A County Where the Sewer Is Your Lawn

Threw the whole liberal kitchen sink in this article. Went from blaming climate change to demanding an expensive fix because those impacted are descendants of slaves. Obviously this is a cost issue. Who does the author want to pay for the sewage fix? State taxpayers, federal taxpayers or private charities? No solutions are often just greivances. I guess this is what 21st century, activism looks like, complain loudly and kick the can down the road.

Welcome to the new third world.

We are an effluent culture. The affluent abandon their effluence. I call it the "cultural ringworm" wherein inner cities become slums as the ugly scale expands. I worked in New Haven, CT doing guard work at an electric power plant close to Long Island Sound. The guards kept the windows of the guard shack closed because the odor of human feces at low tide was intolerable. This is an even greater problem with cities like New York that dump raw sewage into the ocean.

We should have code and standards across the US, so the sewage is not released into the backyard of any American. I know that many Americans use Septic tanks, and homeowners are responsible for the maintenance thereof. These are generally for people who live in rural communities and not in urban or suburban areas. When a home is for sale, an inspection is needed, including of the septic system. As any realtor can tell you, the septic tank should be well maintained, i.e., the tank should be serviced and emptied as needed, which is rather expensive, but is the responsibility of home ownership, just as other maintenance tasks, such as mowing the lawn and replacing the roof periodically. Sewage has to be paid somehow- 1. For cities and suburban areas, the municipality should be responsible to install sewers, but bill the homeowners through direct billing or else taxes. 2. For urban areas, the homeowner is generally responsible. If a homeowner needs financial assistance, a charity should step up. Instead of advocating for the right of non-Americans to migrate on mass to the US, liberals should use resources to fund sewage systems for needy Americans.

Also I live on a mountain and have a septic system. The thing below my house is solid granite. I dont see why I can have a septic system with the densest soil on earth when these people cant. My thought is that if you cant put a septic system in you probably shouldn't build a house there.

I have a septic. You need to take care of your septic system if you are a good homeowner. Just funneling a pipe to a trench is not being a good homeowner. What kind of code enforcement is there when people are funneling their crap into their front yard? My house would be condemned if I did that.

Environmental racism persists nationwide. Just as the post WWII Federal Housing programs discriminated so too have local Zoning and Planning Departments. Putting trucking routes through Black neighborhoods means Black kids are subjected to more diesel particulates which create health and mental development problems. Lead poisoned water in Flint is just a visible headline grabbing version of polluting our minorities. Have we as a country no shame?

This is an environmental travesty folks, but we are all doomed. Black, white, poor, or rich, it doesn't matter. We are destroying our fresh water resources that we ALL need to sustain life. Here in rural Missouri, fresh water comes from groundwater that is recharged through the geologic karst formations. This water is being contaminated by the very septic seepage into the water table. The Upper Meremac River (pristine water I might add) clams are now laden with synthetic estrogen, ritalin, and pain meds; all sourced from our own excrement. We are all doomed. Too many people and not infinite resources. Something has gotta give.

Welcome to the land of Jeff sessions. A state with little to no social mobility and being born poor is almost always a life sentence of poverty. Especially for ppl of color. Some of these houses need to be demolished and the ppl need to be moved to somewhere safe until a permanent cost effective solution is determined. But that will never happen in Alabama. It will never happen with the GOP and the "everyone for themselves" and "pick yourself up by your bootstraps" "stop being lazy" and spending money on booze and women ideology. And let's not forget the unsettled racism that underlies most of their policies, which also do a lot of harm to poor and working-class whites. So ppl will continue to suffer needlessly for no reason. Upgrading our country's infrastructure as this article demonstrates is a serious and urgent need that could employ an entire generation of workers, similar to how the middle class was built in the 20th century.

In rural areas where the density is not high enough (or the environment cannot tolerate, as on water), the code requires a septic system, the responsibility of which is the home owner. Based on the article, the soil is dense and cannot support a 'conventional' septic system. However, I suspect that the companies that could, charge too much. With modern technology, dense soil should not be an issue - many homes along lakes and rivers sit on clay; extremely dense. However, I'd like to hear about other rural areas with similar challenges. These people are human beings and deserve to live without sewage in their yards! But, what are they doing to fix it? Areas in SC where homes are near water have septic systems. The septic field is often combined in one area where multiple homes feed the field through pipes and the neighborhood pays to keep it up. Is it only blacks that face the problem of not affording a septic system, or is this a rural issue, or is this a rural issue when the soil is dense? Or, is this another identity politics article?

Functioning water and sewer systems are essential to living in physical safety and they define why governmental involvement with infrastructure is so very important. Tax cuts for the wealthy are not. Our country is suffering from a lack of perspective and a working Republican Congress would be a good place to start a turnaround! Really!

In an interview in December Philip Alston recounted his tour to Amy Goodman and put it in perspective. https://www.democracynow.org/2017/12/19/gop_backs_tax_bill_for_the When asked how the U.S. compared to other countries Mr. Alston said: “the United States is, of course, one of the very richest countries in the world. But all of the statistics put it almost at the bottom. … Whether it’s child mortality rates, whether it’s the longevity of adults, whether it’s the degree of adequacy of healthcare. … What’s really surprising is that when I go to other countries, the big debate is that ‘We don’t have the money. We can’t afford to provide basic services to these people.’ And yet, in the United States, they’ve got a trillion or a trillion and a half to give to the very rich.” When Mr. Alston described his tour of Alabama, he noted: “What’s shocking is that in a country like India today, there’s a huge government campaign to try to get sewerage to all people, make it available. In Alabama and West Virginia, where I went, I asked state officials, ‘So, what’s the coverage of the official sewerage system?’ ‘I don’t know.’ ‘Really? So, what plans do you have then for extending the coverage, albeit slowly?’ ‘Uh, none.’ ‘So, do you think people can live a decent life if they don’t have access to sewerage, if the sewage is pouring out into the front garden, which is what I saw in a lot of these places?’ ‘That’s their problem. If they need it, they can buy it for themselves.’”

Just another example of that “Southern Heritage” they’re so proud of. When you’re poor, rural and black your existence and quality of life doesn’t really count for much.

Unbelievable. What a despicable government we have in this country. It's perfectly okay to poison Flint and dump sewers into yards in Montgomery because the citizens are black. Just appalling.

This is Alabama. A very Red state. I wonder, will trump and his administration be addressing this issue and do all it can to make Alabama great. I won't say great again because I think Alabama has always been Red and thus the poverty level has always been the same. Only those at the very top live a dignified life.

From 1968, when Robert Kennedy visited rural Kentucky and was shocked by the poverty and living conditions there: “They’re desperate and filled with despair,” Kennedy told a television reporter. “It seems to me that in this country, as wealthy as we are, this is an intolerable condition. It reflects on all of us. We can do things all over the rest of the world but I think we should do things for people in our own country.”

Civil life starts with the wastewater treatment plant, and works by developing sewers upstream from that point. Civil stormwater drainage starts from the benign outfall and also works upstream. Start that way and you end up with a viable community. But folks oftentimes are motivated to provide potable water first, ending up with people living in a cesspool, and inevitably the community becomes nonviable. Civil life depends on sewage management, separating waste water from potable water, more than almost anything else. The Romans knew and practiced that, paid for by taxes levied on citizens who could afford it. Duh.

Installing a real sewer system requires a certain density of homes as well as a big tax for its construction and an ongoing tax for maintenance. The alternate septic system is anything but cheap, and looking at the houses in the photo, would cost more than the home. Basically these homes are unfit for habitation. It is unclear to me who should be required to pay for all this.

I wonder if opulent Stamford, Connecticut has sewers in all the city. We had rock cesspools in a crowded neighborhood on High Ridge Road in the 1950s. The resulting 'swamps' formed a natural defense barrier against intruders. The odor was unmistakeable.