Trump Announces ‘Termination’ of ‘Illegal DEI’ Settlement Over Raw Sewage in Poor, Majority-Black Alabama Communities - Inside Climate News
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The Trump administration announced Friday that it was terminating a historic settlement aimed at improving wastewater treatment services for Alabamians in majority-Black communities harmed by raw sewage, calling the agreement an “illegal DEI and environmental justice policy.”  The announcement came two years after the departments of Justice and Health and Human Services under the Biden […]

The agreement, reached under the Biden Administration, required the state’s Department of Public Health to improve sanitation efforts in Alabama’s Black Belt. It’s unclear what the termination will mean on the ground.

  • TooManyFoods@lemmy.world
    68·
    3 days ago

    We aren’t allowed to clean black people’s shit, because it would be environmentalist and DEI? This is a joke. Can it just get poured onto his golf course?

    Edit: I thought,“maybe I’m wrong, maybe it was white people’s shit we were sending to black people and white people were shifting on them. I want to be accurate”. Read the article. It is their own shit they are forcing them to sit in. The way it is, is below human dignity. They aren’t providing any sewage system, and didn’t on purpose decades ago.

    • xorollo@leminal.space
      3·
      3 days ago

      Septic systems can be VERY expensive for regulatory reasons. And I believe the article said part of the agreement suspends criminalizing failure to afford upgrades.

      A few years ago, our septic system in Alabama began to display some issues. We were told that to repair it , we could not legally “just repair” the issue. Instead, to make the repairs, we would be required to fully upgrade the system to a new system to bring it into compliance with regulatory laws that had been put in place since the system was installed previously. The cost to do this was over 20% of our families total yearly income (before taxes), and about 10% of the full mortgage on the house. We were unable to afford this.

      This meant that we had to either restrict access to regular hygiene in our home or risk sewage backup overflows into our home. Luckily, the engineer who surveyed for the repair also lived up the street and had a similar issue. He told us how he fixed it on his house without tripping the regulatory laws (basically bypassed some high output water sources, like laundry, from going into the septic system and taxing it). We never had to live with sewage, and this was not in a rural area.