­tions hin­der under­stand­ing the chal­lenges dif­fer­ent com­mu­ni­ties face?

• Pop­u­lar media/news references 
  • Filthy Water: A Basic San­i­ta­tion Prob­lem Per­sists in Rur­al America
  • The Heavy Toll of the Black Belt’s Waste­water Crisis
  •  $2.1 mil­lion USDA grant returns to Lown­des Coun­ty to solve the sewage crisis