How the Trump administration made a sewage crisis ‘woke’

0:00This is The Guardian.

0:09Today, how did a sewage crisis in Alabama get caught up in Trump's war on woke?

0:28Lance County is a rural county in southern Alabama. It's about an hour south of Montgomery, which is a state capital. It's a pretty sprawling, very rural place. Really beautiful, you know, lots of forests and woods and really green. Nina Lakhani is a senior reporter for Guardian US, whose beat covers environmental justice. It's a majority black county, about 80 % of the population are African American, and has a really high rate of poverty. It's actually one of the poorest counties in the US. Nina was in the Deep South, investigating a story that has spanned generations. All right, all right. Hello, Mr Perryman.

1:13Yes, ma 'am. Nice, lovely to meet you. I'm Nina. You have a whole road named after you. Yes, that's my grandfather back in the day. I lived on this land all my life. How old are you, sir? 71. My birthday was last month. Happy birthday. So my first stop when I arrived in Lance County was Wilma and Willie Perryman. This is a couple in their 70s. And I called up to their house and they live in a really old trailer. I mean, it's really not in great condition. And they've never, ever had a working sanitation system. So folks are sitting outside in front of the trailer and in the back here you've got this raw sewage that's seeped out of the pipe and it's sort of just risen to the surface.

1:58Where is it coming from? Somewhere you've got a leak on the under there. So it's a leaky pipe. Yeah, it's a leaky pipe. It comes directly from... The toilet. Right. It's pretty grim. The squelchiness of the raw sewage sort of seeping out was pretty awful. But then as I followed the pipe down into the woods, I saw this huge old hickory tree, which was sitting, the roots were sitting in the raw sewage and soaking up this raw sewage that was coming out of their home that was completely dead. That tree was alive two years ago. It had green to everything. It died year before last. It just made me really think, what is that sewage doing to the Perrimans, you know?

2:45And their three-year-old grandson was there and one of their daughters, Tina, and they're breathing in all of this stuff, right? And if it can kill an old tree like that, what is it doing to their health?

3:05It's a public health crisis that has spanned decades. Help was supposed to be on the way. And then came Donald Trump. From The Guardian, I'm Nosheen Iqbal. Today in Focus, the long fight for basic rights in Lowndes County.

3:27Nina, you've been reporting on this story for some time. And before we get into why, can you tell me a little about the history of Lowndes County? Yeah, so Lans County is part of what's called the Black Belt of Alabama. And it's called that for two reasons. One, because of the really dark, loamy soil, which was really ideal for growing cotton. And then during the periods of enslavement and the Jim Crow era, African people who were enslaved by white settlers were forced to work in the cotton fields. It really was synonymous with some of the worst and most brutal practices of the enslavement period and Jim Crow as well.

4:08It also became an organizing hub during the civil rights movement and Lance County was a really crucial part of the Black Power movement. It was here that the first Black independent political party to adopt the Black Panther as its emblem, as its symbol. This county has been run by 20 % of the people who are white, who have seized power legally and who have maintained power through all sorts of terroristic manners. Stokie Carmichael was part of the student organizing committees and doing voter registration in Selma and Montgomery. So we form our own party and we seek power. We don't seek integration.

4:46That's irrelevant to what we want. We want power and this is the way we get it. Martin Luther King, when he led the voting rights march from Montgomery to Selma, spent the night in Lance County.

5:01So, yeah, I mean, it was very much at the heart of the brutality of the enslavement engine careers, but really, really at the heart of the civil rights movement as well. All the world today knows that we are here and we are standing before the forces of power in the state of Alabama saying we ain't going to let nobody turn us around. So a place that is symbolic, both in its history and its residence, and as you say, almost like the birthplace of the civil rights movement. You went there to investigate the issue that residents of Lowndes County have been struggling with in recent years. And this is something The Guardian has covered for a long time.

5:44And we made an episode about this story in 2021. on. But for those who are new to what's been happening in Lowndes County, can you tell us exactly what the problem is there? For generations and generations, the majority of residents in Lowndes County, which means majority black residents, but also some white residents, low income residents as well, have never had functioning sewage and sanitation systems. And the best estimate is that in the rural parts of the county, so those homes that are not sort connected to the municipal service, between 60 to 80 percent of households either have no septic system or one that is inadequate and failing.

6:28And so you have a situation where in 2025, in the richest country of the world, people are having to live and work and sleep and play with raw sewage in their gardens, in their yards. I mean, it's really shocking. It is incredibly shocking. I mean, this is one of the richest nations in the world, a global superpower. And yet people don't have access to proper sanitation. So, I mean, it's worth, I think, remembering that in the US, 20 to 25 % of the population nationwide have private or individual septic tank systems. Really? Yeah. I mean, they're not connected to like, you know, in the UK, we're all connected to like a city or regional water and sanitation system.

7:13But yeah, a quarter of the US is relying on its own private sewage system. Yeah, and it's not necessarily a terrible thing in all cases because a lot of the US is rural, right? So it's not practical or affordable to have a sort of public sewage system when houses are five, six miles apart. But it sort of puts an onus on individuals, right, to have these septic systems. And the soil in this area in Lans County that made it ideal for growing cotton makes a standard septic system really problematic. It doesn't really absorb water how you need it to. It gets really water clogged. There's not enough sand in it.

7:55So many people who have got individual septic systems, they fail because the septic systems are just not built for this type of soil and environment. So even if they have some sort of solution, it's actually not a long term one because it just doesn't work in the landscape that they live in. Yeah, in many cases, that's absolutely right. And I think what's really shocked me when I went down there is that, you know, this is an area of extreme poverty. It's sort of rural poverty. So it looks really different to sort of urban poverty. You know, people are living in their own homes. They have land.

8:29It's absolutely beautiful down there, you know. But these septic systems, even a standard one, is in the range of$10 ,000. An engineered one, depending on how problematic the soil is, can cost anything up to$50 ,000. There's absolutely no way. I mean, none of the people I met could even imagine having$10 ,000 to their name. So they've just been out of the reach of many of the people who most need them.

9:06So when I was driving down from the airport, I saw more churches and houses. Churches and houses. Yeah, I was like, now I'm in the south. Now I'm in the south. You're in the south. I spent my two days in Lander County being shown around by Mr Ellis Vandy in his truck, and he is a 79-year-old Methodist pastor, You know, born and bred in Ladds County, knows the community incredibly well. And he's a real sort of technical expert in septic systems. And, you know, it's a pretty sprawling county. So we would talk, you know, we talked a lot about the sewage problems, but also about the civil rights movement.

9:49We was raised up in the civil rights. Well, after I was born, civil rights started.

9:59during the March 65 7 of the November all of us was in that in the March you were there? one time I went I didn't like walking too fast

10:20but we supported it yeah I mean, what do you think about decades and decades after the civil rights movement that started here in the county? The fact that so many people here still don't have this basic service of functioning toilet, have to put up with sewage in their backyards. How do you feel about that? Well, it's not, it ain't nothing surprising to me. It ain't nothing surprising to me because I've been through it. And I've seen it before. They tried to put us back to where we were. But we still, as Dr. King said, we still got to fight for our rights because it's being violated every day.

11:21I mean, it's really hard to imagine. I mean, as you say, in a rich, industrialised 21st century country that that residence is sort of living alongside. I mean, are these rivers of sewage? What does it actually look like? Where does it go? You said it's not treated, but are there alleys of sewage running down these homes? So many of the people who don't have a functioning sewage system have what are called straight pipes. And these are plastic or PVC pipes that run from their home out through the back, crossing like sometimes a field or the yard. And then they discharge the waste untreated into a wooded area or into ditches that people have dug themselves.

12:05And yet the raw sewage is just sort of being emptied. And the idea is that, you know, when it rains and the soil, it will just be all absorbed away. But the problem is these pipes are exposed to the elements. They age, they become leaky. And as you can imagine, there's mosquitoes and flies and it's sort of sewage sodden is how I would describe it, you know, just sort of squelchy, you know, when it heats up and it gets hot down in Alabama, the waft of the sewage smell is, you know, is unbearable. I mean, people can't barbecue, they can't use their yards because it's just so unhygienic and unpleasant.

12:47Hello, sir. Hi. My name's Nina. David McPherson. Are these your boys? Yeah, that's mine. Hiya. I'm Nina. So the McPherson family live on McPherson Drive, something I absolutely loved. Many of the people I met live on roads named after their ancestors. Right. You know, it's this really gorgeous cul-de-sac and there's five houses dotted around this acreage, surrounded by woods. And there was David McPherson, who's, you know, I guess the patriarch, in one house, and then his son and grandson in another, and then there's cousins and aunts and uncles. So we've been in these five houses. They're all, you know, it's part of the same extended family.

13:30And how long has your family lived here? How many years? I've been here 54 years. Are you 54? Yes, ma 'am. So you were born and raised here. Yeah. And how long have you lived here? I've lived here all my life. And they've never, ever had working septic sewage systems. We couldn't afford it. It was just too high. It was just too high, like, what,$8 ,000,$9 ,000, and we didn't have the money for that. Yeah, right. The money we give is just enough to live on, mostly. Right. None of them have ever experienced what it's like to live somewhere without raw sewage in their backyard. Can you smell it? See it coming, the pipe coming right down.

14:10So the pipe is going under the house, which is on foundations. See it right up under the house, coming right down here where you're standing? Yeah. And it running right there. Yeah, just got a whiff, just got a whiff of it. Yeah. And so, you know, they've all got straight pipes. They do their best to keep the pipes functioning and unblocked. But Christopher McPherson was telling me, you know, that the worst thing, you know, even worse than the smell and even worse than sort of, you know, having the raw sewage seep out is the fact that sometimes, despite their best efforts, the pipes will get blocked.

14:45And then they have to put on gloves and go into the pipes and try and figure out where the blockage is and flush it out. And that's a chance, if you don't watch yourself, everything will shoot down with force and get all over you. Do you wear protective clothes? I had to wear what we got. That sounds like awful. It is, it is. And he said at that point, you're just trying your best to keep it out of your face and then wash yourself down with bleach using the hose. I mean, imagine the indignity of that, right? Having to flush out a toilet pipe because you don't have a basic sewage system in your home.

15:22You're saying you're tired of crawling under there? I'm tired of crawling up anything. Trying to speak to your time to fix it. I wouldn't want to fall in here. Do you get mosquitoes and stuff? Mosquito, horseflies, flies, red flies, everything you can name. Yeah. And it's a nice house. It was a nice house. It's gone now though. Yeah.

15:45People feel really shameful about it. Such an indignity to not have a proper sanitation system. They shouldn't feel embarrassed. It's not their fault. But people really do. I mean, the indignity is one thing and the health risks are quite another as well. It's astonishing. Yeah, absolutely. You know, I mean, this is a public health scandal, in my view. We know from reporting, actually, The Guardian did several years ago, that in Lanz County, almost one in three people tested positive for a parasite called hookworm. It's endemic in some places in sub-Saharan Africa and Southeast Asia and even parts of Latin America, where sewage systems, sanitation systems are really poor.

16:27This is a parasite that causes intestinal disease and thought to have been eradicated a century ago from the United States. And also, you know, many of these households include people who have underlying medical conditions like bronchitis or other respiratory conditions and diabetes and heart problems, mobility issues, all of which are compounded by not having a working sanitation system. That's shocking. And I think most people would naturally assume that there is recourse for this. We have public institutions, there is a county, there is a state, there should be people in charge who are accountable.

17:04So where do those residents go and how did it get to this point? Why weren't the state's public health department doing anything? Well, they did do something. They decided to persecute the people who couldn't afford to have a septic system. What we know is that at some point in the 90s, by which point regulations had been put in place, making straight pipes illegal or banning them as unsanitary. But many of the houses had been built before then, bear in mind. And so the response was to start prosecuting residents who didn't have a function or any septic system. So these residents were literally being criminalised for not having a sewage system that they either couldn't afford or just didn't exist for them?

17:49Yeah, we know of at least one person who did jail time and many others that were processed like criminals, had their photos taken, went through that process and then given citations or fines simply for being too poor to install a septic system.

18:19Nina, we spoke to the activist Catherine Flowers on Today in Focus back in 2021, and this is an issue that she'd been campaigning on for decades. When we think about Confederate monuments, we don't think about policies. We think about those stone structures that are probably in most courtyard squares throughout Alabama and the South. The existence of these policies is an ode to the Confederacy. And some of these communities have been denied access to this type of infrastructure since we were forced to come to this country as slaves. For those who missed that episode, can you tell us what did that fight to get proper sanitation in Lowndes County look like?

19:03Yeah, so Catherine Fowers is an environmental justice warrior, is how I would describe her. She's actually from Lowns County and she'd set up an organisation called Creege, which is the Centre for Rural Enterprise and Environmental Justice. And she became aware of the sanitation problem in Lowns County in 2002. And she started to campaign for it at the state level, at the county commissioner level, and just really trying to get some action to remedy the issue and put pressure on authorities to do something. but the response at the time from the state was just to resist, resist, resist. But why was that the case?

19:42Why were they rejected fixing such a massive problem? Was it a cost issue? Yeah, I mean, yes, it's a cost issue. Alabama does not have a big tax base. You know, this is a really poor state. But I also think it speaks to the sort of deep-seated, warped part of the American psyche that believes that if you're living in poverty, it's your own fault. You know, that you just haven't tried hard enough. And the prosecution and a criminalisation of poverty in the US is as old as apple pie. So I think it was a lack of money, a lack of will and a bad attitude is what I would say. But Catherine Flowers did manage to tackle this.

20:23And it was through her campaigning that a resolution for the issue seemed to be in sight. Yeah. So in 2017, Creege, Catherine Flowers' organization, launched a lawsuit with both the Federal Department of Justice and the Department of Health, which here is called Health and Human Services, which basically sat there for a while because that was the beginning of the first Trump administration. So nothing happened. Biden wins in 2020. And in 2021, the DOJ launches an investigation. And two years later, in April 2023, they announced a historic settlement with the state of Alabama, having found that the state had been in violation of the 1964 Civil Rights Act because it had been aware for many years about the sanitation problem.

21:18It was also aware that this issue disproportionately impacted black residents in the county. And rather than take meaningful action to remedy this public health issue, it instead threatened residents with criminal penalties. Now to the wastewater crisis in rural Alabama. The Department of Justice has just announced its findings in a civil rights investigation. The DOJ has been looking into whether the Alabama Department of Public Health and the Lowndes County Health Department are operating in a manner that discriminates against black residents. This settlement was a huge deal. It gave Alabama, the state of Alabama, no choice but to actually resolve this generational issue once and for all.

22:03Nina, was it unusual for a case about environmental justice to be using, well, for it to become also a civil rights issue? This was the first time that had ever happened. So this was like a landmark case. And I think it was hugely important. Environmental racism is so deep seated in the United States. historically, the US government, both federal and state, has chosen to expose people of color, African-Americans, Latinos, indigenous Americans, and also low-income communities as well, to toxic polluting infrastructure, such as landfills, petrochemical plants, oil and gas installations, five-lane highways, and also neglected to provide basic infrastructure in those communities.

23:00We've known this for decades and decades, but this was the first time that an environmental justice case was investigated using the 1964 Civil Rights Act. I read an article about the crisis in Lowndes County, just outside of Selma, where more than 40 % of the majority black residents lack access to a clean sanitation system. The article described a local leader who said without federal intervention, we would have never had voting rights. Without federal interventions, we will never have sanitation equality either. Well, I immediately called my team and said, make sure help gets down on the ground to these folks.

23:47A few months later, the state was given$5 million out of the American Rescue Package, which was one of Biden's signature COVID stimulation packages that had all sorts of sort of infrastructure elements to it, specifically to work on the sanitation issue. And from that$5 million, Lowndes County was assigned$1.5 million to start work. Sounds like quite a lot of money. the scale of the issue, you know, with the scale of the issue, not so. But that was the first step that the Biden administration took. And Lance Canty in February were told that they would be receiving a second chunk of $1.5 million to continue the efforts that had already started.

24:47So things are moving slowly, but, you know, the trajectory looks positive. And then, of course, President Trump is inaugurated. How does his presidency affect what we've seen in Lowndes County since? Well, Trump comes in in January and, as we know, signs dozens and dozens of executive orders which are directed at undoing or rolling back policies and efforts of his predecessors. And among the first things he goes after are any programme or policy promoting DEI, and that includes environmental justice. We've ended the tyranny of so-called diversity, equity and inclusion policies all across the entire federal government and indeed the private sector and our military.