A major setback for environmental justice in the Black Belt of Alabama.
The U.S. Department of Justice has officially ended a landmark agreement meant to fix long-standing sewage problems in Lowndes County, a rural, majority-Black community that’s battled raw sewage in backyards for generations.
This decision follows a directive from the Trump administration, an executive order that bans federal agencies from supporting Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion efforts.
This is happening, just 30 miles southwest of Montgomery the state’s capitol, in the heart of Alabama’s Black Belt, you’ll find Lowndes County.
Out of more than 5,000 homes in the county, 60 percent have failing or inefficient sewer systems. That’s thousands of families, many of them Black, living with sewage in their yards or backing up into their homes.
Home to about 9,800 people, Lowndes County is 72.5% Black, 25.9% White, and just under 2% Hispanic or Latino.
It’s a place where generations have endured raw sewage in their yards not because of poor choices but because of poor infrastructure and government neglect.
That’s why the Biden administration launched an environmental justice investigation in 2021, which found Alabama’s public health officials failed to protect residents from wastewater hazards.
Catherine Coleman Flowers, the CEO of the Center for Rural Enterprise and Environmental Justice, will join us tomorrow to discuss how this termination will impact Alabama’s Black Belt.
Join this channel to get access to perks:
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCjXB7nX8bL2U2sje8d212Yw/join
Support #RolandMartinUnfiltered and #BlackStarNetwork 👉🏾 Use Cash App by visiting Stripe https://buy.stripe.com/7sI3ccgYyfSQ8y45kl 👉🏾 PayPal ☛ https://www.paypal.me/rmartinunfiltered Venmo ☛https://venmo.com/rmunfiltered Zelle ☛ roland@rolandsmartin.com
Annual or monthly recurring #BringTheFunk Fan Club membership via paypal ☛ https://rolandsmartin.com/rmu-paypal/
Download the #BlackStarNetwork app on iOS, AppleTV, Android, Android TV, Roku, FireTV, SamsungTV and XBox 👉🏾 http://www.blackstarnetwork.com
#RolandMartinUnfiltered and the #BlackStarNetwork are news reporting platforms covered under Copyright Disclaimer Under Section 107 of the Copyright Act 1976, allowance is made for “fair use” for purposes such as criticism, comment, news reporting, teaching, scholarship, and research.