On a Sunday in early October, 16 people, mainly elders, met under Timothy Williams’ gazebo. The ground was still soaked from a recent downpour in rural Alabama. It has become a routine gathering in their historic Black community over the past six years as they’ve battled through a flooding crisis brought on by a highway expansion project.
But this time was different.
That previous Friday, Oct. 4, they had acquired a victory, or at least one on paper. More than two years after residents in Shiloh, a neighborhood in the small city of Elba, first filed a federal civil rights complaint, the federal and state government had come to an agreement on how to fix the situation. Filed through the Civil Rights Act of 1964, the residents alleged that the state’s highway project was an example of racial discrimination.
Since the highway’s expansion was completed in 2018, anytime it rains, which is often, water rolls down from the highway and the newly created drainage system straight into the neighboring homes. Some residents believe the drainage system was pointed at the community intentionally.
Through a voluntary resolution agreement between the federal Department of Transportation and Alabama’s Department of Transportation, the state said it would begin to rectify the situation by rebuilding its ditch system. Federal investigators, notably, did not reach any conclusion about whether the state transportation department engaged in racial discrimination, and ended that specific inquiry once the state agreed to rework the highway’s drain.
Read More: How a Flooding Crisis Unearthed Another Environmental Injustice in Rural Alabama
The agreement speaks to larger issues within the civil rights complaint system, one of the few mechanisms Black communities have to acquire justice for racism perpetuated by the government or companies receiving federal funds. The agreement does not offer any reparation or compensation for the years of damage and pain the community has endured, like thousands of dollars in home damage, having to replace septic tanks that cost upward of $20,000, losing property insurance, and being visited by alleged white supremacists.
Just a few months ago, after Shiloh’s situation received national attention, a white man from Ohio came and staked out properties, according to Williams. Williams said the man told residents that a “higher power sent him down here to do what he had to do.”
It’s why the agreement “doesn’t feel like a victory for us,” he said. “The community had to deal with six years of this. They should have done this years ago, but they waited until there was national attention and after our homes and land were eroded.”
At the meeting under Williams’ gazebo, the 16 families signed a petition calling for a new solution: the state government paying for the Black community to be relocated to higher ground on the opposite of the highway, a major thoroughfare for the country’s burgeoning electric vehicle manufacturing system.
Read More: How Biden’s Goal to ‘Electrify Everything’ Contributed to a Flooding Crisis
“We, the Historically Black Shiloh Community, do not see [the agreement] as a cause to celebrate, nor do we see it as a resolution to the painful years of suffering and disrespect while being drowned by a highway paid for in part with our tax dollars,” the petition reads.
However, this is not something the federal government’s civil rights complaint system can enforce, speaking to larger disconnects between communities and the government. Last year, an environmental lawyer focused on civil rights complaints explained to Capital B that most impacted communities largely don’t know the civil rights complaint process exists. If they do know, they have trouble writing the complaints and often overstate the types of solutions the complaints can lead to.
Williams hopes the government agencies will operate in good faith outside of the civil rights complaint system. There are numerous examples of regularly flooded communities being bought out by local, state, and federal governments.
In a statement, the U.S. DOT said it has provided enhanced technical support and a community liaison to help the Shiloh community access federal resources through its Thriving Communities initiative. It has also coordinated with agencies such as the Department of Housing and Urban Development, the Federal Emergency Management Agency, and the Environmental Protection Agency that are able to provide direct funding for the situation. However, according to the agency, the DOT cannot provide direct funding to the community.
“Earlier this year, I visited Shiloh to meet residents whose families had owned land there since slavery was outlawed, and I saw firsthand the flooding and home damage they have endured for years,” said U.S. Secretary of Transportation Pete Buttigieg in the statement. “The agreement with the Alabama Department of Transportation to build a drainage project is a first step toward addressing broader needs of the community.” He added that he would “urge Congress as well as state and local governments to act to unlock further resources to help make the Shiloh community whole.”
Christopher Coes, who is the principal adviser to Buttigieg and one of two Black key officials in the department, said the work of Robert Bullard, a native of Elba who is referred to as the father of environmental justice, was instrumental in bringing the issues of Black, rural, and low-income communities “front and center like never before in DOT’s history.”
“Because of the enormous impact infrastructure can have on communities like Shiloh, DOT [has reaffirmed] our goal of reducing negative impacts of transportation projects on communities with environmental justice concerns,” he said.
On the day of the announcement, a representative from the Federal Highway Administration said the ruling shows how the Biden administration is “committed to reducing the impact of highway projects on surrounding communities, especially in frontline and environmental justice communities.”
The role of highway expansion projects in decimating Black life has been widely documented, spurring the displacement of Black communities, lowering Black people’s access to jobs and housing, and a slew of environmental health concerns from pollution.
Earlier this year, an analysis found that despite the Biden administration’s push to rectify these harms, half of the projects funded through a climate law meant to protect communities from the impacts had actually been allocated to expanding highways. This is because state governments ultimately decide how the funding is used once they receive it. This month, a major highway expansion project in Houston will begin that is expected to displace roughly 1,000 mainly Black and Latino families. The original construction of the highway 45 years ago displaced a historic Black community.
Read More: How Biden’s Infrastructure Plan Created a ‘Climate Time Bomb’ in Black Neighborhoods
It’s disheartening, Williams said, that this problem is nationwide. “This goes beyond fixing just our highway flooding,” he said.
Like many Black Southern communities facing similar environmental harms, “much of our property was inherited,” the petition reads. “Some landowners can trace their land holdings to relatives who acquired it during Reconstruction in the 1870s.
“It would be a shame and criminal for us to have our land, heritage, and inheritance washed away by a highway.”