How Environmentalist Catherine Coleman Flowers Is Exposing America's "Dirty Secret" | Forbes

foreign [Music] Coleman flowers you are an activist an author an entrepreneur and the Arthur genius award recipient and now a Forbes 50 over 50. thank you so much for being here thank you for having me you do such important work in the area of environmental justice but I want to start with a few definitions for folks who might be watching and who might not be familiar with your work how would you define or describe environmental justice well I think the best way to describe environmental justice is to give an example of communities that are chosen for sighting of dirty plants because they are too poor to fight and there are examples in this country like in cancer alley the examples to our Appalachia you know the examples everywhere you look where companies tend to cite places that pollute in areas where the the incomes are low or they're people of color and those are environmental justice communities you have been working to fight something that you call America's dirty secret what is America's dirty secret America's dirty secret is is that the richest country in the world has people living with no sanitation with sewage running either on top of the ground outside of their homes or coming back into their homes and I think that most Americans don't even know that this exists and that's why we call it America's dirty Secret you have described yourself as an accidental activist you have activism in your DNA but you kind of came to this issue not intentionally but it has become your life's work how did you get into this uh well before I was a teacher and when I moved back to Alabama people were being arrested in Lowndes County Alabama because they could not afford on-site septic and then we found out it was more than that and from that led to us doing a house to house survey to find out how how many people were impacted and then we partnered with Bayless National School of tropical medicine and did a parasite study where we found that hookworm which is something that is is more known to exist in developing countries existed here in the U.S and that's when we started to get attention so it was a long long process it didn't happen overnight and a lot of people didn't want to talk about sanitation they didn't want to talk about sewage and we just had to be persistent and work with Scientists to be able to show that this was a real problem that we need to address just to rewind you mentioned people getting arrested because they weren't handling the sewage that sounds insane to put it frankly how why was that happening what was the structure of the community such that this burden was on individual people well in a lot of rural communities the sanitation responsibilities on the individual homeowners and this was true in Alabama so in Lowndes County Alabama which is located between Selma and Montgomery people were left to their own devices to figure it out so if they couldn't figure it out that there was a state policy that they would be cited if they didn't if somebody reported them or if they found out they did not have adequate sanitation the State Health Department would cite them and then if the people were not in a position financially where they could put in place a septic system that the state approved then they would the next step would be that they would be cited for violating uh an order of the court and that's how people ended up being arrested were you looking into economic development for the region at the time was that the very first question you were trying to answer how do we get more businesses here but when I that was my first job in Lowndes County the county hired me as their Economic Development coordinator and I quickly found out that without infrastructure without working infrastructure you're not going to have any Economic Development so a lot of these poor communities are relegated to remaining poor without infrastructure that's why it's so important for me to see that there's an emphasis on infrastructure and hopefully putting infrastructure in places that never had it before you know and my role is the White House environmental justice advisory Council uh co-chair co-vice chair one of the things that we found one of the definitions that I think that that really help people to see this is that these are Under resourced and overburdened communities and the same in those same communities EJ communities have not had the type of investment necessary in infrastructure and this was one example and what was so glaring about this example is that every year people go to Selma from Montgomery to commemorate the Voting Rights movement and the Voting Rights march and we're passing through this area and didn't realize that this was a glaring example of the inequality around sanitation that we have in this country so they're passing through and it's just happening just outside of the main road so it's behind view for people people don't you can't see it you have to actually go to someone's home this is not the kind of discussion that the average person would have and say you know my sewage isn't working it's out in my backyard most people are embarrassed about it but one of the things I think that we've done is have taken the shame away from sanitation and talking about it because this is the only way we're going to find real solutions to this problem so you start looking into Economic Development and infrastructure and you realize this is a problem and you re wrote in your book that no one really counted the number of homes affected until you did can you talk about going door to door and coming up with the number quantifying the scale of this issue well we we felt that in order for people to understand the whole narrative around this we need to go to the community and find out so what we did was we found the community leaders we didn't want elected officials involved in this we asked people to recommend folk that were very influential in the communities but they were not elected officials they didn't hold any position they were just Community people that folk trusted and we found those people and they're the ones that went from house to house because keep in mind there was a law that could have uh if they had revealed that they didn't have sanitation people could have ended up in jail you know they could have ended up being forced off their property so whoever they gave this information to had to be a trusted member of the community and that's why we chose trusted members uh the county itself has five County Commission districts we divided it up into five five different areas with people that lived in those districts that were the ones that went from house to house to do this survey you do the survey you quantify the scale of the problem fast forward a few years and actually quite recently you and the nrdc filed suit against the county or the state of Alabama well the nrdc and we have actually filed a civil rights complaint with the um we filed a civil rights complaint with with EPA we're still waiting to see what's happening with that but the other complaint that we filed with Earth Justice that was in 2017. we filed that complaint because when we did our parasite study the state of Alabama put on his website that the parasite study was not credible because we didn't use FDA approved technology to to do to run the tests on the samples the FDA approved technology they were talking about was PCR technology which if you fast forward PCR technology was used to determine whether or not people had coveted but that was the same type of Technology we had used and we went to earthjustice who worked with us and we filed this complaint that became the first ever complaint accepted by doj environmental justice complaint using civil rights law to to do an investigation and they actually investigated the State Department of Public Health and recently announced that they have the first ever settlement using using civil rights law to deal with environmental justice I I have part of that statement that was just in May that was very recently they said this agreement marks the first time that the justice department has secured a resolution agreement in an environmental justice investigation under title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and while this may be the first it certainly won't be our last so let's break that down a little bit what does this settlement mean for Lowndes County first of all it validates what local people have been saying all the time about the issues in Lowndes County and how the state has been a culprit in in terms of I think enabling it to continue they thought they were doing something to stop it but they were not stopping it but now with this with this particular agreement I think there's an opportunity for the state to start for the first time hopefully working with local people to find real solutions to this because it has to be documented one of some of the the actions that they were taking against local people were not conducive to a solution and now with the with the federal government being involved also making sure that the funding is available so that there could be help because there was a time they were saying when I first got involved they said there was no money available it was always up to the individual homeowners who couldn't afford it because they were poor and then they say this will not be the last and so we've been talking about Lowndes County but can you kind of widen your lens nationally how big of an issue is this how widespread is it happening in all of our communities and we just don't know it's happening in all of our communities and we just don't know in rural communities throughout the United States people are dealing with the same issue and then with climate change you know with sea level rise there are communities that have relied on septic tanks on-site septic they're not working and when they fail the sewage either goes out into their backyards and to the street or into their homes and we've been in communities around the country we've been asked to come to Miami they have a major problem with failing septic systems next month we'll be in Hawaii they're moving from cesspools to septic and septics we know are failing likewise we were recently in California they they know that in California there are lots of people on septic but they don't know how many are on septic so they're hoping to to launch a program over the next four years where they will move from septic to sewer so we're hoping that as we go to these different communities that we help policy makers understand this is a major problem and it's in your backyard too as we talk about sanitation in rural communities and the issues that you've been uncovering it strikes me that is sanitation a human right how is this happening sanitation is a human right and actually when I got involved with this before we got all this attention we went to the U.N and there are sustainable development goals that the UN has and one of them is the human rights award and sanitation and it's it's all connected and I do believe that it is a human right because humans cannot live without water and we can't be healthy without Sanitation how are so many homes without this fundamental human right I believe that so many homes are without this fundamental uh human right because of inequality I think there are structural inequalities that are in place that have been able this to happen far too long and we can remove a lot of those structural inequalities I think that everyone would have the right toward and sanitation no matter where they are as I dug into this research I felt ashamed that I didn't know that this was happening to this degree why do you think there's that information or knowledge Gap well first of all because most of us when we flush our toilets we don't care where it goes that's number one but those people that flush their toilets and they see where it goes then they're you know of course they know a little bit more about this than usual and then when I first started doing this work I was told that the major media wasn't interested in this I found that not to be the case once they became aware but I think that a lot of people unfortunately have chosen to look the other way the people that do know about this or they blamed it on the the the homeowners the people that were dealing with the failures and and the narrative has been oh they don't know how to maintain these systems but if they're failing everywhere then maybe we need to look at the systems themselves and that's what we're doing we're looking at how we can redesign these systems so that they can work and they can work understanding that climate change is real and that with all these elements that impact how we treat sanitation that we have to look at that when we look at this redesign and figure out a way in which we may be able to reuse some of the sewage instead of it just being waste is that where founding your organization comes into play when did you decide to start your own organization dedicated to this issue well we actually started initially back in 2002 but the Center for Rural Enterprise and environmental justice became a reality in 2019. 2019 so very recent very recent how's it going I was going very very well because people are paying attention now and a lot of people who never saw themselves in the sanitation issue until now are reaching out to us and wanted to partner and collaborate on finding long-term Solutions let's Partnerships because you mentioned local leaders and earlier we were talking about infrastructure Forbes has a business community that we talk to all the time where what is the role of the business community of the private sector in this issue if any I think there is a role for the private sector I think the role of the private sector is to partner with us because one of the things that we bring to the table is our experience with Community engagement and I think that that's why people didn't know that this problem exists is existed the community was not a part of of even defining what the problem was so that we can talk about what the solution is and I think that if we could work together and what we're looking for are partners and collaborators on redesigning the way we look at on-site sanitation redesign the way we look at sanitation in general because it's not just feeling in places like Lowndes County we were in a place not very far from New York City in Mount Vernon New York there's their sanitation was failing too and sewage was coming back into their homes we've been called to Detroit to work there but we have to work with corporately leaders because they have a lot of the technicians a lot of the engineers that are there who can work with us and go into the community and together come up with design solutions that could help us deal with these problems and we're also looking at federal agencies that people haven't partnered with before like NASA I mean on the space in on the space shuttle um in the International Space Station they have to you know they have to deal with sanitation because humans are there but one of national NASA's missions is when they go places to look for water water is a part of this equation so we're hoping that we could use some of NASA's uh extraterrestrial knowledge to do some Earthly good as you talk about doing Earthly good in some of the Partnerships that you could make what are the Partnerships that you already have made that have been successful and perhaps offer lessons to others who are working in this space or other spaces and wanting to create change well a lot of our our partners our first partners and and our the longest Partners we have are the social justice organizations like the Equal justice initiative or organizations like the nrdc which you mentioned earlier of Justice the climate reality project they've all been very very helpful but we're also looking to partner with organizations one one Court one new organization that we're partnering with which is um there they are using 3D technology in order to they've built the lunar habitat it's a group called icon they're out of Texas and that's what one group that we're partnering with we're also looking at partnering with people that are working with renewable energy because renewable energy is part of the solution as well in these communities especially with redesigning sanitation so we're always open and looking to partnering with folk that we haven't been able to get their attention yet and hopefully from this we'll get their attention and we can work on this because this is not just an American problem this is a global problem and if we could find a solution and I think corporations have the the capacity to to not only help us find a solution but to scale it up and make it available in all those other areas around the world that are so in need of this technology entrepreneurs can help too you are an entrepreneur you've started an organization but for folks who are watching so that climate change exacerbates this issue if someone out there is working in the area of climate Tech what's your call to action for them what could they build or do that would help resolve this issue well first of all I think the first step is going into the communities where the failures are taking place in talking to people about what the failures look like so that we can design to eliminate them I think that's the first step and then the second step is I don't think that there's going to be this is not like building a car or you're going to find a put it on the assembly line and mass produce it it's going to be different for different areas because we have different geological factors impacting how it works so if you're in an area with a higher water table that's going to be different than being in a desert area or making sure that it's something that can be used in the colonies you know we got all these these uh communities that are located along the Texas and Texas border with Mexico and going all the way really to California and a lot of people have these same issues but making sure that it's something that can be I believe that you can go to a Lowe's or Home Depot and buy so that everybody can have access to it and I think if we have that as a standard I believe that we will be able to get this technology the new technology that comes about to everyone that needs it that's the solution side of this but I still go back to some of the scenes that you describe in your book of the sewage leaking into people's backyards children not being able to play and it feels to me as if someone needs to be held accountable are there people who have lost their jobs over this not yet you know I think that part of this Paradigm that makes it so strange to me is that the the onus is on the home homeowners we believe that one way we can get this technology change right away is that when you buy the the technology it should come with a warranty you know they don't come it doesn't come with a warranty the the liability is transferred to the homeowner immediately immediately so we feel that if they came with you know maybe a 10-year warranty they came with a 10-year warranty uh I mean personally I believe that it should be the life of a mortgage if it's associated with the life of a mortgage certainly they would work better and they would work longer so those are some of the things that that I think needs to happen to to address it right away so the liability will not just be on the homeowner I think that we should also Design Systems that can be maintained within the home that won't need some type of organization to oversee it or another utility or another layer of government to oversee it and those are the kinds of things that I think that could help us along the way to get to where we need to be it sounds like there's a lot of work ahead there's a lot of work ahead are you optimistic about the ability to create real change here I'm very optimistic why I'm very optimistic because if a country girl from Lowndes County Alabama can make Forbes 50 over 50. the sky's the limit among the discoveries you have forged is a really troubling one about tropical diseases and hookworm can you talk about exactly what you uncovered here well we were you know hearing local people talk about the possibility of illnesses that were related to sewage being on the ground I had my own experience where I was called to a site and I had on a dress was bitten by mosquitoes that were nesting on raw sewage and from that my body broke out in the rash and I was trying to determine what was wrong and I asked my doctor who ran a series of blood tests on me that came back negative and I said is it possible that American doctors are not even trained to look for these kinds of illnesses associated with raw sewage because this isn't supposed to be a problem in the United States and she's saying yeah it's possible so I saw an opiate that was in the New York Times that was written by Dr Peter hotez who was at Bayless National School of tropical medicine and I Googled him and found his email address and I wrote him and I asked him that question I said is it possible that uh people could have diseases from raw sewage being on the ground that American doctors are not trained to look for he wrote me back and said yes he said I always talk about this but every time I talk about the tropical parasites potentially being in the U.S they want to blame it on immigration I said I can take you to a place where people probably hadn't been to Atlanta let alone out of the country and that's how we did the parasite study and then the NIH picked it up well what happened was uh once we we collected the same local people that went from house to house and did the survey they also collected um we they were involved in going because they had the trust of the community people had to give us their fecal samples and their blood samples so the community these same Community activists help us collect those samples we got them to the doctors at Baylor who were there they gave us you know with the uh the protocols were and they were tested and then it there was a three-year um period that we had to go through peer review and once the once the peer review was completed because without that it wouldn't have been valid um that came out in 2017 and from that uh the CDC NIH and others have gotten involved since that time because people realize that this is a problem and not just in Lowndes County but we were the first to acknowledge that it is a problem and provide um and provide evidence that there's a problem here in the United States the White House has taken notice too correct yes the White House is taking notice can you tell me I'm going to read my paper so I get the name right what is the closing America's Wastewater Gap initiative well it was announced in August of last year it was the first ever National recognition that there is a Wastewater access Gap here in the U.S and there are 11 counties from throughout the U.S that are part of it but it started out of our work in Lowndes County Alabama I was told that the president saw an article in the New York Times where I was quoted saying that the only way we were going to get to sanitation Equity is the way we got voting rights it's through Federal intervention and we heard from the White House and and eventually the EPA administrator the USDA secretary and the infrastructures are came to Lowndes County to announce this this first ever initiative what's it going to do what's the the long-term goal is to make sure that every American has access to work and sanitation and earlier we talked about infrastructure economic development is that possible yet in Lowndes County for businesses to come in or are we still a ways off from that from my Economic Development days what I do know is that if there is a business that wants to locate in Lowndes County especially in communities like White Hall Alabama we could get the infrastructure dollars and put in the right type of infrastructure that can support their being there but it can also provide not only jobs for the community but it can provide access to the type of infrastructure that the community needs in order to grow and thrive so that is uh that's what we hope will ultimately come of this what's next for you what is on your to-do list if you look at the next one two five ten years what do you want to accomplish well I like to use my story to inspire young people to not give up to let them know that it's never too late you can always start over and I call it The Nine Lives of cat because I've had at least nine lives so I just believe that that I would like to just for my legacy to be an inspiration for the generations to come I have to work for as long as I to work for as long as you can well to that point we are here for the 50 over 50 and we have a few kind of standard questions we always ask when you were younger did you ever imagine your career over the age of 50 and if so what did you imagine and how does the reality compare when I was younger people were retiring at 50. so so I didn't I I didn't imagine that my career would be what it is now but as I got closer to 50 my goals and objectives change and I feel that once we get to a certain point in life there's wisdom my parents used to talk to me about wisdom and I didn't understand what they meant at the time but there's something that you will only know if you just lived you know my mama used to say all the time just keep on living so the fact that I've lived this long and I've seen a variety of things has helped me to be able to to focus a little bit more on the things that I'm trying to accomplish but to me when I looked back at you know when I was younger and looking now I never thought or imagined that I would be where I am right now speaking of wisdom we always like to ask people is being over 50 an advantage or disadvantage in your line of work and a lot of people talk about wisdom and experience when they answer that question but what would you say activism is hard work long hours is your age an advantage or disadvantage in what you're doing I think my age is an advantage because I've learned how to get along with people you know you have to be able to talk to each other and one of the things that I don't like about what I'm seeing in this country is that people are not listening to each other they're talking at each other and one of the things I've learned how to do is to holler to sit down and have a conversation no matter if I'm in a red or a blue state if I'm even talking to somebody that I don't just that I don't agree with all the time but to be able to have that conversation and have the patience to sit down knowing that they might say some things that are inflammatory but not responding to it but hoping that we come away from there with one thing one shared value that we have in common and I've learned that with age because when I was younger I didn't have the patience to sit around long enough to listen so is that the key to having bipartisan conversations patients and growing up in a rare state you know growing up in a red State there are certain skills I had to learn if I was going to stay there and I had to learn those and part of that is finding those things that we have in common and and and that has um that has been very helpful I've been a very helpful skill to me uh in terms of the work that I'm doing and and and Wastewater doesn't care if if sewage is coming back into your home it doesn't care what party you're in doesn't care how much money you have people are impacted the same way do some have more money to fix it than others but in terms of the impact I think that it is um it's it's pretty much the same across the board so it provides a type of uh platform for me to talk to people across various spectrums you had a really interesting example in your book I think it was Jeff sessions which in other politicians who have I think at this moment in time a certain aura or reputation and what's been the secret to sitting down and creating real conversation with them is it that it goes back to patients I think the secret sauce is meeting people where they are and when Jeff sessions and I met I was at a town hall meeting in Lowndes County and I asked a question because he was talking about all the federal funds that were available at that time for you know rural communities and I asked the question how does rural communities get access and they don't even have grant writers and you're also requiring that they have a 25 match he couldn't answer the question but he came to me afterwards and he said I've always wanted to answer that question I like to know do you have any ideas because I'm from a rural community too you know I would like to find solutions to that and that's how we struck up a friendship that's incredible what is your advice to women in their 20s and 30s who feel like they have to rush to fit all the accomplishments in before the age of 40 or even before the age of 30. you sit here almost 65 what's your advice to them live life don't put a don't put a clock you know or a time limit on your accomplishments because the accomplishments that you will make in your 20s would be different from the accomplishments in your 30s and 40s and you may even change in your 50s and do something completely different and I have my my model the person that I look to is Jane Fonda who has reinvented herself so many times and it's still very relevant today and I think if they had a role model to look to that was over 50. that could give them an inspiration and also give them what they need when those times get get hard and they feel like they're not going to get to the other side but they would get there they just need to have that wisdom and that uh the spirit guide to help them get to where they need to be what do you consider your greatest over 50 accomplishment my greatest over 50 accomplishment was the day that I went to the White House had a chance to go to the Oval Office and walk out with the president to heal to the chief and in the Rose Garden and I got to introduce them that was I think one of that was the greatest accomplishment and I realized then that apparently we had made some Headway apparently and I understand you almost didn't take that trip what else was happening in your life at that time well my granddaughter was was expected to be born any day and as a grandma my job was to get my grandson and let him stay with me while his mom was in the hospital so when they reached out to me I said I don't think I could come because you know I have a duty to perform form and it just so happened that Halo helped me along by coming earlier early enough so that I could actually go to the White House and introduce the president the work you're doing is leaving a legacy for millions of people around the country but also your family what is the Legacy you want to leave to them I want my family to know that there is no problem that's insurmountable just be persistent [Music]

Channel: Forbes

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Length: 33min 37sec (2017 seconds)

Published: Sat Aug 05 2023