White House pledges to fix Alabama Black Belt sewage crisis

Charlie Mae Holcomb is sick and tired of seeing sewage in her backyard. And in her living room.

Holcomb said she’s had sewage problems at her Lowndes County home for more than 30 years. Her small brick home is just across the street from a waste lagoon that overflows during heavy rains, and she’s had to replace her flooring numerous times when sewage backed up out of her pipes from her malfunctioning septic tank.

She’s made her home available for media tours and seen a parade of state, local and federal government officials over the years, first to make people aware of the problem, and more recently to try to find solutions.

But after so many years, she’s losing hope and faith in elected leaders to address her issues.

Tuesday, in a town hall meeting in White Hall that included the heads of the U.S. Department of Agriculture and U.S. Environmental Protection Agency -- two members of President Joe Biden’s cabinet -- Holcomb let loose with a tearful plea for help.

“I’ve been fighting since 1987 with no progress nowhere I went,” Holcomb said. “Still, nothing has been done for my problem.”

But this time, the Biden Administration says help is on the way.

Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack, EPA Administrator Michael Regan and White House Infrastructure Coordinator Mitch Landrieu visited Lowndes County on Tuesday to announce a new federal program to help local communities like Lowndes County use the funding made available by the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law to fix problems for homeowners like Holcomb and others living in Alabama’s Black Belt.

“If every American saw what we saw today, every American, regardless of party affiliation, would say fix that problem,” Vilsack said.

The infrastructure law is making $11.7 billion available for grants and low- to no-interest loans to help repair water infrastructure, and the delegation from Washington traveled to Lowndes County to announce a new pilot program designed to help make sure that money is distributed to the people who need it most in the most effective way.

The new pilot program, called Closing America’s Wastewater Access Gap Community Initiative, will deploy technical assistance from the Department of Agriculture and EPA to 11 different communities across seven states struggling with wastewater challenges, including Lowndes County and Greene County in Alabama.

The technical assistance will include designing waste treatment systems that will work in the unique conditions of the individual communities and helping towns and individuals who are eligible apply for grants to get the funding they need.

“We’re bringing these communities to the table, we’re ensuring that they have all the resources they need to properly plan for the type of infrastructure that they need in their communities,” Regan said. “Those grants will be ready to go when the state is ready to push down the resources that are coming from the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law.

“So this fall, there is absolutely no excuse for the state of Alabama not to provide those resources to those who need it the most.”

Vilsack, Regan and Landrieu said they came to Lowndes County because Biden directly told them to do something about the sewage treatment problems in Alabama’s Black Belt. Regan had previously visited Lowndes County in March and called the conditions “unacceptable.”

“[Regan] got a call from the president of the United States saying, ‘Hey, fix this,’” Vilsack said. “You know, when you get that call, there’s only one thing to do. You’ve got to fix it.”

That will require close cooperation between federal, state and local authorities, of the kind that doesn’t always go smoothly.

“We’re pushing not only from the top down but the bottom up and hoping that the state elected officials, the local elected officials and those that are responsible for the engineering, the architecture actually will come to the table, and finally fix a problem that shouldn’t exist in our country today,” Landrieu said.

The Alabama Department of Environmental Management will be administering the wastewater funding and grants in Alabama and has already received more than $300 million in applications for the first round of funding, which is about $137 million.

ADEM Director Lance LeFleur said at Tuesday’s town hall meeting that it was time to get to work using that money.

LeFleur said that the state was using a three-pronged approach to addressing the Black Belt sewage issues.

First, the state will look to extend the sewer lines from cities and towns in the region that already have wastewater treatment plants, to allow more people to connect to them.

Secondly, the state is working with engineering professors and wastewater professionals to develop smaller, “hybrid” cluster systems in areas where several homeowners live in close proximity but they are not served by a city sewer line.

And finally, the state will look to provide assistance for home owners in areas too remote to install even a cluster system.

After decades of waiting, homeowners like Holcomb may be on the brink of a solution, even though there is a lot of frustration over the situation.

“Too many people have waited far too long for government to actually work,” Vilsack said in the town hall after Holcomb’s comments. “And I understand and appreciate the frustration and the anger, and the impatience, and the lack of trust. Totally understandable. And it’s up to us, because the President has directed us to fix that problem.”

Also attending the town hall were U.S. Rep. Terri Sewell, the only member of Alabama’s Congressional delegation to vote for the Infrastructure Law, and Catherine Coleman Flowers, a Lowndes County native and advocate who has worked for 20 years to improve the wastewater infrastructure in the Black Belt.

Before the town hall event, the delegation from Washington visited the Hayneville home of Aquilla Grant, who has to resort to “straight-piping” waste out of her mobile home because she lives in an area too far in the country for a sewer line, but where the dense clay soil makes most septic tank systems ineffective.

“This is a reflection on America,” Vilsack said. “If we’re trying to suggest to the rest of the world that we are a country to be emulated and to be followed, it’s pretty doggone hard to make that case when we have a situation like what we saw in Ms. Grant’s backyard today. That can’t happen.”

The program is being launched in 11 different sites across seven states.

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