Waste

Despite the wealth of the United States, many rural residents live without adequate sewage systems or sanitation.

In places like Lowndes County, Alabama, soiled toilet paper, raw sewage and other effluents flow from ramshackle houses and mobile homes directly into yards where children play and families gather. Open cesspools breed tropical diseases, and people – too poor to install costly septic systems – face imprisonment for the crime of living in conditions they cannot escape.

About 90% of the homes in Lowndes County have inadequate sewage systems. Similar conditions exist in poor rural communities throughout the United States. Determined to address these inequities, Catherine Coleman Flowers embarked on a decades-long effort to provide working sanitation systems, clean water and livable homes to residents of her home county and beyond.

The government often neglects impoverished communities that have few people and few resources.

Catherine Coleman grew up in a working-class family in Lowndes County during the 1960s and 70s. Long...