Why is sanitation still a privilege, not a right?
Around 1.5 million people in the U.S. lack access to good plumbing, which means human waste often ends up right in their backyards.
This is not an uncommon sight in Lowndes County, Alabama: a stream of sewage waste flowing out of a crude pipe and into the surrounding yard of a resident who just flushed a toilet inside their home. More than 10% of the county’s population, which is three-quarters black, lacks access to a comprehensive plumbing system. Some people in the county’s larger areas are connected to a centralized sewage disposal system. The rest should be using septic systems, which treat the waste at their homes. But the median household income in Lowndes County is $28,000, and a septic system can cost $30,000. So up to 90% of residents who should be relying on septic systems have one that’s broken, or don’t have one at all. Instead, they lean on straight piping–running waste directly through a pipe out of their homes and into their yards, leading to exposure to human waste that can result in diseases that were though to be eradicated in the U.S.