Catherine Coleman Flowers (Photo Courtesy MacArthur Foundation

CBS show “60 Minutes” profiled Alabama activist and MacArthur genius award winner Catherine Coleman Flowers Sunday evening, with a deep dive into the Lowndes County sewage crisis.

Wastewater treatment is often not provided to unincorporated areas, and many residents find private septic systems unaffordable. As many as half of county residents have raw sewage running into their yards, which can cause serious disease.

Read more: $2M grant for Lowndes water treatment rescinded after local dispute.

Read more: We can do something about raw sewage and hookworm crisis in Alabama.

“If this was a community of more affluent people, it would have made headlines 20 years ago,” Flowers told correspondent Bill Whitaker.

“If this was a community of more affluent people, this would have made headlines 20 years ago,” says activist Catherine Coleman Flowers, who has been working to get sewage treatment for many poor families in Lowndes County, Alabama. https://t.co/6h33ZkB1n0 pic.twitter.com/EOOsVPAR0r

According to the special, private septic systems can cost as much as $25,000 -- something that many rural residents, even those working six days a week, cannot afford. So many pipe raw sewage behind their houses, which can seep back into the water supply.

“I have no choice but to break the law,” a resident told Whitaker.

Even those who pay a fee to have sewage piped out can still smell it in a nearby lagoon, which sometimes floods into houses.

“Why do you think nothing’s been done?” Whitaker asked a resident.

“Because we’re Black!” she responded.

According to the special, local and state officials said they either don’t have the money, ability or responsibility to address the public health crisis. An official with the Bureau of Environmental Health Services at the state Department of Public Health recommended residents install outhouses rather than pipe sewage.

The U.S. Department of Justice is investigating whether Alabama is discriminating against Black residents through denial of proper sanitation services.

“The reason the situation has continued for so long, is the type of benign neglect that has happened to Black communities, poor communities and rural communities across the United States,” Flowers said in the interview. “Somewhere along the way, there has been a serious disconnect as to who should have access to sanitation and who shouldn’t.”

Flowers grew up in the area, in a house with an outhouse instead of indoor toilets. She used that experience, as well as her parents’ work in civil rights, and learned how to advocate for clean, safe water before the U.S. Congress and the United Nations.

“My ancestors are here. They are in the soil here,” Flowers said recently, in an interview with Reckon South.

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