BIRMINGHAM, Ala. — An advocacy group claims Alabama health officials are discriminating against residents of a poor, mostly black county by failing to address sanitation problems that led to an outbreak of a parasite most common in underdeveloped countries.
San Francisco-based Earthjustice said it filed a civil rights complaint with the federal government on behalf of residents of Lowndes County, which is one of Alabama’s poorest areas yet lies just a few miles west of the state capital of Montgomery.
The nonprofit environmental law firm contends state and county health officials have failed to address sewage conditions that led to a hookworm problem in the county, which once was a hotbed of civil rights activity and is part of an impoverished region called the Black Belt.
Dr. Scott Harris, head of the Alabama Department of Public Health, said he hadn’t seen the complaint but denied that racial bias was behind the agency’s actions in Lowndes County. He says the agency is working on solutions.
“It’s not a race problem, it’s a poverty problem,” Harris said in a telephone interview.
The area’s dense soil, composed of clay and chalk, reduces the effectiveness of ordinary sewage systems, and some homes drain human waste directly into open pits or ditches that overflow during storms. The complaint, filed with Health and Human Services, contends state and county health officials have failed to address the problem.
“We hope that the Department of Health and Human Services will exercise its power under federal civil rights law to resolve the discriminatory conduct that has long deprived African-American residents in the Black Belt from functional wastewater systems and adequate protections of their health,” Earthjustice attorney Anna Sewell said in a statement.
