Trump’s DOJ Kills a Black County’s Environmental Justice Deal

By Willy Blackmore, Word in Black

It’s no mystery what happens when some poor, Black residents in rural Lowndes County, Alabama, flush the toilet: raw sewage flows into their yards, collecting in a fetid pool. The end result — disease-bearing mosquitoes, hookworm and other parasites are drawn to the sewage, then prey on children and adults — is just as obvious. 

So it was big news when the Biden administration reached a historic settlement with local public-health officials over straight piping, an illegal, environmentally hazardous way to get rid of human waste in low-income households without access to a municipal water system. The agreement halted any fines levied against residents or other means of criminalization.

But the Trump administration believes the settlement goes too far — and that the residents of Lowndes County, who have dealt with the issue for decades, shouldn’t get help with a potentially deadly health hazard just because they are Black. 

Learn more about the risks of straight piping and the end of DEI programs.

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