
Reveal Why Trump Deemed Basic Sanitation Illegal DEI
Dec 17, 2025
Catherine Coleman Flowers, an environmental justice activist and author, shares her journey advocating for sanitation equity in America. She highlights shocking sanitation issues in rural and urban areas, emphasizing the impact of aging infrastructure and climate change. Flowers discusses her memoir, "Holy Ground," filled with personal essays aimed at inspiring hope and resilience. She draws intriguing biblical parallels to critique current policies, and identifies emerging environmental threats like data centers, urging communities to take charge in designing fair projects.
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Nationwide Systems Were Built To Fail
- Aging wastewater systems nationwide are failing because they were built for 50-year lifespans and many have already exceeded that window.
- Climate change and population shifts now overwhelm those systems, causing sewage backups in cities and rural areas alike.
Sanitation Crosses Racial And Geographic Lines
- Sanitation problems cut across racial and geographic lines; affluent and majority-white places also suffer failures and contamination.
- Flowers argues environmental justice must expand beyond narrow racial frames because everyone drinks the same water.
Raw Sewage Sparked Her Sanitation Work
- Flowers recounts showing a visitor raw sewage running down the road from a family's compound in Lowndes County after the owners were arrested for lacking an on-site septic system.
- That encounter is what launched her focused work on sanitation justice in the county.

