By John Archibald
Lowndes County is a place of haunting beauty, where you can see stars at night and endless loblolly pines by day.
It’ll make your heart hurt, if you have one.
But now Lowndes, according to the body that continues to call itself the U.S. Justice Department, is a poster child for all the sins of environmental justice and DEI.
Because America doesn’t do irony anymore.
DOJ is ending a settlement that would have helped people in Alabama’s most put-upon region keep their family land and build passable sewer systems rather than risk health or property or both. All in the disingenuous name of DEI.
“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,” the DOJ punched down in a press release.
Let me tell you a little bit about dignity and respect, with a little decency thrown in for good measure.
Let me tell you about this place.
Lowndes County is part of the Black Belt, a geologic stretch of the South cursed with soil so dark and rich it was ideal for growing cotton. And slaves. So in another time the Black Belt planters prospered and became powerful in Alabama politics.
In 1901 – when people in Lowndes County numbered almost 36,000 – those planters pushed a state constitution to legalize white supremacy, and build a tax system to favor the rich. And then they abandoned the place.
Maybe it reminded them of their own sins. Maybe they just missed them too much to stay.
So by this century – according to a Birmingham News analysis of property data in 2002 – 78% of the land in Lowndes County was owned by somebody that did not live there. Almost a quarter was owned by someone who did not live in Alabama at all.
Many timber owners pay pennies on the dollar in the property tax system created by that constitution. They are subsidized to just let trees grow. That contributes little to the community, and leaves locals to make up the difference with some of the highest sales tax rates in America.
So Lowndes County, shrinking, forgotten, without infrastructure to speak of, struggled to survive in sprawling emptiness.
There are about 9,500 people in Lowndes County now, or about 1.4 people for every square mile. It’s hard to find a doctor, or make your way to a hospital, or find transportation.
Life expectancy in Lowndes County is 70.3 years, less than in Nepal or Dominica or the rest of Alabama. That’s seven years less than the U.S average.
Almost half of those who remain live in poverty. There are 3,143 counties in America, and Lowndes has a higher percentage in poverty than 3,098 of them. And it’s not like there are jobs on every corner. There aren’t a lot of corners.
There are but 110 employers in the whole county. And while seven of every 10 people are black, only 14 companies that employ people in Lowndes County are minority owned.
It is ironic that the very soil that brought people to this place – whether of their own accord or not – is what brings us back to this moment, to the current administration’s disdain for the plight of people in rural Lowndes County.
Black Belt dirt, as it turns out, becomes almost impenetrable when wet, and that makes septic systems particularly tricky and expensive. And, given the sparse population, county sewer systems are unrealistic.
So the area has long been plagued by sewage and illness that comes with it. Some of Alabama’s poorest residents thought they would lose their land because they couldn’t pay to build expensive sewage systems.
That’s what the settlement agreement was about. Alabama was going to be forced to build a sanitation system to fix the problem. After years of neglect, fines and failures that another Department of Justice saw, reasonably, as unjust.
But now it is gone. In the name of the boogeyman DEI, in the bastardized name of fairness. So Alabama is again left to look after the people of Alabama.
As it has failed to do, particularly in Lowndes County and across the Black Belt, for generations.
In the ironic name of DEI. Deceit, Enmity and Indifference.