Target: Nathaniel Ledbetter, Speaker of Alabama House of Representatives
Goal: Follow through on planned upgrade and installation of community sewage systems.
In one Alabama county, anywhere from two-thirds to three-quarters of residents do typical community activities – yardwork, barbecues, playtime, garden-tending – surrounded by the stench and the threat of raw sewage. The aforementioned stat represents the number of community members in Lowndes County who do not have a functional, working waste sanitation system. Instead, they rely on rusted, toxic pipes — that often create backflow right into homes — and ditches dug by hand. To add insult to injury, up until a landmark agreement last year, these residents were the ones being punished – with financial penalties or even jail time – for their government’s failure to provide them basic necessities and public health safeguards. The agreement also brought the promise of long-overdue reform…until the Trump administration tore it up.
Because Lowndes County is a majority-Black community (and because the directive came from the prior administration), its sewage upgrade mandate became the target of the administration’s attacks on Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) initiatives. Somehow, providing desperately needed sewage management infrastructure — and subsequent defenses against public health dangers – for this already-struggling region is “illegal DEI” according to the Department of Justice and therefore must be abolished. So, the hope for repairs is gone, and the nation’s so-called justice department is free to resume penalizing residents who can’t fight back.
The state’s government could take up this cause and fix the problems it let fester for Lowndes County and up to 68 percent of Alabama countries, but its incentive to do so is gone. Sign the petition below to demand Alabama’s elected leaders actually advocate for the communities and the people they represent.
PETITION LETTER:
Dear Speaker Ledbetter,
Over two-thirds of Alabama counties lack the financial means for widespread septic systems or municipal sewage systems. As a consequence, for decades Alabama residents have lived with literal human waste in their backyards. They have inhaled, walked and played in, lived in, and possibly even drunk this dangerous, toxic sewage. Think of the number of hidden health risks that have been realized because of inaction. What Alabama’s leaders have managed to do, however, is to inflict fines and jail penalties on these impoverished communities for the “crime” of being poor and without remedy.
Every day these grim realities continue, your shame should grow. The federal government may have recently given you a free pass to continue with your failure, but the people who elected you to represent them deserve better. Show them their lives and their health mean something by immediately introducing and enacting legislation to fix Alabama’s deficient and at times non-existent sewage infrastructure.
Sincerely,
[Your Name Here]
Photo Credit: Skibka
