"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."
"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 administration negotiated the settlement with Alabama officials. It represented the first time in U.S. history that federal civil rights laws had been used to alleviate an environmental injustice.
Catherine Coleman Flowers, a Lowndes County native whose civil rights complaint led to the 2023 settlement, has fought for years to help improve the lives of residents of the Alabama Black Belt. The Trump administration, in its announcement, said Lowndes County had been made a “target.”
“The DOJ will no longer push ‘environmental justice’ as viewed through a distorting, DEI lens,” said Assistant Attorney General Harmeet K. Dhillon of the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division. “President Trump made it clear: Americans deserve a government committed to serving every individual with dignity and respect, and to expending taxpayer resources in accordance with the national interest, not arbitrary criteria.”"
Lee Hedgepeth and Dennis Pillion report for Inside Climate News April 11, 2025.
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