Trump shuts down program to end human waste backing into Alabama homes, calling it ‘illegal DEI'

NBC News

01-05-2025

For the last 14 years, when it rains in Lowndes County, Alabama, contaminated standing water builds up around Annye Burke's home. When the septic tank breaks down, raw sewage backs up into her toilet, she said.
Although 'frustrated' by the unhealthy and inconvenient conditions, Burke said she doesn't let it get her down. Human wastewater contaminating homes and yards in these rural parts of central Alabama 'has become a way of life,' she said. The problem has existed so long and was so pervasive that a 2017 study determined 1 in every 3 adults in the county had the intestinal parasite hookworm.
The Biden administration investigated and allocated nearly $26 million to rebuild Lowndes County's water infrastructure, with the Department of Justice declaring the majority-Black area was suffering from 'environmental racism.'
But earlier this month, President Donald Trump issued an executive order to kill the deal, calling it 'illegal DEI.'
The DOJ's Harmeet K. Dhillon, the assistant attorney general for civil rights under Trump, said the agency 'will no longer push 'environmental justice' as viewed through a distorting, DEI lens,' referring to diversity, equity and inclusion programs.
A 2023 investigation sparked by environmental activist Catherine Coleman Flowers and conducted by the DOJ found that low-income residents of the county, most of whom are Black, have lacked basic sanitation services for generations. Given the area's especially hard, impermeable soil and the high cost of installing private wastewater systems, many residents have resorted to straight piping to deal with human wastewater. This method involves guiding human wastewater away from the home into a series of ditches and crude piping systems, according to the DOJ report. That water collects in nearby yards, open areas and woods.
In more recent years, heavier rainfall related to climate change has meant that contaminated water floods into the home, spills across open areas, and contaminates local vegetation and water, exposing residents to illness.
And so, Burke and more than 300 other families in Lowndes County — located about 40 miles southwest of Montgomery — are forced to live with a failing water infrastructure that has led to serious health concerns, including hookworm, which at one point had been thought to be eradicated from the United States, according to a 2021 study by the Baylor College of Medicine and the Alabama Center for Rural Enterprise.
Hookworms are mainly contracted by walking barefoot on soil contaminated with infected feces. It can cause abdominal pain, skin rashes, diarrhea, fever and other ailments.
'We have to be extra sanitary because people getting sick can be a problem,' Burke, 58, said. 'The health concerns are real. In 2025 we shouldn't have to deal with this, but it is what it is.'
She said she uses various disinfectants multiple times a day to clean her home and protect her family, which includes her children and grandchildren who come to visit.
This environmental quagmire has persisted for more than 20 years in this rural part of the state, where 72.4% of the population is Black and the median household income is $35,160, according to the latest census; one-third of residents live below the poverty line. Flowers said that much of the problem started back in 1866 with the passage of the Southern Homestead Act, when Black people were first allowed to purchase land there and were offered mostly places that were environmentally unsafe.
In recent decades, it's not uncommon for untreated sewage to flow from some residents' toilets into their yards or back up into their homes through sinks or bathtubs. Drinking water from the tap is out of the question. Some residents have dug ditches in an attempt to drain rainwater away from their homes.
Flowers, who grew up in Lowndes, has been fighting for 23 years to fix the water infrastructure in the county. Her efforts led to the Biden administration's $26 million commitment. She said Trump's cancelation of the agreement did not surprise her.
'There are some people who are not going to make it a priority to get this work done,' Flowers said. 'That's the way it's always been.'
Alabama Rep. Terri Sewell, a Democrat who represents the area, said in a statement that the DOJ's reason for abandoning the deal was weak.
'This agreement had nothing to do with DEI,' Sewell said. 'It was about addressing a public health crisis that has forced generations of children and families to endure the health hazards of living in proximity to raw sewage, as the DOJ itself documented. By terminating it, the Trump Administration has put its blatant disregard for the health of my constituents on full display.'
When announcing the results of the 2023 investigation, former Assistant Attorney General Kristen Clarke said the Justice Department found evidence that suggested Alabama's Department of Public Health showed 'a consistent pattern of inaction and/or neglect concerning the health risks associated with exposure to raw sewage.'
Sewell added that the burden to 'remedy this injustice' fell to the Alabama Department of Public Health. But the ADH said in a statement to NBC News that 'the installation of sanitation systems and related infrastructure is outside the authority or responsibilities.'
A second statement from ADH said the department had received $1.5 million of the funds from the Biden agreement and used it in part to pay for three septic tank installations. With the remainder of that money, ADH will pay a contractor to complete more work by May 2026, according to the statement. Trump killed the agreement before any additional funds could be distributed toward fixing the water infrastructure.
Annye Burke said her daughter, who lives next door, is in a dilemma because she was hoping to receive a new septic tank when hers recently collapsed. She's lived the last four years with her water issues.
'Being raised in the country and at one point of having to use outside facilities, I know how to make do,' Burke said. 'I just take one day at a time and pray about it and keep moving on. I don't let it get me down. But my daughter grew up differently, so I worry about how she deals with this stuff.'
Flowers, the activist, said that while she hopes the agreement will be reinstituted, she has seen communities come together to make change. Last week, she pointed out, she was in Mount Vernon, New York, where sewage issues were resolved with the combined work of the city, county and state government.
'They fixed it because they should have,' Flowers said. The problem was discovered in 2021 'and it's fixed five years later. I've been working on this in Lowndes County since 2002.'
Some families have been able to afford to move away, but many cannot. Then the connection to the land is also a factor, said Flowers, who spent her childhood there and whose father was raised in Lowndes County.
'My family has been in Lowndes County since slavery,' Flowers said. 'It's home for people. Why would we want to move? That's where our people are buried.'
Changing homes is not just about occupying another house.
'We're talking about giving up a culture,' she said. 'So, we will continue this fight.'