SANITATION AND SOCIAL POWER IN THE UNITED STATES

BY
JENNIFER SUZANNE CARRERA

DISSERTATION
Submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements
for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in Sociology
in the Graduate College of the
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, 2014

Urbana, Illinois
Doctoral Committee:
Associate Professor Moon-Kie Jung, Chair
Associate Professor Anna Marshall
Associate Professor Behrooz Ghamari-Tabrizi
Associate Professor Ann Reisner

 ABSTRACT

This dissertation is an investigation of the relationship between sanitation, power, and
poverty in the United States. It draws from two broad theoretical lenses, political economies of
race and political economies of the environment, to build a new theory of wasting economies.
Using ethnographic methods, fieldwork data was collected for two case studies, Detroit,
Michigan and Lowndes County, Alabama. In total, fifty-two interviews were conducted over a
total of twelve months. These interviews were complemented with newspaper reports,
transcripts of town hall meetings, arrest records, and locally produced fliers and newsletters.
These sites were selected because Lowndes County is reported to have at least fifty percent of
households experiencing failing, failed or no septic systems and Detroit has been reported to
have more than forty thousand household water shutoffs per year. This project explored
impaired sanitation in both a rural and an urban setting in order to elaborate on the current
context of impaired sanitation among low-income populations in the United States, the policies
and processes that have led to impaired sanitation conditions, as well as the impacts for residents
who live with poor sanitation in these communities. Residents experienced arrests, fines,
evictions, foreclosures, and child removal as a result of lack of adequate water and sanitation in
the home. In these two locations with significant racial histories, race inequality has played an
important role in shaping the current context of poverty in each space, in spite of colorblind
perspectives that argue to the contrary. In particular, race inequalities related to housing have
contributed to reduced housing security which exacerbates problems related to water and
sanitation. Existing political economic theories of the environment would cast these two
communities as separate from economic structures, casualties of extractive and failed productive

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 economies; this research argues that far from separate from economic forms, these two
communities have been produced through active and ongoing economic processes that cast these
spaces as wasting spaces, allowing for the destruction of existing ways of living, elimination of
unwanted populations, and the generation of new forms of productivity and governance through
both toxic and green industries. The creation of these wasting spaces is prefaced on a
hierarchical ordering of the population, made possible through racism, wherein certain people are
cast as outside of legitimated forms of economy and governance.

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 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

I wish to thank all of those who have provided guidance, support, and critical reflection
not only in the production of this dissertation but also for the profound affect they have had in
shaping me as a scholar. As well, I would like to acknowledge the Social Science Research
Council for funding my Dissertation Proposal Development Fellowship. Not only did this
opportunity allow me to develop my ideas in a community of my peers but it also introduced me
to an amazing group of scholars who model excellence in scholarship and service. I would also
like to acknowledge the Graduate College for supporting my writing through the Dissertation
Completion Fellowship.
I wish to express my gratitude to my committee members for their encouragement and
critical feedback, which has pushed me to set big goals and work towards excellence in my
scholarship. To Moon-Kie, thank you for believing in me and challenging me to dig deeper than
I thought I was capable of doing. Behrooz and Eberhard, thank you for lending your perspective
and for stretching my analysis in new dimensions. My work is much better for it. Anna and Ann,
you are both my mentors and my friends and you have helped me through difficult points many
times. You mean the world to me. Stephen, you have been with me since the beginning, got me
started in my topic area, believed in me, encouraged me, and fought for me all along. What more
can I say but thank you?
Many others have also contributed significantly to making this work a reality. I would
like to thank Zsuzsa Gille for providing my intellectual foundation in environmental sociology
and for encouraging me to dream big and to follow those dreams. Thank you to Assata Zerai
who has always had a smile on her face, encouraging words, and for always helping me to

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 believe in my work and myself. To Abbilyn Harmon and Martha Lincoln, my friends and my
accountability partners, you both are amazing scholars and incredible human beings. I am
inspired by your friendship and cannot wait to see what you will do next. Thank you for letting
me walk beside you on your journey.
I have been privileged to grow as a scholar in no small part through my opportunities to
work with and learn from the engineers in the Department Civil and Environmental Engineering.
Benito Mariñas, thank you for making me a part of your work through the Safe Global Water
Institute and thank you for believing in me when I came to you to tell you that I wanted to study
engineering. You have opened untold doors to me and I am deeply grateful. My success in
engineering would not have been possible without the faith, support, and guidance of Jeremy
Guest. Jeremy, you are an incredible mentor and provide so many resources to your students.
The Guest Research Group, which has welcomed me and included me fully since the beginning,
is a clear reflection of that guidance. I hope one day to be the kind of mentor for my students
that you have been for me.
To my parents and my sister, Beci, you have kept me grounded and taught me that love,
vulnerability, and compassion are great strengths. I am inspired by you to remember where I
came from and make sure that my work always aims to make the world a better place. Shari Day,
of course you go in the family section. Shari, you make the world go round and I do not think
any of us would be where we are without you. Thank you for keeping me sane and for
bandaging all my boo-boos. To my wife Courtney, I cannot express enough how much you have
given to me and helped me to grow. You are selfless; you are strong; you are my friend. Thank
you for taking this journey with me. I look forward to every bend in the road and to discovering
the many places we find ourselves together.

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 Finally, I wish to thank all of the people who I met during my research, who I
interviewed, and who opened their hearts and their homes to me. Thank you for your generosity
and your trust. I am honored to have had the opportunity to meet you and to learn from you. I
carry you with me always.

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 METHODOLOGICAL NOTE

Lowndes County, Alabama and Detroit, Michigan are important communities both for
their current experiences with water and sanitation challenges as well as for their historical
experiences related to Civil Rights struggles and racial conflicts. It is not reasonable or desirable
to anonymize all persons who are relevant to the telling the story of each community. To do so
would be to further make invisible both the challenges and the triumphs of activism and
resistance in each community. Because this dissertation is about a highly stigmatized topic and it
deals with difficult, embarrassing, and potentially criminal subject matter, throughout the body
of this work all quotes, except those made by elected official, State Representative Kurt Heise,
have been noted with pseudonyms. While some participants did give permission for their names
to be used in association with their statements, because the names of the vast majority of
participants were kept confidential all quoted participants are given pseudonyms. In other areas
where the actions of public figures, including activists, are discussed pseudonyms are not used so
as to minimally confuse the historical record. For residents who appeared in newspapers whose
names were mentioned in the newspapers, these names are given pseudonyms. While the stories
of these individuals remain on the public record, the point of this work is not to bring further
attention to private struggles but instead to give examples of commonly shared challenges within
the communities. In this way, the names of individuals who have been arrested and who have
lost their homes are not necessary to telling the stories of community-wide struggles. In this
same spirit, the names of the churches and communities where town hall meetings occurred have
also been given pseudonyms.

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 TABLE OF CONTENTS

CHAPTER 1: SANITARY METABOLISM OF THE POOR........................................................1
CHAPTER 2: A HISTORICAL REVIEW OF PUBLIC WATER AND SANITATION.............30
CHAPTER 3: SANITATION AND REGULATION IN THE UNITED STATES......................63
CHAPTER 4: INSANITARY SEWAGE IN THE SOUTH..........................................................98
CHAPTER 5: LIVING WITHOUT WATER IN DETROIT......................................................137
CHAPTER 6: RACIALIZED LANDSCAPES...........................................................................177
CHAPTER 7: THE DEVELOPMENT OF A WASTING ECONOMY.....................................232
CHAPTER 8: CONCLUSION....................................................................................................274
REFERENCES: ..........................................................................................................................287
APPENDIX A: DATA SOURCES..............................................................................................310
APPENDIX B: TABLES.............................................................................................................313
APPENDIX C: FIGURES...........................................................................................................316

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 CHAPTER 1

SANITARY METABOLISM OF THE POOR

This, then, is the relationship between sanitation and sociology: The individual is the
essential element of society, his social value depends largely on his health, while in turn his
health is partly determined by the conditions which society imposes (Talbot 1896, p80-81).

Introduction
According to the World Health Organization (2012a), sanitation includes the necessary
facilities for disposal of human excrement as well as the ability to maintain hygienic conditions,
through bathing, garbage and wastewater removal. Sanitation encompasses broadly the
technological, environmental and social means for the removal of human waste products
associated with the maintenance of basic living for individuals and societies. Sanitation is the
process by which all living systems organize wastes that are the necessary products of
metabolism. International concern regarding sanitation focuses on the public health implications
of access to “improved” water as provided through private pipes to a residence, public water
taps, boreholes, protected dug wells, protected springs and rainwater collection as well as
“improved” systems for the removal of human excreta including flush toilets connected to sewer
or septic systems, pit latrines, and composting toilets (WHO 2012b).
UNICEF (2010) reports that roughly 2.5 billion people worldwide, “almost fifty percent
of the developing world’s population,” lack access to improved sanitation facilities and close to 1
billion lack access to improved water sources. Every year more than 1.5 million children
(around 5,000 per day) die from lack of access to clean water and sanitation; approximately 88
percent of those deaths are caused by diarrheal diseases (UNICEF 2006). In July of 2010 the
United Nations General Assembly declared access to water and sanitation essential human rights

1

 (UNGA 2010).
Worldwide, the lack of sufficient mechanisms for the disposal of raw sewage is one of
the most significant factors in limiting access to clean water. Millions of people in the United
States become ill from contact with sewage contaminated waters every year (Nelson and Murray
2008). Combined sewer overflows (CSOs), which allow untreated or minimally treated sewage
to discharge into rivers and streams during intense rain events, are just one of the mechanisms by
which residents in developed nations may become exposed to fecal contaminated waters, placing
them at increased risk for transmission of Cryptosporidium and Giardia (Gibson et al. 1998).
The Centers for Disease Control states that sewage is home to numerous bacteria which may lead
to infection and diseases such as shigellosis, typhoid fever, salmonella, and cholera (CPWR
2004). Untreated wastewater also contains funguses (which may present allergy problems for
certain individuals), parasites (including cryptosporidium, giardia lamblia, and roundworm), and
viruses (such as Hepatitis A). In addition to pathogens, raw and even treated wastewater
contains heavy metals and persistent pharmaceutical compounds which are not fully removed
during the treatment process (Heberer 2002). Not only do these pharmaceutically active
compounds (PhACs) pose unknown health risks to humans but they also raise concern for
environmental impacts on aquatic and downstream life through their potential to disrupt natural
hormone pathways (Colborn et al. 1997).
Since the dawn of the discipline sociology has been concerned with the topic of
sanitation. Early social reformers correlated sanitation with the degree of health and civility of a
society and efforts to improve sanitation were understood as fundamental to “improve the race”
(Talbot 1896, p81). Closely tied with modernist visions, systems for water and sewage handling
have been fundamentally linked to processes of development and growth of industrialized cities

2

 and nations (Gandy 1999; Schultz and McShane 1978). But as infrastructure was constructed
and general health of societies improved, sociological interest in the topic waned while the
association of sanitation with ideas of development and developing nations remained fixed.
What early sociologists recognized that contemporary sociologists seem to fail to find pertinent
is that sanitation is a project of the state. The presence of technological infrastructure should not
be viewed as a historical achievement of a society along its pathway towards development, but
rather a feature of an ongoing biopolitical project of the state necessary for the organization of
the body populace and for the management of the total health of the society. For these reasons,
sociological inquiry into systems of management of water and wastewater is just as important in
so-called developed nations as it is in developing nations.
This chapter establishes the theoretical framing for a sociological analysis of sanitation in
the contemporary United States. Beginning with a review of the sociological literature on
sanitation, the chapter contextualizes the study of sanitation from the perspective of
environmental sociology. In particular, by exploring the circulation of water and wastewater
within society as a metabolic cycle of sanitation, it is possible to make use of the Marxist theory
of metabolic rift, which offers a useful interpretation of the accumulation of human waste and
interruption of flows of water within the United States. By understanding humans as nature, this
theory suggests not only the accumulation of environmental wastes as pollution through
capitalist production, but also the accumulation of human bodies as waste products of extractive
processes of production. The process suggests that sanitary citizenship, as offered by Charles
Briggs and Clara Mantini-Briggs (2003), which orders individuals hierarchically according to
their experiences as related to sanitary encounters serves a metabolic action within social and
capital production. Through this interpretation, sanitation can be understood as a racial project

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 of the state, which serves to promote a particular health of the population while simultaneously
suppressing the wellness of particular marginalized groups within the population. This analysis
is explored through an ethnographic study of two communities in the United States that have
experienced impaired access to sanitation. The chapter concludes with an outline of the
remaining chapters in the dissertation.
Sanitation and Sociology
Social science literature on sanitation includes a plethora of environmental histories of
the development of water and sewer infrastructure in the developed and developing world.
Chapter 3 will provide an in-depth discussion of the political and historical development of water
and wastewater infrastructure in United States. Anthropological and historical studies of disease
such as those by Charles Briggs and Clara Mantini-Briggs (2003) and Natalia Molina (2006)
explore the complex connections between social constructions of disease and racialized notions
of who is considered to be a complete citizen. They find that encounters with limited sanitation,
as cause and consequence, are paired with racialized notions of social worth, wherein people of
color are viewed as unclean and less than fully human as demonstrated through their impaired
experiences with sanitation. This analysis will be discussed more in chapter six.
Understanding the health consequences of exposure to sewage, a great deal of literature
related to sanitation focuses on health and illness among the poor, particularly in developing
nations. It is widely understood that limited access to clean water and sanitation is associated
with increased risks of malnutrition and disease (Fotso and Kuate-Defo 2005). Arguing that less
than optimal living conditions among the poor are more likely to contribute to the generation and
the spread of disease, some scholars appeal to sanitary improvements for the poor so as to reduce
risks of disease exposure among the non-poor (Daniels et al. 1999; Woodward and Kawachi

4

 2000). Internationally, particularly in urban slums and rural communities within developing
nations, access to sewer infrastructure is a major challenge for the poor (Angotti 1996; Hall
1984; Whitehead et al. 1993). In India researchers found that caste conflicts led certain groups to
be removed from their land and thereby denied access to traditional mechanisms for disposal of
their human waste and in Brazil rural communities have struggled significantly with access to
basic infrastructure in comparison with urban centers (Beato 2004; Juergensmeyer 1979).
In contrast, in the United States, a few scholars argue that often the poor have better
access to sanitation infrastructure than the non-poor. One argument to this end points to the
concentration of the poor in urban centers in the United States, which, unlike unsewered urban
slums in developing nations, have fully developed and extensive centralized water and sewer
infrastructure (Hawkins and Hendrick 1997; McLafferty 1982). In addition to urbanization,
Werner Troesken (2004) found that outright racism led to the installation of sewers in black
neighborhoods when officials wanted to protect white neighborhoods from exposure to excreta
from black households. Unlike poor and marginalized populations in developing nations,
exclusion of the poor in urban ghettos and racially motivated fear in the United States has in
some cases in fact led to improved sanitation access.
Instead of a concern for individual health and well-being, access to water in the United
States is understood as a basic necessity for continued economic development (Nilsson and
Nyanchaga 2008). While various options for onsite management and treatment of septic wastes
exist, many business owners choose simply to establish their operations where water and sewer
infrastructure are already present (Seley 1981). This preference by business leaders has two
important related consequences. First, areas without existing infrastructure will struggle to
attract new businesses and will thus tend to remain rural and in poverty due to a lack of jobs.

5

 Second, areas that have existing infrastructure or that can invest in infrastructure improvements
have a better chance at attracting new businesses and improving their overall economic status by
generating new tax revenues and providing new employment opportunities for area residents
(Melosi 1989). Therefore, water and sewer infrastructure are understood to be limiting factors
for economic growth and development and play important roles in a community’s ability to
generate new sources of revenue (McLafferty 1982).
In spite of arguments to the contrary, the relevance of sanitation access to sociological
inquiry in the United States is not merely that of sustained and increasing economic
development. While some communities do show improved sanitation access associated with
urbanization or racial prejudice, sociologists have long known that when sewage treatment and
management systems are not understood to directly or indirectly benefit non-poor and white
residents, they have not been (nor will they be) constructed solely to benefit poor communities
and communities of color (Allen 1903). Rather, as environmental justice scholars and activists
show, these communities are either preferentially selected for the siting of toxics facilities,
including wastewater treatment plants, (Bullard 2001; Di Chiro 2004; Litt et al. 2002; Pezzoli et
al. 2007; Ringquist and Clark 1999) or sewer infrastructure is developed in exclusion of poor and
communities of color across the United States (Johnson et al. 2004).
In the late 19th century, through efforts to improve the public health of the white residents
of the city of Los Angeles, publicly held waterways that had provided access to water and
sanitation for Mexican and Chinese residents were enclosed and transformed into sewage pipe
systems (Elkind 2006; Torres-Rouff 2006). The new sewer pipes closed off open access to the
waterways and no entry points or pipes were installed to provide access to the communities
which previously depended upon them. During the early 20th century’s industrial development

6

 of East St Louis, townships constructed their own sewer systems to the exclusion of the
industrial spaces (Colten 1989). As homes of workers were built up around the factories, they
were neither connected to the sewer systems associated with the townships nor the wastewater
management infrastructure of the factories. Up until 2010 when funds provided by the American
Reinvestment and Recovery Act made it possible to connect the community to a centralized
sewer system, one of these communities, Eagle Park Acres, in spite of its suburban, grid-pattern
streets and housing blocks, was entirely unsewered and reliant upon failing septic systems and
cesspools for the management of sewage waste. Finally, in one of the most striking
contemporary cases, discriminatory zoning practices were found to have intentionally excluded
African Americans in a community in North Carolina from access to sewer systems as well as
from the political right to vote upon their inclusion or exclusion (Johnson et al. 2004).
Overall, environmental histories and medical anthropology scholarship offer the most
sophisticated analyses of the social, political, and environmental consequences and connections
between sanitation and lived experiences. Much of the sociological literature on sanitation
dwells on an implicit ‘otherness’ that situates impaired sanitation access among the poor in
developing nations. In the United States some have argued that poverty is irrelevant to sanitation
access; the country is thought to have arrived at some imagined destination of modernity wherein
all of its citizens and residents alike are afforded access to water and sewer infrastructure merely
because of its status as a developed nation. A handful of examples, where poor and communities
of color have experienced improved sanitation access because of population density or racial
prejudice, support this conclusion. For many, the relevance of sanitation to the United States is a
question of economic development wherein communities compete for access to commercial
development through the ability to provide pre-existing water and wastewater infrastructure to

7

 new businesses. In spite of this overly optimistic conceptualization the state of sanitation in the
United States, several case studies demonstrate the historical and ongoing ways in which
communities come to be excluded from water and wastewater infrastructure. Impaired sanitation
access remains a significant and relevant topic for marginalized communities within the United
States and exists as an underexplored area within the discipline of sociology in general.
Environmental Sociology
Although theoretically underdeveloped within environmental justice scholarship, the subdiscipline of environmental sociology offers multiple theoretical tools to draw from in order to
better articulate sanitation flows. It offers a lens with which to explore nature and the social
simultaneously which allows for a materialist analysis of the conditions which lead to and the
consequences of impaired sanitation access. As well, the ecological Marxist notion of metabolic
rift provides a powerful framing for understanding the processes that lead specific populations to
become excluded from full sanitation access.
Environmental sociology as a sub-discipline emerged as a consequence of growing
debate and changing consciousness around the environment during the late 1960’s. After the
publication of Silent Spring in 1962, a large number of previously inactive Americans mobilized
around issues related to the environment (Taylor 2000). Drawn to the furor of activity around
the environment, early sociologists in the discipline focused on changes in attitudes about the
environment and rates of people influenced by environmental problems. Increasingly, though,
some sociologists took a different perspective and began to examine the environment itself as a
variable in formulating social structures.
In 1978 Dunlap and Catton published an article drawing attention to what they see as a
growing divergence of thought between the two groups of sociologists (Catton and Dunlap

8

 1978). The former they see as accepting the established set of assumptions about society and
nature. In essence, they argue that contemporary sociology, despite its many theoretical forms, is
structured on an underlying belief in the exceptional qualities of mankind, which placed man
outside of nature. This, they argue, represents a “basic sociological worldview,” which they
refer to as the “Human (Exceptionalist) Exemptionalist Paradigm” (HEP). They see the HEP as
following a basic belief in progress and modernization. At the time, sociologists seemed to be
rejecting that first set of assumptions in favor of a different set that emphasized that 1) humans
are but one species among many, 2) there are unintended consequences from human activity, and
3) there are finite limits to the world. This second set of assumptions represents to Dunlap and
Catton an entirely new paradigm within sociology. They call this new paradigm the “New
(Environmental) Ecological Paradigm” (NEP). The sub-discipline, in spite of its original
paradigmatic visions, has fostered divergent theoretical assumptions and framings. Among the
divergences, Frederick Buttel (1978) challenged Dunlap and Catton for dismissing the
contributions of classical theorists and has subsequently argued that classical theorists offer a
rich foundation for interpreting environmental struggles (Buttel 2002).
Classical Marxism is not widely known for having been particularly concerned about
nature as such or environmental degradation. Although ecological Marxists have resurrected
some of Marx’s early works to emphasize his writings that included discussions on nature and
resource dependency, Marx has typically been considered a promethean (Buttel 2002; Dryzek
1997). Prometheans believe in indefinite progress through modernization, with no limits to
growth or population, and see nature as purely a resource for man’s use (Dryzek 1997). In his
early writings, Marx wrote that man is in a dialectical relationship with nature (Marx 1994). He
is dependent upon nature for his sustenance, fuel, and clothing and he impacts nature through the

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 production of his own material life. Marx saw man as master of nature through his ability to use
nature’s laws to suit his own ends, but because nature exists outside of man, man’s actions are
constrained by natural limits.
Marx was primarily concerned with capitalism and its destructive impacts on mankind.
He argued that capitalism had a fundamental contradiction intrinsic both to its design and its
downfall. As Marx saw it, capitalism is driven by an unending desire to increase profits. This
drive leads owners of the means of production to seek out ever more advanced ways of
improving efficiency to cut down on costs. This leads to overproduction and declining profits.
Declining profits in turn lead to layoffs, which combined with the diminished intellectual and
skill base caused by the replacement of skilled labor with machines, result in the
proletarianization of the workforce. The proletarian mass, through being denied access to
exchange values, is limited in its ability to participate in processes of consumption. The first
contradiction represents a crisis of overproduction. Marx believed that the proletarian workforce
would recognize its exploitation, form labor unions, and bring about increased planning and the
socialization of the means of production leading ultimately the downfall of capitalism (Buttel
2002; Dickens 2002).
James O’Connor (1988) builds on Marx’s first contradiction to point out that capitalism
has a second fundamental contradiction. He calls this a second pathway to socialism. O’Connor
says that Marx missed recognizing that capitalism limits itself by impairing its social and
environmental base. O’Connor says that in Marx’s time it was not possible to see the selfinduced limits that capitalism might one day reach, so it is not fair to be critical of Marx for not
adequately considering environmental issues. Marx did however allude to the possibility that
problems might eventually develop. Marx recognized that capitalist activity produces pollution

10

 that is wasteful as well as harmful. As well, he argued that capitalism exploits nature just as it
does the work force, “shortening the extent of the labourer’s life, as a greedy farmer snatches
increased produce from the soil by robbing it of its fertility” (Marx 1994, p43). Building on
these ideas, O’Connor says that the waste, pollution, and robbed fertility lead to diminished
capacity for capitalist production. For O’Connor this represents a second contradiction of
capitalism. The destructive relationship that capitalism has with nature undermines its long-term
ability to produce, leading to a crisis of underproduction.
John Bellamy Foster agrees with O’Connor that that capitalism is destructive to its
environmental foundation but Foster does not see capitalism as held in check because there are
no internal feedback mechanisms to the whole of capitalism (Moore 2011). Rather, it is
expected that capitalism will create immense environmental destruction to the point of total
social and environmental collapse. Foster points to Marx’s analysis of the destructive effect of
capitalist agriculture in destroying the land’s natural fertility to support his claims (Foster 1999).
…large landed property reduces the agricultural population to a constantly falling
minimum, and confronts it with a constantly growing industrial population crowded
together in large cities. It thereby creates conditions which cause an irreparable break in
the coherence of social interchange prescribed by the natural laws of life. As a result, the
vitality of the soil is squandered, and this prodigality is carried by commerce far beyond
the borders of a particular state ... Large-scale industry and large-scale mechanized
agriculture work together. If originally distinguished by the fact that the former lays
waste and destroys principally labour-power, hence the natural force of human beings,
whereas the latter more directly exhausts the natural vitality of the soil, they join hands in
the further course of development in that the industrial system in the countryside also
enervates the labourers, and industry and commerce on their part supply agriculture with
the means for exhausting the soil (Marx 1894, p567).
Marx understands labor as the as the mechanism by which the metabolism of nature and
humans occurs (Clark and Foster 2010). Marx draws a parallel between the function of labor in
society and the flow of nutrients from the soils and into plants. In this passage Marx argues that
just as industry is destructive to the metabolic interaction of humans in organizing and

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 reorganizing society, large-scale agriculture interrupts natural rhythms of soil renewal, necessary
for sustaining life, by extracting nutrients for capitalist gains. Large scale agriculture withdraws
soil nutrients to then be transported and sold across long distances (Foster and Magdoff 1998).
Artificial fertilizers are required to make up for nutrient losses but such chemical fertilizers
further contribute to pollution as runoff and toxic algal blooms (Foster 1999). Foster argues that
because of the high energy costs and financial costs of returning nutrients to their origin,
economic systems do not allow for the return of nutrients to their origin. Additionally, they only
minimally allow for the recycling of nutrients within productive systems. Instead, nutrients in
the form of fiber waste/trash and sewage accumulate as pollution in cities while rural land loses
its productive capacity.
Excretions of consumption are the natural waste matter discharged by the human body,
remains of clothing in the form of rags, etc. Excretions of consumption are of the greatest
importance for agriculture. So far as their utilisation is concerned, there is an enormous
waste of them in the capitalist economy. In London, for instance, they find no better use
for the excretion of four and a half million human beings than to contaminate the Thames
with it at heavy expense (Marx 1894, p70).
The interruption of the process of returning nutrients to the soil, Marx identifies as break
in the natural metabolism of social and environmental life. Foster calls this break a metabolic
rift that emerges as the disconnect between town and country (Foster 1999). While Foster points
to lack of economic incentive to return nutrients to the soil as the organizing principle by which
the metabolic rift occurs, Marx points to points to another fundamental cause of the rift.
The same is true of the second big source of economy in the conditions of production.
We refer to the reconversion of the excretions of production, the so-called waste, into
new elements of production, either of the same, or of some other line of industry; to the
processes by which this so-called excretion is thrown back into the cycle of production
and, consequently, consumption, whether productive or individual. … This waste, aside
from the services which it performs as new element of production, reduces the cost of the
raw material to the extent to which it is again saleable, for this cost always includes the
normal waste, namely the quantity ordinarily lost in processing. The reduction of the cost
of this portion of constant capital increases pro tanto the rate of profit, assuming the

12

 magnitude of the variable capital and the rate of surplus-value to be given (Marx 1894,
p50).
For Marx, the generation of waste provides an opportunity to reuse material in continued
processes of production at a reduced cost and thereby increased profit margin. Where reusing
waste in industrial processes offers the potential of reduced production costs, there is a direct
incentive not to return nutrients to an environmental metabolic pathway. Unless returning
nutrients to the soil has a direct and immediate potential to increase profit, it will not occur.
Given Marx’s own articulation of the similar processes of social and natural metabolism through
labor and nutrient flows, this internal mechanism inherent to capitalism makes clear how the
drive to maximize the exploitation of natural resources makes the theory of metabolic rift a
poignant lens in the analysis of social metabolism as well.
Building on the metaphor of metabolism, Jason W. Moore (2011) criticizes Foster’s
continuing distinction between society and nature. Instead, Moore argues that the object of
analysis within metabolism should be what he calls oikeios, which constitutes the dynamic
movement of the bundled relationships of nature and society together. Society and nature do not
exist outside of each other. As such the relational processes within capitalism can be analyzed to
reveal material outcomes for both human and extra-human nature. I contend, then, that
understanding the metabolic rift of nutrient flows should provide insight into the metabolic rift of
human bodies principally because the two are one and the same.
Capitalist production, when considered in isolation from the process of circulation and
the excesses of competition, is very economical with the materialised labour incorporated
in commodities. Yet, more than any other mode of production, it squanders human lives,
or living labour, and not only blood and flesh, but also nerve and brain. Indeed, it is only
by dint of the most extravagant waste of individual development that the development of
the human race is at all safeguarded and maintained in the epoch of history immediately
preceding the conscious reorganisation of society. Since all of the economising here
discussed arises from the social nature of labour, it is indeed just this directly social
nature of labour which causes the waste of life and health (Marx 1894, p56).

13

 Marx’s discussion of the accumulation of waste through systems of production speaks
both to the accumulation of nutrient wastes through capitalist agriculture as well as the
accumulation of human bodies as waste through the production of surplus labor. Just as
production when possible seeks to maximize the extraction of nutrients from raw “natural”
materials so as to maximize profits, the generation of surplus labor seeks to maximize the
extraction of cheap and free labor from human bodies, with the ultimate consequence of leaving
bodies and brains as waste. Metabolic rift theory argues that this extractive process functions
within capitalism by design, serves to create denatured and dehumanized spaces, and serves
ultimately to create spaces of massive natural and social degradation.
Metabolism is “a complex process of metabolic exchange, whereby an organism…draws
upon materials and energy from its environment and converts these by way of various metabolic
reactions into the building blocks of … compounds necessary for growth” (Foster 1999, p382).
Metabolism is “the basis on which life is sustained and growth and reproduction become
possible” (p383). Using the metaphor of metabolism, the metabolic exchange of capitalism is
designed inherently to promote the growth and reproduction of the economic system. Waste and
its management are necessary outcomes of the output of metabolic exchange. The metabolic rift,
then, is both the success and the failure of the capitalist system.
The circulatory flow of water and wastewater within nature and society lends itself well
to a metabolic analysis, wherein sanitation represents the bundle of relations, or oikeios, of the
interaction of water within social processes. Whereas the hydrological cycle describes the flow
of water in exclusion of human activity, through evaporation, precipitation, groundwater storage
and discharge, and surface water storage, Stephen Merrett (1997) terms the hydrosocial cycle to
be the flow of water through human technological systems of water management including

14

 collection, treatment, consumption, wastewater collection, treatment, and disposal. Advancing
this concept, Eric Swyngedouw (2004) argues that in addition to the technological and natural
flows of water, the hydrosocial cycle also includes economic and political interchanges related to
water. His analysis of water points towards a social metabolic process that illuminates the
conflicts and contradictions of social power as exercised within the materiality of human life,
wherein water is a symptom of what Swyngedouw calls a “socio-environmental pathology”
(Swyngedouw 2011).
The full swath of technological, natural, economic and political relations is fundamental
to understanding the significance of metabolic exchange of water within society but as
conceptualized the hydrosocial cycle is incomplete. These relations dwell heavily in the material
significance of water within society but neglect the symbolic significance of water in
maintaining and generating society. I argue that sanitation, understood as systems for the
disposal of waste and maintenance of hygienic conditions, offers a better conceptual framework
for the inclusion of the purification, healthful, and restorative meanings associated with water as
well as the defiling, diseased, and backwards meanings associated with sewage and lack of
cleanliness. Inclusion of the symbolic as well as the material processes and outcomes of a
sanitation metabolic cycle makes it possible to explore the embodied experiences of individuals
within the theory of metabolic rift.
Metabolism and Citizenship
The metabolism of society, for Marx, is driven by man’s labor, which is used to make
and remake the world in which he is embedded. Metabolism is the process through which
capitalism organizes the social and natural world in order to reproduce and grow, drawing
resources from the land and body, exploiting land and body to their profitable extent, and

15

 excreting the unneeded as waste. Sanitation is the organizational process by which metabolism
occurs, defining what is clean and usable and what is unclean and needs to be quarantined. Both
land and body are subject to this organizational process wherein certain elements are assigned
use and exchange value and certain people are assigned legitimacy and social value.
In recent years the notion of citizenship has become redefined according to the ideology
of neoliberalism which makes every citizen responsible for their own destiny (Ong 2006).
Neoliberalism constructs new ways of living by defining citizens as independent individuals who
are free to participate in the global marketplace and conceive of themselves as economically
motivated actors. Correspondingly, it calls for a gutting of social services, deregulation and the
restriction of the role of government to enforcement of the market, devolution of power from the
federal government to states, and privatization of public goods and services. Those who do not
conceive of themselves as economic actors or who lack neoliberal potential find themselves
locked out of the privileges bestowed upon the neoliberal citizen. The concept of freedom is
integral to the notion of neoliberalism as it removes the responsibility of protection of the citizen
from the state and places success and failure in the hands of the individual.
This notion of personal responsibilization infuses distinct moral and ethical imperatives
of accumulation and the performance of wealth into the role of the citizen. Under modernity,
poverty is viewed as proof of failure (Briggs and Mantini-Briggs 2003; Marshall 1964). Poverty
and poor living conditions are regarded as proof of ignorance, backwardness, dirtiness—all of
which can be understood as transgressions in moral character. Conceptualizing one’s citizenship
in biological terms (in contradistinction to noncitizens who violate those biological norms) is to
perform what Nikolas Rose and Carlos Novas (2005) have called biological citizenship. This
form of citizenship moves away from claims of citizenship based on rights accorded to basic

16

 biological life and towards claims based on performance through actively carrying out specific
hygienic and embodied behaviors that signify one’s status as a biological citizen. However, the
spaces in which these norms of behavior are considered valid and morally legitimate are highly
situated and contingent. Further, those responsible for defining what counts as legitimate
behavior are themselves embedded within the hierarchies and their own status as experts is
contingent on those criteria being legitimated within the structure (Briggs and Mantini-Briggs
2003).
In an analysis of the ways in which discourse was racialized within the context of a
cholera outbreak in Venezuela in 1992-1993, Charles Briggs and Clara Mantini-Briggs (2003)
introduced the idea of sanitary citizenship as a way of understanding the construction of moral
subjectivities under a particular public healthcare regime. They found that certain individuals
were afforded rights and legitimacy within the system while others were judged as lacking the
necessary medical understandings of the body, hygiene, health and illness and were
consequentially excluded from decision-making processes about how and where they would live.
Briggs and Mantini-Briggs classified the first group of people, who possessed the necessary
knowledge and carried out the behaviors believed to be appropriate within the particular
‘modern’ health care system, as sanitary citizens whereas those who refused to or were not able
to adopt a modern medical relationship to the body were deemed unsanitary subjects (Briggs and
Mantini Briggs 2003, p10).
Briggs and Mantini-Briggs’ analysis points to a fixed, linear hierarchy of citizenship
statuses that are produced through media and public health discourse. Their analysis was driven
by findings observed during a cholera outbreak in Venezuela when the experiences of the poor
and indígenas were captured within the public spectacle. In the United States, however, the

17

 struggles and experiences of the poor rarely raise the attention of the media. While ideas about
identities are influenced by media imagery, identities and statues are complexly produced
additionally through dynamic, socio-environmental relations. These relations include the
influence of extra-human nature as well as governance structures, which serve to organize the
population for the health of the system. Building on Briggs and Mantini-Briggs’ claims-based
citizenship wherein individuals appeal for legitimacy and recognition through discourses related
to their sanitary experiences, I suggest considering sanitary citizenship within a metabolic
production process where sanitary experiences become inscribed psychologically and physically
onto individuals’ bodies and subsequently affect their modality as political actors. From this
perspective sanitary citizenship is viewed relationally and continuously within a social and
environmental cycle of production.
This suggests that multiple subjectivities are possible along a continuum wherein some
will receive maximum benefits of citizenship while others, through their lack of ability to adhere
to the dominant beliefs regarding ethical ways of living, will be excluded from those benefits.
This downcast subject is not separate and apart from the structure, however, but instead exists in
a state of limbo that, though his position as Other within the system, serves to provide definition
for the normalized ideal citizen (Agamben 1998; Guillaumin 1995).
The Unsanitary Subject
Giorgio Agamben (1998) said that there were two kinds of life common to all humans:
zoë, which is the life characteristic of all living beings and bios, which orders that life according
to a particular way of living. This notion of zoë or bare life, describes the condition of life
devoid of political existence. Bare life becomes the place of exception wherein the individual
exists outside of the protection of the law. Agamben conceptualizes the notion of bare life

18

 through the idea of exception, wherein one is included in society only through actively being
excluded. Agamben argued that our political structure is based on this notion of exclusion,
which defines the Other to which all else is framed. Being stripped of political personhood is to
be rendered bare life, meaning one is in a state of exception where they are stripped of voice,
legal protection, and agency. Agamben’s name for this person who resided as bare life was
homo sacer or sacred/accursed man. He who may be killed but not sacrificed. He who cannot
be touched without dirtying oneself. Agamben used the example of the concentration camp as an
ideal type of the conditions of bare life but also pointed to the modern capitalist project, which
reproduces the poor and transforms the population into bare life. At the end of his text,
Agamben points to how capitalist systems render the poor into a state of exception and cast them
as bare life.
In American culture, not having access to socially acceptable disposal of human waste
says not only something about the conditions in which one is living but also the condition of the
human themselves. The situation in which a person is excluded from a formal structure of
wastewater management finds many people living in conditions where they are not getting by but
just living. Life for them is reduced to basic functions which even then are not being met. While
there are a myriad of more toxic substances than human waste to which poor people throughout
the world are exposed, the condition of handling and living in one’s own waste renders that
person less than human—or perhaps merely human. Briggs and Mantini-Briggs found that the
indígenas who were not socialized and educated to live ‘correctly’ within the legitimated medical
establishment were viewed as “intrinsically pathological or perhaps not fully human” (Briggs
and Mantini-Briggs 2003, p156). The unsanitary subject within their analysis points to an
empirical example of Agamben’s homo sacer.

19

 The abilities to set the terms of reality and define the context of being are the key
characteristics of sovereignty according to Giorgio Agamben. Agamben takes his interpretation
of power from Michel Foucault’s definition of biopower as given in The History of Sexuality.
For Foucault (1990) the original definition of the sovereign rested in the ability to take life at
will. The sovereign was defined by his ability to “take life or let live” (p136). According to
Foucault, beginning in the seventeenth century, the configuration of power changed from one
that took life to one that made live. He said that the focus of the sovereign shifted to one of
discipline and the “anatomo-politics of the human body” as well as to a politics of the species
body (p139). The regulation of populations through disciplinary intervention, such as
management of health, sanitation, and surveillance through statistical techniques, Foucault
termed as biopolitics. The management of life itself became the prime focus of the sovereign.
The term biopolitics emerges as the sovereign’s ability to make live or let die through biological
interventions. For the sovereign death of his subjects is to be avoided as in that moment they
escape the power of the sovereign—in that moment they are free (Agamben 2002).
Agamben identifies dual drivers of power, the more historical thanatopolitics (the power
to make death occur) and the more recent emergence of biopolitics, as presenting a fundamental
contradiction for power illustrated best inside the concentration camps of the Holocaust
(Agamben 2002). With the industrial revolution, the management and production of life serves
the interest of the sovereign through the production of labor and the ability to produce profits
according to the fundamental principles of modern capitalism. During the camps the will to
govern the production of wellness for the Aryan identity through eugenic techniques faced the
will to death for the undesirables who simultaneously threatened and substantiated that identity.
The drive to death persists according to Foucault and Agamben because of racism. Where

20

 biopolitics drives power through systems of production, racism provides a mechanism for the
justification of the identity of the sovereign. João Biehl (2001) explains that through the
definition of the Other as opposite of the self (sovereign), as the Other dies the self’s the position
of dominance in the power structure is reinforced. At the moment before death, the power of the
sovereign is absolute.
Sanitation as a Racial Project
Agamben may be wrong about the concentration camp being the prime example of this
production of being, as Jared Sexton has argued (2010). He argues that slavery is a better
example than the concentration camp because the institution of slavery pre-dates the appearance
of the concentration camp and because slavery provided the economic foundation for the modern
democratic state to emerge. After the camp, Agamben points to the refugee as the embodiment
of homo sacer, held in exception to the law without home or protection (Agamben 2000).
Sexton argues that nativity is not entirely lost with the refugee unlike with the descendants of
American slaves who have no origin outside of the U.S. and who are not seen as full citizens
within the U.S.
Historically, slavery required the production and reproduction of a black laboring class
that was cheap and readily accessible (Sider 2006, p247). Agamben understood bare life within
the context of biopolitical power, wherein the sovereign (the state) becomes concerned with the
management of life as a political strategy. He says that “the development and triumph of
capitalism would not have been possible…without the disciplinary control achieved by the new
bio-power, which, through a series of appropriate technologies, so to speak created the “docile
bodies” that it needed” (Agamben 1998, p3). With the end of slavery, new mechanisms for

21

 producing docile bodies were required to take up the task of cleaving political essence from
human beings.
Accompanying the move towards increasing civil and workers’ rights has been the
consequence that what was once cheap labor is now relatively expensive. Sider argues that
through mechanization and competition for jobs amongst developing nations, immigrants with
few legal protections in developed nations have become the new surplus labor supply, which
drives down wage costs. Low-skilled expensive labor power is now superfluous to the system.
Wherein low-skilled, expensive labor power does not add to the surplus labor supply, it does
threaten profits when individuals make claims upon the system based upon their civil rights.
Perversely, rights of citizenship become a detriment to already poor and marginalized black
communities in the race to the bottom in competition for diminishing wages. Clearly, denial of
citizenship is beneficial to the capitalist class as it supports the generation of maximal profits.
Therein lies the impetus for a transformation of this population either through outright
elimination (“structural genocide”1) or through transformation into bare life endowed with no
political being or power where claims to the system are made prohibitive. Looking at the way in
which the Hurricane Katrina disaster was handled by the American government, Henry Giroux
(2006) argues that poor people of color have been cast out of considerations of significance and
have been deemed disposable. This he calls the “new biopolitics of disposability” (p175). In
this vein, Charles Mills goes as far as to say that blacks have been constituted as the excreta of
American political society, the waste products of which inspire shame and the need for removal
(Mills 2001). He says, “…blacks [are seen to] contaminate the space they occupy. Their
blackness signifies dirt, death, evil; (illicit) sex, shit, excretion; diabolism, savagery, lack of
civilization; and the most manual of labor, shit work” (p83).
1

See Udayakumar, SP. 1995. "The Futures of the Poor." Futures 27(3):339-351 and Vargas (2011).

22

 Giroux asserts that the manufacturing of blacks as criminal and outside of civilized
society reinforces the structuring of governance through police and military action. It legitimates
the use of military operations in the management of “dangerous” elements in society through
techniques of terrorization. For Agamben, the police represent the most direct contact with
sovereignty that individuals typically experience (Agamben 2000). Police officers, as enforcers
of the dominant structure are bearers of and responsible for maintaining the majority ideology
and are thus also responsible for preservation of its corresponding set of values. By constructing
those in distinction to the sovereign as deviant, they become understood as criminal and thereby
justify the governance of such through police and military action.
Giorgi and Pinkus (2006) elaborate on the ways in which the status of being outside is
written onto the bodies of the poor through biopolitical operations. These inscriptions become
markers both for those who are defined as whole and complete while others are marked as
incompletely human (Mills 2001). Such incomplete beings are described as “dangerous,
unclean, crowded, and miserable” (Giorgi and Pinkus 2006, p102). Giorgi and Pinkus not only
describe the condition of being outside of formal institutions (the condition of being poor) but
also the pathways (surveillance, police control, transformation in the public imagination) in
which the poor are constructed as poor, as a state of being not merely outside institutional forces
but outside the status of human itself.
Consistent with perceptions of those lacking access to sanitation as being dirty or
immoral persons, historically racialized groups have been viewed as immoral or as less than fully
human. People of color have been perceived as having race relative to the dominant group,
which, raceless, is seen as existing in its natural, pure, and complete form. Having race is seen
as a defect of the pure form (Briggs and Mantini-Briggs 2003; Fanon 1990; Guillaumin 1995).

23

 These incomplete and defective subjects have been viewed as lacking the values and norms
necessary to allow them to function as full citizens within the society (Briggs and Mantini-Briggs
2003).
Race itself has been defined as an emergent and socially constructed classification system
that utilizes physical, phenotypic, or biological differences to serve as signifiers of social
differences (Guillaumin 1995; Omi and Winant 1994; Outlaw 1990). Bonilla-Silva (1997) used
the term “racism” to refer to an ideology of a racialized social system. Racism is a social system
in which resources are distributed based upon historically constructed races and political
struggles are racialized. A racialized social structure has at its very basis a racial ideology that
arranges races in a hierarchy while allowing race as a social construct to be taken for granted.
Omi and Winant (1994) claimed that racial formation is both culturally and structurally
based, and results from governmental action, supported by racist ideological “projects,” as well
as every day presentations, projections, and interpretations of race. Racial projects are
organizational systems for humans and social structures which become the building blocks of
hegemony. Through “structuring and signifying” hegemony orders society to the benefit of the
dominant social order, such that individuals are ordered hierarchically according to their racial,
class, and gender characteristics (p68). Omi and Winant argue that “through policies which are
explicitly or implicitly racial, state institutions organize and enforce the racial politics of
everyday life” (p83). These policies structure race through “education, family law, and the
procedures of punishment, treatment, and surveillance of the criminal, deviant and ill” (ibid).
Within the capitalist state, the promotion of the welfare of the state operates on a
principal of maximizing efficiency by increasing the exploitation of resource pathways, both
natural and human. As Colás (2002) argued, rather than being neutral to social relations,

24

 capitalism finds means for increasing profitability by exploiting existing social inequalities that
classify people hierarchically based on their social locations. The mechanism by which
sanitation structures a metabolic citizenship within capitalist relations serves to order humans
according to their sanitary experiences, which is particularly acute at its extreme point of
marginalization—the locale of the unsanitary subject. Through efforts by the state to maintain
the health of the dominant structure and to manage the casualties/waste products of the structure
sanitation serves as a racial project of the capitalist state. It offers a vehicle by which to
perpetuate the racialization of the poor and a mechanism which legitimates the governance of
poor bodies.
The unsanitary subject defines and legitimates the hierarchical racial structure. Through
extreme marginalization, the ideal typical unsanitary subject occupies a place of bare life
wherein the power of the state is at its most extreme and the structure retains absolute authority
to make live and let die. The unsanitary subject provides the baseline status that allows
definition for all of the other metabolic citizenship statuses, including the ideal typical sanitary
citizen. Held within a state of exception, the unsanitary subject occupies a politically liminal
space which is the rift within the metabolic structure. Therein exists the disjuncture between
consumptive and reconstructive citizenship status such that poor and racialized individuals
become excretory products within the capitalist labor structure.
Research and Methods
By studying sanitation as oikeios, a complex of socio-environmental relations with
symbolic and material outcomes embedded within historically contingent spaces, metabolic rift
offers theoretical insight into how poor bodies are metabolized within capitalist economic
structures. It makes relevant an examination of the condition of living and how that contributes

25

 to the structuring of a metabolic citizenship status. For those living without full access to
sanitation, socio-environmental context shapes both the individual’s perceptions of himself as
well as others’ perceptions of the individual who has come to live without access to sanitation.
Foster’s analysis, because it fails to hold the social and environmental in simultaneous
examination, leaves the actual notion of the rift underdeveloped. By exploring the rift through
oikeios, it is possible to use the experiences of individuals caught in the rift to further advance
this concept.
Using the tools provided through environmental sociological methods, this exploration
should be conducted through and investigation of the material context and outcomes of social
and environmental exchange. In the context of the United States where impaired sanitation
access is not thought to occur regularly, it is important to ask how do some individuals and
groups of people come to be left out of formal and legitimated options for wastewater
management? What are the specific institutional and technological ways in which this exclusion
is produced? When individuals are placed outside of these formal systems, how do they
navigate this exclusion and what sorts of adaptive strategies are adopted? Further, how do
formal structures manage these alternative modes of being? Finally, in these informal and
formal modalities, how are subjectivities constructed for and by individuals existing at the
threshold?
In order to explore these questions, ethnographic fieldwork was conducted in two
communities in the United States that are known to have significant issues related to water
access and wastewater removal. Fieldwork was conducted from September 2009 to March 2010
in Montgomery and rural Lowndes County, AL and from March to August 2010 and December
2010 to January 2011 in urban Detroit, MI. Semi-structured open-ended interviews were

26

 collected in each site, twenty-five in Lowndes County and twenty-seven in Detroit. Interviews
ranged in length from thirty minutes to six hours with most lasting between sixty to ninety
minutes. To supplement interview data, information was collected through newspapers,
transcriptions of town hall meetings on septic challenges, local meetings, workshops, and
conferences oriented at water and wastewater management, and public archival documents on
local and regional water and wastewater management.
Both of these sites represent examples of communities that have multiple known cases of
individuals and families living without access to full sanitation. Between 2000 and 2002
national media attention regarding community struggles around water and sewer accessed in both
Lowndes County and Detroit began to appear. Although, it is likely that many communities
throughout the United States struggle with similar challenges, the awareness of these other
communities is limited. Lowndes County and Detroit offer important cases because they each
present examples of communities dealing specifically with poverty related sanitary impairment,
whereas some communities may be dealing with sanitation issues for vacation homes or
industrial management issues. In order to explore unsanitary subjectivity, poverty related
sanitary impairment is essential. Finally, given the available information on the rich racial
histories in both communities, they each offer a unique opportunity to consider situated historical
racial context in the exploration of social factors leading residents to experience incomplete
sanitation and some of the consequences of that impaired access. In understanding sanitation as
a racial project, cases that offer explicit community discussions of the relevance of race to
present day conditions are helpful.
Although this project is multi-sited, it is not strictly comparative. Lowndes and Detroit
present examples of impaired sanitation access at both the rural and the urban scales, where both

27

 Marx and contemporary analyses of sewage tend to focus on urban disposal systems. A rural
and an urban site are included in order to illuminate some of the varied reasons why people lack
access to sanitation in the United States. Contrasting geographic scales offer a richer
understanding of complexities and constraints faced in sanitation delivery and each provides a
lens onto the other in illuminating otherwise taken for granted assemblages of the social,
technological, and natural.
Overview of Chapters
The remaining seven chapters of this dissertation will detail the historical context,
findings, and analysis of the research. Chapter two provides a historical background to the
development of systems of sanitation management globally while chapter three focuses on
developments in water and wastewater management in the United States over the last two
hundred years. Both chapters explore the history, overlaps, and intersections of the development
of water and wastewater management infrastructure as well as the evolution of sanitary concepts
within the public health movement. Chapter four presents the research findings from Lowndes
County as a case study of rural septic challenges. Lowndes is particularly significant given its
relevance to civil rights organizing in the 1950’s and 1960’s. Given Lowndes’ status as a Black
Belt county, which is so termed because of its heavy, clay, black soil that is virtually
impermeable to water but it is also home to a high proportion of African Americans, the
interplay between historical and present day racial and environmental context is particularly
salient for examining sanitation in the community. Chapter five explores the struggle over
control of water in Detroit within a deeply racialized context. Today’s political context
surrounding debates for the regionalization and possible privatization of Detroit’s water system
is enriched with discussions of residential exclusion from water access due to poverty.

28

 Chapter six examines the ways in which each community has been constituted as a
racialized landscape through segregation and policies that have stripped wealth from residents.
Specifically, this chapter looks at how colorblindness has helped to entrench race while making
mechanisms of marginalization invisible. This has established a platform for the denial of
wealth accumulation in the form of home and property ownership. The racialization of
landscapes constructs these communities as Other, as defective, and unwanted. The
abandonment of these spaces allows for a discursive construction of the regions as waste
products that need to be cleansed of their impurities. The development of wasting economies in
each context is discussed in Chapter 7 as an economically productive outcome contrived from
social and environmental degradation.
The final chapter summarizes the findings of the dissertation, discusses its limitations,
and offers recommendations for addressing the needs of poor residents in both communities.
These recommendations do not supersede or circumvent the larger structural problems that
require systemic change. Although these recommendations are capable of merely addressing
symptoms rather than the pathology, the immediate sanitation related needs of struggling
residents cannot be dismissed for sake of intellectual and academic indulgence.

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 CHAPTER 2

A HISTORICAL REVIEW OF PUBLIC WATER AND SANITATION

In its broadest sense, a history of sanitation is a story of the world’s struggle for an adequate
supply of wholesome water, and its efforts to dispose of the resultant sewage without menace to
health nor offense to the sense of sight or smell (Cosgrove 1909, p1).

Introduction
Often histories of sanitation begin in the 19th century during a period of revolutionary
development in environmental sanitation and theories of disease. It was during this period that
the flushing toilet was popularized and the facets of modern sanitation began to finally take
shape. Sanitation has not only been a concern of modernity, however, and ideas that spurred the
development of sewer infrastructure date back to ancient times. The provision of water has been
an essential element for the development of urban societies since the dawn of civilization.
Without developing techniques for directing flows of water, irrigated agriculture would not have
been possible. The irrigation of agriculture allowed for crop surpluses and populations to
concentrate and grow in power. Control of water has been essential in growing and managing
populations and states and the denial of water has been connected to the downfall of both.
Understanding water and sanitation management throughout history serves as an entry
point for understanding organizational structures of society and the impacts of this governance
on individual human bodies. Changes in water and sanitation organization and management
have been influenced by certain points of crisis that have affected key groups of people and their
political interests. Crisis often has come in the form of massive disease and death but mere death
and disease, without influencing directly key political figures, has been inadequate on its own to
bring about change. Pressure from the public has also been key in ushering in change.

30

 This chapter offers a brief historical overview of technological practices related to water
and sanitation management through three historical epochs: ancient societies through the fall of
Rome, the middle ages until 1600, and modern society from 1600 forward. The section on
modern society is further bifurcated in the 19th century when great advancements in water and
wastewater management took place and germ theory of disease started to become accepted. The
first part of this section is split from the 17th century through the 19th century with an emphasis
on the sanitation conditions that emerged out of the middle ages and the impacts of the Industrial
Revolution on water and wastewater management and sanitary living conditions. Ending this
first half of the section with a detailing of the prevailing disease theory of the time, miasmas, the
second half of the section picks up by detailing the sanitary changes that took place during the
19th century onward, a period of time referred to as the Sanitary Revolution. Although the
chapter is primarily presented chronologically, within major sections it is also presented
thematically for clarity and to better elaborate on emerging themes. The chapter concludes with
a discussion on the role of water and sanitation in state making and argues that progress in
biological theories of disease set the stage for a shift both in the governance of water and public
health.
Ancient Sanitation: From Ancient Civilizations to the Fall of Rome
Technology
Collection and Distribution Infrastructure
Throughout human history, the management of water has been a crucial factor in the
formation of urban society. Dating back to 8000 BC, early human settlements were established
near reliable sources of clean water (Cosgrove 1909; Tvedt 2010). With the ability to control
flows of water for the purposes of irrigation, aggregated populations developed the ability to

31

 increase output from agricultural production and thereby generate surpluses and wealth for
residents (Solomon 2010). Jericho, believed to be the world’s oldest city, was able to support its
roughly 3,000 residents around 7000 BC through the use of irrigated agriculture (Solomon
2010). Early systems of irrigation utilized open unlined canals and, later, clay, stone or masonry
lined canals to divert rivers and rainwater towards crops (Small 1974). Ancient Persians circa
4000 BC developed the first aqueducts in the form of qanats, which are tunnels connecting an
underground water source to a surface access point distant from the source (Small 1974).
Early sewer systems largely functioned to manage the flow of storm water in dense living
spaces, but also served to transport some wastewater from baths, household use, and lavatories
(Small 1974; Tvedt 2010). For many populations, wastewater was diverted for irrigation
purposes and the use of “nightsoil” (human excreta) as a fertilizer is documented in many ancient
societies including the Egyptians (ca. 1350 BC) and the Greeks (as early as 500 BC; Small
1974). Although not regularly or readily available to the masses, the elite political, religious, and
wealthy residents of ancient civilizations did make use of flushing toilets as early as 4000 BC
(Duffy 1990; Small 1974). Flushing toilets were made possible by constructing a seat, however
elaborate, above a constantly flowing stream of water (Small 1974).
Perhaps the most advanced early civilization in terms of water and wastewater
development was the Indus Valley Civilization, which thrived between 2500 to 1500 BC and
covered areas that are now eastern Afghanistan, Pakistan, and northwestern India (Small 1974).
The Indus Valley Civilization was remarkable in part because of its extensive brick masonry
which covered much of the inhabited areas; within the streets elaborate drainage systems were
constructed (Small 1974). Each residence had a piped system for collecting wastewater from the
kitchen, bath, and lavatory, which diverted through a small sump chamber in order to collect

32

 solid matter before connecting to sewers in the main city streets (Small 1974).
The apex of the development of water and sanitation infrastructure took place during the
Roman era beginning arount the 6th century BC (Duffy 1990; Small 1974). Around this time the
Romans built their first sewer drains in order to drain water from marshlands (Small 1974).
Once the marshes were drained and the land could be built upon, the drains were used to handle
surface runoff (Small 1974). Beginning around 300 BC the Romans constructed their first
aqueducts which would be followed by a total of fourteen aqueducts in the city of Rome and an
estimated 200 throughout Europe, North Africa, and the Middle East (Small 1974). Through the
construction of the aqueducts the Romans were able to provide an average of 150-200 gallons of
water per person per day to residents of the city of Rome; such abundance reinforced the ruling
class’ political legitimacy and made possible the construction of public latrines and public baths
(Small 1974; Solomon 2010). While only wealthy families had hot and cold piped water and
bathrooms with flushing toilets in their homes, the Romans made accessible around 144 public
latrines (approximately 1 per 5,000 people) and public baths for all social classes for the first
time in history (Small 1974). After the siege of Rome in 537, such advanced sanitation was not a
feature of urban society again for more than a millennium (Solomon 2010).
Practices and Technologies of Treatment
Historically, cities have been dirty places where garbage and human waste was simply
left to accumulate on the streets or at the edge of the city (Solomon 2010). Throughout human
history, particularly among poor and rural residents, a prevalent treatment practice has been
simply no treatment. Early forms of treatment were simple and many still practice these
methods. Biblical references to treatment and waste handling appeared in Deuteronomy.
12

Designate a place outside the camp where you can go relieve yourself. 13 As part of
your equipment have something to dig with, and when you relieve yourself, dig a while

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 and cover up your excrement. 14 For the Lord your God moves about in your camp to
protect you and deliver your enemies to you. Your camp must be holy, so that he will not
see among you anything indecent and turn away from you. Deuteronomy 23:12-14
The most primitive form of intentional management of excrement, as described in the above
passage, is the practice of digging a hole in which to deposit excrement and then filling the hole
back in with dirt. Under proper soil conditions, this practice is used effectively to handle bodily
waste even today by hikers and in low population density conditions. In its most basic form
burial of waste allows for microbial decomposition of bacteria and organic matter within excreta.
Techniques for the purification and cleansing of water for consumption are recorded as
early as the 2000 BC with the Indus Valley Civilization. Sanskrit texts recommended boiling
water for use in cooking or prior to drinking, filtering water through sand or charcoal to clarify it,
and storing water in direct sunlight in copper or earthenware vessels (Small 1974; Tvedt 2010).
The Greeks used settling ponds and multiple compartment cisterns to allow solids and sediment
to separate from water and used porous clay to filter water (Small 1974; Tvedt 2010). They also
found that adding alum, aluminous substances, and lime helped to clarify water (Small 1974).
To dispose of effluent, the Greeks regularly used wastewater in irrigation and also spread
wastewater over expanses of land to allow for percolation into the ground (Small 1974). The
Roman’s addressed their treatment needs through their wealth of water which allowed them to
simply flush filth away from the city (Solomon 2010).
Public Health and Disease
Charles-Edward Winslow (1943) offers a history of ideas about disease, briefly
summarized as follows. Human understandings of life and death began with spiritual
understanding of objects and creatures in the surrounding environment. Animist beliefs hold that
objects and animals possess within them spirits which can cause harm including sickness and

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 death. Demonic theories of disease hold that spirits, which cause disease, are evil and may be
the spirits of the dead or demons. Living witches, who use the power of evil spirits, may also
inflict disease. Warding off the effects of evil spirits requires sacrifice, avoiding the evil spirits,
or exorcising them. Later humans believed that gods were responsible for disease because they
were angry with disrespectful human behavior (sins). Gods may have been appeased by penitent
sacrifice and/or pledges to correct improper behavior. Metaphysical science made efforts to
understand the living world through lay science, which relied upon superstitious beliefs about
magical properties of herbs and objects.
Only with the Greek advent of natural law (life as ordered by the laws of nature), did
beliefs about disease shift from supernatural and spiritual beliefs to theories about physical
properties of life (Winslow 1943). An early approach to natural law, humorism suggested that
the universe is made of four properties which are paired with the four elements of the universe,
which are further paired with the four humors of the human body (hot and dry with fire and
yellow bile, dry and cold with earth and black bile, cold and moist with water and phlegm, and
moist and hot with air and blood; Winslow 1943). This conceptualization of the universe
formed the basis of the approach offered by Greek philosopher Hippocrates (460-359 BC) who is
regarded as the father of medical science (Small 1974).
Hippocrates believed that adverse health experiences resulted from a disruption of the
balance of the body’s four humors, which was caused by poor or unfavorable environmental
conditions. Specifically, he believed that illness was the result of being exposed to bad air that
had oozed up from inside the earth or which had been given off by decaying organic matter,
including improperly disposed of dead bodies and filth (Winslow 1943). This malodorous
quality of the atmosphere was called “miasma” by Hippocrates. For him, bad air was the source

35

 of disease but whether someone got sick from this air had to do with their individual
predisposition: properties within their individual body, their hygienic behaviors, and bodily
stresses (including being very hot or very cold, emotional stress, or lack of sunlight and fresh
water; Small 1974; Winslow 1943). Hippocrates believed that individual predisposition must be
related to disease because everyone who is exposed to the same air should be sick otherwise
(Winslow 1943). Hippocrates also believed that being near someone who was sick, particularly
with skin diseases, increased one’s chances of also being sick. Until the invention of germ
theory in the 19th century, Hippocrates’ framework of miasma, predisposition, and contagion was
the dominant theory of disease, varying only in emphasis on each of these three principles.
Public Policy
Even in the most ancient cities elite residents of cities were afforded regular, clean,
flowing water, baths, and flushing toilets whereas the poor largely were left in unsanitary living
conditions with limited access to water and no sanitation infrastructure (Solomon 2010). As a
result, poor residents in urban areas were plagued with disease, overcrowding, and poor
sanitation conditions even during the Roman era (Solomon 2010). From the earliest of times in
human history, water and wastewater access has served to reinforce the legitimacy of certain
power structures by increasing the resources and status of elites. At the same time, limiting
access to water has restricted health outcomes and production opportunities for the poor. By way
of nominally increasing water access or withdrawing that access for those with limited access,
elites found their position further established.
Rome’s expansive water infrastructure, particularly through the use of aqueducts, allowed
Rome to expand its empire and the provision of water to all its subjects legitimated its authority
(Solomon 2010). Water was an essential element of Roman culture, wherein the public baths

36

 were a place where all social classes mingled in leisure (Solomon 2010). The provision of a
basic quantity of water for all Romans suggested a democratized water social structure among
Roman subjects. Subjects were then obliged to pay for their participation in this structure
through taxes, allowing Rome to construct and maintain the massive infrastructure (Small 1974).
Between 537 to 538 AD Rome was attacked by invaders from the north and Eastern Europe who
destroyed the city’s aqueducts and cut off its water supply. After Rome’s decline the apparatus
for collecting taxes to support the infrastructure was no longer in place and the infrastructure that
had not already been destroyed in the siege decayed from lack of use and disrepair.
Ancient Sanitation
Water has been key to urbanized development. The development of water infrastructure
was first focused on bringing water to agricultural crops to provide food for the population.
Through irrigation, agriculture products allowed for the generation of surplus, wealth, and
population growth. With population growth came the need to provide water for concentrations
of populations and means for dealing with the wastes produced by those populations. Although
water provision has been key to the development of urban populations and sewer structures date
back to the earliest of cities, societies have placed less emphasis on the disposal of excreta and
maintaining proper sanitation conditions, particularly within the residential areas of the poor.
For the wealthy, sanitation was a luxury and elites enjoyed elaborate, ornately decorated
lavatories and baths complete with hot and cold water and flushing toilets. For Rome, providing
access to water, baths, and latrines reinforced the Roman hierarchy and taxation, which allowed
for further development of the empire and its infrastructure.
Ancient philosophers recognized the importance of imbibing clean water and early
societies possessed quite sophisticated technologies and practices related to the purification of

37

 water. These included allowing for sedimentation, adding chemicals to encourage sedimentation
or flocculation, filtration through sand, clay or charcoal, and boiling or exposure to ultraviolet
radiation (sunlight) for disinfection. In fact, water treatment today uses these exact same
methods, only now with a scientific understanding of why these are appropriate treatment
methods. Aside from individual practices, which may have included burying excrement, the
only form of treatment of wastewater was in the use of wastewater and nightsoil for irrigation
and fertilizer for crops. The deliberate application of effluent to porous soil allowed for the
water to percolate into the soil, for solids to decompose, and for pathogens to be consumed by
microbes, although none of this was the intent of application.
At no point in ancient history was it recognized that sewage could be directly connected
to illness or death. Rather, beliefs about disease shifted from the belief that illness is caused by
natural spirits, to evil spirits, the acts of vengeful gods, magical properties of various substances,
and environmental conditions. In understanding disease to be caused by environmental
conditions, philosophers argued that bodily imbalances of humors resulted in symptoms of
illness. Hippocrates suggested that these symptoms of illness derived largely from exposure to
bad atmosphere, which was exhausted naturally by the earth but also was produced through
decomposition of filth and death. Although ultimately incorrect, the theory of miasmas had
lasting effects on the management of excrement until the mid-nineteenth century.
Medieval Sanitation: From the Fall of Rome to 1600
Public Policy
With the decline of Rome, centralized government structure with the means to collect the
significant tax revenues necessary for the construction and maintenance of infrastructure
disappeared (Small 1974). In the absence of empire, religion and feudalism took the place of

38

 centralized government. Practices related to water and wastewater management were structured
according to spiritual and religious beliefs, resulting in a regression in management approaches
and a gradual decay in the remaining infrastructure (Duffy 1990). Few efforts in formal water
management were made until the 8th century when Pope Adrian I of the Roman Catholic Church
initiated efforts at rebuilding some of the aqueducts (Small 1974). His efforts would be
continued by succeeding popes. Sewerage efforts were not resumed until the 14th century, when
efforts were taken to enact laws to protect water bodies from sewage contamination (Small
1974).
Technology
With the decline of Rome, cities and villages reverted to drawing water from nearby
sources including wells and surface water bodies (Small 1974; Solomon 2010). It was not until
the 15th century in Germany that formal efforts were again undertaken to construct water
distribution systems (Cosgrove 1909). Extensive efforts to construct water projects in urban
centers throughout Europe and North America began in the 16th century (Small 1974). In 1582
the first pump was installed on London Bridge to provide water from the Thames to the city
through lead pipes (Cosgrove 1909). While lead pipes were the first efforts at redeveloping water
infrastructure, they were soon replaced by hollowed out wooden logs until that technology was
replaced in the middle of the 19th century (Cosgrove 1909). In fact, some wooden pipe systems
are still in place and in use today.
Sewage infrastructure largely disappeared during the medieval period. It was common
practice to relieve oneself in a chamber pot and then simply empty the chamber pot out the
window or deposit the contents into cesspits (Solomon 2010). Garbage and excrement was left
to accumulate on streets and the outsides of buildings (Tvedt 2010). The contents of chamber

39

 pots streamed down the sides of castle walls, requiring the walls to be cleaned for special
occasions (Tvedt 2010). Castles surrounded by moats with flowing water were fortunate enough
to flush away their waste with the stream but castles without flowing moats emptied their waste
into cesspits (Tvedt 2010). Cesspits have long been problematic due to seepage, overflow and
the potential for the contents to contaminate drinking water supplies (Solomon 2010)
Most but not all treatment methods disappeared during the middle ages. Sedimentation
was the primary method of treatment throughout the period (Small 1974). Some areas continued
the use of older methods; sand filtration was used in Venice and distillation has been practiced
by populations in the Middle East since the 8th century AD (Small 1974).
Public Health and Disease
Contagion and Disease Outcomes
Throughout the middle ages populations were stricken with disease and death, which
were facilitated or exacerbated by contaminated water supplies and inadequate sanitation (Small
1974). The siege of Rome in 537-538, which destroyed many of the Roman aqueducts and the
empire’s water supply, set the stage for what would come next. Years of war, starvation, and
disease weakened bodies and fresh water and sanitation infrastructure declined. Beginning in
541 AD pandemic plague struck the Byzantine (Eastern Roman) Empire (Rosen 2008). At its
peak the plague killed thousands to tens of thousands of people every day, killing at least 25
million people by its end and, by some estimates, reducing the population of Europe nearly by
half by 700 AD (Rosen 2008).
During the period between the thirteenth and the fifteenth centuries Europe was struck
again by pandemic disease. In 1347 disease spread from Asia to Constantinople, along water
commerce routes, and then into mainland regions reaching England and Germany by the end of

40

 1348 and Iceland and Greenland soon after (Winslow 1943). The peak of the outbreak occurred
between 1348-1350. Contracting what is now believed to have been Yersinia pestis, the bacteria
responsible for the bubonic plague, another twenty-five million individuals perished from the
disease (Small 1974). It is reported that in 1361 in Montpellier, France 500 people died per day;
cities and villages lost between one quarter and two-thirds of their populations during a single
outbreak event and the disease repeatedly visited cities until after 1425 (Small 1974). It was not
until the 1600’s that outbreaks ceased to occur (Winslow 1943).
The consequences of massive disease outbreaks and deaths left government structures,
universities, and churches without leadership, fields unplowed, and animals untended (Winslow
1943). The basic organizational structures, law and commerce, were destroyed and it would take
centuries for them to recover (Winslow 1943). Villages responded by setting guards at the
borders to keep strangers out; in some areas villages drove out or killed those they thought were
responsible for spreading the disease including Jews, the disabled, and noble persons (Winslow
1943).
Theories of Disease
With his belief that it was dangerous to be around individuals who were afflicted with
skin diseases, Hippocrates introduced the notion of contagion in the fourth century BC. Still,
contagion held a less significant place in disease understanding than his theories of miasma and
predisposition. In the mid-sixteenth century AD, Fracastorius (1478-1553), took up the idea of
contagion as having been overlooked in understanding sickness (Winslow 1943). Although
Fracastorius performed no empirical studies to support his claims, he laid out a sophisticated
theoretical framework for contagion in 1546. Fracastorius believed that diseases are caused by
substances, unique to each disease affliction, that are able to multiple themselves. These

41

 substances cause changes in the body which lead to the symptoms of putrefaction and decay.
These substances can develop de novo either within the body or within the environment and each
varies in its potency, persistence, and invasiveness. Contagions are spread between people by
direct contact, by attaching themselves to articles of clothing or bedding, “fomes,” or through the
atmosphere. According to Fracastorius, disease needed to be treated by destroying the
substances that cause disease, treating the symptoms caused by the disease, or by making the
substances impotent. Although Fracastorius’ conception of contagion was very near our present
day understanding, his theories were rejected in favor of the dominant theory of the day, miasma
theory.
Medieval Sanitation
In every way the middle ages represented a period of regression in terms of water and
wastewater management and sanitation provision. War brought the destruction of the Roman
aqueducts, famine, malnutrition, and disease. The vacuous hole left in the absence of the Roman
government was partly filled by church leadership but churches did not place the same emphasis
on economic and structural development. The end of strategic water and sanitation efforts left
individuals and communities to revert to more primitive water collection methods and to dispose
of excrement in very unsanitary ways, including simply dumping it in the open or down the side
of buildings. Very little was done in the way of treatment, aside from removing large solids.
Thus the absence of sanitation paved the way for horrific attacks of disease and massive death.
During periods of time in which half of the population vanished, disorder, superstition, and fear
reigned. In 1546 Fracastorius offered an advanced understanding of disease that largely fell on
deaf ears and which not be fully appreciated for another three hundred years.

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 Modern Sanitation from the 17th to the 19th Century: Setting the Stage for Change
Sanitary Conditions
The dawn of the industrial revolution did not improve sanitation conditions; rather,
conditions worsened (Solomon 2010). The industrial revolution led to rapid reurbanization
without corresponding infrastructural development. The poor sanitary practices of the middle
ages, including dumping refuse directly onto streets, continued. “Heaps of rotting refuse, mixed
with accumulations of human and animal excrement and urine, produced ungodly odors that
overwhelmed olfactory sensibilities” (Solomon 2010, p254). The use of cesspits continued to be
problematic as inputs increased and the regenerative properties of soil became saturated.
Cesspits buried below the basements of homes became overwhelmed and overflowed into
neighbors’ basements and homes (Cosgrove 1909). In October of 1660 Samuel Pepys wrote,
“Going down to my cellar…I put my feet into a great heap of turds, by which I find that Mr.
Turner’s house of office is full and comes into my cellar” (Solomon 2010, p256).
Technology: The Popularization of the Flushing Toilet
The modern flushing toilet as a self-contained unit (in contrast to seats set above
continuous flows of water, as in antiquity) was first invented in 1596 by John Harington for his
god-mother, Queen Elizabeth (Solomon 2010). His toilet consisted of a seat with an attached
tank filled with water to flush away excrement. He is reported to have made only two of these
toilets, one for the queen and one for his own home. In 1775 Alexander Cumming improved on
Harington’s design by changing the sliding valve to a hinge flap. It was Joseph Bramah, though,
who was able to slightly improve upon Cumming’s design, obtain a patent, produce, and market
his toilets for sale. He would sell 6,000 toilets over the next twenty years. Over the coming
decades the basic design of the toilet would be modified again and again but its basic form was

43

 set. Interestingly, Thomas Crapper (1836-1910) is often credited with the invention of the toilet
but this is mere legend. Crapper sold toilets in London with his name imprinted upon them.
Seeing this, American soldiers returning from World War I popularized the name “crapper” in
reference to the toilet.
In addition to the increased population densities arising during the industrial revolution,
the invention and popularization of the flushing toilet, or “water closet,” helped to deteriorate
conditions related to cesspools. While non-flushing toilets traditionally used in privies
(outhouses) collected primarily human excrement, water closets introduced substantially more
water volume to the environment, which led to more frequent and substantial cesspool overflows
(Schultz and McShane 1978). Waterlogged streets were thick with mud and difficult to traverse.
In London, water closets started to become commonplace after 1830, which led to a doubling of
water consumption and the flushing of cesspits into the Thames Rivers (Solomon 2010).
Public Health and Disease Outbreaks
Yellow Fever
Relative to the unsanitary, dense urban living conditions in Europe, comparatively rural
America was healthier (Winslow 1943). In the late 17th century the United States had its first
contact with Yellow Fever, which tended to produce localized but severe outbreaks. Yellow
fever is thought to have originated in Africa and traveled to the United States through the West
Indies via the slave trade. Several outbreaks of yellow fever occurred in Philadelphia in 1699,
1741, 1747, and 1762 but these had been considered isolated events, that is until yellow fever
broke out ferociously along coastal cities in 1793 (Duffy 1990). Because it had been over thirty
years since the last outbreak, few knew how to manage and treat the disease. Yellow fever was
prevalent for nearly fifteen years during what has been referred to as the “yellow fever era.”

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 Throughout the burgeoning of the United States, Memphis was accepted as a city in
which disease was a condition of residency (Cosgrove 1909). When yellow fever broke out in
Memphis little attention would have been brought except for the ferocity of the outbreak. More
than 5,000 residents of Memphis died in 1879 and another 485 died in 1880, which caused many
residents to flee. As people left Memphis to escape the disease, other cities worried that they
would bring the disease to them. A “shotgun quarantine” was put in place to keep people from
leaving Memphis (Cosgrove 1909, p88). This outbreak of yellow fever helped to convince the
public and Congress that something needed to be done, which led to the formation of the
National Board of Health in 1879. The board was overly enthusiastic about the necessary
sanitary changes it hoped to bring about; as a result political actors that were displeased about the
board’s efforts helped to bring shame to the board and discredit it so that it was discontinued in
1883 (Smillie 1943).
Cholera
No disease is more connected to poor sanitation than cholera. During the 19th century,
onset of symptoms could occur in the morning and the individual would be dead by evening
(Solomon 2010). Initial symptoms of cholera may be mild and seem innocuous, including
dizziness, fainting, feeling as though one is sinking (Snow 1936). As the disease progresses,
individuals begin to show symptoms of dehydration even before diarrhea begins. Symptoms
typically progress quickly to severe stomach cramps, vomiting, fever, sweating and profuse
watery diarrhea, often referred to was “rice water diarrhea” (Solomon 2010). In rare cases,
victims may not experience diarrhea, a condition referred to as cholera sicca; instead of diarrhea
fluid accumulates in the body and distends the bowels (Snow 1936). As the disease advances,
the skin of patients appears sunken, loses its plasticity, and turns black and blue from ruptured

45

 capillaries (Solomon 2010). Blood drawn from cholera patients is thickened and tarry from
water loss (Snow 1936). Left untreated, eventually dehydration leads to organ failure and death.
In the 19th century between one-fifth to one-half of those who contracted cholera died (Solomon
2010).
The first major outbreak of cholera began in India near Calcutta in 1817 where it killed
hundreds of thousands of Indians and roughly ten thousand British soldiers (Solomon 2010). By
1831 cholera had traveled along costal trade routes and up waterways to Eastern Europe. It
crossed through Western Europe and by 1832 had reached the United States (Tvedt 2010). In the
1831 pandemic, tens of thousands of Europeans died from cholera. In response the public began
to call for the accumulation of filth and waste to be addressed. Up to this point, it had largely
been considered an aesthetic concern; with the outbreak of disease many began to see filth as
“the root of all evil” (Tvedt 2010, p237). The outbreaks of the 1830’s helped to begin pointing
towards of water as a cause for concern (Duffy 1990). Cholera returned to Europe in its most
severe outbreak between 1848-1849. Cities that had seen thousands of deaths in the 1831
outbreak saw double or more that in the 1848 outbreak.
The single most important individual in establishing a relationship between cholera and
water was Dr. John Snow who observed a pattern between registered deaths by cholera in a
single outbreak from a contaminated well in London. Dr. Snow (1813-1858) began his work by
inspecting wells of those who had died from cholera in previous outbreaks. He found that,
…the water was offensive, and the deposit possessed the odor of privy soil very distinctly,
I found in it various substances which had passed through the alimentary canal, having
escaped digestion, as the stones and husks of currants and grapes, and portions of the thin
epidermis of other fruits and vegetables (Snow 1936, p28).
When Snow was called in to investigate the large, localized outbreak in London in 1854,
he immediately suspected the water was the cause (Snow 1936). Beginning on August 31, more

46

 than 500 deaths were reported in 10 days in Golden Square in London within 250 yards of the
intersection of Broad Street and Cambridge. With the rapid onset of death, residents panicked
and fled the area, within a week leaving only a quarter of residents behind. Snow mapped the
addresses of the roughly eighty registered deaths and found most of them were in close
proximity to the Broad Street public water pump. When Snow examined the water, however, he
thought that his hunch may have been wrong as the water had no odor and appeared to be of
good quality. As he continued his investigation, he found no other commonality between the
cases. He was able to document that all but ten of the individuals who had died lived closer to
the Broad Street pump than any other public pump, others preferred it, and three were children
who went to school near the pump. Bringing his findings before the Board of Guardians of St.
James Parish on September 7th, he was able to convince them of the source of the outbreak. The
pump handle was removed on September the 8th and the outbreak ended within days.
Snow’s theories of cholera were controversial because they contradicted the prevailing
miasma theory. For this reason, his ideas were not immediately transformative but his efforts in
the long term established him as the father of epidemiology. Snow believed that cholera is
communicated person to person but proximity is insufficient to spread the disease (Small 1974).
It was his strong belief that cholera is transmitted by contaminated water and that efforts to
cleanse the city of London by dumping sewage into the Thames were a mistake (Solomon 2010).
Snow believed that cholera was transmitted by water because it was a disease of the
gastrointestinal tract (1936). For him, if it was a disease of the gastrointestinal tract, it must be
consumed unintentionally. He was aware that cholera spreads more easily in poor communities
that have more limited access to clean water and where sanitation facilities are less available. He
also recognized that because the diarrhea associated with cholera is largely water, it is easy for

47

 bed linens to become contaminated without an individual realizing and to allow for the disease to
be easily spread to food.
Snow’s ideas about the waterborne nature of cholera received validation in 1892 when an
outbreak in Hamburg, Germany stood in contrast to a lack of outbreak in its neighboring city,
Altona. Divided from Altona only by a single street, Hamburg experienced a devastating
outbreak that killed roughly 10,000 of its residents whereas Altona had minimal cases (Evans
2005; Small 1974). The major distinguishing factor in the contrast in cases between Hamburg
and Altona was the source of drinking water. Both cities took their water from the Elbe River; in
fact, Altona drew its water a few miles downstream of where Hamburg discharged its wastewater
(Small 1974). In spite of this, Altona’s relatively fewer cases of cholera were accounted for by
Altona’s use of sand filtration in cleaning water from the river prior to distribution. Hamburg, by
contrast, had no such filtration or treatment. The outbreak in Hamburg helped to convince many
that drinking sewage water had ill health effects (Evans 2005).
Theories of Disease: Miasmas
Long since Hippocrates, the theory of miasmas remained a dominant approach to
understanding how disease occurs. During the middle ages spiritual and metaphysical medicine
was brought back into prominence. In the 17th century Thomas Syndenham (1624-1689), an
English physician, was responsible for helping to reinvigorate the theory in the public discourse
(Duffy 1990). Cadwallader Colden (1688-1776), also a physician, furthered this approach. Both
men believed that miasmas could be appreciated in foul odors that seeped out of the Earth and
contaminated the atmosphere. Colden connected miasmas specifically to stagnating waters and
believed that unsanitary conditions furthered the contamination of the air.
Edwin Chadwick (1800-1890) was instrumental in translating the theory of miasma into

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 actionable public policy aimed at improving sanitation conditions. Chadwick was a social
reformer who wrote extensively about his beliefs and recommendations. Chadwick served as
secretary for the Poor Law Commission which was charged with the task of investigating the
living conditions of the poor and the effects of the Poor Law (Small 1974). The commission
conducted three years of research into the lives of the poor and found them living in deplorable
conditions with higher infant mortality rates than any other groups within the city. One surveyor
reported, “I found the whole area of cellars of both houses were full of night-soil, to the depth of
three feet, which had permitted for years to accumulate from the overflow of cesspools”
(Winslow 1943, p244). Later the same surveyor continued about another property,
At Greenock, a dunghill in one street is described as containing ‘a hundred cubic yards of
impure filth, collected from all parts of the town…It is enclosed in front by a wall; the
height of the wall is about 12 feet, and the dung overtops it; the malarious moisture oozes
through the wall, and runs over the pavement [of the public street]…There is a land of
houses adjoining, four stories in height, and in the summer each house swarms with
myriads of flies; every article of food and drink must be covered, otherwise, if left
exposed for a minute, the flies immediately attack it, and it is rendered unfit for use, from
the strong taste of the dunghill left by the flies’ (Winslow 1943, p245).
The findings were so extreme that the commission was uncomfortable publishing them.
Rather, in 1842 Chadwick published the findings on his own in The Sanitary Condition of the
Labouring Population of Great Britain (Chadwick 1965). In the report, it was stated that the
unsanitary living conditions contributed to immoral behavior, atmospheric degradation, and
disease. Chadwick said “that these adverse circumstances tend to produce an adult population
short-lived, improvident, reckless, and intemperate, and with habitual avidity for sensual
gratifications” (p152). He argued that leaving the poor to live in these conditions “fosters habits
of the most abject degradation, and tends to the demoralization of large numbers of human
beings, who subsist by means of what they find amidst the noxious filth accumulated in the
neglected streets and bye-places” (Ibid). For Chadwick, not only should improving sanitation

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 reduce noxious vapors but it should also improve the moral character of the poor as well.
The recommendations of the report included developing an extensive water and sewer
carriage system throughout the city to provide fresh water for the city’s residents and to flush
away the sewage from residential areas (Solomon 2010). Chadwick advocated water flushing
because it allowed wastes to be transported cheaply and easily across long distances without the
need to clean cesspits by hand (1965). The report encouraged that every town should have a
piped sewer system using a gravity flow system to draw sewage out of the community (Small
1974). All houses should be connected to the sewer lines and should receive a constant pressure
water supply. For Chadwick, the water and sewer system should be publicly owned and
operated by qualified engineers with adequate staffing. Chadwick also recommended that every
town have a trained medical officer and that all marshes should be drained to reduce the spread
of disease. As a result of the publication, Parliament established a central board of health and
put Chadwick at its head to work towards constructing a redesigned water and sewer
infrastructure (Solomon 2010).
Based on miasmic beliefs, Chadwick and sanitary reformers pushed towards sanitation
systems that would collect sewage and discharge it out of dense residential spaces and into water
bodies where it could be flushed away. Aside from removing filth from inhabited spaces, it was
believed that the self-purifying properties of water would destroy noxious vapors through
dilution. Sanitation was the principal strategy recommended by miasma adherents who felt that
cleanliness was key to eliminating disease (Melosi 2001).
Setting the Stage for Change
With rising urbanization brought about by the industrial revolution, sanitary conditions
worsened from those of more rural homesteads during the Middle Ages. Garbage and human

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 and animal excrement piled up on streets and filled the waterways. The technology valued today
as one of the most important features of a sanitary home, the flushing toilet, on its own made
sanitation conditions much worse by increasing the amount of water disposed of, resulting in
flooding cesspools and saturated, mucky streets. New waves of illness and death hit the world
with vigor including tuberculosis, yellow fever, and cholera, the latter two a direct result of poor
water and sanitation management. Little was understood at this point about how diseases spread
and many believed that disease was simply caused by bad air. Dr. John Snow helped to establish
a connection between cholera and water contamination but this was not well received by miasma
adherents. Nonetheless, there were those miasma believers who also thought that rotting filth in
water could contribute to disease.
First proposed by Cadwallader Colden, Edwin Chadwick helped to solidify an
understanding that environmental sanitation was necessary in order to improve health conditions.
Unfortunately, the solution proposed by miasma believers was simply to flush sewage into
waterways to allow for removal from dense populations and for dilution to work its magic. This
led to a worsening of health conditions for those living downstream of the sewer outflows and
the creation of a great soup of filth. It would take more death from cholera and the acceptance of
germ theory to fundamentally change water and sewage management and truly improve
environmental sanitation conditions.
Modern Sanitation during the 19th Century: The Sanitation Revolution
Public Policy
Early demands for public water distribution systems rested principally on the need for
water to fight fires (Solomon 2011). Fears of fire and disease were not adequate on their own to
bring about transformative changes. Rather, there needed to be sufficient pressure from the

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 public and a political commitment for change to occur (Melosi 2011). An important push
towards changing political will related to sanitation occurred in 1858 in London during what has
been termed “The Great Stink” (Solomon 2010). To that point, a widespread belief in miasmas
had supported the practice of dumping sewage into the Thames. As sewers drained into the
Thames, tidal flows made additional withdrawals from cesspools. The surge of the Thames with
high tide pushed the river up into sewer drains, some thirty feet below the high tide mark, and
into sub-basement cesspools. The receding of the tide pulled sewage out and pushed it back in
when the tide again rose.
During the summer of 1858 the rotting sewage festered in the heat, wafting up a stench
that was unbearable (Solomon 2010). Members of parliament were in session at the time.
Efforts had been made to keep the odor to a minimum by hanging lime soaked curtains from the
windows but the putrescent vapors could not be tamed. Bearing in mind that miasmas were
believed to be sensed in odors emanating from rot, there was serious cause for concern. After
years of debating about what should be done about the sanitary conditions in London, Parliament
passed a resolution in eighteen days to overhaul the city’s water and sewerage systems. In short
time the London Metropolitan Board of Works set about designing and constructing what was to
be a model water distribution and sewage collection system.
Technology: The Return of Publicly Operated Water Systems
Water needs were first met through the development of private enterprise (Solomon
2011). In the 18th century private companies, working with investments provided by
stockholders, established water businesses and organized the money for the construction and
operation of water systems (Small 1974). These private water companies had very little
government oversight and where regulation existed, enforcement did not. Water provided by the

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 companies was highly variable in price and quality and delivery was inconsistent. As a result
wide criticism was levied against private delivery.
Private companies were not able to afford the capital necessary to build systems of
adequate quality to meet the rapidly growing population’s needs. London’s population nearly
doubled between 1831-1851 and in poor areas as many as thirty people were living in a single
house (Small 1974). Huge financial investments were required in order to install extensive
underground pipe systems making profitability of the systems uncertain; costs which could only
be justified over the long term (Melosi 2001; Small 1974). Beginning in the 19th century in both
Europe and the United States efforts were underway to take control of water systems away from
private companies and place the operation and maintenance of systems under the municipalities
which could incur debt and draw funds from taxes over long periods of time (Melosi 2011; Tvedt
2010).
An additional incentive in the public acquisition of the assets of private water companies
and the transition to public water supplies was the desire by cities to improve their public images
in order to compete for industry development, workers, and tourism (Solomon 2011). City
leaders who were able to secure improved water and sanitation systems for their cities improved
not only the city’s image but their own power and prestige as well (Melosi 2011).
Efforts to build centralized distribution systems first used wooden pipes, which
performed very well underground for more than a hundred years (Cosgrove 1909). Wooden
pipes were later replaced by cast iron. In the United States the first citywide public water
distribution system, which drew from surface water, was installed in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
in 1799 (EPA 1999). Although the Industrial Revolution caused sanitary problems because of
increasing population densities, it also brought about advancements in technology as well.

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 Steam driven pumping systems vastly improved the capacity of waterworks to distribute water to
the public (Tvedt 2010).
Technology: A Question of Sewage and Treatment
Early 19th century London had roughly 200,000 cesspools for the whole of the population
which at the time was a little over 1 million (Solomon 2010). With up to thirty people per
household, the poor areas of London had as few as one well pump and one privy per twenty
households at the beginning of the 19th century (Small 1974). Prior to the construction of
extensive centralized sewage systems, cesspools had to be cleaned by hand by nightsoil men.
Nightsoil was then sold to farmers as fertilizer (Solomon 2010). The cost of nightsoil removal
was high, though, and farmers desired a cheaper fertilizer solution. In 1847 Peruvian bird guano
became available in Europe for a cheaper price and less unpleasantness than nightsoil, which
resulted in the collapse of the nightsoil market and an increase in volume of flow of waste
through and out of cesspools.
Improvements to sewage handling and water treatment did not proceed with the same
speed that investments in water infrastructure did (Small 1974). Many advanced countries did
not achieve comprehensive sanitation collection systems until well into the 20th century. High
mortality rates in Hamburg during the cholera epidemic of 1892 supported the idea that drinkingwater filtration was important in preventing the spread of disease. The first citywide water
filtration system was constructed in Paisley, Scotland in 1804. Several cities, including Glasgow
and London, had sand filtration as early as 1830.
The United States was more reluctant to see filtration as necessary until after the Civil
War, when poor sanitation and hygiene resulted in widespread illness and death among soldiers.
Duffy (1990) discusses how during the Civil War rural soldiers, who were not taught proper

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 mechanisms for waste disposal, turned camps into cesspits by eliminating wherever convenient.
Subsequent disease experiences in military camps led to changes and improvements in military
sanitation practices (Duffy 1990).
The most important research on proper water treatment and sewage handling in the
United States was conducted by the Lawrence Experiment Station which had been established in
1886 by the Massachusetts State Board of Health, itself the first of its kind in the nation (Small
1974). The Lawrence Experiment Station was instrumental in conducting research on proper
ways of treating wastewater and helped to demonstrate reduced typhoid rates through their use of
slow sand filtration. The first municipal slow sand filtration plant in the United States was
constructed in Poughkeepsie, New York in 1870.
Theories of Disease: The Birth of Germ Theory
The entrenchment of miasma theory within public policy and approaches to disease
remediation led to important progress towards improving sanitation conditions in the 19th
century. Anti-contagionists believed that the filth of the cities led to aberrant behavior and ill
health. Improving environmental sanitation conditions by flushing the cities clean would
improve health of the population both morally and physically. These beliefs, particularly those
held by Edwin Chadwick, helped to usher in parliamentary changes in the United Kingdom,
specifically with the Public Health Acts of 1848 that established the London Metropolitan Board
of Sewer Commissioners, the General Board of Health and local boards of health, and attempted
to improve the provision and regulation of sewers, improve street cleaning, and better regulate
slaughterhouses (Small 1974). The fundamental flaw for anti-contagionists rested in their
complacency with the flushing away of sewage, which merely displaced contaminants and, in the
case of waterborne diseases, improved the distribution of microorganisms. Germ theorists, or

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 “contagionists,” were able to recognize this flaw and drew attention to the need to kill
microorganisms in order to prevent death and the spread of diseases.
Foundations in germ theory have come from many sources often working simultaneously.
I highlight here only a few of the key figures in the development of microbiological thought.
Marcus Anton von Plenciz (1705–1786), while studying the course of small pox and scarlet
fever, made some of the first assertions that disease may have a biological origin (Winslow
1943). Believing that whatever caused disease must be able to reproduce itself (multiplicability)
and must be able to be spread from person to person (contagion), Plenciz pointed out that
miasmas did not meet these criteria. He believed that diseases are caused by miniscule,
wormlike creatures that reproduce under appropriate conditions. Although microbes had been
observed under microscope previously, they had not been connected to disease. Plenciz argued
that microbes were the cause and not the consequence of putrefaction and decomposition.
Germ theory, as it evolved, needed to reconcile three major theoretical issues:
fermentation, the cause of disease, and spontaneous generation (Winslow 1943). Major
advances in germ theory became possible with advancements in the technology of compound
microscopes in 1835. Under microscope, Charles Cagniard-Latour (1777-1859) of France was
able to observe reproduction of yeast through budding. He theorized that the process of
fermentation, fundamental to putrefaction, is caused by living yeast cells. He published his
results in 1836 and was met with both praise and scorn, his detractors dismissing his contribution
to scientific theory in favor of miasmas.
In 1837 Agostino Bassi (1773-1856), conducting research on muscardine disease in silk
worms found that a fungus was responsible for the disease (Winslow 1943). He argued that all
infectious disease is caused by parasitic microorganisms. Soon after, in 1839, J.L. Schoenlein

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 (1793-1864) identified a fungus as the cause of a scalp disease in humans. This was the first
time experimental science had been used to show that a disease in humans was caused by a
parasitic microorganism.
Louis Pasteur (1822-1895) was a famous chemist and microbiologist in France who
helped to firmly establish germ theory’s legitimacy. Many of his discoveries demonstrated ideas
that had already been suggested but which were introduced too early for the scientific
community to accept them. Although Cagniard-Latour first suggested that fermentation was
caused by yeast plants, it was Pasteur who received recognition for the theory and its merit
(Winslow 1943). Pasteur was also responsible for demonstrating that each type of fermentation
is caused by a different and specific microbe. Among his many contributions to microbiology,
important for this discussion was his demonstration that microbes do not occur by spontaneous
generation. In 1862, Pasteur used a swan-neck flask to show that when a sterilized broth was
kept away from dust particles, which is a vehicle for microbes, no microbial growth occurred;
but when the broth was exposed to airborne dust growth did occur. He had proven that
microorganisms are present in air but do not occur by spontaneous generation.
Around 1870 Joseph Lister (1827-1912) was the first to apply the new germ theory to
preventing the spread of disease (Winslow 1943). Lister was a British surgeon who was familiar
with Pasteur’s work on fermentation. Although Pasteur’s work was not yet widely accepted,
Lister applied the theory to preventing contamination in surgeries. Using a solution of carbolic
acid, Lister sprayed instruments, dressings, and wounds and in doing so he was able to
substantially reduce the rate of infection post-surgery.
Robert Koch’s (1843-1910) research forced the scientific world to finally begin to accept
germ theory as a reality. In 1877 Koch isolated the bacteria responsible for anthrax and in 1883

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 he identified vibrio cholera during an outbreak of cholera in Egypt (Winslow 1943). Koch is
famous for his research detailing the bacteria responsible for tuberculosis and the method that he
established in this study helped to bring about the discovery and/or elaboration of leprosy (1879),
gonorrhea (1879), typhoid fever (1880), and lobar pneumonia (1884). With the discoveries of
germ theory and the identification of the bacterial agents, vaccines were soon to follow. A
vaccine for cholera was developed in 1893 and a typhoid vaccine was developed in 1897
(Solomon 2010).
For decades miasma theory and germ theory contentiously coexisted and it was many
years before miasma theory was finally abandoned (Tvedt 2010). Because anti-contagionists
advocated for environmental sanitation and because improved sanitation reduces exposure to
dangerous pathogens, the practices and policy approaches were not immediately incompatible.
Environmental sanitation served the needs of both camps. Because anti-contagionists failed to
recognize the need to treat sewage even after it had been diluted, ultimately the methods of
environmental sanitation as they were practiced failed to reduce illness and death to the degree
that an emphasis on bacteriological treatment could.
Because of the historic tension between the competing theories it is unsurprising that
public health actors at the time minimized the importance of sanitation in comparison to the need
to develop vaccines and cures for microbial diseases. Charles Value Chapin (1856-1941), who
was an American Health Officer, addressed the American Public Health Association in 1902
saying,
We can rest assured that however spick and span may be the streets, and however the
policeman’s badge may be polished, as long as there is found the boor careless with his
expectoration, and the doctor who cannot tell a case of sapolio from one of diphtheria, the
latter disease and tuberculosis as well, will continue to claim their victims…Instead of an
indiscriminate attack on dirt, we must learn the nature and mode of transmission of each
infection, and must discover its most vulnerable point of attack (Winslow 1943, p365).

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 Chapin’s words reflected a declining emphasis on general environmental sanitation in addressing
disease in favor of a medically oriented attack upon diseases themselves.
The Sanitation Revolution
Diseases of the 18th and 19th centuries made clear that a change in water and sewage
management was necessary. Despite thousands of deaths from cholera and other diseases,
powerful change in London did not occur until the Great Stink of 1858 which members of
Parliament could not ignore. Parliament passed legislation that brought about the creation of a
world-class water delivery and sewage collection system. Water needs of city residents were
initially met by the private sector but when it was clear that the private sector lacked the means
and the incentive to provide adequate, high quality water to the public, municipalities began to
take control of water systems. In addition to improving public access, city leaders benefited
from an improved status of their cities and increased desirability of the location for industries
and laborers.
Sewage treatment languished behind progress in water treatment, which primarily was
focused on slow sand filtration. Sewage treatment in part was a low priority for municipalities
because it was considered someone else’s problem once the waste was flushed away (Tarr 1984).
Management of sewage worsened before it improved. Where historically sewage was used as
fertilizer for farms, once Peruvian guano became available, nightsoil use declined and sewer
inputs increased.
Major advancements in the understanding of the spread of disease came about with the
establishment of germ theory, which was met with great resistance from miasma theory
adherents. Key in proving germ theory was the demonstration that putrefaction was caused by
living creatures through the process of fermentation, that microscopic agents caused specific

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 diseases, and that these microscopic agents were the germs or seeds of disease. These seeds
were not capable of materializing spontaneously but were transmitted along vectors such as
particles of dust in the air. The discovery of germ theory was neither accepted right away nor
did it immediately result in changes in approach to preventing disease. Ultimately, though, it
pointed to a different approach in handling disease outbreaks that placed less emphasis on
environmental sanitation and more emphasis on the causative agents of disease.
Conclusion
Water management first allowed urban society to develop through irrigation. Sanitation
management, although poorly understood in terms of its disease causing potential, was
recognized as an important facet of fertilization for crops. Contrary to popular narratives,
technologies for water management in treatment have existed since ancient times, some methods
being quite sophisticated. Water management and the provision of sanitation facilities including
public baths and latrines were key to the power of the Roman empire. This was predicated on
the empire’s ability to divert water through aqueducts and into the cities, providing abundant
water for use and consumption and flushing away waste.
Rome was defeated through numerous wars that strategically targeted the destruction of
the Roman aqueducts. Without an emphasis on sanitation and few resources available to
construct extensive public systems, disease and death lay in wait. The middle ages were ravaged
by waves of disease, primarily various strains of Yersinia pestis, the cause of the bubonic plague.
During this time sanitation was virtually non-existent for all classes of society. Water
management had reverted to collecting water from local wells and surface water bodies.
As the Industrial Revolution came into being, a period of reurbanization took place. This
rapid increase in the population of industrial cities strained cesspools and water supplies and

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 resulted in worsened sanitation conditions. With advancements in technology brought about at
the same time, however, technologies for water distribution improved, including steam driven
pumps.
Early miasma theories of disease resulted in important improvements in sanitary
infrastructure in the 19th century. While these efforts helped to bring about extensive water
distribution systems and sewer collection systems, they failed to adequately recognize the
importance of treatment in improving health conditions. Still, their efforts laid the groundwork
for massive state sponsored public health programs through environmental sanitation. Feuding
scientific theories between anti-contagionists and contagionists worked to undermine some of
this progress and shift the long term emphasis away from universal sanitation for all to
individualized and targeted disease approaches to public health. This shift in a public health
emphasis from universal prevention to individualized preventive measures (vaccines) and curing
diseases represented a biopolitical shift in the strategies employed by the state to make the
population well (Ali and Keil 2009). This helped to establish diseases as personal problems of
large numbers of people rather than as social problems.
Focusing on the development of water and wastewater regulation in the United States, the
next chapter will present the transition in public policy from efforts to build universal access to
water and sewer infrastructure to understanding water and sanitation as increasingly localized
and personalized issues. Again the development of water and sewer infrastructure serves an
important role in establishing the legitimacy of the state in the intervention of issues related to
water and sanitation through financial incentives and regulation. Later withdrawal of financial
support for these efforts did not coincide with a regression of state intervention but rather a shift
from benefactor to disciplinarian. This experience of disciplining failures to meet regulatory

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 expectations is acutely felt by the poor and poor communities who are unable to leverage
financial resources to stay in compliance with evolving environmental laws.

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 CHAPTER 3

SANITATION AND REGULATION IN THE UNITED STATES

Water symbolizes the whole potentiality; it is the fons et origo, the source of all possible
existence…water symbolizes the primal substance from which all forms can and to which they
will return (Eliade 1978, p188 as cited in Tvedt 2010, p1).
Few things are as vital to a nation’s growth and development as the provision
of water and wastewater services (Solomon 2011, p11).

Introduction
Just as development had been for all urbanized civilizations that preceded it, development
in the United States has been contingent upon advancements in water and wastewater
management. Concern about the need for water infrastructure in the United States began in the
17th century but heightened during the early and mid-19th century. Although not constructed
concurrently, water carriage systems in large part drove the need for advancements in sewer
infrastructure, which was increasingly prioritized at the end of the 19th century and into the
beginning of the 20th century.
While development of water and sewer infrastructure was largely a local concern for
individual municipalities, when the United States suffered economic decline during the Great
Depression, strategic efforts were made to inject new life into the economy through
infrastructural investments. These investments were designed to create projects to provide jobs
for the vast unemployed and were put forward along with programs designed to protect the basic
needs of the populace through social security programs. Investment in social and civic
infrastructure was a strong commitment for the nation through the mid-20th century.
Growth and development of the population and industry of the United States was paired

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 with unregulated industrial contaminants and poor sewage treatment, which resulted in public
demands to protect human and environmental health. In spite of a conservative political
environment, environmental protections were easy to sell as they provided a distraction from
other political issues of the time, including the Vietnam War. Shortly after the passage of major
environmental regulation, however, the political structure shifted away from a broad based
investment in public welfare to one that emphasized individual responsibility and accountability
to market needs.
This chapter outlines the development of water and wastewater regulation in the United
States during the 20th century within the context of major social, environmental, and political
challenges. The first section details the development of water and wastewater infrastructure as a
project of the federal government in order to stimulate the economy during the Great Depression.
The next section shows how, in spite of massive investments in infrastructure, lax regulation and
uneven use of federal funds led to severe environmental problems that demanded reforms.
Arising in the 1970’s, reforms were pivotal in the establishment of comprehensive environmental
regulation but such optimism was short-lived. The third section describes a shift in governance
structure during the 1980’s and 1990’s that moved away from investments in sanitation systems
and towards an individualized approach to managing public wellbeing. The final section
provides an overview of data on the present context of sanitation access in the United States and
illustrates some of the weaknesses in that available data.
The Increasing Role of Government in Public Sanitation: 1800 to 1940
Transition from Private to Public Sanitation
Initially, the United States lagged behind Europe in the development of infrastructure and
treatment technologies. New strategies for water and wastewater handling were being developed

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 largely in Europe while leaders in the United States were hesitant to commit resources towards
issues that were already being addressed in the private sector. As late as 1830, 80 percent, (45
total) of water supply systems for the public were privately owned (Melosi 2011). As time
passed, though, rising public and political sentiment favored a shift from private to public
ownership. Citizen sanitarians advocating for social and moral reform and political leaders
seeking to improve their cities’ competitiveness collectively worked towards the public
acquisition of water and sewer infrastructure. From 1840 through 1890, the number of water
systems increased from 65 to 1,879 with the percent of privately owned systems hovering around
60 percent. After 1890 the system of ownership shifted so that the majority of systems were
owned publicly and by 1924 only 30 percent of the 9,850 water systems were privately owned.
Public concern about water rested on the widely held perception that private companies
failed to provide an adequate quantity and quality of drinking water (Small 1974). The driving
motivation for private companies was the generation of profit, which encouraged owners to
provide the minimally acceptable product at the highest tolerable cost. This incentive did not
inspire production of high quality water at low costs for the public nor did it promote
environmentally sound practices in production and treatment. Solomon describes this as
…an early manifestation of an inherent dilemma in the industrial market economy: it had
no automatic, internal mechanism to restore a healthy equilibrium to natural ecosystems
polluted by unwanted by-products of growth, even though such environmental
sustainability was a necessary condition of its continued productive expansion (Solomon
2010, p260-261).
This inherent contradiction ultimately led to movement away from private ownership of water
systems and towards public control.
City leaders in particular were concerned about improving their cities’ images in
competition for industrial development, workers, and improving tax base (Melosi 2011; Solomon

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 2011). The rapid expansion of cities required the investment of large capital resources towards
extensive infrastructure development, which could only be justified only through public
economies of scale—something that private companies could not compel (Small 1974).
Municipalities, on the other hand, could leverage bonds and taxes in order to levy the funds
necessary to construct and operate massive centralized treatment works (Melosi 2011; Tvedt
2010). In order to meet their desire to improve competitiveness it was logical for cities to retain
ownership of water systems in order to ensure adequate construction of comprehensive collection
and delivery systems.
Public participation and public action was critical when political action failed. During
the early 19th century Philadelphia was the political and cultural center of the United States
(Winslow 1943). During the Yellow Fever Era between 1796-1806, an outbreak in Philadelphia
led to the widespread desertion of government officials and political leaders (Duffy 1990). With
the desertion of political leadership, volunteers were essential in cleanup, tending to the ill, and
managing bodies (Duffy 1990). Sanitation and cleanliness started to be understood as essential
for the welfare of society rather than merely as an aesthetic concern. Disease outbreaks,
particularly yellow fever epidemics, provided strong impetus for change.
The Progressive Era during the late 19th century was characterized by a large number of
civic groups organized around improving the conditions of cities through sanitary and economic
reforms (Melosi 2001). In particular, civic groups were concerned about improving the sanitary
and water infrastructure of cities in order to promote civic cleanliness or, for women’s
organizations, municipal housekeeping. Some of the leaders in the sanitation movement
included Caroline Bartlett Crane, Mary McDowell, and Jane Addams. Sanitary reformers sought
to improve environmental conditions for aesthetic, health, and moral purposes. Reformers

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 believed that poor sanitation led to poor moral behavior and poor health (Chadwick 1965).
The yellow fever epidemic in Memphis which killed around 5,500 people in 1879-1880,
did not inspire public participation within the city in the same way that the public responded to
outbreaks in Philadelphia nearly a century earlier (Cosgrove 1909). Like Philadelphia, however,
surrounding cities responded with military action to keep out the exposed that were trying to
escape disease in the city. As terrified residents fled the city, they were met with fear and a
militarized quarantine. While the public had little concern for the welfare of residents of
Memphis, the threat of contagion from the diseased city spurred public outcry and congressional
response. At the end of the 19th century the government was beginning to take a stronger stance
in supporting public health needs and goals.
Technology: Combined versus Separate Sewer Systems
Nearing the end of the 19th century, miasma theory still had a stronghold on public health
approaches to managing sewage and wastewater. The principal belief was that rotting wastes let
off noxious gases which contributed to disease. By preventing wastes from putrefying or
moving those wastes away from human habitation, the vapors would not cause human illness.
Water was a preferred mechanism by which to accomplish both of these goals. Water carriage
allowed for wastes to be quickly and easily transported (once infrastructure was in place) away
from humans, preventing human exposure to leaking gases.
The technological solutions recommended as a result of miasma beliefs were largely not
inconsistent with solutions that could be recommended by germ theorists, with some exceptions.
It was popularly believed that water possessed the ability to self-purify and thus prevent
putrefaction, the supposed cause of miasma (Kinnicutt et al. 1919). Because water is constantly
in flux and flowing water does not permit stagnation, some of the actions of water do serve to

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 reduce contaminants and suppress bacterial growth. First, water disposal allows for dilution of
contaminants to very low levels so that exposure risks are minimized. Second, the turbulent
nature of water promotes aeration and oxidation of organic compounds, which changes their
chemical structure and can neutralize their toxicity. Third, water flows naturally tend to result in
the settling out of solids through sedimentation, which allows for the removal of pollutants that
are heavier than water. Finally, algae in water and solar exposure can help to kill pathogenic
bacteria.
While there were some actions of water that supported miasma theory, a number of other
properties of water exacerbate health and environmental problems when filth is introduced to a
water source. Principally, water provides an excellent medium through which to transmit disease
either directly through the growth of microorganisms or through providing a suitable habitat for
their intermediary hosts (e.g. mosquitoes). As well, while introducing pollutants to water does
dilute their concentration, there are limits to the amount of pollutants that can be introduced and
the carrying capacity for individual water bodies can easily be exceeded. Lastly, for certain
contaminants, dilution is not protective as the introduction of the contaminant to water simply
allows for better dispersion and a larger host reservoir in which to multiple.
Environmental sanitation strongly shaped ideas that resonate even today. The belief that
“the solution to pollution is dilution” is still widely held. Through the late 19th century and into
the early 20th century, no widespread effort was made to treat sewage before discharging to
waterways as it was believed that the introduction of sewage to water would result in adequate
treatment through natural means as long as sufficient distance was allowed between the outflow
pipes and the inflow pipes for drinking water (Tarr 1984).
Municipalities hoping to develop sewer systems were looking for a technical solution to

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 manage volumes of contaminated storm and sewage water cheaply, quickly, and easily. Cities
needed to weigh the cost of the installation of the infrastructure with its appropriateness of fit,
ease of maintenance, and sanitary improvement capabilities. Cities were charged with the task of
managing both human excreta as well as storm water runoff, which once mixed with animal
excrement was considered as contaminated as raw household sewage (Tarr 1979). Two solutions
presented as possibilities: the combined sewer system (CSS) and the separate sanitary sewer
system (SSS). The combined sewer system would collect household waste and storm runoff in a
single large pipe whereas the separate sewer system collected only household waste with no
provision for storm water. In these cities storm water was handled through a system of above
ground gutters. In either case, residential sewage was dumped directly into flowing surface
water bodies without treatment.
In 1881 the National Board of Health sent Rudolf Hering, a trained sanitary engineer, to
Europe to compare sanitary outcomes between the combined and separate sewer systems (Tarr
1979). Hering found no difference in sanitary outcomes between the two systems and instead
found that the choice between the two systems depended upon the size of the city and which
system would present the most cost effective option. Failure to install a system of appropriate
size with functional features to ease maintenance could result in increased long-term expenses, a
mistake made by Memphis with the installation of a sanitary sewer system advocated and
constructed by George E. Waring, Jr.. With no provision for storm water and no manholes to
access buried pipes, the Memphis system was ultimately riddled with failures and presented a
substantially increased cost to the city from that which was originally expected.
For large, dense cities with a great proportion of impermeable surfaces, surface guttering
could be inadequate to move sufficient storm water to allow for continued conducting of

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 business and day to day life activities. For these cities, additional storm water handling capacity
necessitated the use of underground piping to remove excess water and the combined sewer
system was a more economical approach. For smaller cities that could manage their storm water
with surface channels, the separate sewer system required smaller subsurface pipes at a muchreduced cost from the combined system. Hering recommended a rational cost-benefits analysis
without concern for sanitary effectiveness in the choice of systems.
For their cost efficiency, larger cities heavily preferred to install combined sewer
systems. In 1909 in cities with a population of the greater than 30,000, of 24,972 miles of
installed sewers, 74 percent were combined sewer lines, 21 percent were separate, and 5 percent
were exclusively storm sewer lines (Tarr and McMichael 1977). Cities with populations under
30,000 were more likely to install separate systems for sewage handling and have no subsurface
piping to handle storm water.
Regardless of system choice, the push towards installing sewer infrastructure improved
health on average but not to the extent that had been anticipated or, in particular, predicted
through miasma theories. Typhoid rates declined but, because raw sewage was being directly
discharged into waterways and drinking water was insufficiently treated, they did not decline by
orders of magnitude. In fact, as a result of a collective push to install sewage handling systems,
after installing their own sewer systems the downstream cities of Atlanta, Pittsburgh, Trenton,
and Toledo all saw increased deaths from typhoid (Tarr and McMichael 1977).
Even as recognition emerged that sewage was a contaminant and that it posed a health
risk to drink sewage contaminated water, sewage was viewed as an issue of deferred
responsibility (Tarr 1984). Treating wastewater before discharging it into waterways was to the
benefit of downstream communities and not directly to the communities that were discharging

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 their wastes. Once released into the waterways, upstream cities felt it was the responsibility of
downstream cities to adequately treat their drinking water so that their residents would not get
sick. It would take coordinated public policy to address these shared needs across jurisdictional
boundaries.
Water Policies for Civic Growth
The first water policy enacted in the United States that was to lay the groundwork for all
future water regulation with respect to water pollution was not intended to address pollution but
rather aimed to ensure that waterways were navigable for commerce (Gross and Dodge 2005).
In 1899 Congress passed the US Rivers and Harbors Act, also referred to as the Refuse Act. The
Rivers and Harbors Act established the first language for restricting the introduction of foreign
bodies into US navigable waterways. Section 13 of the Rivers and Harbors Act gave authority to
the Corps of Engineers to establish a permitting system to regulate discharges. This permitting
system established the foundation of the permitting system in place today through the National
Pollutant Discharge Elimination System (NPDES). The Rivers and Harbors Act is still in place
today although much of is now covered under the Clean Water Act. In general, early
environmental laws were difficult to enforce and had limited effectiveness, however, in 1959 the
Rivers and Harbors Act was successfully used to address wastewater discharges from a steel
mill.
While the Rivers and Harbors Act addressed pollution which posed an obstacle for
commerce, the first efforts at regulation of the quality of drinking water were not put forward
until 1914 when the US Public Health Service established standards for bacteriological content
in drinking water (EPA 1999). This was the first attempt at regulating water quality for health
purposes and only applied to drinking water. It did not apply to quality of water discharged by

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 wastewater handling and treatment facilities or to chemicals discharged from manufacturing
facilities. These standards were set for bacterial agents believed to be capable of spreading
contagious disease and no other toxins or agents.
New Deal Programs
Major changes in water and wastewater technologies and delivery came about in concert
with major social and political upheaval in the United States. After the crash of the stock
market, which saw its worst day on Black Thursday, October 24, 1929, the country was in a state
of confusion about what the future held (Rauchway 2008). Although the crash of stocks did not
immediately affect the populace, the uncertainty about the economy led families to begin
withdrawing their funds from circulation and reduce spending. In concert with reduced flows of
money in circulation, businesses faltered and unemployment rose. President Herbert Hoover,
adopted a voluntarism approach to public welfare, believing that through civic participation the
public could help itself without becoming dependent upon government subsidies. As the Great
Depression deepened, though, Hoover began to enact policies to stimulate housing development
and create jobs. Under the tide of economic uncertainty his efforts were inadequate to
substantively shift the economic down swell.
In March of 1933 Franklin Delano Roosevelt took office and immediately began to put in
place measures to generate a “New Deal” with the American people (Rauchway 2008).

Largely

experimental and without a clear and comprehensive overarching plan for restoring the nation’s
economy, Roosevelt and the Democratically controlled Congress worked to pass a number of
programs to stave off the hemorrhaging of wealth and “save capitalism” (p59). Among the first
of these, the Emergency Banking Act of 1933 was passed, which established the Federal Deposit
Insurance Corporation (FDIC) to insure the money held in banks. The act ordered banking

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 reorganization and the closure of many banks in order to stabilize currency and reduce the
number of banking failures.
By June, $3.3 billion was given to create the Public Works Administration (PWA), an
amount that equaled 5.9 percent of the total Gross Domestic Product (Rauchway 2008). The
government was now heavily financially invested in the generation of public works projects in
order to stimulate job growth and lower unemployment. The PWA provided loans and grants to
stimulate construction of a variety of public projects (Solomon 2011). Substantial money was
made available for construction of water and wastewater treatment plants and between 19331939 the PWA provided funds for the construction of 65 percent of new and upgraded sewage
collection and treatment plants. Nearly half a billion dollars went to 1,850 sewer projects and
another $312 million was provided for 2,600 water system projects. From 1932 to 1937 the
percentage of the population whose homes were connected to wastewater collection and
treatment systems increased by 73 percent. Much of the funding for new treatment works went
to smaller communities (less than 1,000 residents) for which the New Deal programs had the
greatest impact.
The goal of improving infrastructure was to stimulate the availability of new jobs through
construction projects. Initially, the volume of new jobs stimulated by the PWA was
underwhelming (Rauchway 2008). The Civil Works Administration, which was charged with
hiring the public directly, hired four million workers only to lay them off a few months later as
Roosevelt did not want the public to become dependent upon the government to provide for
them. In spite of this, in 1935 the Works Progress Administration (WPA; later renamed the
Work Project Administration) was established with $5 billion in funding to generate more relief
projects and provide direct employment of struggling workers. The WPA hired millions of

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 Americans to work on public works projects including construction of new highways, water, and
sewer projects. The WPA was criticized for hiring poorly trained workers to do useless ‘odd
jobs’ around the country and in 1943 the WPA was ended along with several other New Deal
agencies.
The New Deal programs transformed the role of the federal government in providing for
the public as a way of promoting the health of the nation. In addition to targeting improved
employment through public works, the New Deal programs also established a system of public
welfare not previously seen in the United States. In 1935, the popular notion of welfare was
born through the Social Security Act, which in Title IV established Aid to Dependent Children
(Abramovitz 2006). Prior to these changes, direct aid varied by state. The New Deal programs
created a safety net for the broad American public base in order to protect the system of
capitalism which had been threatened by the Great Depression.
Economic downturn forced the political leadership in the United States to take notice of
the broad needs of the public. The solution to these problems was to invest substantially in
building the nation through public works projects and investing in human needs. Water and
wastewater infrastructure construction projects served to provide jobs for the unemployed but
also provided an infrastructural foundation in meeting the basic public health needs of the
nation’s population. Coupled with social security programs, investments in water and
wastewater infrastructure served as a mechanism for improving the health of the population as a
whole through what Foucault termed making live through interventions that positively affect the
biological condition of the human body (Foucault 1990).
Summary: Public Works and the Nation
As the public and political leadership in the United States became more concerned with

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 the need for strategies to provide water access to residents and industry and clean the cities to
meet aesthetic, industrial, and health needs engineers and biologists struggled to agree on what
technological approaches were most appropriate. While commercial development was a
significant concern, private enterprise had failed to bring the necessary quantity and quality of
water consistently and rapidly enough to meet growing needs. To meet those needs municipal
governments sought to invest heavily in the public development and ownership of water and
wastewater infrastructure.
Until after World War I, federal funds for infrastructural development were not widely
available but in an effort to bring the nation out of depression, both the Hoover and Roosevelt
administrations sought to stimulate the economy through civic works projects. The New Deal
programs brought hundreds of millions of dollars to infrastructure and treatment works projects.
The investment in the wellbeing of the public through various projects to protect the economic
wellbeing of the public served as an overall project to preserve the economic wellbeing of the
nation. The enhancement of the health of the public served to improve the health of the nation.
Environmental Challenges of Growth and Reorganization: 1940 to 1980
Suburbanization, CSOs, and Treatment
World War II saw the end of many New Deal programs and shifting of the country out
of depression. The Servicemen's Readjustment Act of 1944, also known as the GI Bill, provided
low cost mortgages and educational benefits to returning servicemen from WWII. On its surface
race blind, through implementation at the local level through Veteran’s Affairs offices where
blacks were discouraged from taking or outright denied benefits, the impact of the GI Bill was to
stimulate white flight, pushing towards the growth of primarily white suburban communities and
a decline of urban centers, which remained largely black (Humes 2006; Melosi 2000a). This

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 rapid suburbanization increased the development of rural spaces immediately around urban
centers but did not bring rapid development to rural spaces elsewhere. The withdrawal of white
middle class from urban centers weakened the urban tax base and placed tremendous challenges
on cities to meet their infrastructural needs.
With the rapid influx of new residents and the burgeoning of suburban communities,
suburban municipalities struggled with the need to provide water services to their new residents
(Melosi 2000a). While water services were metered, collection of fees for sewerage tended to be
more complex and sewer systems often represented a cost for municipalities rather than the
income source that water systems can be. As such, sewer system development has historically
lagged behind water system development. Suburban communities, growing from originally rural
outlying spaces around urban centers, first relied on private septic systems to manage sewage
needs. Although functional and efficient for homes with adequate lot sizes and properly draining
soils, increasing housing density led to saturated soils from septic system failures and
groundwater contamination.
As the beginning of the 20th century ushered in wider acceptance of germ theory,
recognition of the need to treat wastewater and disinfect drinking water broadened (Tarr 1984).
This change required that instead of being directly emptied into streams, wastewater needed to
pass through wastewater treatment facilities before being discharged to water sources. Where
before the choice between combined sewer systems and separate sewer systems was largely
driven by economic efficiency, suddenly combined sewage systems presented a fundamental
design flaw for treatment works. While separate sanitary sewer systems do occasionally result
in unintentional overflow events from clogged systems and from system leakage, combined
sewer systems are designed to overflow during peak rain events, allowing raw sewage to bypass

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 treatment facilities (EPA 2004).
During dry weather, combined sewer systems direct raw sewage to a treatment facility
(see Figure 3.1). During moderate wet weather, some systems channel rain separately and allow
it to bypass the treatment works while others collect rain and sewage together and flush them
both to the collection facility for treatment. In peak weather events where substantial rain
inundates the system, combined sewer systems are designed to allow the overflow to bypass the
treatment works. Because of the volume of rain, rainwater and wastewater combine resulting in
a contaminated broth that partly flows to the treatment works and partly flows untreated directly
to surface waters.
Beginning in the 1960’s, combined sewer systems shifted out of favor and some states
mandated that no new combined systems be constructed. The move away from combined
systems posed a particular challenge for cities that had already constructed CSSs. Rapidly rising
populations and industrial wastewater production led to greater influxes of water than anticipated
resulting in more frequent and longer periods of overflow than municipalities had planned for
(Melosi 2000a). Large cities which already had combined infrastructure could not afford to
completely replace their systems so in many cases underground storage tanks were constructed
to temporarily contain the overflow until it could be treated.
Sewerage handling began to shift towards biological and chemical treatment as public
health emphasis shifted away from broad environmental sanitation to the regulation of specific
contaminants (Melosi 2000a). Through vaccinations, the development of antibiotics, and general
improvement of living conditions, morbidity and mortality from disease declined precipitously.
After decades of dozens of sanitation related disease outbreaks every year, the period between
1950-1956 had no deaths from waterborne disease outbreaks. As of 1958 one third of sewage

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 plants provided primary treatment and the remaining two-thirds provided secondary treatment
(Melosi 2000b). Primary treatment involves the separation of solids and inorganic grit from the
wastewater and may include adding chemicals to encourage precipitation of contaminants,
sedimentation, screening, and filtering (Gross and Dodge 2005). Secondary treatment makes
use of microorganisms to digest biodegradable organic compounds not removed during primary
treatment followed by sedimentation, filtration, and pH adjustment (Gross and Dodge 2005;
Melosi 2000a).
The Birth of Environmental Regulation
The period after World War II saw rapid development of industrial technologies which
produced substantial and varied new toxins which were introduced into the air, water, and soils
(Carson 1962). Water is an essential element of industrial processing, so with industries
producing vast quantities of water requiring treatment, publicly owned treatment works
(POTWs) often became overwhelmed and industrial wastewater arose as a particularly acute
concern (Melosi 2000a). As New Deal funding declined or was eliminated, recognition grew
about the need to regulate, provide funding for treatment, and address increasing urban and
suburban sanitation issues.
The first substantial regulation of its kind, the 1948 Federal Water Pollution Control Act
(WPCA) was specifically targeted at addressing and controlling water pollution (Gross and
Dodge 2005). The act provided $22.5 million per year for five years to provide loans for the
construction of wastewater treatment facilities (Solomon 2011). Funds were to be distributed
and managed by the states directly and would provide up to 30 percent of the maximum cost of a
project or up to $250,000. The act authorized states to determine pollution control standards,
develop programs for pollution abatement, and gave enforcement authority to the governors of

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 each state (Gross and Dodge 2005). Governors were given conference procedure for
enforcement which allowed them to identify violations, convene a conference of affected
agencies, make recommendations for specific actions to occur within six months, bring the
polluter before a formal hearing if the issue was not resolved within this time, and bring the case
before the US Attorney General for prosecution. During the twenty-four years that this program
was in place, only one case was brought before the Attorney General.
The WPCA was amended many times over the years. While retaining the 30 percent cap
in available funding for individual projects, amendments in 1956 changed the payment from
loans to a grants program and raised the annual funding from $22.5 million to $50 million per
year for ten years (Solomon 2011). These amendments saw a 62 percent increase in the
construction of sewer plants. Major amendments to the WPCA in 1965 required each state to
establish water quality standards within their jurisdictional boundaries by July 1, 1967 but by
1971 only half of the states had approved any standards, making regulatory enforcement
impossible (Gross and Dodge 2005). The act also established the Federal Water Pollution
Control Administration, later renamed the Federal Water Quality Administration (Solomon
2011).
In addition to WPCA amendments, in 1965 the Water Resources Planning Act which was
also passed which created the Water Resources Council (Sykes 2010). The Water Resources
Council was short lived, being eliminated in 1983, but during its lifetime presented the first
coordinated federal structure for water planning. Prior to the council, agencies concerned with
water and sanitation issues operated independently. The Water Resources Council was charged
with the responsibility of assessing the nation’s water supplies, coordinating plans for larger
programs, weighing costs and benefits of project plans, making policy recommendations, and

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 allocating money to states for planning grants.
In 1966 the WPCA was amended again in what was referred to as the Clean Water
Restoration Act (Solomon 2011). This change increased the federal share of project funding
from 30 percent to 40 percent as long as the state also contributed 30 percent. If the state
established enforceable water quality standards for the project, the federal government would
pay up to 50 percent of the project cost and the state portion would reduce to 25 percent. If a
comprehensive metropolitan plan was created, the federal maximum could go as high as 55
percent. The $250,000 ceiling was eliminated, which encouraged the development of
multimillion-dollar wastewater treatment construction projects.
Public Concern and Rising Environmentalism
Smoldering environmental consciousness found its flashpoint in 1962 with the
publication of a series of articles in the New Yorker, which would be published later the same
year in the form of a book called Silent Spring by Rachel Carson. Carson painstaking researched
the impacts of chemical pesticides on the environment, specifically birds. The book raised
awareness and alarm regarding the potential dangers that exposure to toxins from chemical
pesticides posed. Public health practitioners and scholars increasingly brought attention to of
risks associated with exposures to chemicals. The same year that Silent Spring was published the
Public Health Service established standards for 28 substances believed to cause harm to human
and environmental health (EPA 1999).

These standards would be the foundation of regulation

provided through the Safe Drinking Water Act, which was passed in 1974.
The public particularly expressed growing concern about visible pollution in the form of
air and water pollution. One of the most iconic events of the time was that of the Cuyahoga
River in Ohio which caught fire in Cleveland on June 22, 1969. On August 1, 1969 Time

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 Magazine ran an article on the river as a fire hazard and drew attention to its unenviable status as
one of the most polluted rivers in the nation (Anonymous 1969). The article showed an image of
the river ablaze in 1952, which was the largest and most costly fire to occur on the river. The
1952 fire resulted in more than $1 million in damage to boats and an office building. In total the
river caught fire more than a dozen times and was described in the Times Article as a river that
“oozes rather than flows” (Anonymous 1969).
In the context of a decade of public protest and civil disobedience, the public reacted by
staging the first Earth Day on April 22, 1970 (Gross and Dodge 2005). More than 20 million
people across the United States held teach-ins and protests to bring awareness to public concerns
about environmental pollution and toxins. The groundswell of public pressure was felt by
politicians so that in 1970 the United States Environmental Protection Agency was formed to
bring together the various branches and agencies that dealt with environmental concerns under
one umbrella organization (EPA 1992). Given public support for environmental causes, current
president Richard Nixon found it easy to support the development of environmental programs
which offered a distraction from public dissent regarding the war in Vietnam (Solomon 2011).
Major Water Reform Policies: The Clean Water Act and the Safe Drinking Water Act
Within the next five years two fundamental pieces of legislation would be passed that
form the basis of water and wastewater regulation today: the Clean Water Act in 1972 and the
Safe Drinking Water Act in 1974. In general, the Clean Water Act addresses the regulation of
surface water bodies and “point sources” of pollution. A point source is a distinct and
identifiable origin that discharges pollution into water bodies (Gross and Dodge 2005). Point
sources can include pipes, channels, ditches, tunnels, conduits, confined animal feeding
operations (CAFOs), or water vessels. Point sources do not include individual people or runoff

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 from agricultural production or irrigation. The Safe Drinking Water Act focuses on the
regulation of specific chemical contaminants typically to subsurface water sources, groundwater.
The majority of regulation related to wastewater management falls under the Clean Water Act as
POTWs usually discharge to surface water bodies. The Safe Drinking Water Act is most
relevant to those facilities that discharge below the surface of the ground through underground
injection of wastewater.
Clean Water Act
The Clean Water Act was a significant revision of the Federal Water Pollution Control
Act, originally enacted in 1948. Sewage discharges into public waterways had become so bad
that prior to the enactment of the Clean Water Act “many rivers and beaches were little more
than open sewers” (Gross and Dodge 2005, p13). In spite of significant financial investment
towards the development of sewer infrastructure, such construction could not keep pace with the
changes in residential development and little money went towards repairing aging infrastructure
in decaying cities. The Clean Water Act was intended to make waterways usable for society’s
needs through control of chemical, physical and biological contaminants discharged by
wastewater treatment and industrial facilities (Gross and Dodge 2005; Solomon 2011). When
passed, Congress authorized $18 billion in funding for wastewater treatment projects and
increased the federal share of projects from 50 percent to 75 percent (Solomon 2011).
The initial goals of the Clean Water Act were to eliminate all pollutant discharges into
waterways by 1985, obtain a level of water quality so that waterways are usable for fish, wildlife,
and recreation, eliminate discharges of toxic pollutants, improve federal funding for POTWs,
develop state-by-state waste management plans, provide funding for research and development
of technologies to eliminate pollution, and develop programs to eliminate nonpoint source

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 pollution (Gross and Dodge 2005). The Clean Water Act established that polluting industries
must pretreat waste before discharging it to POTWs and shifted the determination of maximum
pollutant levels from states to the EPA.
Because some discharging of pollutants is to be expected in order to preserve the
feasibility of profits for industries, the Clean Water Act established the National Pollutant
Discharge Elimination System (NPDES; Gross and Dodge 2005). States assume different levels
of involvement with NPDES permitting. They may assume responsibility for permitting all
facilities and parts of the treatment process. They may choose to only participate in the base
permitting process, which regulates normal discharges from POTWs and industrial facilities, or
they can leave the regulation and enforcement to the EPA but they will no longer be eligible to
determine the allocation of funding for environmental protection programs within the state.
In 1977 the Clean Water Act was amended and officially named the ‘Clean Water Act’
(Solomon 2011). The 1977 amendments increased the federal share of funding from 70 percent
to 85 percent for projects using innovative technological solutions to meet regulatory
requirements.

An additional $24.5 billion was allocated by Congress for treatment works

making “wastewater treatment construction…one of the nation’s largest federal domestic works
programs” (p26).
Safe Drinking Water Act
The Safe Drinking Water Act was passed in 1974 shortly after it was announced that
drinking water contained chloroform compounds called trihalomethanes (THMs), which are
formed as a byproduct of chlorination (used during disinfection of water), and synthetic organic
chemicals (SOCs; Pontius 2003). The health significance of THMs and SOCs in drinking water
is undetermined but they are believed to increase cancer risks (Melosi 2011). Prior to the

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 passage of the Safe Drinking Water Act, chemical standards in drinking water were not legally
binding (Pontius 2003).
Creating the first regulatory program to protect the quality of drinking water from all
public water systems in the United States, the Safe Drinking Water Act established a cooperative
structure between federal, state, and local levels (Pontius 2003). The federal level, held by the
EPA, was authorized to set national drinking water standards, conduct special studies and
research, and oversee the implementation of the act. Each state, through their public health
departments and environmental agencies, was to have primary enforcement responsibility of the
regulations. Public water suppliers held the task of meeting the regulations in their water
treatment processes and report their adherence to the monitoring in regular water quality reports.
Summary: Crisis, Action, and Regulatory Change
More so than the New Deal programs, the Second World War dragged the country out of
depression and injected vigor into the struggling economy. Even as New Deal programs were
scaled back, however, the government continued to invest in public infrastructure projects.
These development projects were necessary to provide infrastructure for newly developing areas,
particularly suburban communities outside of urban areas. While the GI Bill helped to support
the growth of white, suburban communities, communities of color failed to receive the same
investments in housing. Much of the wealth that was being directed to infrastructural
development projects was not targeted at investing in the declining urban centers so the urban
and rural poor and communities of color saw few benefits from these programs.
Massive funding investments allocated by the Federal Water Pollution Control Act and
its subsequent amendments most benefited newly developing communities rather than aging
communities with decaying infrastructure. In particular, large cities which had installed

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 combined sewer systems were particularly challenged to meet their sanitation needs as laws
changed regarding appropriate wastewater management strategies. The Cuyahoga River passing
through Cleveland’s industrial shores and combined sewer system, was iconic of the
environmental degradation that unrestrained industrial development had wrought on the nation’s
environment.
Environmental regulation, through the creation of the Environmental Protection Agency
and the passage of the Clean Water Act and the Safe Drinking Water Act, found widespread
support during a contentious period of public unrest and United States military involvement in
Vietnam. Environmental protection concerns during the late 1970’s found a well-timed entry in
an otherwise conservative political climate that was soon to build towards retraction of
environmental protections, infrastructure, and public welfare.
The Neoliberal Shift in Water and Wastewater Management: 1980 to Today
Reduced Funding for Public Infrastructure
From the hundreds of millions of dollars allocated through New Deal public works
programs to the billions of dollars made available by Congress through construction loans and
grants allocated in the Federal Water Pollution Control Act and later the Clean Water Act,
spending in the United States on water and wastewater research and construction projects was a
tremendous priority throughout the early and mid-twentieth century. Up until 1980 the United
States invested heavily in water and sanitation related projects.
The social and infrastructural development that arose from the New Deal programs began
their retraction during the presidency of Ronald Reagan. President Reagan shifted financial
priorities away from public development projects and towards military funding (Solomon 2011).
The Reagan administration sought to reduce the size of government, shrink federal government

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 oversight and regulation, and devolve power from centralized federal government towards more
local and state based programming. In particular, Reagan and the Congress wanted to see states
and localities assume a greater role in funding wastewater treatment facilities (Solomon 2011).
In 1981 amendments to the Clean Water Act made eligibility criteria for grants more
restrictive and the grants harder for communities to get (Solomon 2011). The federal project cost
share was reduced from 75 percent to 55 percent and the annual allocation of grants was reduced
from $4.2 billion in 1981 to $2.4 billion in 1987. Amendments in 1987 began to phase out the
construction grants program entirely and replace it with the State Revolving Fund (SRF), which
provides low interest loans for high priority water quality improvement projects (Gross and
Dodge 2005; Solomon 2011). Construction grants were completely eliminated in 1995
(Solomon 2011). Between the late 1960’s and the late 1980’s spending on water and wastewater
infrastructure declined by 60 percent (Melosi 2011).
Since its inception, the State Revolving Fund has allotted roughly $30 billion in federal
money for water and wastewater treatment and management projects, which through state
contributions and financial leveraging has contributed a total of more than $60 billion to
environmental sanitation construction projects (Davis 2008). While these numbers are
substantial, the EPA does not highlight that funding for SRF has either declined or been constant
since the late 1980’s. Through President Obama’s efforts to stimulate the economy through
construction projects, in the last two years funding for SRF has been higher than any other time
since the late 1990’s. Using EPA (2011a) data, Figure 3.2 shows the annual national allotment
for the Clean Water State Revolving Fund both in actual dollars and in 2011 dollars adjusted for
inflation. Even with the recent funding increase, when adjusted for inflation it is easy to see that
money available for water and wastewater treatment projects has continued to decline with the

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 transition to the State Revolving Fund.
The EPA says that there are $181.2 billion worth of projects for which funding needs are
currently not being met (Gross and Dodge 2005). In 2009 the American Society of Civil
Engineer’s released a Report Card for America’s Infrastructure, which put America’s water and
wastewater infrastructure in the media spotlight. The report characterized US infrastructure for
water and wastewater as very poor and in need of immediate attention (ASCE 2009). The EPA
says that United States needs to invest $390 billion over the next 20 years to update or replace
existing systems and build new systems to meet the demands of growth and infrastructural
decay.
Reduced Funding for the Public
During the period of federal government withdrawals from public infrastructure, the
Reagan administration also began the reversal of programs aimed at protecting social wellbeing.
The rising tide of public opinion against public entitlements drove a push towards welfare reform
so that in 1988 the Family Support Act was passed (Abramovitz 2006). This act created the Job
Opportunities and Basic Skills Training Program (JOBS), which for the first time created a
pathway to enforce mandatory work requirements, for which attempts had failed in the past
(Schoen 1996). The program emphasized job training and was a requirement for receiving AFDC
benefits for children. The act represented the beginning of a successful shift in service provision
for the public, which transformed not only direct aid payments but also indirect benefits
including utilities assistance programs for aid paying water and power bills.
During Clinton’s presidential term massive welfare reform took place which imposed
numerous moral requirements on those needing assistance. In 1996 the Personal Responsibility
and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act (PRWORA) was passed (Abramovitz 2006). The

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 PRWORA eliminated the JOBS program and established that recipients should be moved into
employment as soon as possible (Schoen 1996). Refusing to work would result in the reduction
or elimination of benefits and a maximum time for receiving benefits was introduced. The
changes to welfare structure marked a move from a Keynesian state structure, which required
government intervention to correct for private market oversights, to a neoliberal state structure,
which calls for devolution, deregulation, and privatization of public systems. Additionally, the
shift from Keynesian economics to neoliberalism also signaled a shift in the investment of
government funds for public social services towards a withdrawal of those funds and services
accompanying an ideological belief in individual responsibility for social circumstances.
Privatization
The changing tide of neoliberal governance is acutely visible in water and wastewater
management through the returning emphasis on transferring control and ownership of water and
wastewater treatment works from publicly to privately held assets (Melosi 2011). At present, the
majority of water and wastewater treatment operations are still publicly owned. According to
the National Association of Water Companies (NAWC; 2008) 16 percent of community water
systems and 20 percent of wastewater treatment utilities are privately owned. It is estimated that
the water and wastewater industry in the United States generates revenues of more than $120
billion per year, making it an enticing industry for private companies (Solomon 2011). Where in
the 18th and 19th centuries private companies were responsible for building the necessary
infrastructure and had to account for construction in capital costs, through the massive
infrastructural investments during the 20th century, private companies are able to acquire the
assets of public systems at substantially reduced costs when compared with new construction.
As well, private companies may elect to participate in public-private partnerships (PPPs), where

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 the municipality retains ownership over the infrastructure while the private company is
responsible for maintenance, provision of services, and billing. The NAWC estimates that there
are more than 2,000 of these PPPs in water and wastewater treatment systems throughout the
United States and at their current level represent a $1.5 billion industry (NAWC 2008).
Water activists, including Food and Water Watch (FWW), have serious concerns about
the push towards privatization and what it represents for the public. Food and Water Watch
points to the inherent contradictions in private provision of public necessities. They argue that
private companies are not accountable to the public as a POTW is but rather to their
shareholders, for whom their principle obligation is the generation of profit (FWW 2011).
Private companies have an incentive to provide services to customers who are able to pay for
services so they will preferentially provide services to communities of higher income instead of
those most in need. Because private companies are oriented towards the maximal generation of
profits and water and wastewater companies represent a local monopoly with no competition,
private companies have no incentive to cut into their profits, tend to cut costs in maintenance,
and provide poor quality and inconsistent services. Food and Water Watch also points to rising
costs for households once private companies assume control of services. In Table 3.1 Food and
Water Watch shows how in ten of the largest public to private transfers, residents saw an average
of a 10 percent annual increase in rates for a total of a 116 percent increase in rates over an
average of twelve years (FWW 2010, p7).
Summary: Sanitation and Neoliberalism
With the Reagan administration a new political value system was apparent that shifted
spending priorities within the nation. Moving away from investment in infrastructure and
welfare protections, neoliberal reforms resulted in the disinvestment in the broad health of the

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 populace in favor of a new vision of national health. Wellbeing is strictly understood through an
economic lens wherein ones participation in the market is an indicator of success. Prioritizing
the success of the market over all else and organizing society around market based principles,
neoliberalism constructs new ways of living by defining citizens as independent individuals who
are free to participate in the global marketplace and conceive of themselves as economically
motivated actors (Ong 2006). Correspondingly, it calls for a gutting of social services,
deregulation and the restriction of the role of government to enforcement of the market,
devolution of power from the federal government to states, and privatization of public goods and
services. Those who do not conceive of themselves as economic actors or who lack neoliberal
potential find themselves locked out of the privileges bestowed upon the neoliberal citizen.
Responsibility for the protection of the citizen by the state is removed and success and failure are
placed firmly in the hands of the individual.
Current Water and Wastewater Context
Today, as many as 1.8 million to 3.5 million people in the United States get sick every
year from swimming in sewage contaminated waters (Nelson and Murray 2008). Sewer
overflows lead to as much as 10 billion gallons of raw sewage to be discharged in into the
environment (including people’s homes, yards, rivers, beaches, etc.) every year. The health and
environmental risks associated with exposure to untreated and improperly treated sewage in the
United States are not shared equally. The popular conception of the United States is that the
nation has achieved universal access to water and sewer services and according to the World
Health Organization 100 percent of the United States population has access to improved
sanitation facilities and 99 percent has access to improved drinking water sources (WHO 2011).
Within the United States, scholars have tended to treat issues around access to safe

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 drinking water and the avoidance of exposure to the hazards associated with sewerage systems as
related but distinct issues (Wescoat et al. 2002). As such, different sets of assumptions and
policy implications are formulated through the generation of divergent empirical and theoretical
frameworks organized either around the fair distribution of natural resources through economic
and political struggles (Brown and Ingram 1987) or community mobilization and legal efforts
aimed at redressing unjust siting of “toxic” wastewater treatment plants in already marginalized
communities, predominantly of women, people of color, and the poor (Di Chiro 2004; Litt et al.
2002; Pezzoli et al. 2007; Ringquist and Clark 1999). This distinction is problematic as,
particularly within an economically wealthy nation, the standard for sanitary disposal of human
excreta is entirely dependent upon the availability of water. Flush toilets, septic systems and
integrated sewer systems, the only socially acceptable means of sanitary disposal of human
excreta in the United States, are nonfunctional without the presence of water.
Official nationwide measures of plumbing and water access in the United States have
historically been assessed by the Census Bureau through the decennial census. Dating back to
1940 with the introduction of the long form, the Census has asked residents about the condition
of plumbing in the housing unit (US Census 1993). The long form was administered to a subset
of the American population where, in addition to the standard household demographic
characteristics required in the short form, respondents were also asked to report about certain
social, economic and housing characteristics for their household, including the state of plumbing
infrastructure in the home (US Census Undated a). The Census considers a housing unit to have
complete plumbing if the residence has hot and cold piped water, a flush toilet, and a bathtub or
shower. Using this measure the Census Bureau has tracked dramatic improvement in access to
complete plumbing nationally since 1940 (Figure 3.3).

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 With the administration of the 2010 US Census, the long form questionnaire has been
eliminated and replaced with the annual American Community Survey (ACS). Where with the
long form 1 in 6 households was surveyed at a fixed point in time every ten years, the ACS
samples approximately 1 in 55 households during any given year and roughly 1 in 11 over a five
year period (Blodgett 2009). Although providing the potential for timely data in larger
geographic areas, for smaller, more rural areas the data provided by the ACS will only be
available every five years and will be less stable, due to margin of error, than the decennial
census data.
Although only a fraction of 1 percent of American households officially lack complete
plumbing, the distribution of these households is not uniform and they are predominately found
in rural districts (Figure 3.4; Gasteyer 2004). For this reason, the change from the decennial
census long form to the ACS has important implications for the assessment of complete
plumbing throughout the United States particularly in rural areas. Because the margin of error
increases as the size of the community declines, through the use of the ACS instead of the
decennial census the validity of the estimates for complete plumbing should decline. More so,
significant investment is put into advertising and encouraging all households to participate in the
decennial census. The same investment in encouraging people to participate in the ACS is not
present and for stigmatized topics that leave households vulnerable should they be honest about
their experiences, greater error can be anticipated in particular for questions about household
plumbing.
As an assessment of access to sanitation, the measurement of complete plumbing is
extremely limited. Although the survey question does ask about the presence of water and sewer
infrastructure, it does not inquire into the functionality of this equipment when it is present or

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 about any potential barriers that may limit its use. A much better assessment tool is found in the
American Housing Survey (AHS), which is conducted by the Bureau of the Census in
partnership with Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD). National data for the
survey are collected on roughly 55,000 housing units every other year and metropolitan sample
data, including around 4,100 housing units per metropolitan area, is collected for selected
metropolitan areas typically every six years (US Census 2005). AHS numbers are weighted to
be consistent with population estimates based upon the previous census. Although sampling
error remains an issue for the AHS, the scope of examination is much broader and potential
problems with functionality of plumbing infrastructure are explored.
In addition to the presence of complete plumbing, the AHS also asks if within the past 12
months the housing unit experienced any leaks as a result of plumbing failure; what is the source
of the household’s water supply; what is the mechanism for sewage disposal; was the home
completely without running water within the last three months; what is the number of sewage
system breakdowns; what is the number of toilet breakdowns; is the water safe for drinking and
cooking; and what is the annual cost of water and sewage disposal (Econometrica 2011)? The
information provided by the AHS for the 2009 survey supports the claim that access to water and
sewerage is more limited for residents in poverty, and the data shown in Table 3.2 suggests that
the relative risk2 of water or sewer plumbing failures for those in poverty is 1.5 to 3 times higher
than for those not in poverty.
When asking about system (water and sewer) shutoffs and failures, the time period in
question was restricted to the previous three months. Limiting the survey to the previous three

2

Relative risk compares the probability of an event among exposed versus not exposed. The event of concern in
this case is having a plumbing failure. The relative risk is the ratio of the percent of those in poverty who have
experienced plumbing failure divided by the percent of those not in poverty who have experienced plumbing failure.
 
    
        
                                  ⁄
    
               "
⁄
    
                   "

            
    
    
        
                                     

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 months is problematic because it does not capture the full seasonal range of potential failures
which may vary by region. Pipes have a higher chance of bursting in cold climates during the
winter but in dryer climates some soils, particularly shrink-swell soils, may put increasing
pressure on pipes and drain fields during the hotter summer months (Horne and Guerra 2011).
Surveyors asked respondents to report frequency of failures but they did not probe into the cause
of the failure. Households with a single prolonged system failure would be recorded no
differently than households with an acute failure. With regard to the perceived safety of drinking
water, this question is opinion based only and may not reflect the true healthfulness of the water,
either positively or negatively. Finally, in calculating the monthly cost of water and sewage
disposal, the question is targeted at user fees associated with utilities but does not probe
respondents to consider the full range of possible costs including regular (perhaps not annual)
septic system maintenance, replacement or installation. Among the rural poor the installation
and maintenance of septic systems can represent a substantial financial burden not captured
within the concept of monthly user fees. While the AHS does ask about annual maintenance
costs for the residence in its entirety, answers may not reflect costs put into the system which are
not incurred on an annual basis nor would it reflect needed but unaffordable costs that were not
put into the system due to financial constraints. Although more comprehensive, like the
decennial census the AHS falls quite short of fully capturing the complexity of sanitation needs
and constraints among America’s poor.
Given the limitations of the available survey data and the lack of complexity in which
sanitation is measured, it is difficult to say what the extent of available sanitation access is today,
particularly among poor and marginalized communities which may struggle with more than just
infrastructural challenges in meeting their sanitation needs. Sanitation as a concept encompasses

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 multiple dimensions relevant to needs around water and sewer access including a) nutritional and
dietary needs associated with drinking water and water for cooking, b) hygienic needs related to
washing and bathing that when unaddressed contribute to the spread of disease, c) industrial
needs associated with the use of water in production systems, irrigation, and the day-to-day
operations and maintenance of businesses, d) political struggles around resource and
infrastructure access as particularly related to possibilities for economic development, and e)
moral implications associated with lack of cleanliness that may label individuals as “dirty,”
“ignorant,” and “backwards” (Biehl 2001; Briggs and Mantini-Briggs 2003). Within a complex
web of state policies, disjointed and discontinued federal programs, as well as racialized and
moralized national programs for housing and social services, disentangling impacts for
individuals may be best articulated through understanding unique situated and historical
community contexts related to water and wastewater service challenges.
Conclusion
Throughout human civilization the management of water for human purposes has helped
to shape and empower those who have been able to control it to meet their own needs. Allowing
societies to generate surplus through agriculture, water is one of the essential factors in the
generation of wealth and potentially inequalities. The United States lagged behind Europe in the
development of water and wastewater infrastructure and treatment technologies in part because
the United States represented the new frontier, wild and open and less immediately challenged
by the disease problems dense European populations experienced. Disease outbreaks did hit the
United States, though, and there was great cause for concern among residents of affected cities
and neighboring cities. With time public disease concerns led to pressure to create change
related to ongoing and increasing sanitary problems within the growing nation.

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 As sanitation sciences were blossoming, the world was in a time of great turbulence.
World War I challenged the financial and human resources of the United States and in the
coming years the economy began to decline. By 1929 uncertainty was growing so that the stock
market crash of Black Thursday set in motion a cascade of economic downturn. To restore and
regenerate the nation, succeeding presidencies invested in the public through infrastructure
construction projects to provide employment opportunities and social welfare safety nets
provided through the Social Security Act. These programs were inadequate to restore the nation
in the same way that World War II was able to do only a few years later.
In spite of the withdrawal of some of the projects and agencies arising from the New Deal
programs, the country continued to invest heavily in water and wastewater infrastructure in order
to keep pace with industrial development and residential reorganization. These rapid changes
coupled with minimal regulation strained existing resources and exceeded the carrying capacity
of natural environments. Environmental degradation became the norm until public outcry
garnered enough political support to redress the damage already done. Earth Day brought
national attention to environmental problems and helped to dilute public critiques of the already
unpopular war in Vietnam. Environmental regulation was in part brought about not by concern
for collapsing ecosystems but by easing pressure on industrial-military critiques of ongoing war.
Significant financial investments in civic infrastructure and public welfare reversed
course during the Reagan presidency so that by the time of the Clinton administration programs
had entirely been eliminated, replaced, or scheduled to be phased out. The shifting priorities
were a symptom of the new neoliberal governance priorities taking hold. Neoliberalism
organizes the wellbeing of the nation around market values that emphasize increasing profits,
decreasing funds for and the privatization of public goods, and individual responsibility in life.

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 With regards to sanitation, neoliberalism works in concert to intensify values already
apparent in a biopolitical shift in public health brought about by contagionists. While sanitary
engineering operated under an incorrect theory of disease, the approaches to waste management
offered widespread public health protective measures through advocating for comprehensive
water delivery and sanitation collection systems. Germ theorists downplayed the importance of
sanitation in favor of targeting vaccination programs against disease agents and the treatment of
individual diseases held in individual bodies. Funding priorities in health care throughout the
20th century have shifted away from widespread public health measures, which are less
profitable, towards medicalization and treatment of disease through specific pharmaceutical
agents applied to individual bodies, which carries massive profit potential.
The outcome of these shifts has left marginalized communities with decaying and failing
sanitation infrastructure or no infrastructure at all and few financial and social resources to
leverage in order to improve their environmental conditions. Having failed to benefit from
historic social programs designed to improve the lives of white citizens, poor communities of
color face additional challenges in meeting their contemporary housing and public health needs.
Finally, given the perception that the United States has achieved a particular universal state of
sanitation, little to no attention is given to the needs of those whose communities never arrived at
that threshold. Mandatory vaccination of children in public schools and community health
systems has helped to keep mortality from infectious diseases to a minimum and sanitation is an
issue understood as widely faced by struggling developing countries. Without contagious
disease outbreaks and with statistics indicating that the United States has comprehensive water
and wastewater access, those without full sanitation disappear from the public consciousness
entirely.

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 CHAPTER 4

INSANITARY SEWAGE IN THE SOUTH

The Code of Alabama 1975: Section 22-26-1
Insanitary sewage facilities menacing public health.
It shall be unlawful and shall constitute a misdemeanor to build, maintain or use an insanitary
sewage collection, treatment and disposal facility or one that is or is likely to become a menace
to the public health anywhere within the state, including plumbing facilities, privies, septic tank
systems, other private collection and disposal systems, sewer lines, public or private, municipal,
community, subdivision or other treatment plant and disposal units, but excluding plumbing
within structures located within the police jurisdiction of municipal corporations and regulated
by the municipal corporation.
(Acts 1969, No. 1127, p. 2089, §1.)

Introduction
Leaving the paved road, I turn onto a narrow dirt road. Pastures line both sides but are
soon replaced with small, aged wood-frame houses. On the right I pass a building, which
appears to be a former corner store spray-painted with graffiti. The windows are boarded up
and the walls are rusty and weathered. About a quarter mile down the road I arrive at the home
of the woman who I will interview. She lives in a doublewide trailer surrounded by four or five
other trailers, all appearing at first glance to be in relatively good condition. In the middle of
the trailers is a small wood framed home with a collapsing roof. This home, apparently now
abandoned, draws in my gaze with the many stories it must have to tell. As I step out of the car,
the warm, moist air carries with it the faint but distinct smell of sewage, an odor I had not
noticed when I recently visited on a drier day.
The home is owned by an elderly African American woman who, during the interview,
describes how her septic system came to fail. She says that she had a properly installed septic
system but during an effort to put in a garden, a tractor drove over the top of her tank, cracking

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 the cap and allowing for water infiltration, which causes the system to overflow into her yard.
She insists that the septic tank is fine; it only needs a new cap. After the interview ends I ask if I
can see the spot in the yard where her system is overflowing. The patch that she points to is wet
and the grass here is a brighter, richer green than the grass nearby. On a day like today, warm
but not hot, damp but not raining, the smell is distinct but not strong. She says on hot days the
smell escaping from the tank is easy to detect.
As we stand beside her trailer, the woman directs me to look at a nearby trailer some
twenty yards away. This is the home of one of her daughters. She points to a 55-gallon drum
lying on its side with a white PVC pipe leading to the drum. This trailer has a drum like that one
buried under the ground as a septic tank, she says. The PVC pipe carries raw sewage from the
home to the drum, which serves as a small settling tank. While she speaks, a male relative who I
believe to be in his thirties grows visibly agitated. He had kept his distance during the interview
but when we stepped outside to see the septic tanks he accompanied us. Now, his face is rigid
and stern, conveying either frustration or anger. He interrupts her to say that the daughter’s
trailer has a septic system. The woman repeats to me, clarifying that yes, the trailer has a 55gallon drum as a septic tank buried in the ground. This time more assertively and firmly he
says, “it HAS a septic system.” His voice is reproaching and hostile. His tone and demeanor
unsettle me and I feel as though he is glaring directly at me. At this point we both understand
that the conversation has ended and she says, “yes, it has a septic system.”
Departing the elderly woman and the younger man, I turn to interview another male
relative who lives in the cluster of trailers. Unlike the woman’s home which was brightly lit,
decorated with family photos and garland, and smelled of sausage and pancakes, this man’s
home is in a state of decay. The front porch sags and the floorboards inside the trailer groan

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 with each step. The floor appears to be collapsing and repairs have been made by layering
additional patches of linoleum over gaps in the floor below. The air is caustic and my throat
burns from a chemical pesticide vapor that lingers throughout the interview. I gasp to catch my
breath and composure, hoping he does not notice my discomfort.
The interview lasts only thirty minutes but during that time more than thirteen rifle shots
go off somewhere very nearby. The first shot explodes with such unexpected ferociousness that I
leap in my seat, awkwardly laughing to make light of my obvious surprise. The shots are close
but not immediately outside and occur sporadically, roughly every minute and a half. At the end
of the interview, he takes me to the back of his home to see where a PVC pipe, around four
inches in diameter, runs straight out from the bottom of the trailer and onto the ground. At this
time this home has no running water and he fetches water from a standpipe outside. Some
months earlier the pipes in the trailer broke and, not physically being able to get under the
trailer to repair them, he shut the water off to the trailer. The toilet flushes with water poured
into the tank but little water flows through the system at this time.
Leaving the second interview, I walk towards the first trailer and I can see two men
standing next to a parked truck that is about twenty feet from my own vehicle. It is at this time
that I realize that this where the gunshots are being fired from. The younger man who had
discouraged the elderly woman from talking to me is one of the two men. As I approach they
both go back inside the first trailer. Before I left for the next interview the woman had been
prepared to tell me about her other relatives and neighbors who were struggling with septic
problems of their own. Now, she knows of no one. She says that she cannot think of anyone else
who has trouble with their septic system and she insists that the only thing wrong with hers is a
busted cap (Field Notes 1, October 2009).

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 Arrests for Improper Septic Systems
Reflecting on that day, my persistence through the second interview was not a reflection
of my own character but rather of my own lack of understanding of the context and the degree of
fear permeating the community. There was no reason that the family should trust me and they
faced severe consequences if their trust had been misplaced. My possible contribution to a
broader understanding of sanitation impairment in the United States would bring this family no
closer to a repaired septic tank nor to the installation of new tanks, but possible disclosure did
expose them to the risk of heavy fines, substantial costs from being forced to install an approved
septic system, eviction, or even arrest. As it was, I became aware of Lowndes County, Alabama
because of media attention and community actions that emerged as the result of a series of arrests
and threats of arrests in the county.
As private struggles, little public awareness about septic tank problems in Lowndes
County existed until an article was published on January 20, 2002 in the Montgomery Advertiser
detailing the legal struggles of Terrence and Sandra Fields (Benn 2002a). The intent of the
article was to talk about new opportunities for addressing poverty in the Black Belt region3 as a
result of federal authorization of funding in 2000 for the formation of the Delta Regional
Authority (DRA).4 At the time of publication of this newspaper article, Catherine Flowers, a
former resident of Lowndes County who grew up in the county and whose family still resided
there, was working with the County Commission towards economic development in Lowndes
County. Speaking with local residents, Ms. Flowers was attempting to gather information about
3

The Black Belt is a region that stretches across the Southeastern portion of the United States and is characterized
by a dark, heavy, dense clay type of soil. This area today is associated with high rates of poverty, particularly in
Alabama and Mississippi, in no small part because of the challenges that the soil presents for agriculture and
drainage. The Black Belt is also associated with high percentages of African Americans as a historical result of
cotton growing slave plantations formerly located in the region.
4
The DRA covers counties in eight states, most of which can be found along the Mississippi River from Illinois to
Louisiana and in the Black Belt region of Alabama.

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 poor living conditions and high utility costs in the county. In the process, she was directed to the
article in the Montgomery Advertiser and was additionally informed of stories of other residents
living in the county who faced similar challenges with their septic systems.
Terrence and Sandra Fields, like many others, faced jail time for being in violation of the
state health code on the sanitary handling of sewage. Their property, described in the article as
being a “compound,” consisted of roughly an acre of land, five trailers, and as many as eighteen
family members, including children (Benn 2002a). The Fields lived with a makeshift sewage
handling system where PVC piping directed sewage from the homes and into a ditch. From here,
the effluent flowed through the ditch and into a lagoon, roughly 100 yards away. For two and a
half years the Fields found themselves in court in front of Judge Terri Bozeman, District Judge
for Lowndes County. Judge Bozeman stated that she initially had sympathy for the family but
when she learned that children lived on the property, her sympathy waned. Bozeman ordered
the Fields to install a properly functioning, permitted septic system in sixty days or face jail time
and eviction from the land that they owned. The Fields were told by the health department that
a septic system that would meet the needs for all five homes on the property would cost between
$40,000-$50,000 (Bible Baptist Church Town Hall, April 2002, p72). When sixty days passed
and no septic system had been installed, Terrence told the judge “you can kill me, bury me, put
me in jail. The situation gonna still be there when I get out” (Bible Baptist Church Town Hall,
April 2002, p70). The Fields were among 37 families that in early 2002 were identified by the
county health department as being in violation of The Code of Alabama, Section 022-026-001
and who were threatened with jail time.
While few residents spent any actual time in a jail cell, Irene Mason is believed to have
spent the most time in a jail cell because of her septic issues. The first time Ms. Mason was

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 arrested because of her septic issues was in December of 1999 (Irene’s Arrest Record 1999).
After three years of court appearances, Ms. Mason was arrested again on April 15, 2002. This
time she spent three days in jail for contempt of court after failing to install a permitted septic
system and improve the family’s living conditions. The family faced financial hardship as a
result of Ms. Mason’s disability. Unable to work and receiving monthly disability payments for
income, the family struggled to pay power bills that averaged $400-$500 per month (Bible
Baptist Church Town Hall, April 2002, p55). The household had no running water but instead
relied upon a hose connected to the neighbors’ water pipe. Howard Mason, Irene’s husband,
tried to rectify the families living conditions by purchasing a prefabricated septic tank for $550.
Because the Health Department requires systems to be designed for each specific location, it
rejected the tank and told Mr. Mason that he would still need someone to come out and design a
system for his property.
Through the process of interacting with the Health Department and going before the
judge, the Mason family felt demeaned and belittled. Of the public health officer, Mr. Mason
said that he “talk[ed] to us like trash” (Bible Baptist Church Town Hall, April 2002, p56).
According to Mason, the officer said “his hog pen smelled better than [Mr. Mason’s] backyard”
(Bible Baptist Church Town Hall, April 2002, p60). Mason continued, “…when you put my
wife in jail, that’s just too far. She is disabled. She can’t work. I mean, to lose everything
you’ve got about a septic tank…” (Bible Baptist Church Town Hall, April 2002, p57). “Then
when you save all the money you can for your septic tank…then when your light bill come out
one month and it’s a thousand dollars, you don’t understand. How is this happening? When you
pay that light bill, there goes your house note; there go your land payments” (Bible Baptist
Church Town Hall, April 2002, p58). “I’m not ashamed of [where I live]…I call that home.

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 That’s my land. I worked hard for that piece of land. But to see the man I bought it from
wanting to take it from me…So what I had to do, I had to go file bankruptcy…to see everything
I’ve got just go down the drain. Then you still go to court” (Bible Baptist Church Town Hall,
April 2002, p59).
As awareness grew about the arrests, Catherine Flowers worked to build public
momentum by bringing people from inside the county, state, and at the national level in to see
the homes of residents who struggled with septic problems. Visitors described that while some
homes were in relatively good condition, others bore scars of neglect and decay associated with
abject poverty.
Three of them had floors that were, uh, basically useless except for the structural parts, so
they had beams under running the, floor boards, uh, but the floor boards were beaten out,
so people, including us, would kind walk from…joist to joist on the floor. You couldn’t
step in between them for fear of falling through. And so in places like in the kitchen,
where they had to stand, people just kinda stacked plywood to protect the floor, but as we
toured, toured and visited their homes, uh, they told us, ya know, don’t step on that spot,
you’ll fall through. And you could see a basically, like a waffle, like a waffle
configuration. These floor boards run in this direction and gaps where the floor was
breaking down, and um honestly, that’s gonna let air in, that’s gonna let bugs, ya know,
the homes were physically breaking down.
–Jerry, a white man, health professional serving Lowndes County, non-resident
I mean you would not want to live in that condition….I mean, it looked like a Third
World country. And it still does in many areas.… some of the things you see, you just
wouldn’t believe are going on in this day and age….[raw sewage] just running all over
the ground.
–Paula, a white woman, public servant, Lowndes County resident
Living conditions were often particularly upsetting for observers when they visited areas
where groups of people lived because multiple people were contributing to the release of waste
in one concentrated space. Many families in Lowndes County live in clusters of three or four or
more trailers on a family plot of land, which may be one to several. Each of these households
was described as poor, living on some type of social support (social security, disability or other

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 government assistance); they often had two or three children, and all of the households were
African American, although it was known that some White households also had similar
circumstances. During a visit to one family property around the time of the arrests, it was
observed that the family was dumping raw sewage onto the ground in a makeshift lagoon. At
another home the toilet in the house was not connected to a septic system but instead flowed into
a bucket under the trailer. When the bucket was full the woman living in the mobile home took
the bucket and dumped it out into the woods. Others homes had plumbing connected to the
toilets and sinks and would run pipes dumping sewage into the woods. The pipes would carry
the sewage between 20-40 feet from the house and then directly discharge to the top of the soil.
The Health Department referred to this practice as having “positive sewage outlets” while others
referred to it as “straight piping.”
The perception by those not living with septic challenges was often that residents were
unmotivated to change their circumstances (Field notes 2, October 2009) or that they were
greedy and uncooperative.
‘Every month the family would be back in court. … The Health Department was working
with them. People in the community were working with them trying to get them grants to
put in a system. And in the meantime, during the whole process additional mobile homes
would be brought into their area, their acre or half a acre and they were adding more
people into the…into their little compound area. And it was just… if you could just not
bring anybody else in. Don’t bring anybody else in. Well, they weren’t eligible for any
grants because of the amount of social security disability that was coming into that group
of people in that little small area. Like, you know, one time I think it was like over
$10,000 a month for that one little area.
–Paula, a white woman, public servant, Lowndes County resident
While $10,000 a month at first glance is substantial, this family group was reported to
have eighteen members living in the area. Since there were multiple households in this location,
an average family unit of four persons per household can be used to calculate an initial estimate
of household income. $10,000 per month for eighteen residents works out to roughly $26,700

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 annually for a household of four; for 2002 this was only 1.4 times the federal poverty level and
well within low-income subsidy thresholds (US Census 2003).
Like the Mason family, many families tried to have functional septic systems installed
but for a variety of reasons the process failed them. In October of 1999 Gus Stewart was first
issued a citation by the Lowndes County Health Department to rectify the unsanitary living
conditions on their property (Gus’ Arrest Record 2001). Attempting to address the conditions on
their property, Gus and Dorothy Stewart hired a septic tank installer to put in a system for them.
The septic installer put a septic tank in the ground but did not put in drain fields, which are
required for treatment and disposal of the wastewater (West 2005). The installer left with the
Stewart’s money but without completing the full system installation. After the installer left them
with an unfinished system, the Stewarts did not have the financial resources available to repair
and complete the system. Faced with losing their home, their car, and possible arrest, in 2000
the couple was forced to file for bankruptcy to address their debts (Benn 2003). When the
situation had not yet been remedied, in March of 2001 Gus was arrested (Gus’ Arrest Record
2001).
Daisy Baker was not a resident of Lowndes County, but rather she lived in nearby
Montgomery County (Associated Press 2004). Ms. Baker had three trailers on her property that
discharged to a single septic system (Taylor 2004c).

The Baker family was cited for having

raw sewage discharging onto their property as a result of a failure of the system, which was over
capacity (Associated Press 2004). In spite of having hired an engineering company to design and
install the system, it was termed as “makeshift” and “bootleg” in the newspaper articles written
about their circumstances (Anonymous 2004a; Taylor 2004b).

The Montgomery County

Health Department first became involved with Ms. Baker in 1999 when a neighbor complained

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 that raw sewage was flowing downhill from the Baker property and into the neighbor’s yard.
After reaching no resolution or improvement in the living conditions, the Health Department
took Ms. Baker to court in 2002. On March 1st, 2004 the judge ordered the family off of the
property and ordered that the water to the home be shut-off (Anonymous 2004a; Anonymous
2004b).
With nowhere to go, the family moved into a campground in Lowndes County and set up
tents where they stayed for one week. Learning of their situation, Flowers and the National
Center for Neighborhood Enterprise (NCNE)5 paid to have them moved into a hotel while more
permanent housing could be arranged (Anonymous 2004a; Taylor 2004a). The general sanitation
supervisor with the Montgomery County Public Health Department seemed to hold little
sympathy for the situation after so much time. He said, “it’s one thing after another—anything
she can think of to stall for time…I’ve been to court with her at least 10 different times…What
are you going to do with somebody who doesn’t comply, doesn’t obey the court, doesn’t pay the
fines?” (Associated Press 2004). The article stated that the sanitation supervisor felt that it was
“unfortunate that [Baker] can’t afford to fix the septic system, but…she has refused to cooperate
since the county took her to court in 2002.” NCNE worked to have a proper septic system
installed so that the Baker family was able to return to their home without further fear of action
by the Health Department. No report in any of the newspapers described any penalties to the
engineering firm for designing an improper and inadequate septic system.
Arrest records dating from November 11, 1999 to April 25, 2002 obtained from the
Hayneville Courthouse showed that at least ten people, all African American, were formally
5

Since 1981, the focus for NCNE has been a bootstraps and grassroots approach to economic development
primarily in urban communities in the United States. NCNE works with local organizations to provide training and
technical assistance to build capacity and social capital within communities so that projects can be self-sustaining
and ultimately NCNE can move on to other projects. In 2006 “National” was dropped from NCNE’s name,
simplifying it to the Center for Neighborhood Enterprise (CNE).

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 charged with being in violation of Alabama State Code 022-026-001, which says that no person
can operate a sewage disposal system that is likely to pose a public health risk. Of those ten,
some were also charged with being in violation of section 022-026-002, which states the State
Board of Health compels households to install properly functioning sewage disposal systems,
and section 022-026-003, which states that only systems that have been approved by the State
Board of Health can be installed.
Each person who was arrested received a legal notice from the Lowndes County Health
Department that they were in violation of the code. For those residents who were arrested, the
records show that typically more than a year and a half lapsed between the first citation and the
issuance of an arrest warrant. For one family, three years passed before a warrant was issued,
while for two other families only three to four months were given to rectify their circumstances
before a warrant was issued. In each case of arrest, residents faced a class C misdemeanor, a fine
of up to $500,6 court costs, and the order to remedy the sewage situation on their property. Some
found out about the warrant while coming to the courthouse for other reasons such as to pay
traffic tickets. One woman was picked up on a traffic violation in Montgomery and spent the
weekend in jail while awaiting transfer to Lowndes County. In most cases, each person came to
or was brought to the county courthouse, fingerprinted and processed, and released on $500 bond
the same day.
Raising Awareness: Town Hall Meetings
In early 2002, Catherine Flowers was working as an economic development coordinator
in Lowndes County. She was participating in efforts, which were ultimately successful, aimed at
6

During interviews, Lowndes County Public Health Department officials reported that it was in their purview to
issue up to a $500 per day fine during the period in which the property was in violation of the state code. State
officials said that this assessment is available across the state but that most counties do not elect to utilize it. While
Lowndes County officials did not indicate that they had ever issued the per day citation, they were quick to point out
that it was within their power to do so.

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 bringing two tier-one suppliers to Lowndes County (Clanton 2003).7 Flowers had already been
in contact with Bob Woodson, founder of NCNE, regarding the dire poverty conditions in
Lowndes County. Flowers, along with County Commissioner Charlie King, and several others
went to Washington DC to meet with Woodson regarding economic development opportunities
in Lowndes County. When Flowers learned about the arrests related to septic systems, Flowers
sent a copy of the original newspaper article to Woodson (Benn 2002b).
Woodson was initially reluctant to become involved with the problems of Lowndes
County because of NCNE’s focus on urban community development. Upon hearing about the
septic problems in the area, however, Woodson was appalled. Woodson arrived in Lowndes
County with a contingent of business leaders and representatives of foundations. The official
purpose of the trip was to do fact-finding but during the visit Flowers and Woodson called a
press conference to alert the media and the public about the living conditions and the threat of
arrests. Woodson and Flowers met with the Lowndes County Health Department and were
provided with a list of families who were in jeopardy of being arrested if their septic problems
were not addressed quickly. After meeting with a general practice lawyer working in the county,
the pair called for a series of large, public (“mass”) meetings to occur in churches throughout the
county. All but one of eight mass meetings, preserved by NCNE through recordings and
transcriptions, took place in traditionally African American churches, while the other was held at
a town hall in a predominately African American community.
7

These factories work to assemble factory parts ‘just in time’ to ship to the new Hyundai plant, which was
constructed in Montgomery County. The tier-one suppliers were heavily coveted as they brought the potential for
200-300 jobs to the economically struggling county (Clanton 2003). Chairman of the County Commission Charlie
King said "It will help reduce the unemployment rate, increase our industrial base and improve the quality of life for
our citizens” (ibid). The larger of the two plants, the Deahan plant, which would pay between $8 to $10 per hour
for workers to assemble sound insulation components, was enticed to come to Lowndes County through an offer of a
waiver of property taxes for 10 years, donated land for the construction of the facility, infrastructural improvements
to make the site ready for the construction of the facility, and pre-screening and training of all potential and newly
hired employees. Daehan representatives said that “Daehan decided on Lowndes County because you demonstrated
you really wanted us” (ibid).

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 The first mass meeting took place at Bible Baptist Church in April 2002. Introducing
Flowers and Woodson at the first meeting was Bob Mants, former Student Nonviolent
Coordinating Committee (SNCC) field secretary and one of four organizers of the original Selma
to Montgomery March on Bloody Sunday in March of 1965. Born in Atlanta, Georgia, Mants
remained in Lowndes County after coming to organize for voting rights with SNCC. At the start
of each of the mass meetings, references were made to the Civil Rights legacy in the county and
each organizer’s connection to that history. In doing so the speakers both suggested their insider
status and connection to the community as well as pointed to a moment of pride and successful
mobilization for change within the county. In his opening remarks during the first meeting,
Mants implied to the audience that improvements in their living circumstances were on the
horizon: “tonight I assure you that this is the beginning of a change that’s going to come for
Lowndes County” (Bible Baptist Church Town Hall, April 2002, p3-4).
During Mants’ opening remarks at the second meeting, which took place at Faith Baptist
Church, Mants said, “it was at this church in 1966 that black people for the first time in Lowndes
County history had an opportunity to vote for candidates here in Lowndes County, under the
emblem of the black panther, so this is nothing new to us. This is home and we certainly feel
welcome” (Faith Baptist Church Town Hall, May 2002, p3). Although later organizers would
argue that poverty and sanitation problems in Lowndes County were not confined to racial
boundaries, the framing of the problem from the beginning was colored with poignant symbols
and narratives from racial struggles within the county.
Held in April and May of 2002, the first five meetings served as information gathering
sessions. Initial meetings were broad and audience members were asked to speak widely about
their struggles with poverty in the county. When the scope of problems in the county was

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 revealed, the focus was quickly narrowed to gathering stories, first about septic system
challenges and secondarily about perceived improper billing practices by the local electricity
company, Pioneer Electric Cooperative. As a result, audience members spoke most freely in the
initial meetings, bringing up issues of exorbitant power bills, experiences with and fears about
arrests associated with failing septic systems, anger towards the public health department, and
threats of eviction from homes and properties.
Many residents chose to focus first on the issue of high power bills. During each of the
information gathering meetings, residents presented stories of power bills amounting to several
hundred to over a thousand dollars per month. As the meetings progressed, organizers asked
residents to bring in copies of their power bills to document the high charges. Many people
made statements about the unfairness of such high power bills for low-income families. One
woman said, “I’m a single parent with two children. …why do I have to pay six or $700 light
bill in low-income housing? I don’t have anything already. That’s why I’m here. And now here
I’ve got to pay $250 rent and then a $700 light bill” (Bible Baptist Church Town Hall, April
2002, p87). During the meetings it was said that Pioneer Electric responded to assertions of high
bills by saying that bills were high because they went unpaid or because households were
inefficient in their use of electricity. To that, meeting attendees countered with, “the lowest light
bill I had since ’98 was $300” (Faith Baptist Church Town Hall, May 2002, p35) and “nobody is
at my mother’s house in the evening time. … There’s nothing pulling in my mother’s house
where she has to pay $600 a month. Nothing” (Faith Baptist Church Town Hall, May 2002,
p36).
Residents felt as though their bills were inconsistent and that billing practices were not
transparent. There was no explanation for why bills would be at one rate one month and several

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 times higher the next, without significant changes in household use. When they would try to
work with the power company to resolve their power bills, Pioneer Electric came across as
unsympathetic in working with them and unwilling to make compromises so that power would
remain on at the home while residents made payments that they could afford: “Yesterday, I paid
all I had on my lights. When I got home, they had disconnected my service and left a notice on
the door that I needed to pay $638.88 to get my lights back on” (Bible Baptist Church Town
Hall, April 2002, p86). Once power was shut off at the home, additional fees compounded
making restoration of service even more difficult. One resident described her experience in
saying, “but you want me to come up with $500 to get my lights back on. How am I gonna come
up with it…? Y’all just added on another $250 that I need to get them back because you came
and taken them” (Bible Baptist Church Town Hall, April 2002, p89).
Through their experiences residents felt as though they were caught in a trap with no one
able to help them escape. One woman had no family resources left to draw from. She said,
my parents’ funds are drained from me and my kids. Me and my children made pallets at
my grandfather’s last night because it was too cold for us to stay in that trailer. And
besides, everything is totally electric, so that means we don’t have hot water; we don’t
have a stove. The few groceries that I do have, if I don’t move them soon they’re gonna
be bad.
–Bible Baptist Church Town Hall, April 2002, p87-88
While community assistance funds were supposed to be available, when actually contacted their
funds were depleted as well. “They gave me a list this long. I’ve called every resource there is.
No one had any funds” (Bible Baptist Church Town Hall, April 2002, p86). One woman who
lived in subsidized housing provided by a church, felt abandoned even by her religion.

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 You know, I’m just all cried out. I stood on church ground nearly on my hands and
knees begging this pastor for help, and you know what he told me? Sister, pray about it.
My lights is off. You know, you’re the same person that said you was coming here and
making living arrangements with this trailer much better, and it seems like it’s getting
worse….You know what they tell me? Well…that’s your problem,
–Bible Baptist Church Town Hall, April 2002, p90
Frustration and anger had reach its boiling point for some when they were unable to reach
compromise with the utility:
We built a new house …and the light bill was always like, okay, $60, $50, $45 for four
months. All of a sudden, they made an annual check, and my light bill jumped up to $200.
I paid the 200; it went to 350. And after the 350, I got a $759 light bill one month. So I
called them and asked them, I said, I think y'all made a mistake on my light bill. They
said, ‘no, sir, I don't think we made a mistake.’ I said, I think y'all did; it went from three
months under a hundred dollars, and I said, now it's 779 or something like that. So she
told me, ‘no, we didn't make a mistake.’ I said, well, I see why peoples come in and shoot
their bossman, the secretary. I said, and they kill maybe four or five of the workers,
because y'all robbing us. Now, y'all don't know me from anybody, and you think I'm not
upset. ‘Well, [Sir], you're going to have to pay.’ I said, okay, if I got to pay it, y'all need
to set me up on a payment plan. So they asked me what could I pay. I said, well, I can
pay anywhere maybe a hundred dollar until I get it caught up or maybe 150 until I get this
light bill paid. I gave so much then, when I came back down there the next month, my
light bill was something like $70. Okay. It did that for about two months; then it came
right back to 200 something again. …. Sometime the bill be 300, sometime be 400,
sometime be 150. Some days, it'll jump back up. I asked the lady, I said, look, I heat by
wood; I cook by gas. I said, so what could be running my light bill so high? She still
couldn't explain.
–Grace Baptist Church Town Hall, May 2002, p42-44
Although two distinct problems, electricity and septic challenges were directly connected
for some residents in Lowndes County. Several residents reported that the electric company
refused to turn power on to their homes if they did not have a properly functioning septic system.
By the fourth meeting some residents had brought in bills showing that charges had been
assessed on the basis of septic system status. One family showed a receipt where they had been
charged a “$773 construction fee, and they charged them this so that they could hook up their
power without having a septic tank” (Temple Baptist Church Town Hall, May 2002, p33).
Flowers stated that the organizers had been presented with a situation where

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 one individual had paid, I think, a $500 fee to connect to a power…one of those electric
cooperatives a year ago, and still doesn’t have lights. And they refused to give him lights
because he doesn’t have a septic tank and he has a generator that he has borrowed from
somebody that he uses from time to time just so he can have electricity. That makes
absolutely no sense. They have not returned his money.
–Temple Baptist Church Town Hall, May 2002, p36
When residents tried to purchase prefabricated tanks to install their own septic systems,
their plans were rejected and they were told by the health department that their properties
required engineer designed systems. Such systems are typically raised mound systems that allow
leach fields to release effluent into dirt mounds, which must be brought into the site from
elsewhere in the county.8 Raised mound systems in Lowndes County varied between $10,000$15,000, which some residents did pay, often without full understanding of why this particular
system was required. The mound systems make large sections of property unusable and
frustrated residents felt as though they ruined the aesthetic of their properties. One woman said
“…but they did mess up my yard with this raised bed. The dirt in front of my house this tall and
I don’t like that. I wish it was something that they could have did to not put all that dirt in front
of my house. And then on top of that the commode still don’t flush like it ought to” (City Town
Hall, May 2002, p25). She was not the only resident to complain that even the engineered
systems failed. Another woman said, “my husband and I put out $10,000 for this septic tank. So
what happen when winter come? The rain washes it away. Did the man come back to fix it or
did anybody make him? No” (Faith Baptist Church Town Hall, May 2002, p33). One family
had their system fail during a major family event as a result of numerous cars parked on top of
the mound. The cars crushed the treatment system and resulted in raw sewage seeping out of the
bottom of the mound. For most, though, such systems were simply out of reach. As one woman
aptly stated, “in Dutch Bend there is only family members, basically. You talk about $10,000 for
8

See Figure 4.1 in the Appendix for illustrations and pictures of raised mound systems, which are the most common
engineered systems for the heavy, dense, clay soil found throughout the Black Belt region.

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 a septic system; we can barely pay $200 a month for rent. How are we going to come up with
that kind of money for a septic system? If I had $10,000 for a septic system, I wouldn’t be in
Dutch Bend. I ain’t no lie” (Grace Baptist Church Town Hall, May 2002, p49).
As a result of not being able to afford the installation of approved septic systems, a
number of families faced eviction from their property. The removal from the property, however,
was not about improving the living conditions of the family that was currently living in
substandard conditions. The removal was about displacement:
The judge talked about moving. I said, where we going when we move? She said, I
don’t care where you go, just if you move. Anywhere you go, you have to have a septic
tank. I can’t afford to move. I can’t afford to stay there. So what can we do?
–Bible Baptist Church Town Hall, April 2002, p73
Evictions from property owned by the residents justifiably led to anger and confusion. At
the public meetings the participants wanted an explanation as to how this was allowed to happen.
One woman raised the question,
When people’s land is taken because they cannot put in the tanks or pay…what happens
to the land? Who does it go to? Can somebody answer that question for me, please? …
Because if this is something that’s been instituted and it becomes a pattern, a certain
amount of land being taken, in the pattern, it’s way beyond…okay…septic tanks and
utility bills.
–Faith Baptist Church Town Hall, May 2002, p33
Her question was never answered at any of the meetings. At the first meeting one of the
residents suggested that the land displacement was intentional. He described an experience
where a surveyor had come to his property unsolicited and when he tried to follow up with the
surveyor, the surveyor never returned. He cautioned the audience, “you need to check your land,
check on your property, check on your deeds, because people are taking land” (Bible Baptist
Church Town Hall, April 2002, p95).
Further reinforcing feelings that the arrests and evictions were no accident, residents

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 asked who was contacting the public health department to make complaints about sewage
problems. Officially, the public health department stated that they did not investigate any homes
based on suspicion of faulty septic systems or any sort of systematic assessments. Rather, they
visited homes on a complaint by complaint basis. In order for the public health department to
come to your home to determine if the system was up to code, someone had to call the health
department to make a complaint. Once a complaint was made, the health department was
required to investigate the household in question.
Residents wanted to know if there was any way to find out who was making complaints
about the systems but the health department complaint reporting system is anonymous. As one
official said during an interview, without the anonymous reporting system and with the potential
for people to be arrested or lose their homes, it is difficult to imagine anyone feeling safe to
come forward to make a complaint about their neighbor’s sewage effluent problem. Although
this seems like a reasonable argument in support of the anonymous system, it does fail to account
for the residential distribution of the county. This concern was raised by one meeting participant
who pushed back at the idea that complaints were coming in from neighbors:
All of these people that are getting complaints, if they…the blacks that they say they’re
against, I notice half of these people are already on neighborhood families. What are
they making complaints on, their self? Mothers and kids on all the property. Hundreds
of acres of land? Who’s making the complaint? Seems like the installers are making the
complaint for the money to me. They…that’s why there are so many anonymous calls
because they know who that anonymous caller is. But they want to lock everybody up.
Gonna put all of us in jail.
–Faith Baptist Church Town Hall, May 2002, p82-83
In fact, during fieldwork in 2010 at a meeting of septic tank installers from around the
state it was acknowledged that the Health Department in general expects installers to make a
report when they observed a system out of compliance. The opinion of the installers was mixed.
Some installers felt that it was not their responsibility to be the police in reporting homeowners

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 to the health department. Others disagreed and said that they have a duty to report if they care
about the environment. Additionally, it was mentioned that for septic installers and pumpers
who perform a service at a property but fail to report the system to the health department, they
face the possibility of being held culpable by the health department if it can be insinuated that
somehow their service was substandard and contributed to the system failure.
Although the anonymous system protects those who make reports to the health
department from reprisal from those under investigation, it also prevents the health department
from providing any evidence to support their claims that complaints came primarily from
neighbors. As a result, in the minds of the residents there remained the possibility that
corruption and unscrupulous business practices played a part in whose homes were investigated.
In support of this belief, some residents reported having been told that there were only two
installers in the county licensed to install septic systems that would be approved by the county
health department. One man stated, “what it probably boils down to me, what I see, is that [the
environmentalist with the public health department] wants you to run to the person that he got
that he knows to buy or purchase a septic tank” (Bible Baptist Church Town Hall, April 2002,
p105). The issue was raised again at a later meeting when a different man suggested, “but I think
somebody needs to investigate Mr. Pugh [the environmentalist with the Lowndes County Health
Department]. I’m serious. I think this dude needs to be investigated” (Faith Baptist Church
Town Hall, May 2002, p70). Whether this standard of practice in Lowndes County was
encouraged by the Health Department or not, the perception that only certain people were
providing septic installation and maintenance services within the county was broadly held.
Catherine Flowers indicated that during the efforts to improve sanitation conditions in the

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 county, installers that she spoke with from outside of the county also refused to work in Lowndes
County.
While the public health department took the mass meetings as an opportunity to
communicate with and educate the public, not all responses to the mass meetings were favorable.
Flowers stated that
there was a special to the Lowndes Signal from Pioneer Electric, and based on…I guess
they were responding to our meetings and we’re going to give them the opportunity to
come out and response in person, but they were basically saying in the article that the
people were…that had the high utility bills, that it was more than one bill, but we’ve
collected bills from individuals that let us know that it’s more than…some of these 600
and 700 and 800…and we’ve seen bills as high as a thousand dollars a month, was just
for one month…
–Temple Baptist Church Town Hall, May 2002, p35
The argument that the residents were confused or lying about their bills resonated with what
many already believed about the situation in the community, even with those who desired to help
improve living conditions. Initial reactions were often to place blame on residents, which
Flowers observed when she went to Washington D.C. to seek financial help for improvement
efforts.
Because people for some reason…you know, I had to tell somebody this in Washington
Wednesday, when they were telling me, well, you know, the people, they’re running
those electric fans, and they’re running …said electric fans and space heaters…And one
gentleman, because I took copies of the bills to a meeting, one gentleman told me he has
a 6,000 square foot house, and if his bill was $300 a month he would be complaining
about it. So clearly there is something wrong.
–Temple Baptist Church Town Hall, May 2002, p35-36
Additionally, confusion about arrests spread. It was stated during the mass meetings that
the newspapers reported that no one had ever been arrested and that the group was lying about
arrests. Interestingly, even people who had been intimately involved with the public meetings
and the project from the beginning, during interviews in 2009-2010 reported that they were not
aware of or certain as to whether or not arrests had in fact occurred as related to septic system

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 issues. While arrest records clearly document that a minimum of ten people were in fact
arrested, semantically this point could be disputed because no evidence was ever presented for
anyone having been convicted of and sentenced to jail time at the county jail for septic problems.
While this was a possibility that everyone accused faced, the actual jail time was limited to the
time of arrest and lasted from two to four days, when anyone did spent time in a jail cell. The
wider response to issues residents were struggling with was demoralizing for residents. One man
said, “I’m tired of…every time we get up to speak, everybody get in the media and try to turn
everything we say into a lie. I’m quite sure everyone is not lying” (Faith Baptist Church Town
Hall, May 2002, p84).
As the meetings progressed, the sentiment from residents could already be seen to be
shifting from hopeful to being discouraged. One man said “what I want to know, is anybody
going to do anything about that? Y’all heard our problem. Is anybody gonna do anything?
That’s what I want to know. But I guess not” (Faith Baptist Church Town Hall, May 2002, p40).
Such questions were met on occasion with frustration by organizers, who felt like they could not
solve all of the community’s problems especially without active participation from the residents.
One organizer said,
For those of you that are wondering what we’re going to do, we’re not here just because
we didn’t have anything else to do. We all could have been at home doing something
else but we’re here for the purpose of finding a solution to the problem and we want you
to be … we’re drawing a line in the sand.
–Faith Baptist Church Town Hall, May 2002, p74
Organizers asserted that they were trying to shed light on the topic so that “something” could be
done, but over time even in the meetings blame shifted back onto the residents. Organizers
indicated that if residents had been more engaged in the polls, then they could have elected
people who would have made the situation better for them. One organizer stated, “I want to

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 remind you, too, that you had a choice for a district judge, and if you had chosen a different
person, perhaps we would not be here tonight with this problem” (Temple Baptist Church Town
Hall, May 2002, p6). A pastor at one of the churches told the audience,
solving the problem is you all. So don’t think that someone else is gonna do something
for you that you can’t do for yourself. The main thing you must do, number one, is stick
together. Number two, let people know what you’re going through. Don’t be ashamed of
what you’re struggling though because that’s where you’re gonna get your help.
–Faith Baptist Church Town Hall, May 2002, p73
Over time the series of five meetings during the first year began to carry a tone much
different than at the start of the meetings. The atmosphere during the first meetings was mixed
with collective outrage, indignation, and hope. The organizers of the meetings insisted that their
focus was to get down to the bottom of what was happening in Lowndes County and conveyed to
attendees at the meetings that they were being taken advantage of. Repeatedly, Flowers
informed everyone at the meetings who was on the original list of thirty-seven families that faced
arrest if their septic systems were not corrected. Audience members were asked to speak to all of
the problems that they were currently facing but when the overwhelming complexity of
challenges that residents living in poverty in Lowndes County faced was revealed, organizers
tried to limit discussions to power bills and septic tanks, preferring just to focus on septic tanks if
possible.
As the meetings continued, representatives from the county and state health departments
were present to explain the health department’s position on septic systems. When residents were
hostile to the health department even after the state health department declared a moratorium on
arrests, the organizers seemed to soften to working with the health department to solve the
community’s problems. At the final meeting during the first year, a representative from the State
Health Department said, “so again, we at the State Health Department, we do look forward to

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 working with all the concerns” (Grace Baptist Church Town Hall, May 2002, p22). The
allegiance that the organizers had worked to establish in the first meetings by detailing their
insider status in the community and connecting their own personal stories to the historic civil
rights struggles in the county had begun to erode. Instead, organizers started to position
themselves away from focusing on legal action against what residents felt were injustices
committed against them and towards collaborative action with the groups who had been
disciplining the residents for their unapproved living practices.
By the end of the series of meetings, a plan for moving forward had emerged. Flowers
announced that a number of people had contacted her interested in supporting the group’s efforts.
She stated that $350,000 had been offered as a grant by the county commission to help purchase
septic tanks, another $50,000 had been offered so that a communitywide door-to-door
assessment survey could be conducted, and that “the University of West Alabama…has received
a … two million dollar grant to do a demonstration project in Lowndes County” (Grace Baptist
Church Town Hall, May 2002, p21-22). Some residents asked if a centralized system could be
installed in the county and Flowers responded positively that they were investigating the
possibility of installing a decentralized system that would serve a cluster of households.9

She

said,
if we put in place various on-site individual systems in Black Belt, what happens to that
person that moves in a trailer tomorrow and can’t afford a septic system? When you’ve
got 400 families living right together, it makes more sense to put in a sewage system.
–Grace Baptist Church Town Hall, May 2002, p40
Later she stated that once a sewage system was in place, businesses would move into the area,
bringing with them the potential for jobs and economic stimulation. As the first series of

9

Incidentally, at $15,000 per household, $2.35 million would have been enough money to install 156 raised bed
septic systems. With estimates being reported that 1,200 homes in Lowndes County had septic problems, this
amount would have accounted for 13 percent of the problem if only onsite systems were installed.

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 meetings concluded, the next steps involving conducting the community assessment survey and
gathering information about what a decentralized demonstration project in Lowndes County
would look like emerged. Community members were asked to assist with the survey and they
were told that the official launch of the survey would take place during a revival planned for
June 2002.
When a year had passed, the group reconvened for another series of mass meetings. The
first of those meetings was March 13, 2003. By this time the Alabama Center for Rural
Enterprise (ACRE), funded by NCNE, had officially been formed with Flowers at the helm. The
meetings during the second year reviewed the progress of the intervening year, which included
multiple visits and tours with a variety of political figures and potential collaborators. Out of the
visits and awareness raising Senators Jeff Sessions and Richard Shelby secured a $575,000
appropriation, which was to be administered by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA).
The money was to be used for a demonstration project to address sanitation problems in
Lowndes County. It was expected that it would pay for the installation and maintenance of the
system as well as provide some funding for instruction on its care. The operation of the system
was to be overseen by a five-member board that would serve as the sewer authority for the
system.
The meetings during the second year were organized so that residents from each district
could vote for who they would like to represent them on the nascent sewer board. Voters were
required to be a member of the district they were voting in and votes were counted by a local
environmental justice organization, Lowndes Citizens United For Action (LCUFA). LCUFA
was chosen to count the votes because they were regarded as trustworthy and fair. Some
believed that particular people, including current county commissioners, were sending in people

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 to vote in the elections so that the people that they wanted to be on the board would be
nominated.
The formation of the sewer authority was the first official step in establishing Lowndes
County as an official demonstration site with the EPA. For the State Health Department, it was
also a conditional step that made a good faith effort at addressing the community’s septic
challenges. Flowers stated “so it be that we are in this process right now and we want to have
the board set up by the 8th. Because if we don’t what is going to happen…is [the health
department is] going to start prosecuting people again” (Bible Baptist Church Town Hall, April
2002, p32). Where outrage originally met the notion of prosecuting families for their septic
problems, in these later meetings it was more clear that ACRE sympathized with the need to
arrest people who were not complying with the law:
When we started out on this juncture, the Health Department was up against a rock and a
hard place and so were the families. The families couldn’t afford to remedy and the
Health Department had to enforce the law. So what they ended up doing was citing
people for not having septic tanks because raw sewage running on top of the ground is a
health hazard.
–Grace Baptist Church Town Hall, March 2003, p10-11
Interestingly, even making public statements about the prosecutions seemed to be off the table
for the time being. The willingness of the public health department to work with ACRE,
combined with the anticipated arrival of a tier-one assembly plant, made open discussions about
sewage problems in the county bad publicity:
What we don’t want is with all the good things that are happening in Lowndes County
right now, what we don’t want is to have more negative press about arrests, people not
having septic tanks in light of the fact that we just had an announcement here in Fort
Deposit about a plant locating here and there is rumors of another plant coming to the
county. So we don’t need to have negative publicity.
–Calvary Christian Church Town Hall, April 2003, p29-30
The probability that someone might still be arrested as a result of septic problems was

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 connected to the belief that the problem in the county was growing, as reported by ‘someone
involved with area level enforcement’ for the county. He said, “that the problem has grown, that
since last year more people have run pipes on top of the ground with sewage running on top in
addition to people that were already in that predicament” (Calvary Christian Church Town Hall,
April 2003, p3). Since the public health department made clear that they do not systematically
investigate homes for code violations, it is also possible that because of more widespread
awareness of the problem, more reports were being made. Even if new households were being
established in the county without installing septic systems, the implication that these households
were taking advantage of the situation does not address the basic need that these new homes also
expressed for functioning septic systems.
From beginning to end the public meetings carried out the goal of gathering information
about problems associated with poverty in Lowndes County, assessing the extent of the
problems, and coming up with a plan of action for addressing those problems. The goal of the
meetings was to encourage community participation in addressing the septic needs of the
community in order to address problems from within. By establishing connections to the
community early on, organizers hoped to create alliances that would empower residents to take
control of their circumstances and work towards meeting their own needs. While meeting
organizers called for open discussion, they appeared to be quickly overwhelmed by the breadth
of problems and with the depth of frustration and anger felt by the residents. Wanting to work
towards an actionable solution for the community, the organizers drew alliances with the Health
Department. The language in the meetings shifted from ‘you have been wronged’ to ‘you have
done wrong.’ Residents were encouraged to vote in representation or serve as representation to
address their own problems without further discussion of inequities meted out on certain

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 residents. The organization of the sewer authority was democratic in its nomination process but
ultimately the county commission would have authority over the approval of that board.10
Where the initial meetings were well attended, the final meetings drew only a couple dozen
attendees. When organizers contemplated the lack of participation in the final meetings, they
concluded that the residents were self-interested and apathetic. One pastor said, “well, let me say
that I announced the meeting over and over again. And when it don’t affect people the truth
is…in our community it doesn’t affect them most of the time, you won’t see them until it do.
And that’s what happened here” (Calvary Christian Church Town Hall, April 2003, p37).
Contradiction of Banishment
The pastor’s frustration at the waning participation of community members as meetings
progressed is indicative of an ongoing tension between hope and resignation experienced by each
of the groups of participants at varying times. What happened to make residents feel so outside
of a process that should have been in place to improve their living conditions? As the
experiences of residents became public and attention was brought to their struggles, what
ultimately were the consequences of living without sanitation for residents in Lowndes County?
While newspaper articles and some interviews mentioned the deplorable living conditions
to which residents were subject, throughout the fact finding process regarding residents’
experiences related to sanitation the focus was not on the day to day lived experiences with poor
sanitation conditions but rather on the punitive process that regulated their lives. Specifically,
great emphasis was placed on fines associated with being in violation of the code, arrests, and
evictions from their homes.

10

In fact the county commission refused to approve the first board because they were unhappy with some of the
representatives who had been selected. The board was retained as nominated by the districts, but a new governing
body needed to be found to authorize the formation of the sewer authority.

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 Fines
Fines held particular importance for those responsible for imposing regulations related to
sanitary practices. For public health workers, the issuance of citations and associated fines
fulfilled their role in the regulatory process, defining their purpose with respect to creating a
well-functioning regulatory system.
We issue legal notices. We can see injunctions in court through our general council and
we just seek to get the situation remedied…We’re not out there to write tickets, um,
which can do now, uh, if we have to but, uh, we want compliance through education. But
if that doesn’t happen, if push comes to shove, then we can seek legal remedies in
court…which would be fines.
–Tim, white man, public health professional in Lowndes County
When asked what resources they have available to help them remedy the situation, “uh we don’t.
We don’t. Again, we’re a regulatory agency” (Scott, personal communication). Probed on the
point that they said they tried to work with residents, the health workers said, “we do have, um,
lists of engineers, installers. We steer them to Farmer’s Home Administration, you know, if they
can get some federal grant money” (Tim, personal communication). USDA Rural Development
is also a possibility. “You have to qualify. It’s a lot of paperwork” (Scott, personal
communication).
The mechanism for code enforcement is carried out through a criminal process, which
requires enforcement by police officers. County public health workers stated,
we would take the law enforcement officer out there with us for things like discharge of
sewage onto the ground. The fine is five hundred dollars. And he would issue that and
then if somebody wanted to appeal it they could go to court and appeal it but now the fine
could be five hundred dollars a day. Each day’s a violation of the offense.
–Scott, white man, public health professional in Lowndes County
While these public health workers seemed to feel that fines were an inevitable
consequence of failure to remediate code violations and higher fines were a better resource for
bringing about corrections, the statewide perspective tells a different story. The State Health

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 Department has regulatory authority over “small” sanitation systems (<15,000 gallons per day)
that are operated by management entities as well. Such management entities are not regulated in
the same way that households are.
We do have administrative procedures for management entities. And what I mean by that,
we have the capability of, of, uh, civil action as opposed to criminal action. …We have
civil capability, we can fine them. Um, I think it’s $100 a day per violation. I mean,
that’s up to…Um, I think we’ve only done one in the 7 years I’ve been here. Those guys
usually do a pretty good job of, of, uh, ensuring that their system is operating correctly
and they’re reporting on a regular basis but again for a single family dwelling it’s a little
more difficult.
–Steve, white man, public health professional, non-resident
Across the state of Alabama, county officials were limited to code enforcement through
criminal (misdemeanor) proceedings for single-family units while enforcement for management
entities was dealt with through an administrative process. The penalties faced by the
management entities, in addition to not being criminal, were also met with smaller fines ($100
per day versus $500). As well, even when focusing only on residences, the degree of
enforcement (i.e. the severity of fines and penalties) varied across counties and was up to the
discretion of individual county health departments and the courts.
We do not have what we call administrative procedures for single-family dwellings. Uh,
each county health department has to use, uh, arrest warrants and those kinds of
enforcement capabilities when we have, uh, failure to comply or, uh, failing systems.
Now, there are, uh, some differences when you start talking about these management
entities. Uh, most of the single-family dwellings are misdemeanor kinds of things. And,
um, so it, it just depends on, uh, the district attorney, the sheriff’s department and the
local judge in terms of how well we’re able to enforce our rules when it comes to onsite
at…at a house.
–Steve, a white man, public health professional, non-resident
Public health workers did not see themselves as responsible for working with residents to
change their circumstances, except possibly giving residents more time to solve the problem on
their own. The application of fines for them sufficed in moving residents along into more
punitive procedures. The failure to pay fines provided justification for further action when

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 residents ‘refused to cooperate.’ If someone does not pay the fine, “that’s out of our hands at
that point. That’s up to the judge. They could, I guess it could be considered contempt of court”
(Tim, personal communication). As the Montgomery sanitation supervisor stated, “What are you
going to do with somebody who doesn’t comply, doesn’t obey the court, doesn’t pay the fines?”
(Associated Press 2004).
The irony of fining residents for having insufficient funds to pay for proper sanitation
systems seemed lost on the regulators but not on the residents.

“Every time I went to court, she

always told me 60 days. And I told her, if I pay that $500 fine, I'd be $500 short of getting it
done” (Faith Baptist Church Town Hall, May 2002, p81). Initially, for residents who could not
afford a septic system fines were imposed for being in violation of the code. When residents
could not afford the fines, the judge offered them the “option” of jail time.
She also said that if you don't get it done within the time that she set, 60 or 90 days, that,
you know, she'll give you the option that if you don't have the $500 fine, you do 90 days
[in jail], if you don't have it. After 90 days when you get out, if you still don't get it done,
you either have the option of moving off the property -- and I know I have spent all I
have. I was broke trying to get it done.
–Bible Baptist Church Town Hall, April 2002, p29-30
Within the regulatory process, fines up to $500 per day plus court costs were interchangeable
with jail time. When both of these options failed to rectify the code violation, eviction was the
escalated penalty. “If you don't…you have to be either locked up for 90 days, $500 fine, or the
option of moving off the property” (Bible Baptist Church Town Hall, April 2002, p31).
For low income residents fines, rather than serving to improve living conditions, served a
more structural purpose. Fines entered residents into a relationship with the regulatory structure
that holds within it an essential contradiction. They entered residents into a process designed to
regulate their being without providing mechanisms for improving their circumstances. The
regulatory process itself, by fining people for having not enough money, established a

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 relationship in which residents are held simultaneously inside and outside of the approved status
as compliant citizens. They were bound within the process through the obligation to pay the
fines and yet they are outside of the relation through the punitive measure itself. Through the
punitive measure their ability to pay and regain status as compliant citizens was further
complicated.
Arrests
The arresting of residents for failure to comply with the sanitation code was an affront to
both organizers and residents. Called a “criminalization of poverty,” the arrests were the fuel for
the flame of collective outrage about the situation in Lowndes County (Louis personal
communication; City Town Hall, May 2002). As a penalty for improper septic systems,
residents were charged with a Class C misdemeanor. In the state of Alabama this is the lowest
misdemeanor classification, with the potential for up to three months in jail and fines of up to
$500. Offenses that could also be charged with a Class C misdemeanor in Alabama include
“open container, public lewdness, harassment, and disorderly conduct” (Bradford 2013).

Class

C misdemeanors, unlike felony charges, are not associated with a loss of basic rights, like the
right to vote, but do remain on the criminal record and can impact employment eligibility. In
terms of a legal penalty, the charge of a Class C misdemeanor is minor and yet at no time did
public health regulators or law enforcement ever attempt to assert that the arrests were
inconsequential or minor in the lives of those facing charges. There was a shared understanding
of the symbolic significance that the arrests represented.
The process of being arrested made residents feel as though they were criminal; they
were deviant as a result of failing to live in the manner deemed proper by someone other than
themselves.

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 I've got to go in, sign my bond, get fingerprinted like a criminal. I've never been to jail
before in my life, and I'm being treated like a criminal. I got ink all over my hand from
being fingerprinted, and then I've got sign myself back out. That's just a horrible feeling.
–Bible Baptist Church Town Hall, April 2002
Someone told me that they had had a meeting, that my name was on the list to be arrested.
I said, be arrested for what? Be arrested for a septic tank. I said, oh, my God, what I'm
gonna do? I couldn't sleep all night. So I got up the next day. I went to Hayneville and
made a phone call. Checked and see, well, did they have a warrant out for me, and they
said, yeah, your name is -- for them to arrest you. I said, well, I'm not gonna let them
come and get me. I'm gonna turn myself in if they want to arrest me. And so I went down
to the sheriff office, and I told them I was there to sign a bond, and it was a while before
she told me anything about it. She had went around and got her papers and everything.
Called me in the back room. I thought they was gonna put me in jail. I said, I never did
nothing to hurt nobody or nothing like that, no crime. And so they fingerprinted me; they
took a picture of me like I had killed somebody or something.
–Faith Baptist Church Town Hall, May 2002, p68-69
Residents, whose violation was lack of funds to install proper septic systems, were
marked through a series of tangible (fingerprinting and photographing) and symbolic procedures
(the creation of an arrest record and going before the judge) as criminal; in their minds they were
classified the same as someone who had committed murder. Through penalizing poverty a
formal and legitimated structure emerges for the management of the detrimental conditions of
those living at the lower ends of the social scale (Waquant 2001). By criminalizing poverty, the
effects of the economic system can be attributed to individual failures as opposed to flaws in the
overall system. Such structural violence, as Paul Farmer (2004) describes, is “likely to wither
bodies slowly” and remain just below the threshold of visibility that might demand intervention
(p315).
Evictions
Where arrests raised the greatest alarm for outsiders, residents themselves were just as or
more concerned about evictions. When fines and arrests did not result in the installation of
engineer-designed septic systems, residents were threatened with eviction and, on occasion,

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 removed from their properties.11 Housing units in Lowndes County, however, are predominantly
owner-occupied (72 percent in 2000, 78 percent in 2010; US Census 2000, US Census 2010) and
when not living on properties that they own, many residents live on family properties that are
owned by relatives. While evicted renters may have no legal connection to the property once
removed from it, landowners are still tied to a property that they are not allowed to trespass onto.
They are banished from their own land.
One resident described this banishment as like feudal days wherein peasants were ruled
by an unquestioned sovereign king:
Seems like it's back in the Roman days. Pioneer and the county, they're kings and queens;
we're peasants. And we're paying the taxes on the land. That's what it seems like. If we
can't get nothing, they're gonna send the knights in armor to push us off our property,
take everything, seize everything we own. We get moved off our property, who's gonna
stay on it? We own. We pay taxes on it.
–Faith Baptist Church Town Hall, May 2002, p83
Such an analysis frames evictions as a mechanism for establishing an ordering of people within
an overall hierarchical structure. The sovereign, however, is not a single king or queen but a
diffuse process differentially advantaging and disadvantaging certain people more than others.
Rarely were participants willing to directly articulate who the winners and losers were but an
understanding was implicit:
Our people owned this land for so many years. I don’t think it’s right for a person to
come up there like Mr. Pugh to say, well, you got to move off your land because you
don’t have a septic tank. But Mr. Pugh don't own that land, we do. Our people do.
–Bible Baptist Church Town Hall, April 2002, p107-108
Fines, arrests, and evictions all served the purpose of placing residents within a
paradoxical stranglehold. Their punishment for failing to perform as compliant sanitary citizens
did not merely exclude them from the proper status but held them in tension with it. None of the
penalties achieved the intuitive goal of improving sanitation circumstances, but instead further
11

Zina and Ethel were both actually evicted while many more, including the Fields, were threatened with eviction.

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 challenged residents ability to make their living conditions any better. This contradictory
relation of being held as included within a process through a mechanism of exclusion is what
Giorgio Agamben (1998) refers to as “abandonment.” About this he says, “he who has been
banned is not, in fact, simply outside the law and made indifferent to it but rather abandoned by
it, that is, exposed and threatened on the threshold in which life and law, outside and inside,
become indistinguishable” (p28, original emphasis). Later he goes on to say, “what has been
banned is delivered over to its own separateness and, at the same time, consigned to the mercy of
the one who abandons it—at once excluded and included, removed and at the same time
captured” (p110).
Products of Exclusion
Agamben’s discussion of abandonment is part of his larger analysis of the production of
excluded subjects. In particular, Agamben focuses on the political techniques that bring about
the subjugation of individuals before a sovereign power.

In grounding his work, he draws from

Michel Foucault’s discussions of subject formation and pathways of power. Rather than
focusing on loci of domination, for Foucault examining the subject draws attention to the effects
of power from below (Foucault 1997). Along these lines, Foucault argues that at the heart of
understanding power is to understand the micro level interactions that accumulate into what is
observed from outside as a ‘power.’ By this he means that we should examine both the
individual subjectivities as well as the techniques of shaping subjectivities at the small scale.
Each of these he said had its own history, its own trajectory, and its own mechanisms for
structuring and arranging power and knowledge. Observing these collectively it then becomes
possible to discern how each of these micro-level arrangements contributes to “increasingly
general mechanisms and forms of overall domination” (p30).

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 Foucault emphasized particular techniques of organizing knowledge and space through
what he characterized as discipline. Discipline individualizes and normalizes through constant
surveillance (Foucault 2007). Borrowing Bentham’s panopticon, Foucault (1999) used the
prison system to describe how the sovereign/state could organize and order individuals so that
knowledge extracted about those individuals was complete and unidirectional. Power flows to
the sovereign through this complete regulation of information regarding the actions of the
prisoners, while the prisoners are prevented from garnering information about the sovereign due
to the structure of the panopticon. This flow of information about the prisoners allows the
sovereign to normalize behavior and identify deviant behavior. Prisoners are individualized
through the panoptical gaze and their actions can be seen as falling within the expectation for
behavior—the norm. Those who deviate from the norm are then immediately visible to the
sovereign and can be dealt with accordingly.
In the case of residents in Lowndes County, this unidirectional gaze of power is
particularly apt. Residents repeatedly asked, “who was making complaints about the failing
septic systems?” The reporting of failing septic systems, as an anonymous system, allowed
public health workers to retain all information about who was behaving in a deviant manner and
who was subject to correction. Through the anonymous reporting system, neighbors, installers,
land coveters and passersby all had the potential to serve as ommatidia for the Public Health
Department—itself a spectacle of the state. While the Public Health Department insisted that
neighbors were making complaints, residents’ made a quite reasonable counterpoint in that
neighbors were most often family members who would be unlikely to make such reports to the
state.
Aside from the administrative regulation of information, the material nature of the space

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 and its needs also supported the directional flow of information. The soil structure in the Black
Belt region necessitates the construction of raised mound septic systems. Such systems are
substantial and easily viewable from a reasonable distance, such as a nearby roadway. One
environmental worker reported that she was easily able to assess who had functioning septic
systems merely by noting whether they had a raised mound in their yard. With minimal
knowledge of what kinds of soils were present in which areas of the county, a person need only
to determine whether a mound was present on the property to have a high probability of correctly
guessing whether or not a household was in compliance with the code. The reporting system and
the recommended solution for difficult soils in the county both allowed for knowledge to be
easily and anonymously gathered about residents who could be labeled as deviant and then
disciplined into correct ways of being. The formation of subjects who would self-regulate before
power (whether as a more tangible sovereign in Agamben’s case or as a diffuse network with
Foucault) is a key (productive) outcome of relations of power for both authors.
Punishments in the form of fines, arrests, and evictions carried out through a
unidirectional surveillance mechanism aimed to discipline residents into proper sanitary living
practices. When those practices were unachievable, residents were cast into a state of exception,
included in the system through their very exclusion from it (Agamben 1998). The process of
ordering residents served to mark them physically and symbolically in their unsanitary status.
Through this process of marking residents as outside of the correct sanitary way of being, a
foundation for racial categorization emerges.
While those involved either in the regulation or experience of limited sanitation struggled
to articulate the significance of race in the setting, it was clearly a salient concern as
demonstrated through the persistent contestation of the relevance of race. While a traditional

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 environmental justice perspective on race examines the social inequalities perpetrated upon
individuals because of their (natural) racial categories, Colette Guillaumin’s (1995) analysis of
race inverts this understanding; for her, race emerges as a social group arbitrarily made
significant through social relationships that order individuals hierarchically. Marks, such as
those experienced by residents in Lowndes County (fingerprinting, arrest records, photographs,
and even evictions) become tied to residents in a manner that inscribes their ascribed social
status onto their being. She says, “the dominating group imposes its fixed inscription on those
who are materially subject to them…Race is a category peculiar to social relationships, springing
from them and in turn orienting them” (p148).
As Guillaumin describes, such processes of categorization are made invisible. The
history of racialization itself disappears before a naturalist argument, which argues that the social
status (e.g. race or gender) was preexistent and resulted in social inequalities. As a Black Belt
county (i.e. a former slave holding and cotton growing county), a key organizing site for SNCC,
and the birthplace of the Black Panther Party, racial inequalities in Lowndes County have a long
history and deep legacy. With the election of black political representation, however, the
conversation has become complicated such that social inequalities stratified according to race
were difficult for residents and organizers to speak about directly.
The criminalization of poverty in Lowndes County offers a glimpse into the relations of
production of social categories that are quickly rendered invisible. Disciplinary techniques were
initially quietly held as private struggles away from public view. As media attention drew a
spotlight on the challenges faced by low-income residents, outrage fueled organization towards
improved living conditions. The attention brought to the arrests developed as an embarrassment
for the county and for the Public Health Department, which refused to outright declare the

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 practices unfair and yet recoiled from the publicity. As momentum shifted in the county towards
bringing new economic development to the county (i.e. the tier-one suppliers), even the
organizers wanted attention to shift away from penalties enacted upon residents in violation of
the code. As the demonstration project developed, the spotlight faded away and attention
towards the ongoing mechanisms of exclusion in the county disappeared. The stage, once alit,
had again darkened.

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 CHAPTER 5

LIVING WITHOUT WATER IN DETROIT

It’s just the situation that we’re in. So we live with it, you know. We’re never gonna have any
money in the bank. We’re never gonna have any excess of anything. But we live fine, you
know. I call up and pay my utilities on the day that they’re gonna cut them off but sometimes I
don’t. Sometimes they’re off.
—Maria, a Hispanic woman, activist, and a resident of Detroit

Introduction
Meadow is a light-skinned African American woman in her mid-fifties. Her hair is a
light, reddish brown, coiled into neat braids that are loose and lumpy at the tips. She wears a
flowing dress and loose bracelets that overlap and intertwine up her arm. Her voice is kind but
not weak, however in this moment there is fragileness to her that gives me pause. Meadow
begins to talk about having her power shut off by DTE (Detroit’s gas and electricity provider)
for a period of 24 months. When a worker came to turn off her power, he instructed her to pay
him directly. He would cut off her power but later that evening another DTE truck would drive
by and turn her power back on. He would let this go for 30 days but if she had not paid DTE in
full he was going to turn off her power for good the next time. She implies that this was an
informal arrangement between the two of them and not a practice sanctioned by the company.
After the first 30 days the worker turned off her power and left it off. After the power
was turned off not to be turned back on again, a friend told Meadow about “the Mayor,” a
former and disgruntled DTE worker who was in the business of turning people’s power back on
for them for a fee of $200-$300. For six of those months she was able to pay “the Mayor” to
turn her power back on at the pole whenever DTE would come back by to shut it off again. After
six months DTE cut the actual cable at the top of the pole.

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 In January 2010 they came to cut off her gas as well. Because her landlord paid for her
water, she had previously been able to make do in the winter by sleeping with hot water bottles
in her bed while buried under several comforters.
The whole two years my power was off I wasn’t cleaning my house. ‘Cause I was only
using one area of the house. So everything else if it got dirty or dusty…no dusting. No
polishing anything. My whole life just got down into lock down. I was just on survival
mode. And I just wanted to get into that one room… I stayed in the bed all the time
because it was warm. You know, once I got the covers and the hot water bottles in my
bed I just laid in the bed. ‘Cause if I got out I was freezing.
When they turned off her gas she feared that she would be put out on the street because
she had no way to keep herself warm. As she tells this story she clutches her arms and bows her
head bashfully. She expresses that she is ashamed and embarrassed by this experience and in
sharing her story with me she conveys to me a profound sense of vulnerability.
DTE had been telling her that they wanted to come into her home to take away her gas
meter and shut off her gas. She had been refusing to allow them to come into her home but one
day she heard the sounds of a backhoe rumbling up onto her front lawn. They did not knock on
the door or tell her what was about to occur; she just happened to look out the window. They
were there to dig up the gas line out of her yard so that they could cut the gas. She was very
embarrassed to have this happening as all of her neighbors could see the ruckus taking place
and she held herself as a respected member of the community. She was a leader in the block
club and a community activist. In spite of that, her front yard was about to be torn up to shut off
her gas. Meadow went outside to speak with the men and said they could come in to take the gas
meter rather than digging up the yard.
For the next three months, Meadow lived without gas or lights. Without gas, Meadow’s
strategy for staying warm in the harsh winter was taken away. Denial of electricity and gas
meant that Meadow was no longer able to keep herself warm using hot water bottles and,

138

 because the water was literally ice cold, she was unable to maintain basic hygiene. She spoke of
how living without access to hot water affected her
The hygiene thing was really important for me because it was my only way to stay in
touch with reality. I kind of think that I got into such a depression… because I even felt
suicidal at times. You know ‘cause I was so depressed that I didn’t have gas and light.
… That hygiene piece, it’s something else to be able to keep your body clean, you know,
to shower. Because what happened 18 months into my gas and light deal DTE wanted to
take the gas so taking the gas meant I didn’t have hot water. I mean, I couldn’t do my
hygiene. Because I would go in the bathroom and take a shower, a hot shower, clean my
nails and my private parts, brush my teeth…I barely looked at my face because I couldn’t
really see in the mirror daylight or night …Hygiene is just important. … I could feel
clean. But when they took my gas and I had cold water then I thought, uh oh, this is it.
Because what a person not having gas and lights means is they gonna have to get out in
the street. I would have to leave my house finally.
As she speaks her body language wrings of discomfort and shame. She holds herself as
she tells me how it was important to her to be able to keep herself clean, to wash her face and
wear clean clothes. Sometimes, she says, she did not even have enough money to go to the
Laundromat. Meadow indicates that in the previous year her income totaled $4,000. She had
asked her downstairs neighbors if they would help her but their reaction was essentially that she
brought her circumstances upon herself. Because the downstairs neighbors still had their gas
and electricity on, sometimes when they were away, Meadow would sneak downstairs to the
basement to wash her clothes.
Meadow tried hard to prevent others from knowing about her circumstances. During the
time her gas and electricity were shut off, she used a kerosene heater but only reluctantly. She
would occasionally find scald marks on her blankets or the walls where the heater got too
close—reminding her of the precariousness of her situation. Her additional reluctance was from
the smell of the kerosene, which Meadow felt that she could smell on her clothes. She worried
that other people could also smell the kerosene on her clothes and would know that she did not
have her power and gas on in her home (Field notes 4, June 2010).

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 More than 40,000 Households without Water
The discourse around control of water in Detroit is contentious and at times vitriolic as
the residents of the city struggle with and against the Detroit Water and Sewerage Department
(DWSD) and suburban municipalities. The struggle is dominated by frustrations over high water
rates in the metropolitan region and extensive shutoffs throughout the city of Detroit, brought on
by crumbling infrastructure, divestment in city services, an exodus of residents from the city, and
a dwindled and impoverished population left behind to foot the bill for a system designed to
serve over two million. As complicated as this public battle remains, it remains an
oversimplification of living without full access to water, sanitation, and hygiene in an urban
setting in the United States. Meadow’s story offers a window into the complexity of limited
water access in Detroit and her experiences exemplify the myriad ways in which informal
barriers to access to water emerge under conditions of poverty in the city.
For residents inside the city, the primary focus on water access has been related to reports
of more than 40,000 households having the water shutoff annually by DWSD. Initial awareness
of the high numbers of water shutoffs in the city did not come from residents but rather from
state and national water rights activists.
You know water had never been an issue where people were getting their water turned
off in mass numbers. All of us from time to time get their water turned off. It’s usually
temporary and it lasts for 1 or 2 days. You go into church get some money, water turned
back on. Things started to change.
–Augusta, an African American woman, activist, and a resident of Detroit
Throughout the early 2000’s the Michigan Welfare Rights Organization (MWRO)12 was
12

MWRO is a union for low-income people living in the state of Michigan with its headquarters in the city of
Detroit. The National Welfare Rights Organization (NWRO) was an umbrella organization which brought together
welfare rights groups from around the country. Founded in 1966, it served a population of primarily low-income,
African American women. When the NWRO went bankrupt in 1975, efforts at welfare rights organizing continued
but in a decentralized structure. MWRO has continued through this time and has remained one of the strongest
welfare rights groups in the country. In 1987 MWRO members participated in the formation of the National
Welfare Rights Union, which provides a national face for the distinct welfare rights groups across the country.

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 active in protesting high utility rates and service shutoffs with DTE. There was no awareness at
that time of a systematic problem throughout the city.
We only found it out by accident. We were fighting with DTE. Wasn’t looking at water
at all. People don’t talk about water shutoffs and we were at a DTE march when this guy
… tall thin white guy … walk up next to me. … He said “well y’all, we been reading
about this on the internet. About these DTE marches and we came down.” What we?
“Well I work with a group called Waterfront Alliance.” What’s that? “We do water
watches and whatnot. What about the water in Detroit?” I said well what about it? He
said, “what about all these shutoffs?” What you talkin’ ‘bout Willis? You know? What
you talkin’ about? He said, “you all got lots of people without water.”
–Augusta, an African American woman, activist, and a resident of Detroit
Soon after the march, MWRO followed up on the tip by contacting a group called Water
Warriors out of New York. At the time the group was doing policy research about water shutoffs
in different parts of the country. Although MWRO attempted to contact DWSD directly to get
detailed information about the number of shutoffs in the city, their request went unanswered; the
information was, however, provided to the New York based group. The report was later faxed
back and at this time MWRO first had an idea of the scope of limited water access in Detroit;
more than 25,000 households experienced water shutoffs in the city annually. The following
year, the number of shutoffs increased to 40,000.
Further information was not easy to come by. In 2007 a series of meetings took place
with Mary Blackman, then the current chair of the water board, Maureen Taylor of the MWRO,
and Joanne Watson, who was a city councilwoman.
It took some talking to get everybody to be there. It was not a very friendly discussion.
There were heated points but Joanne Watson at that point she had said you know what,
Mary and Maureen, all three of us need to get together and meet in my office and have
some real conversations about what’s going on. Because of course Maureen is saying
40,000 shutoffs and Mary was saying, no, there’s never been 40,000 shutoffs at once in
the city of Detroit. … And so for a while, I think we ended up meeting four times and at
one of the meetings Joanne just said, “Mary, how many shutoffs are there right now?
Like, you must know. There has to be some kind of data out there.” And so this is
something Michigan Welfare Rights had been trying to get, is this hard data. How many
shutoffs are happening each month? And I tell you that Mary took out her cell phone she

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 made a call and she had the number at the time. I think it was 7,000 or 8,000 shutoffs had
taken place and I think that was the month of September. Um, and it was like, so that
number exists somewhere. And the sadly enough, I mean, I think after that we never met
again. Because at the time, Anthony Adams, who was the former deputy mayor, under
Kwame Kilpatrick, was the interim director at the time for DWSD and he was at that
meeting that we were all and he basically told us everything that we wanted to hear and
so we were all excited and then I think it was two weeks after that he then left his post as
the director, which we should have all known was going to happen.
–Jessica, a white woman, activist, and a resident of Detroit
As MRWO began to learn about water shutoffs in the city, they sought out residents who
had experienced water shutoffs. Unlike utilities shutoffs, proportionately, far fewer residents
were willing to talk about their experiences having their water turned off.
So we get the union to give us some addresses. … We go to the houses and knock on the
door. Most of the times we couldn’t get anybody. Sometimes we did and that’s when we
found out we got whole blocks with no water. Water hoses from house to house.
Because one house on the block got water.
–Augusta, an African American woman, activist, and a resident of Detroit
How could so many households without water be accounted for without widespread outcry and
awareness that there was a problem? The answer to that question is twofold: in fact not all of
these houses were without water and those who did live without water in their homes were afraid
to speak about it.
Illegal Hook-ups
Half the city has illegal hookups of utilities…
–Maria, a Hispanic woman, activist, and a resident of Detroit
Taking those thousands of people who I believe are on the system, on the books at the
Water Board, turned off but not really. They’re on illegally. Because everybody in
Detroit has a water key and for $20 you can get your water turned back on. Matter of fact,
the crews that roam around, no one likes to talk about it, but it’s the underbelly side of a
survival mentality. As soon as people see your water with the key turning off your water,
the supply valve, no later than 30 minutes later after they leave a guy will come and
knock on your door. He was like, dude, got $20. I’ll get you your water right now. And
people pay the twenty, get their water turned back on so when the supervisor leaves he
charged this house water disconnected and date and time. And, the real reason why we
can’t mount a public campaign is because I believe two-thirds of all the stuff that’s on the
books that’s called a shutoff is actually illegally turned on. And it’s happened in my

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 family several occasions where people have gotten their water shut off and within hours
turned back on. Now what the water board has been doing is they double back like two
weeks later. They have these crews. They call them confirmation crews. They come
back and test the line. They’ll go to the meter and test and if the meter hasn’t moved,
they leave. If the meter has moved they go back and shut it off again and pour gravel
down the channel. So what people have been doing is the pipefitters now in Detroit have
been sucking out the gravel turning the water back on and putting cement down there and
like, come back and get this. It’s like a one-upmanship… Because people is like, I’m
gonna flush my toilet. I’m gonna take a shower and I’m gonna cook. And about twothirds of what is on the books as turned off is not really turned off and the water board
knows it. They know it very intimately. It’s very few people who will say my water was
shut off. I turned around, illegally turned it back on. They came back. Checked. They
put gravel down there. I sucked out the gravel. I turned it back on and I threw concrete,
poured some cement down there. And I’m daring them to come and dig up my supply
valve. I know that’s happened to 10 people I know personally.
–Tiana, an African American woman, activist, and a resident of Detroit
For many residents who had their water shut off because they fell behind in their bills,
turning the water back on illegally was believed to be their only choice. Turning the water back
on was actually a fairly simply manual process. In order to turn off service to the home, the
water department would have to go to the home, dig a hole in the ground to access the water
shutoff valve, and use a tool, referred to as a “water key,” to close the valve. The water key,
however, is not a complex piece of equipment and can easily be obtained or fabricated. In some
cases former or disgruntled employees of DWSD had possession of water keys. Residents were
able to go back to the hole and turn the valve back on themselves or pay someone else a modest
amount to do it for them. Illegally turning one’s water back on had become a way of life in
Detroit.
You cut it back on, or you’re just in trouble. Ya know, what else can you do? People use
water. People need water. They have to drink it, they borrow it or umm, they try to have
it illegally cut on.
–Roger, an African American man, activist, and a resident of Detroit
Many residents, although aware that turning the water back on was illegal, did not see
turning the water back on as immoral. Instead they felt that the water department’s denial of

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 service was a violation of basic human rights.13
My aunt, now I don’t remember, it just hit me, I don’t remember if my aunt had her water
turned back on but when her water got cut off she actually had a water key where you dig
up and she turned hers back on. And for years she didn’t pay water bills. Of course
when they found out they came and turned it off and I remember my aunt cursing out one
of the water men say that water is a right. It’s given by god. Water is a right! And the
guy just doing what he doing.
–Lauren, an African American woman, city employee, and a resident of Detroit
The battle between residents and DWSD over water service resulted in a physical oneupmanship in accessing the water supply valves. Initially, the water department would shut off
the water and fill back in the hole with the excavated dirt. When the water department would
return to find the water back on, they filled the holes with gravel. When this presented no greater
deterrent, they filled the holes with cement, making it impossible to turn the water back on
without excavating the hole using heavy machinery. By filling the access point with cement and
permanently shutting water access off to the home, the water department had effectively made
the home permanently uninhabitable.
In the past people would manually turn water on from desperation. The city has found
ways to plug that access hole into the ground so people can’t turn it back on. Or even
pour cement in the hole which means that further habitation in this house has to go
through a major, major project of spending a thousand dollars to get someone to excavate
the earth to get it repaired.
–Mike, a white man, DWSD employee, and a resident of Detroit
Residents who had their water shut off and who became savvy to the water department’s tactics,
began to skip steps in the exchange and proceeded to immediately fill the access holes to the
water shutoff valves with cement so that water service to the home could not be turned off again.
Under the banner of improving service by increasing overall efficiency of the system and
eliminating estimated billing (which was the source of widespread frustration throughout the

13

In this vein, MWRO made an unsuccessful plea to the United Nations requesting intervention on the impaired
access to basic needs in Detroit. No action was taken and the United Nations response indicated that they did not
feel that the relative poverty in the United States was comparable to the absolute poverty in developing nations.

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 city), in 2007 DWSD began to convert all residential meters from manual read to an Automated
Meter Reading (AMR) program (DWSD 2013). The electronic system eliminated the need for
DWSD employees to physically go to each house and read the meter and instead transmits
readings to the water department up to 12 times per day. An added benefit for DWSD was that
water department employees no longer had to physically dig up water shutoff valves to turn off
the water. The water shutoff could be triggered electronically, eliminating the need to fill access
holes with gravel or cement.
As the water department switched over to the new AMR program, many residents were
resistant to the change. Some were not opposed to the change but not actively concerned about
participating in the upgrades while others received the changes as a new mechanism of
enforcement for DWSD. To force residents to participate in the changes, DWSD compelled
residents to make the switch by threatening to shut off their water. Even when residents were
current on their bills, if they did not promptly schedule the switch or if they did not have the
funds to pay for infrastructural upgrades in their homes that the new meters occasionally
required, their water was shut off.
Stigmatization and Vulnerability
When trying to get their water turned on, prevent a shutoff or just pay their bills, residents
complained that the customer service that they received from the water department was poor and
that interactions with the department were hostile. At water department customer service
centers, residents who were frustrated with the services that they were receiving would become
angry and occasionally belligerent with DWSD workers and other customers waiting for
services. Residents described having long waits and feeling frustrated and discouraged while
attempting to address their problems.

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 I’ve called the water department and someone talked to me so nasty and rude. … But it
was like, is this the way you talk to [everyone] when they call? So [residents] get
intimidated. They don’t wanna work with [the water department]. The last time I paid
my water bill in person and I never did this again because I didn’t realize it was this
bad… I must have waited 2 hours to just pay a water bill. I hear people cursing people
out. I mean, this is residents, not employees. Cursing them out in frustration. People
nearly in tears. And I’m sitting there like oh my god. I just couldn’t believe it. … It was
unbelievably ridiculous long wait and if you go and sit in those type of facilities the
whole atmosphere is just kind of doom and gloom. It’s like people are more scared, more
afraid of the water man than a tax collector.
–Lauren, an African American woman, city employee, and a resident of Detroit
When residents were unable to rectify their problems through traditional customer service
channels, the last formal mechanism to bring grievances to the water department was through
offering public comments during the monthly Water Board meetings. During the public
comment period, residents were allowed to provide brief comments, no more than three minutes,
to express whatever problems they were having with their service or billing at the time. At the
end of the public comment period, residents were typically directed to a DWSD employee who
would take them out of the meeting room and talk with them about the problems they were
experiencing. Activists who regularly attended the water board meetings observed that over a
period of time, the same residents would return to the meetings within a few months still
struggling to deal with the same problems.
Yeah, it’s so funny because I was actually down at one, one of the water board meetings,
and the beginning of the meetings is public comment, and every meeting, there are a
number of citizens, you know, maybe two to ten, that get up and tell a story of problems
they have getting an accurate water bill, and how, you know, and you can imagine that up
to that point of them coming there, they’ve been on the phone or probably visited a local
office a number of times … the amount of time you spend doing it just depends on how
much free time you have. … and they just, they shoo you off into a room. Give you a
phone number, tell you they’ll take care of your problem and then they come back in two
months.
–Donna, a white woman, activist, and a resident of Detroit
After struggling to get their billing issues resolved by calling or going directly to the
customer service centers, residents were whisked away from public view when they raised

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 concerns in open forum. Some of these residents were still unable to resolve their problems and
as a result became even more discouraged about remedying their problems through legitimated
channels. When water activists tried to engage these residents to speak publicly about their
problems, most resisted and preferred to keep their struggles as private as they could remain.
Speaking about the difficulty of maintaining water service to their home was simply
embarrassing for many residents. “A lot of people won’t let you know. They’re embarrassed.
But the ones that I do know personally they’ll come to me and say my water’s been shutoff”
(Tasha quoted in Miller 2007). For those living with limited resources under difficult economic
circumstances, being able to maintain services to their homes was a source of pride. When those
services would be disconnected then the inability to maintain services to their homes was a
source of shame and humiliation.
It really broke my heart because she didn’t tell me about it until it got to this point. When
I would go visit her she wouldn’t mention it. She kept it private because she was proud
of the fact that she could take care of her household even though she was confined to the
bed.
–Tasha, an African American woman, and a resident of Detroit, quoted in Miller 2007
More than pride, though, lacking water service to the home is a source of stigma because
it inhibits one’s ability to maintain proper hygiene. As Meadow described, being able to bathe
and to feel clean was a source of stability and normalcy for her that when she was without it lead
to feelings of depression and hopelessness. Meadow often was unable to wash her clothes
because she was unable to afford to go to the Laundromat and she worried that people could
smell kerosene on her clothing.
Adults are somewhat less vulnerable to stigmatization for poor hygiene than are children.
Children who lived in homes without water service or hot water, due to gas and electricity
shutoffs, faced ridicule from their peers, which resulted in them wanting to avoid going to school

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 or social encounters where this may pose an issue.
Children have a way feeling, well, if they can’t take a bath they’re afraid of what another
child is gonna say about them so it puts a stigma on them where they don’t say anything.
They don’t want to go to school if they can’t wash up. If they can’t wash they clothes.
See children will say some things to you that’s straight up because that’s the way they
feel. They don’t camouflage things like us adults do. They just tell you how they feel.
And it is very hurting when a child says ew, you stink. It may not affect your or not
because we’re adults but to another child it makes them feel bad and they don’t want to
go to school. Because why? I ain’t had a bath. My clothes are dirty. I can’t wash them.
–Carl, an African American man, and a resident of Detroit, Truth Commission 2008
Although smelling bad from not being able to bathe presents a temporary signifier of
meager economic resources, limited resources for hygiene also present health risks associated
with poor sanitation conditions. Maria, who worked as a teacher, encountered a situation where
students were coming to school with ringworm. Ringworm is not a reportable disease to the
Centers for Disease Control as it poses minimal health complications and normally is easily
treatable. Ringworm is a fungal infection that is highly contagious but which is prevented with
adequate use of hot, soapy water and proper drying of the skin (WHO 2014).
We had a rash of ringworm and when they would get it they would pass it around and
they couldn’t come back to school until they got rid of it and a lot of it it turned out that it
was it led to people not having water in their house...It turned out that they had ringworm
and couldn’t go back to school until they had gotten to the doctor and had gotten this
remedio, whatever they used to get rid of it and then they could come back. And then
they would have scars on their heads and scars, because ringworm leaves a big scar and
its from…living in conditions that are dirty so it was like a tattoo mark. It was like a
brand on you that showed that…and it happened to kids. Adults don’t generally get
ringworm…we didn’t get it from the kids….It would leave a mark. It reminded me of
branding them. It was just like a way of separating people, like you can tell if you’re not
poor now, you were poor when you were a kid and you were so poor that you got one of
those marks on you. … If you were black it would leave a scar where your hair wouldn’t
grow back. … I remember talking to parents about where’s your kid or whatever and
there was a lot of shame associated with getting that and there’s like all these…but it
would also lead to five or six or ten days out of school, which then leads to eventual drop
out, eventual you know, and it’s like conditions that you live with in the community in

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 your home. That came from people having no water in their house. Often having no
water or having no hot water. Now if you lose one [utility] you lose them all and you
have to pay them all to have them all. … They wouldn’t have a chance. If they went
anywhere outside of their community they would be humiliated.
–Maria, a Hispanic woman, activist, and a resident of Detroit
In Maria’s experience, children who lived in homes who had their water turned off or that
had their gas or electricity shut off, preventing them from having access to hot water,
experienced ringworm infections that led to scarring. The scars on the children were more than
markings of an illness, but were also coded markings significant of their state as children living
in poverty. The markers of poverty, as she stated, “branded” them as children of poverty.
Although Maria indicated that such children were not stigmatized directly by their peers or
teachers, she also stated that the parents were very embarrassed and ashamed that their children
had to be out of school due to ringworm infections caused by impaired access to hot water.
Maria did attest that children were made to feel badly about their situation by school
administrators and public health workers who singled the children out as having something
wrong with them.
Beyond managing the effects of limited hygiene, children living in homes without
utilities, particularly water, run the risk of being removed from the home by Child Protective
Services within the Department of Human Services. Families with children who were living in
homes without water service were very careful in who they would speak with about their lack of
water. Although activists with MWRO were working actively with residents to help restore or
retain gas and electricity services to their homes, residents were still reluctant to even speak with
MWRO about their water shutoffs.
We began to notice that people were coming in our office a lot of utility bills and one of
the ones they would not leave. I told Maureen at the time, you have to look for these
water bills. The reason why, they were afraid that their children would get taken. And
when we started exposing that and we had workers saying, no we wouldn’t take their

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 children. We says, bull. Yes you can. Because that’s a hazard to their health, and you
do snatch their kids because of water. Now it might be compounded with other stuff but
because of basically not having any water.
–Toni, an African American woman, activist, and a resident of Highland Park
If you’re a welfare recipient or a person who lives on a cash assistance grant and you lose
the ability to be able to provide water for small children, human resources can come in
and remove your children and put your kids in foster care.
–Augusta, an African American woman, activist, and a resident of Detroit
According to activists at MWRO, once water or two or more utilities have been shut off
to a home it can legally be considered condemned. At this point the city can force you to leave
your home for living in a condemned property. As a person receiving financial assistance from
the state, living without water or other utilities places you in further jeopardy if you have
children. One woman, an active member of her community and the pianist at her church,
learned this difficult lesson as a result of a back $200 water bill.
After failing to pay her overdue water bill, both the water and power were shut off in her
home. Consequently, Child Protective Services was notified that the utilities had been turned off
and a social worker was sent to her home. After interviewing the children on Friday, the social
worker returned on Monday and removed two children from the home and two children from
school. At the time the children we ages eleven, nine, seven, and four. The children were
placed into two separate homes and over the coming months found themselves moved around
different foster homes. In one case, one child was exposed to an abusive situation. “One
daughter was living in a house with a child abuser. She had to be moved. I don’t know if she was
touched or not. It was really bad” (Stelzer and Zurer 2011). It was nearly three weeks before she
was allowed to see her children again even though she had the utilities turned back on in her
home. It took a total of twenty-two months to get her children back. Ironically, the cost to the
state for placing a child in foster care in Michigan was estimated to be at around $1,400 per

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 month in 2002 (Noor et al. 2003). For the $200 back water bill to the city, the state of Michigan
incurred costs of more than $30,000 per child over the nearly two year period. Moving through
foster homes, her children missed more than a year of school and once back together, feelings of
abandonment lingered. “Taking my children away from me instead of helping me restore the
water was dumb…It cost us all—the kind of cost no one can ever pay back” (Stelzer and Zurer
2011).
As residents found themselves without access to water or with limited access, they
experienced a variety of individualized consequences. Communicating with the water
department’s customer service centers, residents experienced anger and frustration at how they
were treated by customer service representatives and by other water customers. In trying to
remedy their situation by going to the water board meetings, although some did have their
situations resolved, others did not and the process of removing them from public view
contributed to the framing of their problems as individual, isolated experiences. These residents
preferred to keep their experiences away from public view and to deal with their problems as
individual cases.
For many, speaking about their struggles with water was a source of embarrassment, but
revealing their struggles also opened them to other embarrassments such as their inability to
practice personal hygiene and wash clothes. In particular, children struggled with the shame and
stigmatization of living in unclean conditions. Compounding this stigma, children’s bodies were
inscribed with symbols of poverty as a result of contracting ringworm from inadequate access to
hot water. This stigmatization around water access opened residents up for significant
vulnerabilities in exposing them to intervention by Child Protective Services. Ultimately,
removing children from the home because of inadequate means to maintain proper water and

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 hygiene in the home exposed children and parents to additional stigma, management, and
psychological harm from being torn apart, feelings of failure and abandonment, and exposure to
unsafe living situations.
Making Do
Due to embarrassment related to stigma from living in unclean conditions or inability to
maintain one’s financial independence or to fear of legal consequences for living without water
in the home, many residents kept their struggles to themselves and found ways of making do.
Living without water, having water services cut off, and finding alternative ways of accessing
water, including via illegal means, for some residents in Detroit started to become a way of life.
When it became a question of survival, unconventional strategies started to become normalized.
I’ve had the water cut off, but see I had, ya know… poor folk have a way of, we survive.
A lot of us survive. I was, I grew up with the mentality of take what you can, don’t worry
about it. So when they cut off my utilities I would find a way to get them back on
illegally. Now I wouldn’t consider it illegal. Umm, so it wasn’t, it was a problem because
you have to go to alternative means to live, you know. Your life but uhh, yeah I put my
utilities back on. And sooner or later, the utility company cut my power off at the pole.
Or dig my water out at the street. But people are doing it all the time.
–Roger, an African American man, activist, and a resident of Detroit
For another Detroit resident, his water service was never shutoff even after he requested
it to be turned off. Bill requested the water to be turned off while he was still living at his
residence because he could not afford the service. The water was not turned off immediately,
though, so while the water service remained on he continued to use the water service to his home
without paying for it. Eventually, water service to his home was shut off. When this happened
he gathered from a vacant apartment that was still receiving water service. He managed in this
way until he was evicted from his own apartment.
Yes, 2004 or 2005 and I tried to remedy the situation by paying the bill back … and I
went down to the water…to where you pay your bills at and they gave me an outrageous
number that I had to pay and when I left the building I had called the people to come out

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 and turn it off but they never came out and turned it off because they had to get the
manager or the landlord to let them in the basement. So the bill was still adding up. …
So that’s why I never paid it. I would say [it was shut off for] about 20 days. I think.
Somewhere around in there. I would go to the next apartment that was vacant. I made do
with what it was at the precise time. I ended up getting evicted. I was homeless for two
or three years.
–Bill, an African American man, and a resident of Detroit
When Lauren’s mother was faced with paying her water bills or feeding her children, she
opted to feed her children and water service to her home was shut off. Viewing access to water
as a basic right, she did not hesitate to have the water turned back on in her home illegally.
When the water department returned to permanently disable access to water to the home,
Lauren’s mother cried out for her children to collect water in whatever containers they could.
During the time [my parents] separated we were in the house and my mother could…she
would apply for assistance and barely could afford anything. So it came to a point that it
was eat or pay the water bill. My mother chose to feed her kids. So I remember one
particular day, I must have been somewhere between 9 and 11, and my mother saw the
guys out in front of the yard about to dig up the water connector or whatever you call it,
and she yelled for us to get anything we could grab to put water in. So we would have
water until she could figure out how to get it turned back on. … I cannot remember
exactly when our water got reestablished but I do remember as a kid thinking isn’t water
given to everybody? … And as a kid, and I of course couldn’t articulate it in this way, I
could not understand why would we get our water cut off. … I do remember my mom’s
frantic call to fill up anything we can. And that hurt so bad. Now that I think about it
hurts so bad because like oh my god. So as a resident, I think that it’s an injustice to cut
off water. I think they could find other ways to manage to get payments. But I think it’s
an injustice to cut off water especially for a family with kids, with children. My mother
had three kids. We were all middle school age. She had no income. Her husband had
left her. What was she to do?
–Lauren, an African American woman, city employee, and a resident of Detroit
Water hauling is the iconic image of limited water access in developing countries but it is
also a practice that was adopted by residents in Detroit who lost service to their home but could
still access water from a neighboring property. With pervasive failing infrastructure and
abandoned homes in Detroit, often units and properties that had been vacated still had water
service connected. Other times residents were able to draw upon the generosity of their

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 neighbors and fill containers from their neighbors’ homes to carry back to their own homes.
Edda found herself without water access one particularly harsh winter when her pipes
froze because she had no heat turned on in her apartment. Edda had expected this to happen so
in anticipation of this event, she collected and stored more than forty one-gallon water jugs.
These she filled at a neighbor’s apartment multiple times each week in order to meet her
drinking, cooking, washing, and flushing needs.
Now the situation was such, … I was living in a building where they did not have central
heat, they couldn’t afford to pay the gas bill, so they were using kerosene heaters. And,
uhh, we did not have hot running water. … What we had to do, we had a large kerosene
heater way up in the front room, where we had a large pot where we kept filled with
water, and that’s how we had our hot water. We sat it on top of this kerosene heater. …
The temperature, the actual temperature, not the wind chill, had dropped down to sixteen,
or seventeen below zero. Then one night I heard this loud crack in the kitchen during this
time and water was shooting everywhere, and I had to shut the water valve off. The pipes
were busting downstairs and upstairs. So for about three months, we didn’t have any
running water.
Now anticipating a problem with this I was prepared and every spring water jug, every
bottle of spring water that I bought from the store, the jug, after I emptied it, I filled it up
with tap water and put it in the spare room. To where I had forty to fifty, between forty
and fifty jugs filled with water. Well I knew, I knew with it not being central heat in the
building, that when it got cold, with it being an old building, that those pipes were likely
to freeze and bust, so anyway that’s what happened. And umm, what happened then was
those jugs of water I had to use for everything. I had to use them for flushing the toilet, I
had to use them for washing dishes, I had to use them for washing clothes, but then
another problem happened. Because of the pipes bursting, raw sewage had started to back
up into the bathtub and also the toilet had backed up where it was unusable. However,
[there was an] apartment across the hall, which was basically unlivable. It had windows
that were out, and everything. The bathroom was usable over there, but the bathroom
window was out so what I had to do was climb out the window on top of the unclosed
space between the two apartments and put plastic up to the window and there was no
lights on over there. … I absolutely dreaded it at night when I had to go use the bathroom
across the hall, because I had to get my shoes on and take a flashlight with me and a
bottle of water to wash with, and uhh. … And when I had to use, I had to take a couple
gallon jugs of water with me, to flush it down, to pour it in the tank.
And uh, … anyway, when you’re relying on these jugs of water to wash with, flush the
toilet with, clean with, those jugs go pretty fast. So it was like every two to three days I
had to go to my neighbors house across the street and I had uhh two, three, several
garbage bags with empty jugs. And I had to go across the street and fill up those jugs and

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 the traffic light where I had to cross, it was brief, you know where you had to cross
quickly, so what I had to do is get the jugs filled up and then set them out, set them by the
cross walk where I was supposed to cross at and I had to carry four at a time, two in each
hand, you know, two one-gallon jugs in each hand. And then I had to go up a long flight
of stairs with these uhh, with these jugs, so you figure about forty gallons, and uhh I can
only take four at a time, uhh you figure that’s about ten trips…Ten trips up and down the
stairs. And I,… But anyway, you know, I had to, umm, I had to deal like this for about
three months. And that was basically until the spring thaw, because down in the basement
the ice around the pipes I was told was almost like a foot thick. And uhh so we had to
wait till the Spring thaw, for the, you know, for the plumbing you know to get fixed and
in the mean time uhh I had friends whose house I would go over to take a shower or a
bath, or I would just deal with the proverbial bird bath, which is just with a little water
and a wash cloth. So it is very tough to live without running water.
–Edda, a multiracial woman and a resident of Detroit
Although creative and determined residents made do with limited water access in their
homes in whatever ways they could, sometimes making do simply meant going without. When
Meadow could no longer use her water because of the cold, she went without bathing, washing
her clothes, and without cleaning her home. When Jessica’s friend went without water, she told
her thirsty daughter that she should try swallowing her spit.
It just breaks my heart. I have a friend of mine. Her daughter has struggled to find jobs
in Detroit and she has a daughter, a granddaughter, they’ve gone without water. And the
little girl was told to swallow her spit. That’s not right.
–Jessica, a white woman, activist, and a resident of Detroit
While certainly some residents in Detroit have struggled to find ways of surviving with
limited or no water access, others have found themselves forced out. “If you don’t have water
you’ve got to go some place else. If you don’t have a house. If your kids can’t go to school
you’ve got to go some place else” (Samantha, Truth Commission 2008).
In the midst of the nation’s housing and foreclosure crisis, the situation for homeowners
in Detroit was aggravated by unpaid water bills and shutoffs. When residents were unable to pay
water bills for prolonged periods of time, the water department took action to move delinquent
water bills onto the property taxes and placed liens on the homes. When delinquent property

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 taxes were not paid after two years, the city could move to foreclose on the homes. Where
Detroit has historically had a majority of owner-occupied housing, that ratio has begun to shift.
According to the US Census, in 2000 there were 336,428 occupied housing units. Of those
184,647 (54.9 percent) were owner occupied while 151,781 (45.1 percent) were renter occupied.
In 2010, 269,445 units were occupied with 137,730 (51.1 percent) owner occupied and 131,715
(48.9 percent) renter occupied. Over the ten-year period, there was a 25 percent decline in total
owner occupancy and a 13 percent decline in renter occupancy. In 2010 the population of
Detroit was estimated to be 713,777, down 25 percent from 951,270 in 2000. Housing advocates
have argued that some of the exodus from Detroit is attributable to the struggles that residents
have experienced in maintaining water service to their homes.
Bundled Challenges
Although DWSD has been reluctant to release any hard data on the number of shutoffs in
the city, at one time the department did concede that annual shutoffs were around 40,000
households, with 7,000-8,000 shutoffs per month. Because of the contentious discourse between
DWSD, residents, and activists, specific data is difficult to come by. It can be inferred, though,
that some percentage of those shutoffs is turned back on each year and likely some of the
households that are shut off have multiple shutoffs in a year. There are not 40,000 unique
households with their water shutoff in the city at the same time nor are they shut off necessarily
for long durations of time. Clearly, though, based on reported individual experiences, some
households are shut off for months and even years. While these households are officially shut
off, some make do by taking water illegally, either through turning their services back on or
using services of other buildings that are unoccupied. Others borrow water from neighbors or go
without entirely.

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 While the public debate regarding water service in Detroit focuses on water rates,
shutoffs, and control of the water system, the experiences of residents in the city show a more
complicated story about water access and what it means to struggle with limited access in a city
in the United States. The picture of limited water access in Detroit is one of impaired access to
bundled resources. There are multiple barriers to water access beyond simply having water
service in a home. Meadow and Edda both well demonstrate how residents may have water
service to their home without actually being able to make use of that service. Housing activists
estimate that there are more than 200,000 gas and electricity shutoffs to households in Michigan
each year. Because heat is necessary to be able to make use of water in the winter, tens of
thousands of residents in Detroit and across Michigan are also likely to experience impaired
water access above and beyond the estimated 40,000 households without water service in
Detroit.
The issue of sanitation access in Detroit is similarly complicated. With an extensive
water and sewer infrastructure, if a house is connected to the infrastructure in theory that
connection is present regardless of whether other utilities services are also present. Because
sewage infrastructure in the United States predominately relies on the flush toilet, however, the
ability to make use of the sewer infrastructure is also impaired if water is not available. Water
for flushing toilets does not need special heating but pipes do need heating in the winter in order
for the water to flow to the residence. When piped water is not available for flushing, sewage
cannot be disposed of without providing external inputs of water as Edda did. Even then
inadequate water for flushing caused her sewer pipes to back up into the apartment.
In situations where the weather is not cold enough to freeze pipes, the simple presence of
water may still be inadequate. Water needs to be conceptualized as a bundled resource, which is

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 coupled to its temperature as an integral property. Water is bundled both in its ability to be
delivered as mediated through other resources such as gas and electricity as well as in its
material, thermodynamic presence. The material presence of water in its phases (ice, liquid, and
gaseous) and how much energy it stores with it (temperature) in those phases is influential in the
experience of water in its social context. This material property of water is illustrated best
through its ability to function in hygienic practices that lead to the elimination of contaminants
and pathogens. When infections lead to scarring, water access is coupled to social inclusion and
denial of water is coupled with marking the body with symbols of social exclusion.
The consequences for residents who have impaired access to bundled water include
thirst, inability to cook, clean, and dispose of waste, shame and embarrassment, legal
precariousness in the collection of water, possible child removal, possible loss of one’s home,
and detrimental health impacts from poor hygiene and sanitation. These social and material
consequences have the effect of being incorporated into the physical being of individuals—
embodied through feelings of hopelessness, depression, and fear and through demarcation as
unclean outsiders.
Infrastructural Failures
There are a number of explanations as to how these conditions emerged in Detroit. No
one account completely captures the emergence of conditions of vast social inequalities in the
city. At an individual level, households living in poverty have made direct and indirect decisions
that have led to delinquent bills, which have in some cases led to service termination. Residents
have also struggled to cope with insufficient information from DWSD regarding their
responsibility for their water bills due to inconsistent billing practices and a grossly underserved
infrastructure. This infrastructure is part of a larger regional struggle for power in the city and

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 externally imposed visions for the “right” Detroit. At an even broader scale, though, the
economic struggles for low-income residents in the city are intertwined with national reforms on
social services, the transformation of the welfare system, and the convolution of regional and
local welfare programs with national policy changes.
Welfare Reform and the Vendor Pay Program
In particular, MWRO points to the changes in protections provided by social welfare
programs as major contributing factors in the contemporary conditions in Detroit. When the
Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act (PRWORA) was passed, Aid
to Families with Dependent Children (AFDC) was replaced by Temporary Aid to Need Families
(TANF).
It became clear, ‘95-‘96, especially ‘96 when William Jefferson Clinton signed in the
legislation welfare bill that says we’re gonna change welfare the way we know it. …
This was a shock. … We had already started to recognize that there’s something going
on in the economy but we wasn’t feeling what’s going on now. But we knew something
was changing.
–Augusta, an African American woman, activist, and a resident of Detroit
The change from AFDC to TANF moved from a centralized, national welfare structure to
a more decentralized structure that was contained more completely within state-based programs.
This switch also opened the space to move responsibility for social wellbeing away from public
entities and private companies that provided public services and to place that responsibility more
squarely on individuals. With changing priorities, programs that had been in place to provide
assistance to low-income residents began to be reduced or eliminated. One such program was
the Vendor Pay Program.
The Vendor Payment Program was a program started under Westside Mothers and
Michigan Welfare Rights Organization. That was back in 70’s. They knew how much
money we would get allocated in our grants for gas, lights, and for water. …. So if
you’re getting $50 a month for gas, why send it, make us have to go to the gas company?
Send it directly to them. … And it even expanded to the recipient could choose whether

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 or not she or he wanted the rent vendor or mortgage vendor also. So what happened was
Welfare Rights presented that program. It was Ella Braggs who was the state chair and
Selma Gould, negotiating with John Dempsey who was head of the director of the
Michigan Department of Human Services at the time. And it was finally implemented.
So a person could choose to be on vendor.
–Toni, an African American woman, activist, and a resident of Highland Park
The Vendor Pay Program was a program that was implemented as a result of organizing
by poverty rights activists in Michigan. The Vendor Pay Program allowed for recipients of cash
assistance to have money paid directly to service providers in an effort to budget regular amounts
for services and to maintain a negotiated service protection with utilities providers. Providers
that participated in the program received a percentage of the individual’s cash allocation directly
from the Department of Human Services and in some situations agreed to accept reduced costs
when services exceeded payment.
And it what it was is that it would allocate a percentage of the recipient’s income toward
lights. A separate allocation for gas, because at that time lights and gas were a separate
company. And a third allocation for rent and a fourth allocation for water. And if, you
know, me and my son were involved with welfare I got this amount of money per month.
2 percent went to water. 3 percent went to electricity. 5 percent went to gas and less than
50 percent of my grant could go for housing. All right. And vendor was…vendor pay
was very popular because a lot of people like it. It just comes right out and at the end of
the year if you had an accumulated bill then you could go to the welfare department and
get the balance paid off because vendor only paid a portion of the gas, or light, or water
bill.
–Augusta, an African American woman, activist, and a resident of Detroit
The program guaranteed that service providers would receive a certain amount of
payment from cash assistance recipients so service providers were positive towards the program,
under the existing regulations and mandates for social services. The program was popular
amongst recipients as well because it guaranteed that services would not be cut off even when
their income was stretched very thin. Because of the program’s popularity, where at its inception
the program was available for cash assistance recipients to opt-into, recipients started to be
automatically enrolled in the program. MWRO resisted this mandatory enrollment in part

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 because they felt that by making the Vendor Pay Program mandatory the priority in aid shifted
from cash assistance recipients to the vendors themselves. They felt that the needs of families
should take precedence over the needs of companies.
Eventually the welfare department got to the point they started putting everybody
practically on Vendor. So here was the, and we fought it after a while because we said
that should be a choice. A person here you were using poor people now to ensure the gas
company to guarantee them a profit. And it’s proving to be true in a sense because we
found out that the state of Michigan guarantees DTE a 17 percent profit margin. They
don’t guarantee me a right to have food, clothing and shelter on my table but they
guarantee DTE a profit margin of 17 percent.
–Toni, an African American woman, activist, and a resident of Highland Park
MWRO also resisted mandatory enrollment in the Vendor Pay Program because it denied
individuals the choice about how to manage their finances and the ability to draw upon those
resources when they faced difficult financial situations. When recipients would opt-out of the
program they would not necessarily always be in a position to stay current on their payments to
the utilities but MWRO argued that this was still the individual’s choice.
So people were able to opt out of that when it changed from Aid to Dependent Children
to TANF, Temporary Assistance for Needy Families, and you didn’t have to have that.
So therefore the welfare recipient was given an option. Instead of paying $20 a month,
you could pay it on your own. Instead of us taking it out, you could pay it. So you offer
a poor person who only got this much money, well why don’t you be the responsible one
and send the money off. Well you know how that went. Sometimes I would send it.
Sometimes I didn’t. If my kid needed a dress for Sunday or had to go to the bar mitzvah
or whatever the case may be, I was gonna use that money for that, and I’d catch up but
that’s what poor people always think. So that’s what happened there and then people
began to get behind and behind and behind and more behind. That’s how that went.
–Augusta, an African American woman, activist, and a resident of Detroit
What had at one time been a substantial resource for low-income residents in Detroit
however, was changed without sufficient disclosure to participants about how they would be
impacted by those changes. At the beginning of the program, participants were forgiven of their
high balances when their contribution did not meet the actual costs for the services. As welfare
laws changed, though, so did the Vendor Pay program. In a later iteration of the program,

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 balances exceeding actual payments were carried over but recipients were not informed of the
unmet costs. Over years of being on the program, significant unmet costs accumulated.
Ok so I want my $20 taken out. So I get $20 taken out every month for my light bill. And
my light bill is actually $40. So they take out $20 I have a balance of $20. Take out $20
I have a balance of $60. Take out $20 I have a balance of $80. In the winter months it
would go up. So I stay on welfare for 8, 9 years. And I pay $20 every time. Alright, so
now at the end of the year I have a very large balance. And I used to be able to send that
in to the welfare department and I stayed on my vendor they would pay that. Then things
began to change. I stay on welfare and I don’t get a balance at the end of the year. The
balance goes some place else. I never see it. So the first year I got $600 balance. The
next year I got $800. The next year I got $600. So that’s $2000 I owe already. So three
or four years go by and now I’m encouraged with Workforce, and Workplace, and Jet to
get off welfare. I’m excited now. My last kid is 15 and I got a job. “Hey! [Augusta],
your last kid is 18 years old and just got out of high school. And we’re so happy and we
found out that your kid is going to college. So happy about that. Oh, the thing we forgot
to tell you is that you got a balance. You know, we’ve been paying part of your light bill
and you owe the light company $6,214.38 and they’d like that before the end of the
month. And congratulations.” What the hell kind of thing is this?
–Augusta, an African American woman, activist, and a resident of Detroit
With the switch to TANF, a lifetime cap on benefits was instituted and cash assistance recipients
were timed out of receiving social service benefits. Previously insulated from unpaid balances
over years of being on the Vendor Pay program, gas, water, and electricity bills had accumulated
into the thousands for many. Once residents no longer were eligible to continue receiving
assistance, they were met with unanticipated, longstanding unpaid bills that they in no way could
afford.
During this same transition period, the city hired Victor Mercado to be Director of
DWSD. Mercado’s goals included increasing efficiency in the department’s billing and debt
collection system and as part of that an aggressive shutoff policy was instituted. Residents who
had been on the Vendor Pay program and then were taken off of the program not only faced
outstanding bills in the thousands but many in short time were also at risk of having their water
shut off and possibly having their homes foreclosed upon. Over time the Vendor Pay program

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 was phased out entirely. Laws in the state changed so utility service providers were no longer
pressured to participate and many opted out. Without fanfare, the Vendor Pay program was
eliminated as an option to aid residents in making regular contributions to their utility payments.
Estimated Billing and Billing Errors
In spite of Mercado’s efforts to improve the solvency of the water department, the
impacts of these efforts did not prioritize improved customer service for residents. Instead it
focused on collecting back payments from delinquent customers. While poverty is wielded as
the explanatory factor for why residents in Detroit had high water bills and subsequently
experienced shutoffs, the full story is more than this. One reason, already given, for substantially
high water bills was the consequence of changes to the Vendor Pay program, which ultimately
left residents with very high unpaid bills. Additional factors that contributed to high water bills
for residents included problems with estimated billing and mistakes in billing.
Many residents complained that they were unable to get accurate bills for their water
because DWSD relied heavily on estimated bills. As DWSD struggled to meet its financial
responsibilities, a significant percentage of the staff was let go so fewer employees were
available to go out to read residential meters. Estimated bills were a problem for residents for
two reasons. For some residents, the estimated bills were higher than their actual water usage
and they could not afford these additional costs nor did they think it was fair to expect them to do
so.
I kept getting … estimated bills. … I only maybe wash the cars once a year, you know,
it’s and there’s only two people living in the house with a small dog, so I just don’t have
that much water usage and I kept getting these estimated bills that were you know way
over what I could’ve perceived my use to be. … I would go and I would read my meter.
It’s sitting in the basement and I was looking right at it. I would call them up and I would
say I want a new bill based on this reading, … Well they, I couldn’t even get a new bill
issued but I never got a bill issued to the read that I gave them and, umm, so at that time,
that was during the time where I finally got really frustrated with it, I just said you know,

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 I’m not paying you until I can get a read.
–Donna, a white woman, activist, and a resident of Detroit
For other residents, the estimated bills were too low. Although these residents were
liable for the water service they used, the extra amount that they owed the department was not
reported to them on a gradual basis over time. Much like residents who had been on the Vendor
Pay program, many months would pass before residents’ bills were caught up to actual usage.
Once meters were read manually, residents received unexpected large bills based upon
accumulated, previously unaccounted for water use.
The people that have approached me were senior citizens that were having problems
paying their bills. They were saying that mainly ranged around $19 or $20. Now they’re
saying that it’s gone up to $800-$900. I’ve heard some scary stories where it was even
more than that. So the only way I could see what was happening they were being back
charged…These folks were getting estimated bills. So it appears they are being back
charged because of the estimated bills. I guess maybe tests were run and they found out
oh they weren’t charging enough. Now they’re back charging the people. That’s not the
citizens’ fault because they’re receiving estimated bills.
–Isaac, an African American man and a resident of Detroit, quoted in Miller 2007
In addition to being billed for water use in the home, some residents complained of
having been billed for water that they had not actually used. In one extreme case, a family was
receiving monthly water bills in the thousands. They were forced to refinance their home to pay
the bills and only later did they discover that the water department was billing them for a nearby
business with a similar address.
Some months it would be three thousand. Some months it would be five. It got as high
as five. When it got to the point of shutoff the bill was $10,000. … When the water was
shutoff they got to a place where the household couldn’t function. The only other thing
they did do was they went out and refinanced the house to pay the city. Reduced the bill
from 10,000 to $9,000, which they had to pay before they got their water turned back on.
To this day they haven’t tried to refund any money to her. Because somehow or another
they made a mistake and her address is the same as the cleaners address on different
streets. Whereas it’s reasonable the cleaner would have a water bill of thousands of
dollars, more so than a residential home. But they never made that adjustment.
–Tasha, an African American woman and a resident of Detroit, quoted in Miller 2007

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 The response of the water department to complaints about high bills has often focused on
inefficient water use and structural leaks in poorly maintained houses. One woman who was a
resident of Highland Park14 said, “we did not use $4,500 worth of water. And you’re telling me
it’s from some leak that I had two years ago? It’s ridiculous!” (Aiesha quoted in Miller 2007).
Although, failing infrastructure in the homes likely does account for some portion of the extra
water that residents were charged for, much water is also lost due to failing infrastructure and
unmanaged infrastructure throughout the water system. Gloria (quoted in Miller 2007) stated
that she believed, “citizens are being asked to pay for years of inaccurate billing and undetected
leaks.” Based on the ability of some residents to gather water from buildings and units that have
been vacated but that were still receiving water service, Gloria’s claim does have merit.
Overall, the emergence of a water crisis in Detroit was brought on by a number of
structural failures in systems that were originally designed to protect and provide for the
residents of the city. As welfare reform induced changes in regional social service programs like
Vendor Pay, residents were caught up in the momentum of the change without full disclosure as
to how those changes impacted them directly. Vendor Pay was originally supported by welfare
rights organizers as a way to maintain services to resident’s homes even when residents lacked
adequate funds to fully pay for their services. As the implementation of the program changed,
though, Vendor Pay first became a mechanism to ensure the rights of utility service providers
over meeting the needs of low-income residents and second became a slowly triggered trap that
left residents with bills in the thousands, for which they had no information available to them to
14

Highland Park and Hamtramck are two cities enclosed within the municipal boundaries of the city of Detroit.
Highland Park and Hamtramck retained their municipal identities as Detroit expanded in part to shield the
governance of the Ford and Dodge Main automotive assembly plants in each city, respectively, from the intrusion of
political decision-making in Detroit. As micro-boomtowns within the boom and then bust city of Detroit, both
Highland Park and Hamtramck have suffered similar struggles with service provision as has Detroit. As such,
efforts to respond to these challenges across all three cities have drawn from the same groups and organization
strategies.

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 prepare. As DWSD attempted to establish fiscal viability, in an effort to meet the expectations
of the larger region for a well-managed and financially secure department, it stripped away its
resources for providing customer service to its service base. By downsizing the department,
fewer employees were available to meet the demand for monitoring and maintenance and
residents were expected to accept the responsibility of adjusting to the sporadic oscillations in the
department’s enforcement and management efforts.
MWRO Response
As MWRO became aware of problems with water access in Detroit, specifically related
to water shutoffs by DWSD, they began to organize to develop a solution. Although MWRO has
pursued support from the United Nations based upon the belief that access to water and basic
services are human rights, MWRO’s campaign for alleviating hardship in the city was not based
upon demanding free access to water. Instead, MWRO developed a plan for improving water
affordability in the city, which they called the Water Affordability Plan (WAP). The WAP
focused on requiring a cost for services from all households but on a fixed sliding scale instead
of by water usage.
So after all these struggles, on this water stuff, we concluded that we needed to…we had
been in the streets. We’d been in the court and all that stuff but what we need now is to
get something passed as legislatively and we did. It took a long time but we got it passed.
People like …. Joanne [Watson on the city council] got elected based on that. Just like
we got five people…no…probably about four people elected in Highland Park out of five.
Three people out of five in Highland Park based on the water struggle. So because our
tactics has always been the streets, the courts, and the legislature. … We were picketing
every week in Highland Park. Picketing … in Detroit. Going to they houses. You know,
doing different things. We got the Water Affordability Plan written up by this attorney
that people fundraised for us and got in there. Because he specialized in that out of
Boston. And presented it to the board, Water Board. Presented it to city council. The
council thought it was great. Finally passed. And it was supposed to have been
implemented in 2006.
–Toni, an African American woman, activist, and a resident of Highland Park
The Water Affordability Plan for the Detroit Water and Sewerage Department was

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 prepared by MWRO and submitted for consideration in 2005. It was modeled after a program
used by the Pennsylvania Public Utility Commission (PUC) to decrease delinquencies and
increase collections from low-income households. The 46-page document was presented as a
business model for the department to establish an affordable system for low-income residents to
pay their water bills while still recovering costs for the water department. It focused on the need
for affordable services, how to provide consumer protections, and mechanisms to incentivize
payment from those who could pay (Colton 2005). Based on estimates that the burden for water
should be 2 percent of the household’s income, the WAP estimated that a household in Detroit
receiving Supplemental Security Income (SSI) should pay $132 annually for water while
someone receiving TANF should pay $110. It was estimated that the average household in
Detroit was billed roughly five times the amount of this recommended burden.
The WAP recommended a fixed fee structure with a sliding scale for water fees for lowincome households in Detroit. For customers that were below 50 percent of the federal poverty
level, the WAP recommended that the burden of water for the home should be 2 percent of the
household’s income. For households at 50-100 percent of the federal poverty level, it
recommended a burden of 2.5 percent and for homes between 100-175 percent a burden of 3
percent. Households making above 125 percent of the poverty level and whose calculated
payment burden exceeded the average residential water bill were not to be enrolled in the
program. The WAP also included provisions for encouraging water saving to reduce water
consumption in low-income households.
The Water Affordability Program was well received by the city council of Detroit and it
was approved for implementation. According to MWRO, $5 million was allocated in support of
the program to help with the costs of the administration of the program. In spite of this, the

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 WAP was never implemented.
It morphed into something else. And then money started disappearing from it. And we
couldn’t ever prove what was happening. Even though we knew it was five million in the
beginning, all the sudden the five million dollars went to zero and we couldn’t trace it.
Kwame. You know what happened to it. That’s how that happened.
–Augusta, an African American woman, activist, and a resident of Detroit
Instead, DWSD developed its own plan called the Detroit Residential Water Assistance
Program (DRWAP), which was jointly administered through the Department of Human Services
(DHS) and DWSD. In order to qualify for the DRWAP an applicant must have either
experienced a water shutoff or have received a shutoff notice (Coleman 2008). Requiring a
shutoff placed residents into a vulnerable position because the city was then able to transfer
overdue balances to the property taxes. Once the balances were transferred to the property taxes,
they were no longer considered water accounts but tax accounts, making residents ineligible for
assistance with the DRWAP.
We worked with Welfare Rights to develop a water affordability program, which is just a
joke because you have to be in default or threatened with a shutoff in order to access the
program and now they’re simply transferring water bills to the taxes, which they always
had the authority to do if the local government chose to do. And that’s when we said the
water board had numerous opportunities for collection, you know, numerous kind of
sticks to use. They didn’t really need to be shutting people off. But now they have both
the shutoff and the transfer. And the transfer is actually worse in some respects because
they’re transferring the water bills to the taxes so the family can now lose the house. And
we can’t access the water affordability program where they were supposed to set aside 5
million dollars a year to help people with delinquent water bills and no one qualifies.
–Fran, a white woman, activist, and a resident of Detroit
The DRWAP established a number of barriers to benefits, further limiting who could
access the program. In order for a resident to apply for assistance through the DRWAP, it
required documentation of:
•

“Income documentation, for all household members 18 years of age or older, for the
previous 12 months.

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 •

Income documentation for the current year. (year-to-date)

•

Current picture identification for each household member 18 years of age or older (i.e.,
Michigan Driver's License, Michigan State Identification).

•

Social Security cards for each household member (alternative to cards, official
documentation from the Social Security Administration which reflects the social security
number of the household member).

•

Verification of the ages of all minor household members (i.e., birth certificate,
immunization records, school record, etc.).

•

Current DWSD water bill, and payment/consumption history.

•

Proof of homeownership (or if renter, lease or rental agreement which must clearly
indicate who is responsible for water payments)” (Coleman 2008, p7).
As some have criticized recent changes to voter identification laws, which have instituted

requirements to have state issued photo identification to vote, obtaining state issued picture
identification for all members of each household over the age of 18 is particularly prohibitive for
low-income populations. This is because it requires the additional hurdles of obtaining a birth
certificate or a naturalization certificate, possibly copies of marriage licenses, the time to go to
identification-issuing offices during times in which those offices are open, and transportation to
and from those offices (Gaskins and Iyer 2012). In addition to challenges obtaining state issued
identification, proof of homeownership may also be difficult to obtain either because such
documentation has been lost or because the residents living in the home are not homeowners but
are also not in formal/legal leasing agreements. Such a case could occur if someone was living
in a home owned by a family member.
Unlike the WAP, which prioritized affordability and a sliding scale for residents, the

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 thrust of the DRWAP focused on repayment of past due balances. The DRWAP prioritized
making payments towards overdue balances and offered a 20 percent to 40 percent discount on
the monthly water bill but no cap was placed on the bill should it prove to be particularly high
and the DRWAP provided no additional protections for participants against collections.
Although no communication was offered as to how the switch from the WAP to the
DRWAP came about, welfare rights activists attributed it to another example of corruption that
was visibly occurring in the city at the time. The Director of DWSD, Victor Mercado, pleaded
guilty to conspiracy in a corruption trial that also involved the Mayor of Detroit, Kwame
Kilpatrick, who was convicted of extortion, bribery, and corruption for activities that took place
during his term as mayor (Anonymous 2012). The money that had been allocated for the WAP
was unaccounted for and ultimately, the DRWAP serviced far fewer residents than MWRO had
hoped.
And what happened was Victor Mercado … it got to the point that the people we had
agreed upon that should be hired to handle the program … they had to give up on it
because they couldn’t wait around no more, you know, to get the contract and everything.
So they were sabotaging it from within. Two years later … we exposed it on a national,
an international level as to what had happened here around this water situation, they
implemented. They changed the name from the Water Affordability Plan, Detroit Water
Affordability, to Detroit Residential Water Assistance Program. Had a news conference
without us knowing about it. Without the city council knowing about it. And talked
about they were going to have 1,100 people. Our thing was to start with the 50,000
people that they had claimed had been without, that had shutoffs or been shutoff and that
type of stuff. Um, The city council got outraged. We got outraged. And talked to the
young lady who was over the program. Um, city council summoned them as well as us
to the city council meeting. At that point we said look, Victor Mercado is responsible for
embezzling this much money. We exposed it back that time. And as far as we were
concerned the administration was a part of that too because they committed this money
and we never saw it. $5,000,000 plus $2.7 million. So $7.7 million. If the water
affordability plan had been implemented correctly, it was based on people’s income, then
it was affordable. They would have had…it was geared towards conservation and all that
type of stuff. So everybody would have been with water.
–Toni, an African American woman, activist, and a resident of Highland Park
MWRO tried to take the WAP to Highland Park to help mitigate the high water costs

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 residents were experiencing there as well. At the time, Highland Park was under an emergency
financial manager, Ramona Pearson. A hearing was held to determine how the city would
proceed with the management of the water system and at that time Ms. Pearson attempted to
move forward on a plan to have a private company manage the water system with the goal of
producing bottled water out of the Highland Park water plant (Miller 2007). Pearson argued that
no other viable plan had been put forward, in spite of having received the WAP. Pearson and her
associates felt that MWRO was trying to organize residents to demand free water. MWRO
denied that claim and stated that the WAP for Highland Park recommended a fixed rate of $40
per household in Highland Park. Although the city council voted down the plan to privatize the
water plant and develop a bottled water company, no action was ever taken on the WAP proposal
either.
So we presented it in Highland Park and the financial manager at that time, Ramona
Pearson, was supposed to take it to the treasurer of Michigan, because that’s who she had
to report to and she never did. Because the city council thought it was a great plan in
Highland Park. So it was sabotaged also there. So we haven’t given up. You know it’s
just a matter of, some campaigns sometimes cease and you have to go back, you know,
you retreat in order to advance. We’re still retreating a little because we’ve got so much
problems.
–Toni, an African American woman, activist, and a resident of Highland Park
By 2010, the efforts of MWRO had moved away from emphasizing water
struggles in the city. Although water rights organizing was still a core value for MWRO,
it had taken on a new shape while the organization rethought its strategy for improving
water affordability and access in the city. Part of that new strategy was the formation of
the People’s Water Board (PWB), which was a coalition of organizations concerned
about poverty, environment, and water cost and quality in the Detroit metropolitan area.
The PWB formed in February of 2009. It aimed to be an alternative institution standing
in shadow of the city’s Water Board so as to offer a critique and a measure of

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 accountability to the official management of DWSD.
That’s a major reason to have the People’s Water Board, to have, or to have a group of
people that are trying to stay on top of umm, what’s happening, and what direction we’re
moving and you know we’re, we’re still newly formed but we have a lot of history
working on the issue but it need forms trying to work as a coalition and getting umm a
plan of action together. So we’ve done pickets, we do umm, go to the municipal water
board meetings, we meet with council around issues, we get umm research done here and
there around certain things. We’re checking in more to Judge Fikens, umm, try to keep
abreast with what he’s doing with the water systems and stuff like that. And umm we
we’re working towards more of an action plan we can implement on our own or umm
work with the municipal water board to [deal with] some of this stuff. Really important to
me, that we have water, that we get water, into a public trust.
–Donna, a white woman, activist, and a resident of Detroit
The success of the WAP and then its subsequent stealth replacement, delivered a setback
to MWRO that left the organization still fighting but frustrated. When asked how they felt water
access to water had changed in the time since MWRO first learned about the shutoffs and since
the defeat of the WAP,
It’s getting worse. They’re trying…they have moved to privatize certain sections of it.
When they brought Victor Mercado in that was their goal, to privatize. They want to
regionalize it. That the people of Detroit would not have the ability to have the
ownership of their own water. That they make it a regional type thing and they’re…the
suburbs have an opportunity to have power over Detroit water.
–Toni, an African American woman, activist, and a resident of Highland Park
Discussion
The picture of impaired access to water in Detroit has been limited to the story of water
shutoffs. In the early 2000’s welfare rights activists in Detroit helped to bring attention to the
tens of thousands of shutoffs that were occurring annually in the city. Although these shutoffs
are significant in number, they represent only one way in which impaired water access occurs in
the city. Water struggles in the city also occur because of other utilities shutoffs that restrict
one’s ability to make use of water (for lack of ability to heat the water) or prevent its delivery
into the home (as in the case of freezing pipes). Residents also struggle with high water bills that

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 lead them to limit their use of water and these high bills in some cases result in the loss of
homes. Through housing loss residents’ access to water is blocked even further.
The consequences for residents experiencing limited water access to their homes include
shame and embarrassment for not being able to maintain independence for their households,
embarrassment for smells that are the result of not being able to bath or wash their clothes, and
health impacts from not being able to maintain sanitary living conditions. These health impacts
go further in their consequences for individuals by marking the body with a “tattoo” of poverty,
which can further to further stigmatization. Limited access to water also places residences in a
precarious legal position in three important ways: by forcing residents to choose whether procure
water through illegal means, by making them vulnerable to state intervention and child removal
for living in unsanitary living conditions, and by attaching water bills to property taxes thus
making it possible for households to lose their homes for their inability to pay their water bills.
As for how these conditions emerged in Detroit there is no simple answer. Two
important contributing factors that have led to the conditions of impaired water access in Detroit
include the interaction of national welfare policy changes with local social service programs and
the downsizing of DWSD, specifically. The reduction and elimination of previous welfare
programs led to changes in the implementation of local programs such as the Vendor Pay
program. No proactive program was put in place to transition residents off of Vendor Pay and
the consequence of incremental changes in the program led to the accumulation of massive debts
for social service recipients. These debts came unexpectedly to residents who were unable to
pay them and ended up losing utilities services to their homes and in some cases their homes as
well. The downsizing of DWSD resulted in the elimination of staffing, which further led to
inaccurate billing and the need to recover funds from a population that was unprepared to

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 support the revitalization of the department.
Residents in Detroit are everyday activists, so a distinction here between residents and
activists only signifies those whose primary employment is as an organizer for a social cause
organization in the city. Everyday activism comes in the form of survival, described by many as
a “survivalist mentality.” The response to shutoffs by DWSD and DTE for many residents was
to take back services illegally. Although not always couched as a political act, many did state
that their reason for taking services illegals was because water, gas, and/or electricity, to them,
are basic human rights. MWRO adopted a more traditional organizing strategy in response to the
shutoffs by lobbying, picketing, and going through the courts. They drafted a plan to allow for
cost recovery while keeping water affordable for residents, which they presented to both the city
councils in Detroit and Highland Park. While these proposals were received favorably by the
city councils, they were not implemented in either location.
Like residents in Lowndes County, residents in Detroit have faced a number of actions
taken towards them that have served to punish the experience of being poor rather than
alleviating the conditions of poverty. The most striking examples of punishing residents for
being poor in Detroit were in the cases where children were removed from the home because the
parents could not afford water service to the home and in cases where residents had their water
bills attached to their property taxes, which resulted in some losing their homes. Both residents
in Detroit and Lowndes County have experienced a criminalization of poverty that has left them
in a legally precarious position without recourse. Survival has depended upon their actions that
are formally illegal (e.g. unauthorized septic systems, straight piping raw sewage, illegally
turning on water, and taking water from abandoned homes) but without such actions continued
living would be impossible in their residences. The de facto function of this criminalization is to

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 create both Lowndes County as spaces of exclusion with residents held in zones of exception
(Agamben 1998).
The status for residents as contained within a context where they are bound by patterns of
surveillance (i.e. fines, evictions, arrests, foreclosures, child removal, and electronic water
metering) is simultaneously in contradiction with their exclusion from this system as they are
pushed out of formal mechanisms to establish “right” ways of being. There are two broad
trajectories within which such a condition of exception can be understood, which will be
explored in the next two chapters.
Lowndes County and Detroit share long histories of contentious racial struggles that have
helped to shape the current context of each community today. Chapter 6 will introduce this topic
so as to provide a context for the saliency of racial conflict in both settings. Although in each
community residents declared that their challenges were not about racial conflict and rather their
struggles were class based, each person continued on to contradict themselves and detail how
race is a key factor in the context of water and sanitation access. Race, particularly in Lowndes
County and Detroit, has served as a mechanism for defining who is within and who is outside of
the grouping of individuals that are considered to be full and valued citizens. It continues to be
an important mechanism for the classification of people as to whether they are deserving of
resources, assistance, and decision-making power. Chapter 7 elaborates on policies aimed at the
management of the material properties of water and sewage, which in effect are policies that
govern the management of bodies as well. The rational logic of water and sewage management
creates a framing that without overt intention of racism, reinforces patterns of racial exclusion in
each context so as to establish residents as abandoned within their own communities. Through a
framing that considers the oikeios of poverty and water management in both settings, a story of

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 exclusion and wasting in the United States unfolds (Briggs and Mantini-Briggs 2003; Moore
2011).

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 CHAPTER 6

RACIALIZED LANDSCAPES

People who see each other and themselves in racial terms are pathological. They
have a mental addiction to identifying everyone in terms that must include a person’s
race or racial characteristics. Sometimes the pathology is benign… Mostly, though,
and especially in terms of public policy, racial pathology appeals only to our worst.
–Matthew Davis (2013), political columnist for MLive.com

Introduction
Detroit and Lowndes County present interesting case studies in the examination of
contemporary race politics. In spite of clear concentrations of low-income African Americans
and long historical traditions of racial conflict, it is often argued in both Lowndes County and
Detroit that race is of no current relevance to the economic conditions or to the marginalized
experiences of residents. This assertion is supported through the presence of black political
leadership in both communities, evidence of corruption amongst black leaders, and ongoing
poverty of black and white residents in and around each community. Instead, it is put forward
that the dire living conditions for residents are the result merely of social class inequality; it is
said that race-based arguments unfairly revive a long gone historical event (slavery) that has no
influence on present circumstances but does serve to incite divisiveness and backward thinking.
The relevance of race to economic inequality is an important and deep area of scholarship
within sociology. While early theories of race focused on biological differences, by the
beginning of the twentieth century sociologists including W.E.B. Du Bois and members of the
Chicago School, such as William Thomas and Florian Znaniecki’s classic work on the Polish

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 peasant, started to lay the groundwork for understanding race as a social construction (Winant
2000). The social construction of race points towards how systems of domination work to
produce racialized bodies and racialized politics in an ongoing and everyday basis, the outcome
of this process being the reinforcement of systems of domination and the continuation of
structures of inequality.
This chapter examines the relevance of race to political and public discourse and its
relationship to economic inequality within Lowndes County and Detroit. Drawing from
literature that considers how racism leads to economic inequalities, this chapter also examines
how inequality produces racialized outcomes. Specifically, I draw attention to how social
inequalities lead to racialized landscapes. The notion of landscape herein is consistent with the
examination of environmental-scapes throughout this dissertation, wherein human and nonhuman nature are taken to be singular and co-constituted.
The chapter begins with an overview of public perceptions around race in Lowndes
County and Detroit as presented through the media and public commentary. While for some race
is an overt and apparent challenge facing both communities, for many the invocation of racial
language is the insertion of divisive politics. This critique of the relevance of race represents a
kind of colorblindness that undermines the significance that race has in the development of
present day inequalities in each setting. To understand how race is relevant to these contexts,
this chapter draws from the literature on the underclass and its relationship with racial
segregation. Within historically segregated spaces, Lowndes County and Detroit have
established conditions favorable for the concentration of extreme poverty. Situating the
economic decline and stagnation of each community within the larger national financial crisis,
coupled with diminishing support for low-income populations, the chapter looks at the loss of

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 land-based wealth as held and accumulated through property and home ownership. Through
processes that lead African Americans to be specifically excluded from land wealth, structural
racism is entrenched. The chapter concludes with a discussion of how these racialized landscapes
cast entire communities as defective, creating a racialization of space that overlays potentially
contradictorily racialized bodies.
Public Representations of Race
While descriptions of Detroit and the Black Belt emphasize historical segregation, Civil
Rights mobilizations, and black-white hostilities, many public commentaries attempt to polarize
discussions through the implication that “race” is no longer a factor in public decision-making
and only those who bring up race as an issue of concern are the ones perpetuating racism. This is
not a new occurrence in either setting. When openly racist statements are made a platform for
dispute is provided but when those overt statements are avoided it becomes the challenge of the
dominated to demonstrate that such oppression is taking place. For instance, in 1943 riots broke
out stemming from conflict between a small group of whites and blacks in Detroit (Sugrue 1996).
The rioting grew and ultimately required the National Guard to be brought in to restore civility.
Although both blacks and whites were involved in the rioting, media attention ignored white
participation and blamed blacks for what the media described as shameful and disrespectful
behavior. This riot occurred within a context where whites continued to walk off the line, or go
on “hate strikes,” because of increasing opportunities for the employment of blacks, particularly
black women (p28). In response to rioting, white residents started leaving the city for the
suburbs. The media limited its attention away from the violence against black-owned properties
so many white residents were unaware of the conditions for black residents and conflicts going
on in the city.

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 A similar argument can be made for Lowndes County. Lowndes County was a seed of
voting rights organization during the 1950s and 1960s. This work grew out of the Lowndes
County Christian Movement for Human Rights (LCCMHR), which had developed on its own
largely under the direction of John Hulett (Jeffries 2009). Later, the group worked with the
Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) under the direction of Stokely Carmichael
to form the Lowndes County Freedom Organization (LCFO). The LCFO worked through
multiple elections building a base of black voters that threatened to gain enough momentum to
elect the first black officials in the county. Fearing a loss of political power, white probate judge
Harrell Hammonds began to court black voters. Specifically, he recruited John Hulett to run for
sheriff. This action went against the democratic structure upon which the LFCO was founded.
Hammonds orchestrated the election of three black candidates, including Hulett, while Hulett
worked to prevent black voters from running a candidate against Hammonds. The alliance
undermined the cohesion that LCFO had worked to establish and ultimately contributed to the
disintegration of the LCFO.
Hulett’s tenure as sheriff established a mechanism through which whites could retain
power and influence in the country through time honored traditions of bribery, voter fraud, and
behind closed doors agreements. Other black representatives were elected throughout the county
but Hulett's history in the Civil Rights Movement made him exceptionally popular and he
retained his position as sheriff for 22 years and later for three terms as probate judge (Jeffries
2009). In the end, although Hulett eliminated the direct violence that the sheriff’s office
perpetrated on black residents in the county, overall the election of black leadership in the county
did little to improve the conditions of poverty and de facto segregation for black residents. By
courting black voters and supporting the election of Hulett, Hammonds gained favor and stifled

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 critiques of him that his actions supported racial exclusion and white supremacy. By openly
supporting black leaders, white residents in Lowndes County are able to deflect criticisms that
they are supportive of a racially oppressive structure while still retaining the policies and
processes that underlie that structure.
Much has been said publicly about race politics in Detroit. This was particularly acute
during the tenure of Coleman A. Young, who served as the first black mayor of Detroit from
1974 to 1994 after having served on the Michigan state senate from 1965-1973. He was an
outspoken and fiery former Tuskegee Airman whose history was grounded in black radicalism
and the Black Power movement (Darden 2013). Young saw the financial struggles of Detroit as
explicitly linked to racialized practices and racist, exploitative attitudes. Many remember
Young’s statement that was made during his inaugural address as a declaration for whites to get
out of the city. He said, “I issue this warning to all those pushers, to all rip-off artists, to all
muggers: It's time to leave Detroit; hit Eight Mile Road!” (Gray 2009). Although not explicitly
mentioning race, this statement was interpreted as a one declaring that whites were not welcome
in Detroit.
Coleman Young and Oakland County Prosecutor, Brooks Patterson, often exchanged
heated words over racial hostilities between the (black) city and the (white) suburbs. Patterson is
famous for saying, “let one half of Detroit kill the other half and if anyone is left, put them in jail”
(Gray 2009). Patterson’s statements reflect an ‘us’ versus ‘them’ juxtaposition with an implied
understanding of who the ‘them’ is. Patterson historically was openly hostile about Detroit and
unapologetic. In one of his most controversial statements he said that “Detroit should be treated
like an Indian reservation and fenced off, and its inhabitants given blankets and food”
(Lessenberry 2012). The interpretation of this statement was that the blankets Patterson was

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 referring to were blankets infected with small pox, like those given to American Indians during
colonization. The reference is indicative of Patterson’s conscious devaluation of Detroit
residents as needing to be closed off from the rest of ‘decent’ society but within his statement is
also the historical reference to a population deemed as subhuman and in need of extermination.
Largely, though, discourse surrounding Detroit and Lowndes County has bifurcated into
two themes, those supporting calls for black independent power and those who argue that
speaking of race unfairly advantages certain groups based on skin color. In the first camp have
been calls for efforts to increase black representation, political power, and economic resources
through targeted programs. In the early to mid-2000s, a project was suggested to strengthen
black entrepreneurs in metro Detroit through “Powernomics,” helping to develop an African
Town in Detroit. The logic of the proposal was that entrepreneurs in other ethnically organized
neighborhoods had been successful, so African Americans should be as well. A vocal response
to the program was to charge the proposers of the program with racism, that this proposal would
discriminate against non-African Americans, and thus unfairly advantage black entrepreneurs
over other races.
The plan, dubbed ‘African Town’ by some proponents, has stirred fervent opposition, in
part because the new district would be established using taxpayer money that would be
available only to black business owners. A majority on the City Council has endorsed its
basic tenets. But the plan is unlikely to become a reality. The mayor is against it, and
many community leaders say the very notion undermines the city’s efforts to promote
economic revitalization through regional cooperation” (Karush 2004).
The African Town and Powernomics plan ultimately failed. In 2006 Michigan voters approved
Proposal 2, barring “the state from granting preferential treatment based on race and gender in
contracting, employment and education” presumably in response to the Powernomics proposal
(Nichols 2007).
More recently, mayor Mike Duggan felt during the 2013 election cycle in which he was

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 elected that too much emphasis was placed on race. “I resent it. I’ve resented it from the
beginning…People in this city got past it almost a year ago, as people got to know me and we
started to relate as individuals” (Williams 2013). Duggan’s campaign was unique; because he
did not meet the residency requirement he was ineligible to be an official candidate so his
election required write-in votes. He is the first white mayor of Detroit since the end of Roman
Gribbs’ term in 1973. Consistent with Duggan’s frustrations, some news articles proclaim that
race should be irrelevant to the elections. “…The race question should actually not be an issue.
It should be about who has the best plan to effectively deal with the problems facing Detroit”
(Thompson 2013).
Several news articles about the politics of Detroit lament the “usual” black-white
divisions, seemingly questioning why race continues to be significant in that context. At the
same time, these articles themselves point out the race of the individuals quoted, even if they are
not from or living in Detroit (Harmon and Cole 1999; Williams 2013). Race is constructed
through the news media as an inherent part of Detroit. “Race is as much a part of Detroit, its
politics, citizenry and relationship with suburban neighbors as assembly lines and the cars that
rolled across them” (Williams 2013). In the black-white binary created by this author, the
diversity in Detroit is overlooked. He claims “race, more specifically black and white, has
defined Detroit for generations” (Williams 2013).
A common theme in news articles about Detroit is to state with authority that race is and
has been a division in the city. In this way, these articles help to reinforce understood boundaries
between the (black) city and the (white) suburbs.
In many ways, acrimony remains, and it’s tangible any time there’s a debate over
regional cooperation between Detroit and its suburbs. Inside the city, residents fear a loss
of political power. In the suburbs, the fear is that hard-earned tax dollars will be
siphoned off by a poorly run city” (Hulett 2012).

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 At the same time, while acknowledging divisions, many authors attribute those divisions
to failures of Detroit residents to take advantage of opportunities that would allow them better
economic prosperity and better neighborhood integration.
It is, after all, taboo to discriminate against individuals because of their race, ethnicity,
gender or involuntary group affiliation in housing. If blacks desired to live in Livonia or
Warren, there are no legal impediments preventing them from doing so. Conversely,
Detroit’s population suggests that blacks may not view racial separation as necessarily
against their social and economic interest (Johnson 2001).
This author states that it is “taboo” to discriminate against people based on their social
statuses, although his uncritical statement does not intone that the author believes that the
behavior is morally wrong or unjust. He continues by saying that blacks in Detroit prefer
racial segregation because they choose not to leave their impoverished communities.
Clearly, his assumption is that the residents have the resources available to them to be able to
move and that merely moving would provide them with untold new opportunities, but he also
leaves completely unconsidered what they might lose by leaving their communities. His
interpretation of racially segregated low-income communities allows him to assert that,
because there are no legal barriers to movement, racism (at least externally imposed) cannot
be a factor in the residents’ impoverishment. For that reason, these residents are to blame for
their own circumstances and white communities and white power structures are absolved of
any part in the conditions for low-income residents in the city.
In a significant inversion, the mere discussion of race and any attempt to bring light to
racial oppression is deemed a racist act thereby morally justifying the exclusion experienced
by black residents.
Detroit has become in many ways a metaphor for a certain type of black activist political
thinking in this country. For we are seeing in Detroit a black leadership that, far from
working to stop the carnage there, is actually praising the isolated and violent ‘culture’ of

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 this inner city… these black officials of Detroit really are saying that this culture of
violence and fear is at the very basis of their ‘new black mentality.’ They are saying that
young blacks are ultimately unable to join the healthy social life in the economic
marketplaces of this country. Only in our inner cities such as Detroit – and in far too
much of the leadership of black and Hispanic interest groups – do we still find this guiltinvoking, self-isolating and (most sadly) ultimately self-destructive theology (Geyer
1990).
The argument goes that thinking in racial terms is self-destructive because it is self-defeating and
justifies segregation. Black leadership that believes that redresses should be made for economic
disparities is constructed as incapable of the demands and responsibilities of holding powerful
positions.
Detroit’s social pathology is seen in other cities with large black populations such as
Philadelphia, Newark, Baltimore, and Chicago. These are cities where blacks have for
years dominated the political machinery in the forms of mayors, police chiefs,
superintendents of schools and city councilmen, plus they’ve been Democrats. It’s safe
to conclude that the focus on political power doesn’t do much for ordinary blacks
(Williams 2012, my emphasis).
White critiques of racism have taken direct aim at black leadership and the ability of
black residents to govern themselves. Many times these critiques are vocalized by black
faces but the underlying organization behind those arguments supports a white power
structure. The legitimacy behind these critiques lies in the need to bring economic
opportunities for residents in the city and the genuine need to remove blight and improve
services. Such an uncritical analysis devoid of a discussion of race, however, does not
consider how certain groups have been impacted differently by development programs in the
past or how those same groups are disadvantaged by projects that are decided for them for
the future of the city. The critique of black leadership for support of addressing racial
inequalities becomes muddied with accusations of corruption, leading ultimately to a
characterization of black leadership itself as destructive unless guided by white hands. This
is strikingly observed through the state imposition of emergency financial managers who are

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 given dictatorial control over programs such as the public school system, the water and sewer
department, and the city itself, institutions that had previously been governed by
democratically elected and predominately black leaders.
In contrast to Detroit, media plays less of a direct role in the daily lives of rural Lowndes
County residents as does the importance of local social networks, as there is only one weekly
newspaper in the county. Without any alternatives, there is no opportunity for competing voices
to be heard across sources. Outside of the county, Lowndes does occasionally present in
important statewide conversations. One significant external characterization of Lowndes County
was as a place where black residents seek to rectify historic inequalities through excessive
punitive damages in court. During the 1990s Lowndes County was at the center of a statewide
debate on tort reform, which sought to restrain a number of high profile civil lawsuits against
corporations. In these cases black juries awarded multimillion-dollar settlements in what has
been called “jackpot justice.”
Alabama juries awarded $767 million in punitive damages from 1989 to 1996 in more
than 200 cases that did not involve wrongful death claims. The average verdict statewide
was $3.3 million, while the average award in Lowndes County was $13 million. By
contrast, a 1995 Justice Department study of punitive damage awards in the nation’s 75
most populous counties found the average verdict was $760,000… In Lowndes County,
most of the recipients have been blacks who 35 years ago would have been barred from
entering the courthouse through the front door” (Hohler 1997).
Like Detroit, in the issue of excessive civil penalties authors eschew ownership of racial
terms and instead assign racism as a label to blacks that they see as seeking revenge on whites
for the wrongs of slavery and the pre-Civil Rights era. Although the authors do not represent
themselves as presenting a racial argument, they do include racial markers to support their claims
and emphasize differences between the ‘bad’ blacks who seek to unfairly punish underserving
whites for crimes committed by others and ‘good’ blacks who ignore race.

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 She [Willie Mae Davis] sued a white-owned company for fraud, and it took a jury of her
peers less than five hours to award the sharecropper’s daughter $6 million. Other blacks
have had similar successes in the Lowndes County Courthouse, where justice was for so
long a foreign word to them. In the five years since Davis’ trial, juries have awarded
more than $51 million to local residents and, earlier this summer, one verdict topped
them all, angering business groups nationwide. A local black factory worker, who was
paralyzed in a car wreck, won $150 million in his lawsuit against General Motors Corp.
Blacks see the legal victories as justice long overdue in the same courtroom where a jury
30 years ago acquitted three Klansmen charged with murdering a civil rights worker
(Greenburg 1996, my emphasis).
In the example of Willie Mae Davis, the author highlights that Ms. Davis was a
“sharecropper’s daughter,” that she is black, the jurors are black, and others who have also
successfully filed suit in Lowndes County have also been black. With no evidence tying the
stories together, the author states that the awards were in retribution for the acquittal of three
Klansmen who were charged in the death of a civil rights worker. This rationale falls short if the
reader is reminded that the civil rights worker implied in this article was a white woman from
Michigan, Viola Liuzzo, who had no ties to Lowndes County specifically and who was in the
area only to support the 1965 Selma to Montgomery March after seeing reports of Bloody
Sunday at the Edmund Pettus Bridge. While her murder was a tragedy and the trials that
followed travesty, hers was only one of many representations of constant violence and repression
that black residents and those seeking to improve the lives of black residents experienced in
Lowndes County.
Supporters of the phrase “jackpot justice” felt blacks were inappropriately using the
courts to award grossly exaggerated sums of money (Allen-Mills 1997; Thomasson 1996),
although critics argued that this so-called jackpot justice was equally beneficial to white and
black plaintiffs (Allen-Mills 1997; Hohler 1997). One article describing Lowndes County
argued that these actions by black jurors were misguided, resulting in large corporations avoiding

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 Lowndes County. Ultimately, this author concluded that the blame for economic stagnation in
the county rested squarely with those jurors for sending the message to corporations that they
should look elsewhere to place manufacturing plants (Thomasson 1996).
White discourse has functioned as an important gatekeeper in how race discussions are
allowed to be mobilized and to what ends. While black residents arguing about the existence of
racial injustice are accused of creating divisiveness, the efforts to prevent the siting of landfills in
Lowndes County demonstrate examples in which white uses of racial language have been
permissible, deemed respectful of local Civil Rights heritage, and ultimately successful. In 2000
and 2005 community members, led by the Lowndes Citizens United For Action (LCUFA),
successfully prevented two separate landfill projects from coming to the county in spite of strong
support for the landfills from county leadership. Opponents of the dump projects used the
symbolism of the route for the historic 1965 Selma to Montgomery March, which took place on
US Highway 80 and which passes through the county, to prevent the landfill projects from going
forward. Although the group was racially diverse with many white members, the group argued
that the landfills were disgraceful and were ‘dumping on the Civil Rights Trail.’
Conversely, John Hulett argued in support of the landfill for the tax dollars it could bring
to the county. He also used a claim of racism against the opponents of the dump projects.
Ok, and then John Hulett… he wanted the dump. So in order to um…destroy this biracial
group, he and his cohorts went all over the county sayin’ those white people from
Lowndesboro, they have never done nothin’ but put their foot on your neck, why would
you join with them? This, this is a good thing, this is gonna bring us jobs, and most of
the black people that were involved at that point stepped back. Number one, you didn’t
cross John, you...ya know.
–Sydney, a white woman and a Lowndes County resident
Hulett was publicly affronted that white residents would claim racism towards blacks to
the benefit of a cause they were concerned about. He stated that he was distrustful of their

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 motivation and felt exploited by their use of this argument. Hulett said that the dump would
bring jobs and resources to the county and he discouraged black residents from supporting the
biracial coalition. When Hulett discouraged black residents from supporting the coalition, many
stepped out of their participation with LCUFA. Although the dump projects received some
support from the county commission, ultimately the commission refused to grant the developers
permits and the landfills were never constructed.
Some media depictions of the county board’s approval and the community’s outrage
emphasized that this event brought together the black and white communities, overriding racial
hostilities (Martin 2000); others, however, said that black residents worked to keep the dump
away from the Civil Rights Trail while white residents worked to keep the dump away from their
neighborhoods (Fleming 2006b). Described as environmental racism, news outlets reported that
community members felt that waste companies were unfairly and disproportionately targeting
poor, black communities like the ones in Lowndes County (Allen-Mills 1997; Bryan 2003). “I
think Alabama is being targeted, and I think, especially, the communities of color and lowincome neighborhoods are being targeted,” one white resident said (Bryan 2003).
What was less emphasized in the media was the relative siting of the planned dump
facilities. The dump location was to be within a few miles of Lowndesboro, which is more than
70 percent white in a county that is only 25 percent white overall. Lowndesboro is the location
of several remaining plantation style homes, the all-white, private Lowndesboro Academy that
was opened in 1966 in anticipation of the mandatory desegregation of schools, and where one
black resident reported during interviews that he had accidentally driven through a ceremonial
meeting of Ku Klux Klan members late one evening in 2005. Although the criticisms raised by
those opposed to the landfill were legitimate in their critique of the differential siting of toxic

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 facilities predominately in communities of color, the Lowndes County landfill disputes present
an overall example in which the mobilization of racial concepts required the support of white
residents, who in this case felt their own way of living was being threatened, in order for the
racial claims to be whitewashed, considered valid and not as racist statements on their own.
While popularly conceived of as heavily racialized spaces, the effects of race and racism
on poverty in Lowndes County and Detroit are actively downplayed in the media. The concept
of race is most often mobilized by black residents and leaders in each community who attempt to
bring attention to differential availability of resources and power for blacks in each community.
White language, on the other hand, seeks to minimize racial discussions in a manner that
dismisses racial inequalities and deems anyone engaging in racial discussions to be actively
racist. An exception to this was how white and black residents in Lowndes County worked to
fight off landfill development projects by invoking the symbolism of the Civil Rights Trail while
in the process appropriating racial language to meet the needs of white residents. Overall, media
in both communities support a kind of enforced colorblindness that, while acknowledging racial
differences exist, blames the assertion of race inequalities as the cause of race inequalities in
each context.
Colorblindness is a set of ideologies around race, valuing the making invisible of racial
differences between people as part of a quest for equality of opportunity for all (Bonilla-Silva
2010). Within a colorblind perspective, any mention of race is interpreted as the speaker’s own
discriminatory bias, even when discussing the impacts of historical legacies of racism and
inequality; bringing up race is an antiquated practice indicating an individual’s inability to move
on from past slights that have no bearing on relationships and society today. The refusal of those
with colorblind perspective to consider how discrimination and racism have changed over time

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 helps to uphold the white, unequal, discriminatory power structure that continues to exist.
Eduardo Bonilla-Silva (2010) outlined four frames which all fall under the category of
colorblindness: abstract liberalism, naturalization, cultural racism, and minimization of racism.
These four frames often operate together in the construction of colorblind perspectives in
contemporary society.
Abstract liberalism is a frame largely based on the notion that all people, regardless of
race, should have equal chances to pursue opportunities. Within this frame, equal opportunity
means that no groups should have advantages over others, and individuals must choose to pursue
the opportunities that are open to them. Abstract liberalism ignores historical disadvantages and
contemporary structural limitations faced by people of color, attributing any poor or undesirable
outcomes to bad choices. The assertion that political leadership and corporations should be
selected regardless of race aligns with an abstract liberalism frame adopted in Detroit and
Lowndes County. This frame discounts the importance of self-determination and whether the
individuals and organizations deemed ‘most qualified’ have the experience or capacity to
empathize with the needs and desires of residents.
The second frame elaborated by Bonilla-Silva is naturalization, through which colorblind
perspectives attribute racial inequalities as differences in preferences or as “just the way things
are” (Bonilla-Silva 2010, p28). Further, the naturalization frame relies on biological
predisposition to explain such differences. “…Whites can claim ‘segregation’ is natural because
people from all backgrounds ‘gravitate towards likeness’… preferences for primary associations
with members of one’s race are rationalized as nonracial because ‘they (racial minorities) do it
too’” (Bonilla-Silva 2010, p28). The argument that residents choose to stay in Detroit and
thereby prefer segregation aligns with the naturalization frame. While this frame is less visible

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 in the media related to Lowndes County, it is apparent in the practice of residents in the county.
“We don’t go to church together, we don’t socialize together, we might work together, but, but
that’s it” (Sydney, personal communication).
Cultural racism uses arguments that certain racial groups have bad values or morality
leading to poorer outcomes. For example, the myth of the black welfare queen relies on cultural
racism in the assertion that poor black women just do not want to work. This frame reinforces
the abstract liberalism frame by depicting black residents as less qualified to govern themselves.
The cultural frame is apparent in characterizations of residents and leaders as lazy, corrupt and
violent. The most common display of cultural racism in the media, however, is the consistent
assertion of race as divisive in Detroit and part of the history of Lowndes County, while claiming
that “they” (black residents) care about race but “we” (whites and enwhitened blacks) are more
progressive and see beyond color. The cultural frame allows race deniers to assume a moral high
ground over those who make claims about racism because those people see race and are
therefore racist.
The final frame according to Bonilla-Silva, minimization of racism, is similar to
arguments made by William Julius Wilson’s arguments about the declining significance of race.
That is, within this frame people argue that the effects of racism are not as bad as they used to be,
as race is no longer a central determinant of life chances. This frame overlooks how large of a
role race continues to play in life outcomes. In both Detroit and Lowndes County commentators
point to poverty of whites and blacks as evidence that economic inopportunity is not limited to
race. Minimization of race is apparent in arguments in both regions that class supersedes race as
the predictor of deprivation and risk exposure. To build on this perspective, much of the
forward-gazing discourse around development aligns with a minimization frame that sees all

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 development as good development, bringing generalizable prosperity to each region.
Public presentations of race in Detroit and Lowndes County largely present colorblind
racism that is consistent with Eduardo Bonilla-Silva’s four frames of colorblindness. This
colorblind framing makes it difficult for residents to engage discussions about economic and
environmental inequalities in each context without being accused of creating divisiveness
through racialized language. As will be elaborated later in this chapter, Detroit and Lowndes
County have significant impacts from structural racism, which has contributed to and which is
constituted by economic inequalities in the communities.
Race and the American Underclass
Many contemporary debates around race argue for a colorblind perspective towards
social issues. Colorblindness removes historical inequities between groups based on race,
ignoring institutionalized racism and personal experiences based on race. People who embrace
colorblindness see race as merely about skin color, believing that racism is an individual
experience detached from any larger structures of power (Guinier and Torres 2003). These
perspectives expect to see racist name-calling, explicit vocalization of race-based motivations for
violence, and documentable discrimination in hiring and housing. When race-based experiences
are more subtle or at least made more invisible than these overt forms of racism, proponents of
this perspective argue that racism is not present. By focusing on fairness and equality over
equity, colorblindness normalizes privilege and injustice (Guinier and Torres 2003). Colorblind
perspectives lack the theoretical tools to articulate ongoing racial exclusion and marginalization.
Often efforts are made to focus solely on economic forms of exclusion while ignoring
patterns in the characteristics of marginalized populations. A Marxist political economic
framing focuses on the structure of capitalism that creates a single oppressed working

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 population. Marxian political economy builds from a historical materialism understanding of
social processes. Historical materialism is the perspective that social, political and economic
forms are emergent from physical processes grounded in the material production of life (Balu
1976). All experiences are produced through our previous experiences with the world around us.
Our evolving knowledge about the world comes from processes of producing goods from natural
resources in order to reproduce ourselves. From a Marxist framing, studying political economy
is to study the ways in which social relations emerge from material interactions. This analysis
commonly examines the ways in which economic relations emerge from the base physical
(natural) sphere that is appropriated through labor. A political economic framing lends well to
understanding how different populations have developed divergent relationships to the economy
based upon their stratified experiences through labor production, however oversimplified
Marxist analyses become reductionist by focusing only on the final production of a single
oppressed class. These oversimplified perspectives fail to recognize that race has been a
principle underpinning feature of the expansion of capitalism throughout its history.
“Race” itself has been defined as an emergent and socially constructed classification
system that utilizes physical, phenotypic, or biological differences to serve as signifiers of social
differences (Guillaumin 1995; Omi and Winant 1994; Outlaw 1990). Race was created as an
ideology justifying European colonialism to explain acquisition of property, rights, and wealth
(Cornell and Hartmann 2007; Omi and Winant 1994). This ideology presents races as if outward
physical appearance is a direct indication of the content of one’s character, values, and morality,
to justify inequalities (Omi and Winant 1994). Bonilla-Silva (1997) used the term “racism” to
refer to an ideology of a racialized social system. Racism is a social system in which resources
are distributed based upon historically constructed races and political struggles are racialized. A

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 racialized social structure has at its very basis a racial ideology that arranges races in a hierarchy
while allowing race as a social construct to be taken for granted.
While social inequality is not a modern experience, the concept of race is much more
recent. Racial difference emerged as a useful mechanism for marking people so as to order them
hierarchically as having greater or lesser worth. This valuation of people served to justify and
reinforce exploitative and oppressive actions that came about during colonization and European
imperial rule. Michael Omi and Howard Winant (1994) proposed the theory of racial formation
as being that race is a concept that emerges through public and political discourse. Racial
formation is the process through which racial categories are constructed, experienced, and
changed (Feagin and Elias 2013). Race comes about through racial projects in which race as a
concept serves to reinforce the structure of particular institutions, such as the state (Winant 2000).
The ways in which racial categories were constituted to support the expansion and development
efforts during the colonial period provide an important example of racial formation.
Race has been the social product of powerful groups assigning otherness and inferiority
for purposes of exclusion (Cornell and Hartmann 2007). Although socially it is popular to
construct race as natural and unchanging, race is an idea rooted in certain social, historical, and
political conditions (Omi and Winant 1994; Cornell and Hartmann 2007). It is only through
social processes that varying physical differences are imbued with meaning (Cornell and
Hartmann 2007). Edward Said (1979) points to the relationship between the Orient and the
Occident for conceptualizing racial classifications. Through contrast, Europe’s understanding of
the ‘Orient’ helped to define European identity, distinguishing the global ‘East’ from the ‘West.’
According to Said the two identities do not exist independently but understandings of each arise
through their relationship with each other. This relationship was one of power and domination

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 wherein the “sovereign Western consciousness” constructed itself as central and the logical
superior to the East (p8). Said argues that studies of the Orient have less to do with
understanding the Orient per se than they do with elaborating upon understandings of our
(Western) selves. The relationship of domination itself gives meaning to the dominant group in
opposition to the oppressed group (Collins 2000). According to bell hooks (quoted in Collins), it
is through the ability to set the terms of reality that defines one as subject, whereas as the object
one’s identity and history are defined by others. Racism operated during colonial times to
provide legitimacy for European expansion. Through subjugation of ‘inferior’ populations it was
possible to take resources and land and extract vast quantities of labor through brutal working
conditions.
Slavery provided the labor necessary to create vast quantities of wealth in the growth of
the United States. Jared Sexton (2010) has argued that the black slave trade represents the purest
moment in which bodies were converted from human being into “flesh to be accumulated and
exchanged” (p38). The state of blackness in America is an enduring condition, founded upon the
distinction of human and inhuman and persisting through today in the form of criminalization of
blackness. Sexton describes the condition in which any form of action other than pure
submission to the power of the slaveholder was viewed as deviant and criminal behavior.
Though slavery in the United States was officially ended, the legacy of inequality that
was pivotal to the development of the nation persists. Today this difference is most apparently
manifest in the disparity between the wealth of white and black people (Guinier and Torres 2003,
Oliver and Shapiro 1997). Wealth is accumulated and passed down generationally through
families, allowing new opportunities for family members to build human, social, and economic
capital (Oliver and Shapiro 1997). Oliver and Shapiro (1997) argue that due to historical,

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 institutionalized discrimination, black people have accumulated disadvantages making the
accumulation of wealth extremely difficult, thus cementing them to the bottom of the economic
hierarchy as part of what they call the “sedimentation of racial inequality” (p50). Although this
may have begun with slavery, even after slavery ended different legal and political processes
were used to reinforce the lower position of blacks. At the time of their writing, the income for
blacks was 70 cents to every dollar earned by a white person; the disparity in wealth was much
greater: 15 cents for black individuals for every dollar of white wealth.
A number of scholars have attempted to explain the discrepancies between black and
white Americans in what is broadly characterized as the underclass debate. Over the early 1960s
Oscar Lewis developed the concept of the culture of poverty, which asserted that poverty is
produced cyclically within a community based upon the cultural transmission of bad personal
characteristics such as laziness and criminality (Lewis 1959; Lewis 1961). This thesis was
wildly popular among conservative circles and supported a demonization of those living in
poverty. Gunnar Myrdal (1963) introduced the concept of the underclass as a segment of the
American population that had experienced persistent unemployment or underemployment to the
extent that they had been effectively set outside of the development aspirations of the nation. He
pointed to structural and cyclical impediments to leaving poverty where individuals in poverty
would be less likely to have access to education to gain access to jobs, leading to unemployment,
discouragement, and further poverty.
The notion of the underclass was considered at length by William Julius Wilson in his
book The Declining Significance of Race (1980). Wilson posited that the situation of the black
underclass was worsening based on increasingly prevalent out-of-wedlock births, violent crime,
female-headed (single parent) families, arguing that racism is an inadequate explanation of the

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 situation of the black underclass. Instead of focusing on racism and culture as causal
explanations, however, Wilson pointed to structural changes, such as economic downturn, as
having a more profound effect on vulnerable groups such as urban minorities. He stated that
ghetto neighborhoods have experienced a changing class structure, such that the black middleclass has moved to higher-income areas, leaving lower-class blacks without social organization.
Although Wilson (1987) later acknowledged that racial oppression has effects that can outlast
racial barriers themselves, he still preferred a solution that focused more on universal economic
growth and employment opportunities instead of addressing race and racism. Wilson considered
the impact of race in determining life chances through different periods of history and because
we as a society have moved out of slavery where race was the basis of life chances and outcomes,
Wilson felt that class and economic well-being were more determining of life outcomes than race.
Wilson’s argument was seen as colorblind. Arguing against Wilson’s proposed solution,
Steinberg (1995) said that opening up opportunities to all people through colorblind strategies
and policies is inadequate to addressing economic problems because it ignores the history of race
and racial oppression in the United States. Bonilla-Silva’s (2010) critique of colorblind
perspectives argued that rather than guaranteeing equal access or non-discrimination, the
language of colorblindness at best ignores the differential effects of institutionalized racism and
racist practices, and at worst shifts racism into more subtle wording of cultural differences, still
asserting that some groups do not try hard enough because their culture is not motivated or
values the wrong things. Colorblind solutions ignore institutionalized racism, which is
embedded within and built into societal structures.
Colorblind strategies are consistent with the moral imperative within neoliberalism that
dictates that all people have equal opportunities to participate in the economic structure and are

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 thereby individually accountable for both their successes and their failures. Neoliberals claim
that focusing on race supports notions of separatism, factions and divisions. Neoliberalism
favors a notion of personal responsibility and individual accountability where state provided
services are deemed unnecessary. This view functions to support victim blaming and notions of
dependency. The disallowance of discussions of race prevents discussions of those who have
been excluded from economic and social opportunities (Omi and Winant 1994). Going against
Wilson’s argument for universal solutions, Omi and Winant stated that the universalism
promoted by neoliberalism obscures lived racial conflicts (Omi and Winant 1994, p152).
Wilson emphasized that concentrated racialized poverty is the result of the outmigration
of middle class blacks while Douglas Massey (1990) contended that racialized poverty occurs
regardless of whether middle class blacks move out due to the effects of segregation (Quillian
2012). Massey and Denton (1993) have argued that racial segregation is the principle cause of
inner city poverty (Bond and Williams 2007; Massey 1990). They showed mathematically how
outmigration of middle-class blacks is unnecessary to the development of racialized poverty.
Because of racial segregation, higher rates of the poor are concentrated in a small area making it
so that small economic fluctuations lead to large and rapid changes in low-income pockets
(Massey 1990).
Joe Feagin (1991) has also argued against Wilson’s declining significance of race through
studies of middle-class blacks, which have shown that they are still subjected to pernicious
racialized attacks. Middle-class status does not buy one’s way out of being racialized and
racially discriminated against. Joe Feagin and Sean Elias (2013) emphasized the importance of
systemic racism, which is persistent in the institutional structures that define society. Feagin and
Elias criticized Omi and Winant’s analysis of race because it emphasizes the role of the state as a

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 structure while discounting the importance of racial oppression in social organization. He argued
that racial oppression is expressed through power inequalities and differential access to resources,
which establish and maintain hierarchies of white populations over populations of color. Feagin
and Elias stated that systemic racism was foundational to the organization and development of
the United States and it is persistent in its continued maintenance of social inequalities. Whites
are explicitly complicit in this social organization either through direct acts of racism or through
passive and colorblind acts that accept and thereby reinforce their privileged dominance.
Whether the cause of racialized poverty or no, both Lowndes County and Detroit have
experienced outmigration of black residents with more means. As highly segregated spaces it
would seem that Wilson and Massey’s theories are multiplicative in the context of these two
settings.

Racialization of space allows one to build theoretically from this intersection while

incorporating Feagin and Elias’s attention to systemic racism that is manifest in power
inequalities that are maintained through colorblind political strategies. “Racialization of place is
a process of constructing particular geographic landscapes that help define and reinforce
racialized social hierarchies, thus facilitating domination and exploitation” (Inwood and
Yarbrough 2010, p299). A spatial understanding of racial formation allows for an examination
how spaces and racial categories are co-constructed through political struggles (Neely and
Samura 2011). Neely and Samura (2011) argued that space and race are constructed together
through a dialectical process. Through the spatial control of bodies according to racialized
statuses, the hierarchical ordering of groups of bodies deemed as less worthwhile is made
possible (Neely and Samura 2011; Nelson 2008). Doreen Massey (1993) stated that geographic
space is sewn together through relations of domination and subordination. These relations are
manifest in how certain groups are able to access resources and exercise power (Neely and

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 Samura 2011).
Racial segregation has led to concentrations of poverty, making communities more
vulnerable to economic downturn, neighborhood blight, and suppressed property values (Massey
1990). As such racially segregated areas have been largely excluded from mortgage lending
(Lipsitz 2007). The consequence of differential access to mortgage lending has been that blacks
have struggled to gain access to homeownership; thereby black neighborhoods have experienced
reduced community stability (Rohe and Stewart 2010) and fewer opportunities for
intergenerational wealth transfer and accumulation (Lipsitz 2007). In the following section, the
chapter turns to focus on how racial dynamics have operated to reduce opportunities for black
residents in Detroit and Lowndes County to accumulate wealth through property ownership. The
denial of and removal from land in these two settings are significantly related to the
accumulation of racialized poverty in both communities.
Wealth, Home and Property
National Policy Impacts
Although the relationship between race and economy in the United States is complex, a
few important national polices have had significant impacts on the ability of traditionally
marginalized populations to accumulate wealth. With relevance to home and property ownership,
I focus here on three of these policy developments: welfare accessibility, NAFTA and its affects
on low-wage jobs, and low-income home ownership. These three nation-level interventions have
had significant impacts on the evolution of poverty in the United States.
The first formal welfare program in the United States was through the widow pension
program, which was a cash assistance program in place between 1908 and 1935 (Abramovitz
2006). When Aid to Dependent Children (ADC) came about through the 1935 Social Security

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 Act, a component of the New Deal programs put forward by Franklin Delano Roosevelt, it was
targeted at poor, single, white mothers. Blacks were initially excluded from receiving such
welfare benefits (Brown 2013). In 1962 ADC was changed to Aid to Families with Dependent
Children (AFDC). Over time welfare shifted from being associated with the deserving widowed,
white woman to the lazy, cheating, procreative, black woman. As welfare became racialized, the
framing shifted to a conceptualization of receipt of “welfare as fraud” (Chunn and Gavigan 2004,
p220). During the 1980 presidential campaign Ronald Reagan popularized the notion of the
“welfare queen,” based on a fictionalized version of two women’s stories he blended together as
a black woman who committed welfare fraud and who was living comfortably while receiving
benefits (Gustafson 2009). Seeing welfare as government waste, Reagan reduced funding for
food stamps and federal school lunch programs and introduced mandatory work programs
(Abramovitz 2006; Gustafson 2009).
During the 1996 presidential campaign, candidate Bill Clinton fueled racist caricatures
regarding black women in poverty in order to gain more moderate political support during the
election (Abramovitz 2006). He promised to bring about a change to the irresponsible behavior
of welfare mothers and in 1996 President Bill Clinton signed the Personal Responsibility and
Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act (PRWORA), which instituted Temporary Assistance for
Needy Families (TANF; Shaefer and Edin 2013). TANF placed lifetime caps in benefits,
encouraged (heterosexual) marriage, required work programs to hasten getting off of assistance,
and shifted the responsibility of administering welfare programs away from the federal
government and to individual states (Abramovitz 2006; Shaefer and Edin 2013). As states have
assumed more responsibility for managing welfare benefits the only consistent factor across
states corresponding to generosity of benefits has been race, with states having higher black

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 populations providing fewer benefits than states with smaller black populations (Brown 2013).
Since the switch to TANF benefits for the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP)
have increased, that is until the 2014 farm bill which reduced SNAP funding by 8.6 billion
dollars (Joseph 2014; Schaefer 2013). While the number of TANF recipients declined from
12.3 million per month in 1996 to 4.5 million 2011, the number receiving SNAP benefits
increased from 25.5 million in 1996 to 47.3 million in 2013 (Schaefer 2013).
Between 2000 and 2010 the number of Americans in poverty increased from 32 million
to 46.2 million and 58 percent of those in poverty are racial or ethnic minorities (Lichter et al.
2012). Rural populations experienced higher consistent rates of poverty over the same time
frame. One area of the United States that experiences persistent and particularly high rates of
impoverishment is the Black Belt region of Alabama and Mississippi. Lichter et al (2012)
estimate that the number of households living below the World Bank’s absolute poverty
definition of $2 per day in the United States increased from 636,000 in 1996 to 1.65 million by
2011. Among African American households there was a 186 percent increase in the amount of
absolute, extreme poverty between 1996 and 2011 (Lichter et al. 2012).
Hoynes et al (2012) found that men, blacks, Hispanics, youth, and people with lower
educational attainment experienced higher levels of unemployment during the recession during
the late 2000s, but men were also more likely to be hired back during the recovery from the
recession. According to Hoynes et al., people of marginalized social locations are more likely to
experience unemployment during times of economic stress and are less likely to be hired back
during early stages of economic recovery. To illustrate this point, Figure 6.1 shows that during
the recession between 2007 to 2009 both Lowndes County and Detroit experienced exaggerated
high unemployment rates in direct correlation with national unemployment rates.

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 One reason for higher unemployment rates within marginalized groups is the historic loss
of low-skill manufacturing jobs. Since the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA)
went into effect in 1994 the United States has seen a net trade deficit and net job losses (Scott
2011). While trade initially improved after NAFTA was put in place, it soon stalled. During the
recession between 2007 and 2009 the U.S. saw a loss of nearly 700,000 jobs and a trade deficit
of nearly $100 billion. The majority of jobs lost to Mexico were in manufacturing. Automobile
production exports from Mexico to the United States have increased, with more than 30,000 jobs
in automobile manufacturing displaced to Mexico. It is estimated that 43,600 jobs were lost as
of 2010 from the state of Michigan alone and an additional 11,100 jobs were lost from Alabama.
In 2010 the U.S. had a $35.4 billion trade deficit with Mexico in the motor vehicle and parts
manufacturing industry.
The enactment of NAFTA was also significantly detrimental to Mexico’s economy,
causing the loss of millions of jobs with the declining value of the peso as well as 1.3 million
jobs lost in the agricultural sector due to the influx of cheap, subsidized U.S. corn on the
Mexican market (Audley et al. 2004; Scott 2011). The enactment of NAFTA led to a
depeasantization of rural Mexican farmers (Browning 2013). U.S. corn exports to Mexico
increased by three to four times and pushed corn production into more marginal lands in order to
sustain Mexican corn production (Browning 2013). NAFTA opened the door for global exports
beyond Mexico and Canada so anticipated trade gains for Mexico, in particular, never
materialized (Correa and Seccareccia 2009). Since NAFTA went into effect, the number of
immigrants into the United States from Mexico has risen (Audley et al. 2004), further straining
employment opportunities for low-skill, low-income workers in the U.S.
Official income measures and employment statistics tell only part of the story of wealth

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 in America, though. Property ownership is a principal mechanism through which wealth is
transferred inter-generationally (Lipsitz 2007). Housing access has been a key area of inequality
in the United States and one for which significant policy efforts have attempted to directly target
inequality in access across racial groups. Policies enacted by the Federal Housing
Administration (FHA) directly discriminated against black communities and black applicants for
mortgages throughout the first half of the twentieth century (Bond and Williams 2007). In an
attempt to improve affordability and access to housing for low-income and minority families,
Congress passed the Civil Rights Act of 1968. The act is commonly known as the Fair Housing
Act. The act made discrimination against a person based on their race, color, or national origin
illegal in the pursuit of housing. The 1968 Housing Act required FHA to insure mortgages in
areas that had previously been excluded, including inner city neighborhoods.
Section 235 of the Fair Housing Act established a program to subsidize housing for lowincome buyers, reducing the amount that they would owe for a down payment, reducing income
eligibility to qualify for a loan to an annual income between $3,000-$5,000, and encouraging
lenders to permit loans for properties in more financially risky locations (e.g. inner cities and
areas with non-white residents; Gotham 2000). Section 235 encouraged new home construction,
with only 20 percent of funding for renovating existing structures (Lewis 2005). As a result of
the program, in a single year 125,000 new homes were constructed and 15,000 were renovated.
The U.S. Commission on Civil Rights found that houses purchased through the 235
program were often of poor workmanship and in immediate need of repair (Hesburgh 1971).
Many new and existing homes were found to have serious defects that could present new
homeowners with costly repairs. Inexperienced homebuyers were taken advantage of by
unscrupulous builders and contractors who did shoddy workmanship. Between poor

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 workmanship and mortgage recipients with little financial means, widespread loan defaults and
foreclosures followed, leading HUD to take ownership of an estimated 8,000 to 28,000 235
homes in Detroit alone. Many newly constructed homes were immediately condemned and the
Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) was called “the nation’s biggest
slumlord” (Harrigan 1989, quoted in Lewis 2005, p41).
So you had low-income people moving into these homes, which weren’t properly
repaired. Major systems were breaking down and they were unable to afford to have
furnaces and water heaters and whatever else, you know electrical systems rewired, you
know. They couldn’t afford it. So what happened, they’d have to walk away from these
houses. And in Detroit there were thousands and thousands. I would say tens of
thousands but there were probably at least ten or fifteen thousand abandoned homes. …
At the heart of the problem was that these homes were being left because people couldn’t
pay for them in many instances. In other instances these properties just weren’t up to
code. Many of the city officials that were involved in some of the corruption and some of
them went to jail.
–Ramon, an African American man, attorney, and a resident of Detroit
Residents in Lowndes County also pursued 235 homes only to have those homes be
poorly constructed and in some cases uninhabitable. Poor records and issues with financing
communally owned property have impaired residents’ ability to make improvements on their
homes and as a consequence have had limited resources for septic upgrades. Many septic
systems installed along with the 235 homes were inadequate at the time but were used anyway,
leading to long-term violations of state public health codes. This is one of the reasons why
residents perceived themselves as having functioning septic systems when they were installed
only to find out years later that they never worked properly. Although abandonment of homes
has occurred in Lowndes County, the abandonment of properties has not occurred as has
happened in Detroit. Poor quality houses are abandoned on family properties to be replaced
principally by mobile homes.
The 235 program was criticized for contributing to housing segregation because in

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 practice access to housing was still segregated along racial lines (Gotham 2000). When black
buyers could purchase new homes, they were often in blighted areas and when black buyers
attempted to move into predominately white areas, white residents panicked and moved out. The
235 program was ended in 1973 by President Nixon in response to widespread complaints about
the implementation of the program and its effects. With the failure of the 235 program, black
homeownership stalled until the 1990s.
During the 1980s, the banking industry underwent deregulation through the Depository
Institutions Deregulatory and Monetary Control Act of 1980 (Mendenhall 2010). The act
allowed for banks to charge higher interest rates and as the 1990s progressed new types of
commercial lenders emerged on the market (Aalbers 2009; Bond and Williams 2007;
Mendenhall 2010). Commercial banks and mortgage companies replaced credit unions and
savings banks as the principle mortgage lenders by the end of the 1990s (Mendenhall 2010).
Commercial lenders were not subject to the same regulations as investment banks so in 1999 the
Banking Act of 1933, otherwise known as the Glass Steagall Act,15 was repealed making it easier
for banks to compete with commercial mortgage companies.
The deregulation of the mortgage industry allowed for a market for subprime lending to
emerge (Bond and Williams 2007). Such loans targeted households that were perceived to be at
greater risk for defaulting but were profitable because subprime customers were required to pay
higher interest rates and loan servicing fees. Subprime lenders imposed punitive lending criteria
in order to increase loan profitability, which has contributed to the description of these loans as
predatory. Some of these criteria included
negative amortization, where payments are structured so they do not even cover interest;
prepayment penalties that keep borrowers from refinancing at lower rates; excessive fees;
15

The Glass Steagall Act separated investment banking from commercial banking. With its repeal, banks were able
to participate in loan securities financing along with mortgage companies.

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 loan flipping, where creditors pressure borrowers to repeatedly refinance their loans and
pay additional points…; and asset-based lending, where the loan is based not on the
ability to repay but on the equity in one’s home (Bond and Williams 2007, p676-677).
An additional factor influencing the profitability of subprime loans was the way in which
subprime loans were packaged. Subprime loans were individually higher risk loans but
packaged together they presented the possibility of high profits due to their higher interest rates
and associated fees (Aalbers 2009). As such, these loans underwent securitization wherein they
were bundled together and sold as packages to investors in investment markets on Wall Street
(Correa and Seccareccia 2009, Mendenhall 2010). This allowed for a deferred chain of
accountability such that risk continued to be pushed off to the next buyer. Bundles of subprime
mortgages were purchased beyond local and national banks by international investors,
distributing the U.S. mortgage market to global investors (Aalbers 2009).
Mortgage lending for low-income and minority households increased in the 1990s (Bond
and Williams 2007). Between 1993 and 1999 mortgage lending to black households increased
by 119 percent. Subprime mortgage lending went up 7.5 times between 1993 and 1998 and
subprime mortgages were significantly responsible for increases in homeownership for black
residents (Bond and Williams 2007; Rugh and Massey 2010).
The system was profitable so long as more borrowers could be found and housing prices
continued to rise (Rugh and Massey 2010). With rising housing prices, speculators invested in
housing with hopes to flip houses and make a quick profit. This further pushed housing prices
up to their peak in 2004 until they began to stall in 2006. In September 2008 the major mortgage
guarantors Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, along with the American International Group Inc.
(AIG), which provided mortgage insurance on high risk loans, crumbled and required the federal
government to provide trillions of dollars towards bailouts (Mendenhall 2010). By 2009

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 foreclosures in general rose to 4.6 percent and subprime foreclosures rose to 15.6 percent (Rugh
and Massey 2010). Declining housing prices exacerbated foreclosure, which led to the collapse
of the subprime lending market. It follows that concentration of low-income minorities in urban
communities led to the concentration of sub-prime lending, which left those communities
particularly vulnerable to rampant foreclosures. With housing foreclosures, these communities
were subject to population decline and increasing blight.
Together welfare reform, the loss of North American manufacturing jobs, and the
subprime lending market followed by economic recession all contributed to diminished cash
assistance and safety nets for low-income populations, fewer employment opportunities for lowskilled and poorly educated workers, and housing instability particularly for low-income
minorities. The synergism between these national policy changes had severe affects on the most
economically vulnerable populations. These national level efforts negatively interacted with
regional and local policies and practices to create the conditions of poverty observed in each
community at present.
Detroit
Detroit’s racialized housing structure has been pervasive throughout the city’s history.
From redlining to keep blacks isolated in designated areas, the development of defended
neighborhoods as black residents became more mobile, historic and present urban renewal
projects that displaced black neighborhoods, and rampant foreclosures associated with 235
homes, predatory lending, and water bills, black housing has been aggressively managed and
destroyed. Not only does this process deny black residents of homes, neighborhoods, and
opportunities for wealth accumulation but it also strips them of place identity, community
ownership, and the ability to make claims on place-based ownership so as to assert their ability

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 and right to govern themselves.
Redlining and Riots
Detroit was built as a residential city with few high-density residential buildings (Sugrue
1996). Instead, the 140 square mile area of the city of Detroit was developed largely with singlefamily houses as shown in Figure 6.2. Black newcomers to Detroit settled in the only
communities available to them, the communities of Black Bottom and Paradise Valley. Whites
in Detroit maintained segregation maintained through threats of violence, restrictive covenants,
and refusing to do business with black customers. Active segregation efforts were the norm in
Detroit. In one instance, faced with being denied funding through the Federal Housing
Administration because of a planned development’s proximity to (black) slum housing, in 1940
one developer took an unusual step. In an effort to contain black residents and prevent the
proximity of black-occupied housing from diminishing property values, the developer
constructed a one-foot thick, six-foot high cement wall along Eight Mile Road to separate the
white and black communities. Even today the wall remains a stark dividing line between the
black city of Detroit and its white suburbs.
When the Detroit Housing Commission and the United States Housing Authority decided
to develop a housing project in northeast Detroit that would allow black residents white
neighbors of the future Sojourner Truth project organized and resisted (Sugrue 1996). In part,
their resistance stemmed from the concurrent decision by the Federal Housing Administration to
deny mortgage loans in that neighborhood as a result of the planned development. Whites and
blacks, respectively, pressured the project developers to deny or allow black residents to live in
the community. When in 1942 blacks were allowed to move into the housing project, rioting of
erupted; at the end of the day hundreds were arrested but nearly all of those arrested were black.

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 In 1948 the US Supreme Court struck down restrictive housing covenants and black
residents with the means to do so began moving out of the segregated neighborhoods. Many
white residents moved out of these communities as black residents moved in.
When … I first moved to the neighborhood, I was twelve years old, it was an all white
neighborhood basically. Maybe about ninety percent white, ten percent black, we had
schools everywhere. … But then more blacks moved in, more whites moved out, schools
started closing. … When whites left, money left. And the city went down man.
–Roger, an African American man, activist and a resident of Detroit
Over the first three decades of the 20th century Detroit’s African American population
increased relative to the number of whites in the city. As shown in Figure 6.3, the shifting
demographic can be seen as early as the 1920 census. Rapid changes in Detroit’s population,
however, started to occur in coincidence with major events of rioting such as Sojourner Truth
riots in 1942, rioting in 1943, and the Rebellion in 1967. While many point to the 1967 riots
as the defining point which led to the population sea change in Detroit, Figure 6.3 shows that
this transition was well underway by 1967. Rather, it was after the 1967 riots that Detroit’s
demographic shifted from a predominately white city to a majority black city.
The 1967 riots are largely referred to as riots by whites and outside observers while
Detroit residents term them the Rebellion. By 1967, black residents in Detroit, particularly
youths, had grown to a breaking point in anger and frustration at difficulties with securing
affordable, decent housing; massive unemployment; violence from white residents; and
mistreatment by the white police force (Sugrue 1996). When the police shut down a blind pig
(an illegal bar) and attempted to arrest all of the employees and patrons, a crowd developed
around them. Tempers raged until rioting broke out, resulting in dozens of deaths and thousands
of arrests. More than 1,000 buildings were destroyed, which amounted to property damage

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 estimates around $50 million (Darden 2013). The rioting lasted five days and again had to be
suppressed by the National Guard.
Rather than a point when the exodus from Detroit began, the 1967 riots mark a symbolic
change for white residents of Detroit who see this as the point when the city was abandoned to
black residents who they considered to be violent and dangerous.
Um, and then just the sentiment too of a lot of people that are … older white people that
grew up in Detroit and lived in Detroit until the race riots and then they moved out to the
suburbs and … some … that have not been back to Detroit since then and are actually
afraid to come to Detroit. … And you just, talking to different people and there’s just
this, I don’t know, there is this sentiment that Detroit is not good and the riots occurred,
and it’s never going to be better … “I’m not going down to Detroit.”
–Jessica, a white woman, activist, and a resident of Detroit
Not only did the outmigration of whites constitute an abandonment of the city, it was also
an abandonment of the city’s remaining occupants. The movement of whites to the suburbs and
middle-class blacks away from low-income black residents contributed to the development of a
category of people that represented the embarrassing, the detestable, and the ones to be feared.
The basis for the movement of people around the Detroit region was explicitly to escape the
object of fear, the poor black resident.
So [in Paradise Valley and Black Bottom] you had the so-called well to do and the poor
all in one area. … Once we were able to make that money and move, they did. So they
were moving away from those poor people so fast, and did not want any association, and
then you have internalized racism. The same racism that was practiced on us, we practice
on ourselves. And we dislike that class for the same reasons the others seemingly don’t
like them too. But I think it was even deeper. I think for many blacks it was because they
were embarrassing to them and because… And I wanna get away from those single
mothers and that whole stereotype that went with them, … the association of drugs …
thugs, gangs, things like that, you know. ….
–Nadeen, an African American woman, activist, and a resident of Detroit
Redlining was symptomatic of a collective construction of blacks as unwanted and
contaminating of pure, white spaces. Rioting, as a result of discriminatory practices, served
to reinforce these constructions of blacks as violent and dangerous. In order to improve their

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 living conditions, middle-class blacks moved away from dangerous areas but also dangerous
people—the poor, black residents. Through abandonment, in mutual constitution the space
of Detroit and its remaining residents were set as a single violent, black, and poor landscape.
Defended Neighborhoods
White residents moved into the suburbs to avoid violence and preserve their way of life
while middle-class blacks moved out also to avoid violence but also to improve their way of life.
Detroit’s population peaked at just over 1.8 million in the 1950 census and declined significantly
after that point. As middle class blacks moved out of black communities, those left behind were
of minimal financial means. The depopulated areas became extremely impoverished ghettos
without the social and financial capital to improve living conditions.
Slums don’t just appear, they’re created. Slums don’t just materialize; they’re caused.
Everything that we do, a decision was made, one way or the other. Like poverty…
Poverty is a decision. It’s not just something that appears.
–Roger, an African American man, activist and a resident of Detroit
While the outmigration of middle class blacks is supportive of Wilson’s analysis, the
presence of defended neighborhoods also supports a framing consistent with Massey. Not all
white residents moved to the suburbs. Some took to defending their neighborhoods from the
intrusion of blacks (Sugrue 1996). In response to the outmigration of middle-class blacks, white
residents resorted to intimidation, protests, and violence (including stoning black-owned houses,
breaking windows, setting homes on fire, and burning crosses on the lawn) to keep blacks from
moving into their neighborhoods. The enforcement of segregation did not die out but persists
even today.
It’s like, in particular, certain neighborhoods are so spanking white that if a black…ok, a
block away from my mom’s house there’s a, they call it salt and pepper couple. So they
move in…So this poor couple moves in a block down from her. On the right side the
house goes up for sale. On the left side the house goes up for sale. Across the street was
a school so nothing went up there. Salt and pepper couple move out. This was [2009]! I

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 don’t want to say somebody burned a cross on their lawn but something happened. Like
somebody put up something on their lawn like put up something, a cross or something
and made a doll implying something really bad would happen. So they moved out. The
people on the left moved back in instead of…well they had already sold their house so
they moved into another house that was over there. The people on the right took the for
sale sign down.
–Paige, a white woman and a resident of Detroit
Although the U.S. Supreme Court officially declared housing restrictions to be illegal,
in practice they persisted through the efforts of realtors, landlords, and white neighbors.
“Real estate discrimination in Metro Detroit gained national prominence in 1960 following
revelations that agents in the Grosse Pointes ranked prospective home buyers by race,
nationality, occupation, and ‘degree of swarthiness’” (Cohen 1999). Such revelations helped
to spur the demand for the federal reforms brought about through the 1968 Federal Housing
Act. While legally these practices are barred and realtors found to be engaging in
discrimination now face severe legal and professional consequences, as Paige observed this
does not prohibit white residents from making communities unlivable for those they do not
want as neighbor.
Urban Renewal
In the 1950s and 1960s, homes in Black Bottom and Paradise Valley were bulldozed
to make way for the Chrysler Freeway, a one-mile stretch of Interstate 375, and the
development of Lafayette Park, which today is home of sky rise apartment buildings (Karush
2004; Sugrue 1996). Thousands of low-income residents of color were forced out to look for
new homes but few affordable options were available. Displaced residents were trapped into
paying inflated housing prices for poorly maintained buildings, leaving them with little
attachment to the properties (Sugrue 1996).
Although the demolition of Black Bottom and Paradise Valley was the most overt form

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 of urban renewal, ongoing plans to rescue Detroit from its economic free-fall and to build a new
and improved version of the city have involved demolition of tens of thousands of homes and
properties. While residents and city planners agree that removal of dangerous and blighted
structures is necessary, many visions for the future of Detroit include plans to tear down homes,
relocate residents, and consolidate neighborhoods. For long-time residents of the city, such plans
are deeply reminiscent of urban renewal projects that have transformed the city in the past.
You know, my grandfather got displaced by freeways three times. Three times! And the
last time he sat on the porch with a shotgun. ... He was the last house before the freeway
came through. … Your house gets torn down by freeways over and over again, it just
gives you like…you’re either gonna move on or your gonna root yourself so deeply that
nothing is gonna move you. … Just root down as deep as you can go and refuse to go.
–Sophia, a Hispanic woman and a Detroit resident
Former Mayor Dave Bing’s plans to “right size” the city of Detroit through demolition
and residential removal drew significant ire from many residents. His plans for the
redevelopment of the city included creating rural, agricultural spaces in pockets or rings around
an urban core (Glaeser 2010).
[Mayor Bing] did an interview with Chris Hansen from Dateline…. Basically what he
said was he was gonna reduce the size of the city. He was gonna, through eminent
domain, make people leave their homes and demolish them and do urban farming. He
said this publicly on TV.
–Lauren, an African American woman, city employee, and a resident of Detroit
The most recent plan for the city, The Detroit Future City Strategic Framework Plan,
makes no mention of the use of eminent domain and the phrase only appears once in the full
document as a recommendation by a resident (DFC 2012). Discussion of eminent domain and
relocation is strictly avoided in part due to the backlash that Mayor Bing received for his
rightsizing plans (Reindl 2013). In spite of an emphasis by planners that under their plans no one
would be forced from their homes if they did not want to move, some legislators are skeptical
that the revitalization of Detroit can take place without forced relocation.

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 I don't believe with the city's current size it is viable trying to deliver resources to maybe
one house on a block,” said [State Senator Rick Jones, R-Grand Ledge], who would
support shrinking Detroit's city limits. “Detroit has enough land mass for 3 million people,
and it has shrunk down to 700,000 (Reindl 2013).
While planners officially state that their reasoning behind not advocating for relocation is
a matter of justice and fairness to residents who are attached to their homes, the cost of relocation
is also a concern.
There are issues regarding eminent domain and how do you remove people. Some
people don’t want to leave where they’re currently residing. Issues in terms of the costs.
Removing, placing people in suitable housing once they are forced off the land. You can
use eminent domain but you also have to give them fair market value and is the city in a
position financially to do that? Even with some assistance from the federal government.
–Ramon, an African American man, attorney, and a resident of Detroit
More than lack of political will, Detroit lacks the financial resources to use the court system to
force people out of their homes. Regardless of which citywide redevelopment plans move
forward, existing processes driving out low-income households are already at play. A far more
effective way to remove people from the city is to let poverty run its course, remove basic
services, and enforce punitive measures that result in relocation. For Detroit this is observed
through the elimination of public housing in concert with massive foreclosures that have
devastated the city.
Housing Displacement
Lack of affordable housing in Detroit has presented a conduit for pushing out unwanted
poor residents, predominately of color, from the city. Tax lien foreclosures from unpaid water
bills, as discussed in Chapter 5, are one mechanism through which housing displacement has
occurred. For residents who should have more leverage to stay in their homes because of their
home ownership, tax liens for unpaid water bills offer a conduit for a backdoor eminent domain
process that shifts the process of urban renewal away from planners and developers and onto

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 homeowners who can be characterized as having failed in their responsibilities to keep their
services current and legally turned on.
There’s a lien on your property if you can’t pay your water bill so you lose your property
and it makes you homeless and they get rid of poor people. They take possession of the
property because they have plans for that land so they were using the water as a way of
eminent domain.
–Maria, a Hispanic woman, an activist, and a resident of Detroit
Foreclosures resulting from the 235 program and the more recent recession have also
resulted in the loss of secure housing in the city. In 2007 Detroit had 72,616 new default filings
and 41,273 houses already in foreclosure (Rooney 2008). Houses in foreclosure in Detroit
comprised 4.9 percent of all properties, which was nearly five times the national average for that
year making it the highest rate of foreclosures for any city in the nation. It is estimated that 28.7
percent of all foreclosures in Detroit were abandoned and in 2011 that there were at least 70,000
abandoned homes in the city of Detroit (Forer 2011; Sauter 2013). The city has auctioned off
properties for a little as 500 dollars for houses and 200 dollars for vacant lots (Sands 2012).
Public housing has also been significantly problematic in the city. Like many other
programs run in the city, the Detroit Housing Commission was found to have problems with
corruption and mismanagement of funds.
Back in 2003 the housing department used to be a part of the city. Well they got cited by
HUD and they had to pay millions back because of the misuse and abuse of money so
finally the city and the housing department they became separate entities but the housing
department reorganized and said they could not maintain the Section 8 here in Detroit.
They couldn’t take any more. So they stopped. They just stopped. … There used to be
housing projects, they used to call them, all over… The public housing has disappeared,
all but disappeared.
–Lauren, an African American woman, city employee, and a resident of Detroit
Because Detroit did briefly cease offering Section 8 housing and when it resumed there
were said to be several thousand people on waiting lists, it has become widely believed that
Section 8 housing is simply not available in the city anymore. According to housing rights

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 activists, this is not the case but it is also not easy to get Section 8 housing the city either.
Thank god for racism. … What I mean by that is that Detroit Housing Commission did
have a huge problem with waiting lists like 13,000 people on the waiting list for public
housing and for Section 8 vouchers. So of course, that’s difficult to get but most of the
suburban communities also have vouchers. They would sooner poor people not use them
in their communities so Detroiters do access, you know, by going to Redford, by going to
Livonia, by going to Ferndale, Dearborn, wherever, do access those to be able to get
vouchers as well to be here. … They hand them a voucher and direct them back to Detroit.
… The other thing is there has been a tremendous reduction in the number of public
housing units, particularly, and also the numbers of Section 8 units. … There’s nowhere
near enough housing to meet the need.
–James, a white man, activist, and a resident of Detroit
Because of mismanagement, public housing was significantly transformed in the city. As James
attests, it is possible to get Section 8 vouchers in the city either by waiting on long waiting lists
or by going to suburban communities to get a voucher. These communities continue to enforce
segregation by discouraging applicants from using vouchers in their communities.
While the focus on Detroit is typically on the exodus, many Detroit residents have gone
off the grid from formal occupancy recognition. Detroit has an estimated 20,000 homeless
persons living in the city and more than 30,000 in the metropolitan area (Chapman 2013;
MSHDA 2014). Homeless persons have few rights to occupancy and are frequent targets of
harassment by the public and by the police. In the recent efforts to improve the image of the city,
numerous homeless persons in Detroit have reported being picked up by police, driven outside
the city limits, and dropped off with no way to get back (Chapman 2013). The net effect of each
of these circumstances is both the legal and the public construction of the landscape as devoid of
(rights wielding) occupants.
Formal plans for relocation involve the legal exchange of land rights and termination of
lease agreements. For those without legal documentation of connection to the properties in
which they dwell, their ability to claim their space is more precarious. Although even squatters

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 have rights to adverse possession, developers have greater financial and legal resources to take
possession of properties and demolish them. In some cases residents may have at one time been
in legal possession of a property but no longer have the appropriate documentation, the legal
resources to defend that possession, or the knowledge and experience as to know how they
would go about fighting for their properties. By making claims to property invisible, at least to
the law, it is easier for developers to move forward with demolition and development projects.
I saw that [making people invisible to remove them] happening when they built the
Motor City Casino. North Corktown extended over on the other side of Tremble. There
was more neighborhood. There were blocks of houses and I noticed that when they
started kicking people out those same people they were kicking out were just homeless.
They had no place to be. I started having conversations with them like what happened to
your house? “Casino took it.” What, did you own it? “Well…it was my grandfather’s
house. It was…that house has been in our family since 1890. But I couldn’t prove it so I
lost it.” Maybe there was never probate. All this bullshit costs money. It costs
thousands of dollars to have probate. … So a lot of people left because they didn’t know
how to fight for themselves.
–Paige, a white woman and a resident of Detroit
Housing displacement has served as a significant mechanism through which
contemporary urban renewal projects are able to take place. Detroit’s decline is not only about
absolute decline in incomes but also about how residents have been squeezed out of their homes
through formal and informal mechanisms. Because housing is intimately tied to wealth, the
displacement of residents from their homes further entrenches structures of poverty that have
been well established in the city for decades.
Detroit’s population fell from a high of 1.8 million in 1950 to its present population
around 700,000. In a city where housing was deeply contested and defended across racial
boundaries, the departure of whites and middle-class blacks for the outer limits of the city
reinforced an ingrained classed, racial segregation between the city and the suburbs. The widely
shared perspective for residents outside the city limits is not that the departure of whites and their

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 financial resources left the city in ruins, but that blacks that remained in Detroit ruined the city
through graft and greed. Through a discursive construction of the city as abandoned and through
formal public policies at the national and local scales, pathways to secure and retain decent
affordable housing were eliminated or degraded. The lack of decent, affordable housing has left
residents with few resources to remain in place and for those that do severe deprivation has
become the norm.
Lowndes County
Housing in Lowndes County, like Detroit, is tied intimately to the history of race
relations in the county. Property ownership, specifically, has represented security and power for
black residents. This power is not tied so much to the ability to influence political decisionmaking for county governance as it is to have power over one’s own self-determination and
ability to ensure stability for one’s family. Several themes are significant in relation to property
ownership in Lowndes County. These include the historic ways in which political power was
denied through control of land, experiences of heir property, concerns about land grabs, and
evictions associated with improper sanitation. Far from distinct, these themes are mutually
reinforcing.
Land and Power
Control of land has long been the anchor of power in Lowndes County and a mechanism
for influence regardless of physical residency (Jeffries 2009). Even during slavery, many
plantations were owned by whites who did not physically reside in Lowndes County but instead
lived in Montgomery. Today this tradition remains and many white, large landowners live
outside of the county. Through land ownership they maintain influence on the political structure.

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 And, um… Although the whites are the vast, uh, minority, in politics, still these rich
white landowners still have huge power with the black-elected officials, as well.
–Sydney, a white woman, and a resident of Lowndes County
Some still have property here in Lowndes County. … And these are the large landowners,
uh, these are the ones who have already made it in life. Those are the type of people who
are the outside interests who do not want Lowndes County to grow in such a way where
it could be.
–Lowndes County Commissioner
For individual property owners, black ownership of land in the county has never
matched the scale of white land ownership. In the South, during Reconstruction some
plantations were seized and the property was given to former slaves (Jeffries 2009). In other
instances, white landowners divided up plantations into smaller plots and allowed families to
pay rent on the land through sharecropping. While during Reconstruction some black
families in Lowndes County were able to acquire property, control of large properties of land
continued to be maintained primarily by white landowners. Control of land was a significant
mechanism for maintaining social order in the county and efforts to purchase land were
received similarly to efforts to gain political power; they were threats to the established
power structure. Violence was used to intimidate blacks from organizing politically or
purchasing property, which were threats to this structure; evictions and threats of evictions
were powerful tools used against tenants to quash efforts to support those causes.
The removal of tenants from properties was a tactic of intimidation as many who were
removed from their homes had lived on the properties for their entire lives (Jeffries 2009). For
sharecroppers, eviction from the land meant both the denial of ‘home’ as well as the elimination
of economic sufficiency (Harmon 2012). Additionally, though, it severed relationships between
tenants and landowners that in some cases were perceived as benevolent. At the end of
sharecropping, some landowners allowed the sharecroppers to take their belongings and the

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 building materials for their homes with them as they relocated. This act of kindness, as viewed
by residents, was an important connection between them and the landowner who they felt cared
about them. One woman interviewed remarked fondly about how the landowner allowed her
mother to take the building materials for her home with her when he had them move off of his
property.
Throughout the early 20th century, multiple efforts at mobilizing black voters in Lowndes
County were undertaken (Jeffries 2009). In direct response to successful efforts to register large
numbers of black residents to vote in the 1960s, white landowners evicted blacks residents.
Black ownership of land in the county was significant during this time in sustaining political
activities. In 1966 a tent city was constructed on a black-owned property to provide temporary
housing for those families that had been evicted from their homes for participating in or
supporting voter rights organizing. The ability to have voter rights activists and supporters move
to the tent city allowed them to keep working towards organizing. The presence of black-owned
land, however, did not prevent whites from trying to set fire to the tents or from shooting into
them.
Heir property
While for white landowners in the county control of land represents power, for black
residents land ownership also represents security and family cohesion. It has afforded some
measure of protection from white intimidation and provides a physical point of congregation for
families. Often residents of collectively owned land live in clusters of five or more homes.
Yeah, because when I grew up…I mean the way my parents preach home ownership to
me from the very beginning. Um, and, and I’m sure everybody else’s parents did too.
Their goal was to own property. I mean, that was the goal … and the property was not a
car or a house or jewelry. Property was owning land. Because they realized the value of
land and the value of land keeping a family together, too…creating that cohesiveness.
–Sarah, an African American woman, activist, former resident of Lowndes County

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 Ownership of land in Lowndes County is valued such that 78 percent of households in
Lowndes County are owner-occupied in contrast with 65 percent of households nationwide and
72 percent in rural areas and small towns (HAC 2012; US Census 2010). Land ownership for
black residents in Lowndes County does not carry the same political influence as it does for
white residents because black-owned land is typically not owned outright by individuals.
And, a lot of the property is heir property. … And…what happens is that it’s passed
down…it’s not even in one family’s name. So, if the great-great grandparents bought the
land and then, uh, all of their heirs are owners. Then all…then that next generation all
their heirs are owners. I mean it keeps growing and growing and growing.
–Sarah, an African American woman, activist, former resident of Lowndes County
Over time, black-owned land in Lowndes County has become increasingly complex as
more names are added to the property titles through the system of heir property. Heir property is
legally referred to as tenancy-in-common and is a system in which land is owned by multiple coowners (Deaton et al. 2009). It is considered to be an important cause of lack of wealth
accumulation among blacks in the South (Dyer and Bailey 2008). Because property titles are
aggregated at the county level and are subject to the records keeping of individual county clerks,
the extent of heir property throughout the Black Belt is not easy measured (Dyer et al. 2009).
Dyer and Bailey (2008) estimate that between 33-80 percent of black owned land in the Black
Belt is collectively owned.
Heir property is a system of landownership wherein when an individual landowner dies
without leaving a written will, the property passes to all living heirs with allocations given
according to degree of relation by blood (Dyer 2008). The more closely related a family member,
the greater a percentage interest in the property that family member is given. These
arrangements entitle that family member to that share of the profits of the land (either through
sale of the land or through sale of the products of the land) but not to a specific, physical plot of

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 the land. The land itself remains as an entire unit to which all owners, regardless of share size,
have access. Heir property is particularly common among African American descendants of
slaves due to the fact that it was illegal to teach slaves to read and write. As such, many black
property owners passed away without leaving written wills. Because with heir property the land
continues to be divided to diminishing fractions and because that land cannot be leveraged to
gain access to other forms of financial capital, heir property stalls wealth accumulation (Dyer
and Bailey 2008; Deaton et al. 2009) but heir property has remained an important mechanism for
establishing family cohesion, providing an emotional connection to the land as home and
sanctuary, and ensuring a degree of political power and independence through collective land
ownership (Dyer and Bailey 2008).
Since multiple parties own the land it is difficult to gain the cooperation of many family
members who may be spread out over a distance and who may not even know each other or how
to get in touch with each other (Dyer and Bailey 2008). As such, individual co-owners of the
property do not have clear property titles. As a result of not having a clear title to the land,
individual co-owners are ineligible for loans or grants to make infrastructural improvements on
the land; the land cannot be held as collateral against loans; and agricultural products, such as
timber, cannot be sold. Agricultural products cannot be sold because companies worry about
litigation should another co-owner claim that they were not properly compensated for the sale of
the products. Any improvements that are made to the land, such as building houses or septic
systems, belong to the entire group of co-owners and not to the individual who invested in those
improvements.
The principle risk with heir property is that any co-owner can force the sale of the
property through partition sales (Dyer 2008). Any co-owner has the right to attempt to buy other

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 co-owners out of their share of the land but if they refuse to sell their shares that original coowner can have a court order a partition sale so that the interested co-owner can get their
investment out of the land. Judges can choose to divide the land up and sell only a piece of the
property but because land may be considered of different value depending on location, typically
judges will order sale of the entire property.
Taxes on heir property can also force a sale. Typically property taxes are paid by
individual co-owners and not collectively. Having paid property taxes in the past does not
indicate more significant ownership of the land as the property taxes are paid for the land as a
whole and not in the name of individual occupants (Dyer 2008). Even if a single co-owner has
historically paid taxes, if taxes are not kept up to date the property can be taken by the county.
Heir property is vulnerable to adverse possession because there is no written title to the
land. Another party, regardless of whether or not they have a legal right to the land, can build a
fence around the land or construct buildings and claim ownership over the property (Dyer 2008).
It has been argued that there have been intentional efforts to remove blacks from their land (Falk
2004; Gilbert et al. 2002) and exploiting heir property is one mechanism through which this is
done (Dyer and Bailey 2008). One man described the experience of having his land surveyed
for an unknown speculator.
But in regards to the land, people talking about they're losing land, I had an experience
about three years ago where I lived on my in-laws – they have 10 acres. And I went
outside one evening, and there was a surveyor coming up through the woods, and he was
surveying. So I went back to the house, and I told my wife, I said, I'm going to see what
he would charge to survey out two acres out of this ten. … He said, well, I'll be back
tomorrow evening. Tomorrow never came. He never came back. So somebody had him
surveying out that whole corner of land. You need to check on your land, check on your
property, check on your deeds, because people are taking land.
– Lowndes County resident, Bible Baptist Church Town Hall, April 2002
The surveyor never returned so it is unclear why he was on this property. With poor records

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 keeping at the county level and limited documentation of ownership these properties are
vulnerable to speculators or other residents who may be interested in claiming them as their
own.
For residents in Lowndes County, ownership of land has been valued as a symbol of
status. For white residents who own large areas of land, land ownership brings with it power and
influence over decision making in the county. For black residents, land ownership brings family
cohesion and independence. Because of the heir system in the county, black landowners do not
have the same degree of influence over the political structure as white, large landowners. The
stability of black landowners is less secure as a result of an inability to leverage land as an
independent capital. Although land ownership does enhance a sense of familial security, the
mutual coownership of land places occupants in a precarious position of not being able to access
traditional benefits of land ownership such as making improvements on the land or being able to
pass accumulated wealth on to one’s children.
Land Grab and Evictions
Many parallels with Detroit can be found in access to decent housing and control of
property in Lowndes County. Black residents in Lowndes County feel as though there is an
effort to take control of property in the county and they attribute that to existing white
landowners. Unlike Detroit’s urban renewal programs, though, there is no indication of a
systematic effort to remove black residents from the county. Instead, black residents are pushed
into smaller spaces with limited infrastructure and community resources. One significant and
commonly shared concern about the arrests and evictions related to septic system problems in the
county is that this issue is merely a rouse for a larger effort at a land grab.

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 When people's land is taken because they cannot put in the tanks or pay – what happens
to the land? Who does it go to? Can somebody answer that question for me, please?
Because if – this is something that's been instituted and it becomes a pattern, a certain
amount of land being taken, in the pattern, it's way beyond, okay, septic tanks and utility
bills.
–Lowndes County resident, Faith Baptist Church Town Hall, May 2002
The origins of this fear are grounded in the mechanisms through which blacks in the county were
able to gain possession of property in the past. Through being awarded property during
Reconstruction and whittling away at a white family’s legacy, black ownership of land has been
perceived as a threat to white control of property in the county.
And, uh, ya know… there was a lot of things that maybe were said where, ya know, back,
way back in… these sharecropper days where the land was given away, and some of the
people from Montgomery, that their family gave it away many years ago, and there’s this
kind of a suspicion of a land grab, of trying to get the land back…
–Earl, a white man, environmental consultant, and a non-resident
During the town hall meetings, multiple residents spoke about their experiences in trying
to retain control of their land. One man described how his property began to disappear through
clerical errors and problems with documentation.
We lost property; we lost everything we had from the family due to people taking it for
no reason at all. We had land on the highway disappear. Paid taxes on it for years. … My
last auntie passed, and I assumed responsibility for paying the taxes for my father. At
that time, there was supposed to have been 34 acres of land left. … My father started to
cut the timber about eight or nine years ago. Once he started cutting the timber on the
property, they find out then that somebody else owned it, and we wondered how. And
then they issued a warrant and had him to stop cutting the timber. They stopped, went in,
tied it up in the court. We hired a lawyer out of Hayneville to look into it. And what they
did was they said they ruled on it, but my father never got a hearing on the ruling, and
that probably dwindled down from 34 acres to 17 acres now.
– Lowndes County resident, Bible Baptist Church Town Hall, April 2002
Whether an intentional effort to regain control of land perceived to have been dispossessed or the
result of poor records keeping practices at the county courthouse, the impact has been a reduction
in the amount of land owned by some black residents in the county, a widespread belief that a
land grab has been taking place, and a degree of disempowerment to respond to such problems

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 because of challenges in working with the records through the courthouse.
Bound within the difficulties of mostly heir properties, documentation is a significant
problem in protecting land and making improvements on it. As members of ACRE worked to
improve living conditions for residents struggling with septic problems in the county through
improvements on the land (i.e. installing septic systems) or through improving the homes on the
properties, they encountered significant difficulty in getting outside appraisers and contractors to
work inside the county.
They said that the records in the courthouse are so messed up that they don’t have a good
way to appraise the value of the property. And, that’s also a problem because when you
have land and you want a, um, a mortgage, you know, you’re going to have to get an
appraisal of some sort. And they can’t appraise it …We said it was Lowndes County and
they said they wouldn’t come to Lowndes County.
–Sarah, an African American woman, activist, former resident of Lowndes County
Black property owners in Lowndes County feel as though they are losing their land in a
discrete but systematic effort to regain control of land by white residents. They base this belief
in the history of the county that saw land taken away from white landowners and given to black
residents through Reconstruction. Black residents believe that this was met with resentment and
an effort to illegally take possession of that land back from black landowners. Regardless of
malicious intent, in effect black residents are losing possession of their land due to problems with
records keeping at the courthouse, heir property, and evictions associated with poor sanitation.
Residents experience these evictions not as a mechanism to restore healthful living conditions to
the county but as a further instrument to disenfranchise them and displace them from their land.
Matters are further complicated through the heir property system that creates disincentives for
and barriers to property improvements like septic systems. Lacking the financial resources and
social connections to legally fight for their property, black residents have lost ground.

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 Conclusion
Lowndes County and Detroit share significant similarities in the ways in which blacks in
each community have experienced marginalization in relation to property and home ownership.
This exclusion from land has not only been symptomatic of their poverty but also constitutive of
it. Without the ability to accumulate wealth through land and home ownership, residents lack 1)
stable points for gathering together families and building neighborhoods and 2) political
influence that is associated both with land ownership as well as wealth from the land through
property values and the potential value of products from the land.
The instability of property ownership in Lowndes County helps to explain continuing
conditions of absolute poverty in spite of improvements in formal measures of poverty in the
county. Figure 6.4 shows that poverty in Lowndes County has declined at least since 1960 when
77.8 percent of the population was officially below the poverty level. In 2010 the poverty level
in the county was estimated to be 23.6 percent, which is a significant improvement over the last
half century, although it is still more than 5 percent higher than poverty levels in the state overall
and more than 8 percent higher than national poverty levels (see Table 6.1). While absolute
income levels indicate imply improved living conditions, the instability of employment, as
indicated in Figure 6.1, and the struggle for permanent housing indicate that family wealth is still
quite problematic. The structure of black property ownership through the heir property system
and the role that race has played in shaping land ownership patterns in the county have
contributed to this barrier to wealth accumulation for blacks in the county.
Overt processes, and in some cases real physical barriers, have been put in place to
regulate black home and property ownership in Detroit. Between black resistance (in the form of
rioting) to violence and discrimination for housing and jobs and black leadership that asserted the

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 importance of an independent black political structure, black assertions of power in Detroit have
been perceived as threatening to whites in and around the city. To limit the spread of this
assertion of black independence, whites fled in some cases and in others resorted to violence and
intimidation to constrain black movement. As whites collectively abandoned the city to itself,
formal (e.g. urban renewal) and informal (e.g. foreclosures) actions that served to limit the
influence and autonomy of the (black) city ensued.
These local, land-based processes interacted with national processes that synergistically
reinforced the displacement of blacks from the formal economic structure. Various programs
that on their surface have been intended to improve opportunities for low-income Americans
have instead allowed for further exploitation of these populations. The racialization of welfare
characterized black women as greedy and lazy, resulting in the withdrawal of cash assistance and
a demonization of those seeking welfare. While the 235 homes on their surface were intended to
improve access to housing for low-income and minority residents, just like the subprime lending
crisis that followed, the program in actually served as just another opportunity for other people to
profit from black poverty.
Often it is claimed that racism is not relevant to Lowndes County and Detroit because
black leaders largely govern both communities and yet political corruption persists while poverty
has not improved. This superficial analysis allows for a colorblind gaze to emerge as the moral
and valid understanding. While through using Bonilla-Silva’s (2010) four frames it is possible to
see how these claims are various forms of colorblind racism, through a land-based analysis of
each community it is also apparent how ongoing racially motivated violence and intimidation
have worked to maintain structures of racial segregation. Drawing from both Wilson (1987) and
Massey (1990), it is apparent that while the void of middle-class blacks has left these

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 communities with minimal social capital, it is also clear that segregation has amplified the effects
of local, regional and national economic inequality that flow through and shape the landscapes in
both settings.
Colorblindness operates as a gatekeeper for ongoing oppression and prevents residents
from raising concerns about how the structural and systemic processes of race shape
marginalization in each setting. As racialized landscapes, the denial of race and how it operates
in each setting conversely layers and entrenches race, casting a shroud of blackness over bodies
and land. Ironically, the inattention to race and how racism has shaped each context reinforces
the economic marginalization of the entire landscape. In that way, black and non-black residents
in both communities are all cast as disposable. That is not to say that white and black residents
in Detroit and Lowndes County have the same experiences of marginalization nor that whites
share in black experiences of racial inequalities. Rather, as residents and spaces are mutually
constituted through racialized frames, they become part of an overall disposable landscape. This
disposable landscape is a key feature of a wasting economy, as will be detailed in the next
chapter.

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 CHAPTER 7

THE DEVELOPMENT OF A WASTING ECONOMY

Well, the thing is that in the beginning we thought everybody was going to have to be forced to
be on this type of thing. That may or may not happen. … You may still be overseen by this
manage entity as far as them making inspections. … You don't have to worry about it. … You
won't even have to think about it.
–Earl, a white man, environmental consultant, and a non-resident

Introduction
Environmental sociology is an inherently interdisciplinary subfield within sociology. In
particular, it draws heavily from the environmental sciences, political science, and geography to
conceptualize the concurrent expression of human and non-human actors. This variegated
framing lends favorably to multiple perspectives and theories for understanding human
experiences with the non-human. Although most of environmental sociology considers an
increasingly environmentally degraded planet, some of these conceptualizations emphasize
opportunities for stalling this decay, remediation, or progress through technological advancement
inspired by environmental challenges. Ecological modernization, environmental social
movements, and environmental law engage with these possibilities (Pellow and Brehm 2013). A
significant area of environmental sociology, however, examines the political economy of the
environment and how capitalism works to drive policies and behaviors that result in significant if
not catastrophic environmental degradation (Rudel et al. 2011). The intent of these theories is
not to be bleak but rather to sound an alarm about humanity’s impact on the environment and
ultimately on ourselves.
Political economic theories of environmental decline are largely macro-scale, examining
global impacts of populations, industry, and consumption on the environment. Grounded in

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 dialectical materialism, political economic theories of the environment examine the ways in
which humans impact the environment and how those impacts constrain future mechanisms of
production, exchange, and growth. All of these theories, however, reside at a course grain in
their analysis of environmental impacts on human experiences. Examining the direct impacts of
the environment on humans risks running afoul of an environmental determinist argument but by
eschewing this direction also avoided are more nuanced analyses of the relationships between the
co-degradation of humans and non-humans.
Situated within the literature on political economic theories of environmental decline, this
chapter outlines a theory of wasting economies as it has emerged from the data in this
dissertation. In this analysis I take a wasting economy to be one that operates through the
process of wasting humans and non-humans for future increased economic activity. The
concept of wasting is drawn from the health condition typified by the decline of muscle and fat
mass due to metabolic interruptions and malnutrition. Wasting is a symptom of a metabolic
interruption caused by a triggering syndrome such as AIDS, cancer, diarrhea, infections, or
malnutrition due to food shortages (Hsu et al. 2005; WHO 2012c). Wasting leads to weakness,
susceptibility to injury and infection, and potentially death (Horn 1998). Wasting, as much as it
is a symptom, is also a cyclical process. Malnourishment (because of nausea and weakness)
discourages consumption leading to further reduced intakes of required nutrients. Using a
health-based definition of wasting, rather than a traditional notion of waste (i.e. trash), the theory
of wasting economies considers the ways in which a process of creating wasted humans and nonhumans works towards increasing forms of governance, regulation, and opportunities for
economic development.
While this theoretical framing is in line with the larger sub-discipline, through its

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 examination of the destructive impacts of capitalism on environmental systems, it deepens and
enriches this area by exploring micro- and meso-scale influences on human and non-humans.
The theory of wasting economies as proposed herein is an attempt to develop a theory of the coconstruction of excluded human and environmental spaces, expanding on existing environmental
sociological theory through race, exception, and sovereignty. In response to the assertion that
environmental degradation is indicative of increasing disorder, the theory of wasting economies
argues that, because of capitalism’s ability to remake itself and adapt to shifting conditions,
environmental degradation may actually increase order by facilitating new forms of governance
and increasing potency of state authority.
Following an introduction to the political economic theories of environmental decline,
this chapter outlines the concept of wasting economies. To elaborate on this concept, first
provided is a detailed analysis that of how Lowndes County and Detroit are constructed as
wasting spaces. Together the casting of both the environmental spaces and the underclass in
Lowndes County and Detroit motivate increased governance and state intervention. The theory
of wasting economy articulates how wasting human and environmental spaces create order
through their exception. In the concluding discussion, based on the empirical evidence provided
in this dissertation, an outline of a theory of wasting economy is offered.
Political Economic Theories of Environmental Decline
Early theories about the relationships between humans and environmental decline
focused on absolute population size as a determinant for environmental decay. In the late 18th
century Thomas Malthus (1798/1998) drew attention to the dangers in exponential population
growth alongside linear growth in food and resource supplies. This revelation led to the
conclusion that the population will eventually exceed resource supplies, resulting in population

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 misery and collapse (Commoner 1994). In 1968 Garret Hardin (2001a) published his seminal
piece, The Tragedy of the Commons. Hardin used a metaphor of a shepherd to assert that the
rational man will necessarily exploit the publicly held trust, ‘the commons,’ in order to maximize
his own gain. The ultimate consequence is that the commons will be destroyed by man’s avarice
and multitude. Paul Ehrlich’s (1968) The Population Bomb likened population growth to an
impending catastrophic explosion, a sort of which mankind had yet to see. The works of Hardin
and Ehrlich led the Club of Rome16 to commission a study by researchers at MIT on population
growth. The publication of the study’s findings, The Limits to Growth, was equally grim
(Dryzek 1997). Framing human population as the cause of poverty and environmental
degradation, the conclusive policy recommendation was inevitably to limit population growth.
This work limited its focus to the consequences of large populations without considering
inequalities or how technology and wealth impact environmental outcomes.
More recent efforts in this vein have attempted to model environmental impacts as
influenced by population, affluence, and technology (Rudel et al. 2011). The first of these
models was a deterministic model that set Influence = Population * Affluence * Technology
(Ehrlich and Holden 1971). Rather than a data driven model, its components were related to
each other by definition and the model was therefore not testable. An effort to improve upon this
model was the ImPACT model, which also considers consumption, but this model too is
untestable (Waggoner and Ausubel 2002; York et al. 2003). A significant improvement on these
models is provided by the stochastic impacts by regression on population, affluence, and
technology (STIRPAT) model, which uses regression analysis to model the relationship between
impacts, population, affluence, and technology (York et al. 2003). Although models such as

16

The Club of Rome is an international think tank concerned with global environmental and political issues.

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 these are reductionist by design, they are also helpful because they are predictive and provide an
intuition for making long-term environmental planning decisions.
Theories that emphasize population size as a significant factor in environmental
degradation have historically aligned with eugenicist and misanthropic arguments, which limit
their acceptability (Devall and Sessions 2001; Hardin 2001b). Most other dominant themes in
political economic theories of environmental degradation focus less on population explicitly and
more on productive and consumptive systems that motivate increasing economic inequality and
environmental degradation. An important theme within this area is that of the drive towards
perpetual growth. Harvey Molotch (1976) contributed to this theme with his theory of the
growth machine. He argued that cities are growth machines perpetually driving towards
increasing populations, business activity, and land development. Of population, Molotch was
less convinced that growth causes increased populations but rather redistributes it to areas of
more rapid growth. The concept of the growth machine ties economic production to geographic
space through land development.
Similar to the growth machine, Allan Schnaiberg (1994) theorized that economic
processes under capitalism drive increasing production. He called this the treadmill of
production. As producers increase efficiency in their systems of production, the cost of products
declines, which in turn requires increasing investments in efficiency. In order to drive down
costs, producers must invest in systems and equipment that make products more cheaply, acquire
raw goods at lower prices, and drive down the cost of labor. The treadmill is a result of the
competitive nature of capitalism. The outcome is the sacrifice of environmental quality through
deliberate waste, inattention, or pressure on government to reduce environmental protection laws
in the unending drive for profits.

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 Although not explicitly an environmental theory, many of the environmental theories in
the degradation framing draw their base from world systems theory. World systems theory, first
introduced by Immanuel Wallerstein in the early 1970s, posits that the significance of individual
nation states has declined and we have shifted away from what he calls empire economies.
Instead, since the long 16th century society has been governed by a single world-economy that is
constituted by core, semi-periphery, and periphery areas (Wallerstein 1974). Core areas are
areas of production and concentrations of wealth, which extract raw resources from the periphery.
Periphery areas have limited to no productive systems and operate through resource extraction
and exploitation. Semi-periphery areas are significant in their trade-based role between the core
and the periphery.
Critical of the emphasis on core productive systems within world systems theory,
Stephen Bunker (1984) focused on the periphery and developed the notion of an extractive
economy. An extractive economy is characterized by the depletion of resources (either through
ongoing extraction of nonrenewable resources or through extraction that exceeds the
regenerative capacity of renewable resources) and minimized labor costs below the true cost of
labor (i.e. that necessary to maintain the health and productive capacity of the laborer; Bunker
1984; Wilk 2004). A key feature of an extractive economy is the cost of goods: with a
productive economy the price of goods goes down through increased production but in an
extractive economy the price of goods goes up with increased extraction. Extractive economies
have historically been slave dependent economies. The features of an extractive economy lead
to widespread social and environmental impoverishment. Following Wallerstein’s analysis that
resources move from periphery to core areas, Bunker argues that the net flow of resources is
from extractive economies to productive economies. In his analysis extractive economies end

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 with environmental impairment and economic stagnation when resources have been depleted.
The analysis presented under metabolic rift theory (introduced in Chapter 1) points to this
decline as an underpinning to the ultimate decline of capitalism. Metabolic rift theory argues
that capitalism interrupts the cycle of sustainability within environmental systems by depleting
environments of nutrients. As in Bunker’s theory of extractive economies, these nutrients are
withdrawn from environmentally rich (rural) areas and deposited in resource hungry (urban)
areas for consumption and production. Because financial constraints do not motivate return of
resources and actually incentivize reuse so that they are deliberately not returned to rural areas, a
fundamental fissure is created, preventing economic systems of production from regenerating
themselves in the future. Peter Dickens (2002) criticized this approach for underestimating
capitalism’s flexibility and its dependency on crises in order to spur restructuring and stimulate
new possibilities for growth.
These political economic theories of environmental decline tend to focus on
environmental degradation as a cautionary tale advising the reduction systems of consumption
and production under capitalism. While humanity as a whole may be headed towards
environmental catastrophe, capitalism as a system does not seem to be scaling back. Dickens’
critique is well taken and points to further investigation as to how in some cases environmental
degradation to the point of collapse supports the sustained growth of capital. The cases
presented through Lowndes County and Detroit point to the ways in which the exploitation of
inequalities among humans is has economic benefits through valuing certain populations as more
expendable than others. This operates through existing social hierarchies and racism,
specifically, in these cases. Through an examination of environment as oikeois, wasting spaces
(human and non-human) allow for increased state sovereignty, increasing state power, and a

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 recasting of spaces to be remade into new spaces for development.
Wasting Spaces
Lowndes County
At the time of its founding in 1830, the population of Lowndes County was roughly 50
percent black slaves (see Table 7.1; Schoenmann and Burke 1918). Prior to the end of slavery,
Lowndes County was home to roughly 20,000 slaves who comprised four-fifths of the total
population. Cotton was the most important cash crop in Lowndes County during the mid and
late nineteenth century (Schoenmann and Burke 1918). Corn was second to cotton and served as
the primary ration for black slaves as well as a staple food source for Confederate soldiers during
the Civil War. The population of the county peaked in 1900 at 35,651, with approximately 87
percent of the population being black.
Over time, land at higher elevations with better drainage became depleted of nutrients so
increased production was done in lowland areas (Schoenmann and Burke 1918). These soils
were still very productive but required much greater labor investment for crop success. As less
productive land requiring more intensive cultivation, lowland areas were the predominate areas
where black residents were able to acquire land. Cotton production declined due to diminished
productivity of the soils after intensive cultivation, crop destruction by the boll weevil, increased
competition with international cotton producers, and increasing costs of labor due to the
elimination of slavery. Although in 1909 roughly 60 percent of agricultural land in the county
was dedicated to producing cotton, beginning in 1914 cotton production began to decline steeply
due to boll weevil infestations (Schoenmann and Burke 1918). By 1947 cotton production in the
Black Belt had declined by 70 percent (White et al. 1951). Even still, cotton remained an
important cash crop throughout the Black Belt for much of the twentieth century.

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 As sharecropping replaced the plantation system, the burden of labor for cotton
production remained with black residents. Sharecroppers paid a portion of their crop production
as rent for use of the land, supplies, and building materials. In cases where the landlord provided
all necessary materials to live on the land and to grow crops, tenants paid at least half of the crop
as rent (Schoenmann and Burke 1918). Sharecroppers bore both the costs of labor as well as the
risks of failed crop cycles. Sharecropping was commonplace on large farms in 1947, with more
than 75 percent of large farms in the Black Belt functioning through sharecropping labor (White
et al. 1951).17
Over time, other agricultural practices rose to prominence in the Black Belt. With the
introduction of mechanization, unskilled labor was less in demand but cotton remained a laborintensive crop (White et al. 1951). Coupled with declining soil productivity, it became less
expensive and more profitable to focus on other land use practices including hay production and
livestock. At the present time, cotton is no longer a significant crop produced in the Lowndes
County, being replaced by sod and hay as well as intensive poultry and cattle farms (ACES
2014).
Oh, goodness, um, you know, uh, for, what a hundred years cotton was king in the south
and more. … These are very productive agricultural soils because the clays do hold
water and they do hold nutrients. … Um, these are, um…years ago they were well suited
for cotton production. What, what’s happened now is you’ve lost a lot of the topsoil. So
those crops that required roots to anchor, um, are, are much less suited but still things like,
uh, soy beans or, um, uh, you, you could probably still grow some cotton. It’s not as
productive as it used to be. Um, uh, what else? I’m trying to think. Peanuts. Um, or
ground nuts. Um, the, those are the ones that come to mind and then any kind of forested
crop.
–John, a white man, environmental engineer, and a non-resident
As John described, the decline of cotton in Lowndes County came about in part due to a
loss of topsoil, which reduced the productivity of the land. The soil structure in Lowndes
17

One person interviewed reported that as late as 1949 a white resident was found to be still holding slaves in the
county.

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 County, and throughout the Black Belt region, is comprised of a heavy clay soil. It was an
excellent soil for the production of cotton when labor costs could be kept to extreme minima.
Intensive, unsustainable farming resulted in the removal of significant amounts of productive
topsoil in the area. Adding to this the loss of the exploitable labor base, the land has lost its
social and economic value. Instead, for the purposes that they are needed today, the soils are
considered “bad” soils and must be transformed or replaced in order to hold value again for the
region.
The condition of the soil in Lowndes County today is an artifact of the productive
processes for which it was used in the past. The landscape of the county was built on an
extractive economy that withdrew nutrients, wasted soil quality, and extracted labor from black
slaves and sharecroppers in a manner that diminished their capacity for wellbeing all for the
production of cotton. The distribution of humans across that landscape was also dictated by the
value of the land and the people in that production process. As blacks acquired land, the land
available to them was lowland, which was produced as inferior land. This land is more highly
characterized by shrink-swell clay soils, high water tables, and proximity to swamp areas.
The dense but nutrient rich soils in the Black Belt are an impediment to economic
development and to community wellbeing because of their poor hydraulic conductivity—they do
not easily allow water to flow through them. Although construction of drainage in upland and
lowland areas in the county was historically important for the productivity of the land, erosion
and topsoil depletion have made drainage systems inadequate to address the challenges that the
clay soils currently pose (Schoenmann and Burke 1918). Large-scale drainage interventions do
not address the problems with the prairie soils because the challenge is not in removing surface
water or providing conduits for flowing water to escape. Rather, the physical properties of clay

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 allow it to retain more water than other soil types because of its ability to adsorb water to the
surface of clay particles through ionic interactions and for the ability of some clays to expand the
physical shape of the crystal structure itself, which facilitates greater water incorporation
(Barshad 1952). Drainage conduits through clay type soils are largely irrelevant to the drainage
of the soils because the water is so tightly adhered to the clay particles. When septic systems are
not installed to handle the clay soils, water has nowhere to go and instead backs up into the
system.
If you’ve got water coming in, coming in, coming in and no water going out, you know,
what happens? The water coming in backs up and either into the ground or to the source
of the water wherever it’s coming from…septic tank or bathroom or wherever. So if you
can’t get water into the ground, you know and there’s input, input, input and no exit, you
know, what happens? It fills up the bathtub and eventually overflows somewhere.
–Andrew, a white man, environmental engineer, and a non-resident
The challenge with prairie soils is not limited to its poor ability to allow water to flow.
The type of soil found in Lowndes County is colloquially referred to as shrink-swell soil because
it swells with the addition of water and contracts when dehydrated, amounting to movement of
several inches between hydration cycles. Such expansive clay soils are referred to as vertisols.
The expansion and contraction of the ground destabilizes the land and makes construction
challenging for buildings, basements, and septic systems and field lines. The expansion and
contraction of the soil can cause foundations and basements to warp or collapse. They can also
break septic tanks and disable septic treatment field lines. The expansion and contraction of soils
was a major challenge encountered early on as the Alabama Center for Rural Enterprise (ACRE)
moved to address septic problems in the county.
And, uh, so one of the problems is the…is that we have prairie soils. So, I’ve heard some
use the term, we have a prairie-gumbo mix and because of the land expanding and
contracting, uh, it makes it very hard on septic tanks, and it makes it very hard on the
field lines. It can crack open a septic tank. And cracking open a septic tank means it can
fill up full of water. You know, same thing with the field lines. … They say it can bend

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 or twist the field lines. So what they do is bring in soil put it on top of the bad soil and
put the system in that soil.
–Sarah, an African American woman, activist, and a former resident of Lowndes County
To deal with the expansion and contraction of the soils as well as the poor hydraulic
conductivity, the method of choice for dealing with poor soil quality in Lowndes County has
been to construct mound-based treatment beds that provide adequate soil lattice structure for
septic system field lines (see Figure 4.1). The building of mound-based treatment systems
involves replacing the “bad” soils with “good” soils. Discourse in Lowndes County, through
interviews, newspaper articles, and town hall meetings, described the native soil as “bad” and the
replacement soil as “good.” In an interview with a wastewater professional experienced with
mound based treatment systems, the respondent, Kurt, described how the “bad” soil had to be
amended in order for it to be compatible with “good” soil.
… the idea of course is when you find bad dirt you bring in good dirt and put your field
lines in the good dirt. … The native soil has to be prepared in a certain way before you
build the mound on top of it. They have to do this process that they call scarification
where they take a backhoe bucket or a chisel plow or something and break up that native
soil to make a nice interface between the imported fill material that you’re gonna bring
and the in situ soil. And, um, the other thing is the fill has to be somewhat compatible
with the native soil. Like, you can’t build a sand mound in Lowndes County and expect
it to work properly with that clay soil up underneath it. You would need a, a fill material
that has some clay in it to help that, um, help try to make that passage of the water for the
mound nice and gradual before it meets the native soil.
–Kurt, a white man, wastewater professional, and a non-resident
As Kurt stated, since “good” soil is not available in the location where mound systems
need to be constructed, it must be imported from elsewhere. The soil is extracted from other
areas in the county or neighboring counties and brought to the location where the mound system
will be constructed. The imported soil is similar to the defective soil because it must be able to
bond with the defective soil and permit water to transition slowly between the two soil types.
Because the “good” soil must be compatible with the “bad” soil, it is reasonable to assess that

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 this soil is also not a good soil in the sense that it is ideal for water percolation but rather it works
better than the soil that has been deemed defective.
The current lack of infrastructure combined with the additional difficulties of installing
sewer systems because of the Black Belt soil in the county have significantly limited interest in
bringing new industries to the county. Rural regions that lack infrastructure such as electricity,
water, and sewer systems place additional burdens on prospective industries to contribute such
resources in any developments they undertake. As such, communities that have these systems in
place already have a significant advantage over communities that lack them.
In recent years Lowndes County has struggled to stimulate economic growth. The lack
of economic development of Lowndes County is influenced by several factors. In part, Lowndes
County is a product of a state culture that is fervently against taxation. Low tax rates are a
source of pride but with a poor tax base there is little in the way of public funds to support
construction and maintenance of public infrastructure.
To meet the shortfall of resources the county pursues funds through grant opportunities.
Federal funds that are available to places like Lowndes County often are limited to improving
access to funds for traditionally marginalized groups. For example, as the county commission
pursues funds for road improvements, available grants target low-income and minority
populations. In spite of broad poverty in the county across white and black residents, resources
tend to be more readily available for black residents as a result of these programs.
The system is set up that we get grants based on, on, I guess economic conditions, uh,
people, uh, incomes, and amount of people staying on the road, stuff of that nature. And
pretty much what happens is, if you live in a low to moderate income, with the grant
situation that we apply for to get roads paid for then you are more likely to get the grant
but if you’re economic status then you’re less likely to get that grant. So, what we do, we
know the system so we have to apply for the monies that we’re gonna get. And they
[white residents] have a problem with that but it’s not a system that we created.
–Lowndes County Commissioner

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 The county commissioner pointed out how although poverty is particularly prevalent among
African American residents in the county, in the case of certain grants, African American
residents qualify for more resources than white residents. In an impoverished county with
few resources for road construction, the funds available often go towards construction and
maintenance of roads near the homes of black residents. This causes frustration and hostility
between white and black residents in the county, when white residents feel as though they are
also poor and differential access to resources is discriminatory towards them.
In the absence of strong outside interest in economic development in the county,
community leaders have targeted economic opportunities that can be considered extractive
industries. Such industries demand resources from the communities that they enter, provide few
benefits, and ultimately few jobs are realized to balance the cost to the community from their
presence.
In the early 1980s GE constructed a $1.5 billion plastics plant, which came about through
agreements made with political leaders in Montgomery.18 The plant, which began construction
in 1983, was placed on 6,000 acres of land that was purchased by the Montgomery Industrial
Development Board (Auchmutey and Painton 1986). Because the Board owned the land and
leased it to the company, by state law GE was exempt from paying the $2.1 million per year in
taxes that it would otherwise owe (Auchmutey and Painton 1986; Jeffries 2009). Lowndes
County received no direct financial benefit from the plant, few jobs for residents of the county,
and possible contamination from plant emissions (McKinney 2012). Community leaders and
residents in the county felt that the siting of the plastics plant was a drain on the county by
exposing residents to toxins (or the perception of exposure to toxins) while failing to compensate
18

In 2007 Saudi Basic Industries Corporation (SABIC) purchased the Plastics Division from GE Corporation and
took ownership over the Lowndes County plastics plant.

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 the county through tax revenues.
And, ya know, let’s put the chemical plants there, GE plastics, let’s put everything that’s
dangerous, in a poor black place, where they’re so hungry for tax revenue, they’ll take
anything, they’ll do anything, and they’ll agree to anything.
–Sydney, a white woman and a Lowndes County resident
Although facilities like the plastics plant are introduced under the guise of providing
jobs, few jobs materialize for low-skilled workers in a depressed context like Lowndes
County.
There is a, um, a plant, um. … Um, the one of the reasons they came, the county was
trying to attract them, they thought it would supply a lot of jobs for people but…um…it
provided some but the level of education required was college or PhD level so, um, you
have some of…I don’t know what the percentages are but you don’t have a lot of PhDs
and college graduates who are staying in the area. Usually they will go to where the jobs
are.
–Carter, an African American man, health professional, and a non-resident
As Carter described, even if there were highly skilled people from Lowndes County, there is
no framework to keep them so they do not present as an employment resource pool for
industries like the plant. The promise of jobs is often a false promise.
Another development effort that received support for coming to Lowndes County was the
series of landfill projects that were successfully fought off by Lowndes Citizens United for
Action (LCUFA). Although Lowndes County has a landfill, it accepts locally produced waste.
The proposed landfill projects were to accept construction waste from outside of the county but
many local residents resisted these projects. Although the dump projects received some support
from the county commission, ultimately the commission refused to grant the developers permits
and the landfills were never constructed.
With few industries locating in Lowndes County, the largest employer remains the
county itself. Many of these positions are through the school system, which is desperately
underfunded. Although efforts to improve schools in the county have consistently been made,

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 the schools continue to underperform. Additionally, many of the employees working for the
school district do not actually live inside the county. Instead, they live in nearby Montgomery,
adding a further drain on tax resources for the county.
Unemployment rates in the county are consistently higher than state and national
averages. Occupying insecure positions, Lowndes County’s many underemployed residents are
vulnerable to job loss and unemployment rates increase dramatically during times of economic
stress (see Figure 6.1). The excess labor pool with minimal financial resources to sustain itself
motivates a demand for economic opportunities, and to some in the county any economic
opportunities are considered beneficial. The pursuit of economic opportunities at all costs opens
the door for developments such as the dump projects and the plastics plant. Lowndes County was
also host to an electronic bingo gaming center, which was shut down by the state because it was
in fact a casino, which are illegal in the state of Alabama. The Tier 1 suppliers in Lowndes
County offer improvements over the wasting industries, however, through their lack of tax
contributions to the county, demand for infrastructure, and their reliance on existing social
relationships and hierarchies to secure employment opportunities, in some regards they are still
extractive industries.
Lowndes County lacks a hospital, has limited local health resources, and minimal public
transportation. Some shuttle services can be scheduled for doctor’s appointments and some
residents provide their cars as rented transportation but travel outside of the county can cost
between $20-$50 each way and there is no formal regulatory process to constrain these costs.
Lack of services extends beyond the needs of individuals to an impoverishment of resources that
exposes residents broadly to the violence of poverty. In one case an obese resident, living
without a safety net, passed away and emergency responders lacked the necessary equipment to

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 manage his body with dignity or to protect themselves from possible disease or infection. The
Deputy Coroner described this experience.
Black man... um, in his fifties, obese, he weighed four hundred pounds, lived in the
projects on SSI, five hundred and somethin’ dollars a month… And he’s dead in there
five days, and nobody knew it. … And we got there. Ok. Here’s, here’s a picture of a
poverty, of a poverty stricken county. We get there, the smell is horrendous. The
firefighters, who also are rescue squads. All volunteers. Young black guys... have no
masks, no body suits to protect ‘em, no rubber gloves, and after we pronounce the body.
Well we don’t have anything either. All we have at that point are masks and gloves
because the coroner’s, uh, equipment for the year is six hundred bucks. ... Ok, so... the
guy is dead, and very swollen after five days in the heat, and those firefighters have to get
him outta there. The body bag is not big enough. And these young guys are exposed to
God knows what... So, I dressed them in, I went in the back of my car and got garbage
bags and duct tape, and made them protective suits. We gave them our masks, and they
proceeded to get this gentleman out of there. A guy who was morbidly obese with heart
trouble and yet nobody checked on him. Nobody checked on him. The poverty is not
just personal poverty. The poverty is that we don’t have the resources to deal with
emergencies... and... our first responders aren’t protected. If there was a pandemic here,
God knows what would happen. The poverty invades every aspect of the county.
–Lowndes County Deputy Coroner
The death of this man tells not only about his own lack of resources but also the lack of resources
for the people who comprise the public services in the county. His passing in the manner that he
did denied dignity both to him as well as to those who came to care for his body.
The extreme poverty of some residents was characterized as “grinding poverty.” Such
grinding poverty was quite explicit for residents who lived with collapsing homes, had feces
growing “like rock candy” up the back of the trailer, or had a “bubbling pot of sewage [filled
with bugs] in the backyard.” While these homes are clearly not fit to live in, public health
professionals are stymied to point to direct disease outcomes resulting from poor sanitation
conditions in the county. The presence of such waste does expose residents to the risk of
communicable diseases and emerging research does explore the possibility of neglected
infections of poverty (Hotez 2007; Hotez et al. 2009; Moolani et al. 2012) that could be prevalent
in the area but the severity of poverty in Lowndes County is not only about direct health impacts.

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 Exposure to poor sanitation conditions is constitutive of a process of casting a population outside
of a basic, shared understanding of what can be considered a minimum acceptable life
experience (Biehl 2001). It is intimately entwined with a process of dehumanization, setting
certain individuals outside of the realm of a citizen imbued with protections and basic rights for
healthy living and into a state of being of mere flesh (Agamben 1998; Agamben 2002).
This relationship was observed by João Biehl (2001) when he visited a rehabilitation
center in the south of Brazil called Vita. At Vita social outcasts, particularly those with AIDS,
were sent by their families and communities to disappear. He described a social isolation
characterized by stillness, “a kind of relinquishment that comes with waiting, waiting for
nothing, a nothingness that is stronger than death” (p132). The case of one woman at the center
illustrates an experience of dehumanization that is more than medical illness.
We came upon a middle-aged woman sitting on the infirmary’s ground; she crouched
over a stream of urine, her genitals matted with dust. As we got closer we could see that
her head was full of small holes. Millions of bichinkos [little animals], generated from her
own flesh and dirt. … She was putrefying even before death (p134).
The horror of this woman’s experience comes from her own living death and from Biehl’s shock
from their encounter. Biehl was struck by the woman’s exposure to her own bodily wastes and
from the little animals that fed on her flesh. Her ‘putrefaction’ was an indication to Biehl that
she was no longer a living human but a corpse that had not yet stopped moving.
This living decay was observed by a doctor in Lowndes County with one of his patients.
Let me give you a fifteen-second story. A guy…uh, HIV positive for many years, doing
ok when he’s on treatment, doing badly when he’s not on treatment. Got pulled into jail,
I think for financial stuff. Had some bad checks. At any rate, he got out of jail after
seven months; he was sicker than when he went in. The only place he has to stay is here
in town. It’s a house that his mother left him, but it’s got no water connection, no electric
connection, no gas connection. He’s drastically sick with HIV. He’s got something
going on in his lungs, which is either tuberculosis or cancer or something quite serious,
and his main complaint was the bug bites that he was covered with because he can’t bathe.
And, who knows because he has no electricity, and so he’s getting eaten alive here in the

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 city. He, uh, ya know, he, he shits in a pot and throws it in the backyard. And that’s in
town. He’s on the rim, just financially. Uh, he’s off it because of his incarceration and
his inability to work.
–Jerry, a white man, health professional, and a non-resident
Although Jerry’s patient had other issues that would be more likely to draw the attention of
medical professionals, his patient focused on the bugs that crawled on and ate his skin. The
bugs would likely easily be managed with adequate resources to clean and sterilize his home
and to dispose of his waste properly but without those resources the bugs thrived. They
crawled on his body, decomposing him before death. For Jerry’s patient, keeping his body
clean was the most basic condition of life, even before being free from disease or
incarceration.
It is a mischaracterization to cast all of Lowndes County as desperate and
impoverished. Certainly even many of the residents who live with improper sanitation
systems are not living in such dire conditions. Rather, straight piping is just a way of life for
many in the county. Ways of living that develop alternate definitions of acceptable living for
certain residents as opposed to others establish these residents as particular kinds of citizens
(Collier and Lakoff 2005). A citizenship classification that allows for some residents to live
with unsanitary living conditions as a ‘normal way of life’ reinforces a hierarchical ordering
of types of citizens in the county. The argument made here is that these citizens are those
constructed within a wasting economy; they are wasting citizens. The process of social
organization is constituted through a devaluation of these residents as incapable,
unknowledgeable, and helpless. These citizens are not seen as deserving of additional
resources or structural changes to rectify the situation but rather require intervention in the
form of governance to manage their condition.
Efforts to improve sanitation in Lowndes County relied heavily on a management

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 framing that would draw residents into accepting a new governance and surveillance
structure whereby they would unquestioningly accept new fee structures, enforcement of
failing septic systems, and the role of the public health department and the state in regulating
their wellbeing. The plans to address septic problems in the county were unable to identify
solutions for the pervasive problem of failing septic systems. This would have required
addressing historic problems with substandard housing, development and enforcement of
building codes, establishing mechanisms for residents to purchase quality housing, social and
infrastructural support to meet basic healthcare and living needs (such as transportation to
doctors visit and home visits to check on the infirmed and socially isolated), access to quality
educational opportunities through the public schools and job training, and employment
opportunities that are non-extractive and non-wasting that add to the community through fair
wage structures, community beneficial products, and taxes.
Instead of addressing the systemic challenges prefaced on the racialized political
economy prevalent in the county, management of individual residents assigns responsibility
for failure as proper citizens squarely on the individuals themselves, maintains the economic
inequalities in the county made possible through historic and ongoing racial conflict, and
validates the increasing role of the state in the lives of the marginalized and impoverished.
The mechanism through which this operates is consistent with Agamben’s notion of docile
bodies that disciplines residents into accepting governance and the legitimacy of their own
marginalization while simultaneously strengthening the sovereignty of the governance
structure (Agamben 1998). The process of conditioning bodies to be docile is the process of
wasting, a process made possible through the hierarchical ordering of the population through
the race inequalities. With the decline of agricultural labor in Lowndes County and the

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 absence of new industries to replace this economic base, the county has little demand for the
available working population in the county. Residents waste19 and are wasted through lack
of resources.
In the late 19th and early 20th century, the economic foundation of Lowndes County was
extractive. Bunker’s definition of an extractive economy (1984) includes one that relies on the
depletion of resources through non-sustainable agricultural production made possible through
minimized labor costs from slavery and sharecropping. Through this process bodies were
consumed and depleted. Agricultural production of cotton in Lowndes County exhausted the
topsoil, contributing to the increasing cost of production of cotton in the county. As cotton was
phased out, other agricultural products have replaced it but to a lesser extent. Bunker
characterizes areas that have been exhausted by an extractive economy as stagnated or collapsed.
Such places can be seen as having been constructed as waste products by being used up through
economic processes. Lowndes County is not an end product, though, and it still has relevance to
economic production. The land in Lowndes County is not wasted land. It is a discursively
wasting land.
Much of the landscape in Lowndes County is characterized as “bad” and without
purpose. In some cases the “bad” land is replaced with “good” land that has value. With so
much “bad” land in the county, the space is conceptualized as a space that serves no purpose.
Without purpose, though, it can be given purpose anew. This new use for the land can be to
accept contaminants from other spaces or to serve as a site of contaminant production. Unlike an
extractive economy that withdraws resources and leaves a void, the lack of tax base, employment

19

To be explicit, the use of waste and wasted in this context refer to the concept of wasting (verb) and waste
products (noun). To say that residents waste is to say that they experience wasting, a depletion of their essence
through resource (financial, social, environmental, etc.) deprivation. Residents who are wasted perish as a
consequence of this process.

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 opportunities, and infrastructure in Lowndes County all contribute to desperation for economic
resources that motivate the pursuit of a productive wasting economy. The desperation of the
population supports both the introduction of economic forms that continue to drain resources or
introduce contaminants into the community and the introduction of new governance structures,
in the form of increasing surveillance, self-regulation, and management.
Detroit
Like Lowndes County, Detroit is exemplary of the recent development of a wasting
economy. Unlike Lowndes County, however, this economy emerges from the history of a
collapsed productive economy, rather than an exhausted extractive economy. The economic
boom of Detroit brought with it industrial development and the city’s subsequent bust has made
it vulnerable to polluting industries that use the city as a “dumping ground” (Austen 2013). Both
have subjected the city to inundation from environmental pollutants and toxins. Detroit is home
to at least 757 open20 leaking underground storage tanks (LUST), 910 closed LUSTs, oil
refineries, and steel, coal, and gypsum plants (DEQ 2013; Newell 2013). In 2013 a large heap of
petroleum coke, a byproduct of Canadian tar sands development, began growing in Southwest
Detroit (Austen 2013). A Marathon Petroleum plant processes the petroleum coke for fuel
production and sale overseas.
In the midst of great economic transition in the city, an opportunity has arisen for a
market based upon toxic spaces. It was announced in May of 2013 that the city had been
awarded a $600,000 assessment grant by the United States Environmental Protection Agency

20

An open LUST is a site that is known to have had at least one release of contaminants into the surrounding soil
but for which no remediation has been completed. A closed LUST is a site is known to have had at least one release
of contaminants into the surrounding soil and remediation has been completed at this site for the land use
designation at that site. A closed LUST, therefore, does not necessarily mean that all contaminants have been
removed from the site but that the remediation has brought the level of contamination at that site to a level deemed
acceptable for the activities for which the land has been officially approved.

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 (EPA) to study the extent of contamination and prospects for cleanup at thirty-two brownfield21
sites in the city (COD 2013). The aim of the grant was to identify and prioritize sites for
redevelopment after site remediation. The mayor’s office declared with optimism that the grant
brought the possibility of renewal for Detroit neighborhoods.
“This grant is the first step toward reclaiming land that has been overused and neglected,”
Mayor Bing said.22 “Once brownfields are properly assessed, they can be cleaned up and
redeveloped as part of a neighborhood’s revival.” (COD 2013)
Although cleaning the space is beneficial to the community, the aim of cleaning the space is
not purely for the benefit of the environment to remove toxins nor is it to improve living
spaces for the low-income residents already living there. The purpose of these grant
opportunities is to redevelop the space for a new vision of Detroit.
Other efforts that have worked towards boosting redevelopment of brownfields
throughout the city include Tax Increment Financing (TIF) Reimbursements. TIFs establish a
district within a municipal jurisdiction that allows the freezing of tax rates for a developer (Dye
and Merriman 2006). Future increases in property values are not weighed against the developer
because, presumably, the increases in property values would not have occurred without the
development. TIF reimbursements borrow against projected future gains to provide additional
incentives to developers including demolition, site preparation, infrastructure improvement, and
lead and asbestos abatement (DEGC 2014). Under the current law 3 mills (0.03 percent) of
future increases in educational taxes, an expected $4 million, go to support TIF reimbursements
(Lane 2012).
Michigan Public Act 381was passed in 1996, which defined what properties could be

21

According to the EPA (2011b), “with certain legal exclusions and additions, the term ‘brownfield site’ means real
property, the expansion, redevelopment, or reuse of which may be complicated by the presence or potential presence
of a hazardous substance, pollutant, or contaminant.”
22
Dave Bing served as mayor of Detroit from May 2009 to December 2013.

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 eligible for TIF districting and in 2012 Public Act 502 was signed into law extending provisions
established under the original law. PA 502 eliminated the sunset provision and expanded
infrastructure development to include green infrastructure and onsite storm water management
systems. Additionally, the new law makes it easier to designate historic buildings for
demolition, which was previously only permissible if they were “contaminated, functionally
obsolete or blighted” (Lane 2012).
TIF districts have been met with criticism as being not as innocuous as they are
presented. In part, although TIF designations are only supposed to be applied to blight and
contaminated spaces, the TIF designation has been widely abused and receiving a TIF has
become more of a standard of practice in recruiting new development (Dye and Merriman 2006;
McGraw 2006). In a blighted city like Detroit, TIF designations present real vulnerabilities as a
case for demolition can be made for a majority of properties without such properties necessarily
being the most severely blighted properties in actual need of demolition. Rather, TIF
designations can provide developers with additional resources, including political will for
eminent domain, to demolish and build on properties that may have high social or cultural value
to communities. Further, no data is required to demonstrate that any particular development had
a positive impact on property values in a community, thus possibly presenting a drain on future
taxes for a community if that site was not to have been developed through the TIF process.
Although proponents of TIFs disagree, some argue that TIF Districts are detrimental to
school systems and withdraw school tax revenue (Sullivan 2009). Detroit has been amidst
significant controversy regarding the takeover of the Detroit Public Schools by an emergency
manager and the administrative operation of the schools by the privately operated Education
Achievement Authority (EAA; Higgins 2014). Efforts to improve the financial status and

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 achievement of Detroit Public Schools have included administration of schools by professionals
with little to no experience in public school administration and displacement of experienced
teachers with young and inexperienced Teach for America (TFA) members (Johnson 2013).
Both the EAA and TFA are criticized for devaluing the practice of education, discounting the
importance of students being educated by representatives from their communities, and for
pushing experienced teachers and administrators out of the few remaining valuable jobs. Given
the dire financial status of Detroit Public Schools, the loss of $4 million in future educational
taxes does present a possible significant impact.
Over the past century, Detroit has shifted from a productive manufacturing economy to
an economy in which unemployment and poverty are prominent features. Detroit’s official
unemployment rates were as high as 25 percent in 2009, however residents perceived
unemployment to be roughly twice that. Economic disparity between the city and the suburbs is
particularly striking when unemployment rates are considered. Data from the Bureau of Labor
Statistics (2013) show that the trend of unemployment in the entire metropolitan area follows
that of the city of Detroit but at a rate half that of the unemployment rate in the city (see Figure
7.2). That rate, however, is weighted upwards by the unemployment in the city of Detroit; the
actual rate of unemployment in the suburban area excluding Detroit is well below half that of the
city’s average rate of unemployment.
Between Detroit Public Schools and the city, local government is the largest employer in
the city of Detroit (Picchi 2013; Reilly 2013). Another significant source of employment in the
city comes from the non-profit sector. According to the National Center for Charitable Statistics
(2013) there are over 14,000 non-profit organizations in the three-county area that encompasses
Detroit (2,096 in Macomb County, 5,706 in Oakland County, and 6,542 in Wayne County). Of

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 those organizations that report their assets to the IRS, more than $140 billion in assets are held
within these organizations (NCCS 2013). In 2011 $124,023,490 in charitable contributions and
grants were made in the city of Detroit and an additional $116,447,846 in revenue was generated
by non-profits (NCCS 2011). Although these organizations do bring resources and services to
the community, many people find their presence to be more extractive and exploitative than
beneficial.
Often these organizations, which exist purely because of the presence of poverty in
Detroit, are referred to as “poverty pimps.” Many residents pointed to the non-profit
organizations as not providing improved living conditions in the city but rather using the
problems of residents in the city of Detroit to justify receiving funds from larger foundations.
Instead of making transformative change in the communities, funding for the non-profit
organizations was largely perceived to support the non-profits’ staffing costs.23
Pimp is…Detroit produces every year through the health department a mortality,
morbidity index. The department of human services produces like a demographic profile
on who’s in poverty, single headed households, who has a car, who has a telephone or not.
People take that dataset and literally create a nonprofit around a demographic point, write
boiler plate on it, and just shop it around all the foundations to see if they’ll drop down
any dollars. That’s a poverty pimp.
--Tiana, an African American woman, activist, and a resident of Detroit
Poverty pimping, as Tiana described, was the use of poverty experiences and data to justify
receipt of resources that do not actually go to change the living conditions for the better for
those in poverty. Non-profit organizations, city leaders, and churches were each
characterized as being poverty pimps in multiple interviews.
Appeals for funding to support these groups often went to larger philanthropic

23

This problem was also raised in Lowndes County where residents and officials reported that non-profits,
municipal organizations, and academics would use the poverty data from the Black Belt region to apply for grants
but when those grants were secured the funding went for research and development projects for the organizations.
The perception was that little change in the actual communities came about because of those grant projects.

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 foundations. Several major foundations (e.g. Skillman, Kresge, Kellogg, Knight, and Ford)
contribute tens of millions of dollars annually to the revitalization of Detroit, and much of
that money is distributed through smaller organizations that compete for funding calls
through the foundations. The effect is that these foundations have tremendous sway and
influence over the administration and direction of the city’s development. For example, as
Detroit has eliminated funding from public schools, increased resources have been funneled
towards charter schools. Charter schools are a major initiative of the Skillman Foundation.
The Kresge Foundation is a major supporter of the most recent re-envisioning of the city, the
Detroit Future City plan. The Kellogg Foundation is significantly invested in the
preservation of the Detroit Institute of Arts. With the foundations providing significant
resources where there are otherwise few, each of these foundations is regularly invited to the
table to provide direction about the future of Detroit.
With the city’s financial matters in disarray and an estimated $18 billion in debts, in July
2013 the city of Detroit filed for bankruptcy (Dolan 2014). The city’s debts are in part
attributable to corruption and mismanagement of funds by city leadership. The debts are also
due in part to the decline of the city’s tax base resulting from a 25 percent drop in population
between the 2000 and 2010 census periods. The declining availability of financial resources has
resulted in a withdrawal of city services, including for police, fire, and infrastructure
maintenance. The exodus of population from Detroit led to the abandonment and decay of an
estimated 80,000 homes across the city as of 2014 (Gallagher et al. 2014). Together, the lack of
public services and the decline in population have contributed to a landscape in Detroit that is
nationally and internationally characterized as abandoned, in ruins, and rotting.
The carcass of Detroit has been well documented by photographers and videographers

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 who capture and display ghastly images of the shells of once beautiful and ornate buildings
throughout the city.24 Some of the most iconic images of Detroit in decline were taken by
French photographers Yves Marchand and Romain Meffre who in 2011 published their
photographs in a book entitled The Ruins of Detroit.25 The stunning photographs capture a city
devoid of people, crumbling, and returning to nature. A surreal image of a twisted clock over
pealing walls invites the viewer to see the city as frozen in time and captured in a surreal,
dystopian dream.
Distinctly absent from the majority of images of Detroit are any signs of the more than
700,000 residents that still occupy the city. In spite of this oversight, the current residents are
present in their absence. The French photographer, Yves Marchand, described the scenes of
Detroit:
Detroit presents all archetypal buildings of an American city in a state of mummification.
Its splendid decaying monuments are, no less than the Pyramids of Egypt, the Coliseum
of Rome, or the Acropolis in Athens, remnants of the passing of a great Empire
(Marchand and Meffre 2014, my emphasis).
Detroit is a very symbolic place in modern history…In Europe, the ruins were mostly
anecdotal, they were the very last pieces of a changing and gentrifying landscape...
Detroit's ruins seemed a bit like a natural component of the cityscape. You could find all
the archetypal buildings of an American city in a state of abandonment, like an American
Pompeii (Marchand quoted in Neugeboren and Valera 2013, my emphasis).
Pompeii was destroyed in 79 AD when rock and ash from Mount Vesuvius buried the city.
While many residents of the city escaped the volcano’s destructive fury, thousands perished
during the eruption. What makes Pompeii fascinating, though, is the way in which the remaining
inhabitants of the city died and were discovered some 1,500 years later. When the buried city
24

A quick web search for Detroit photos, Detroit ruins, or the like will bring up thousands of images of abandoned
buildings across the city. Some typical sites include http://all-that-is-interesting.com/abandoned-detroit-photos,
http://zfein.com/photography/detroit/, and http://www.forgottendetroit.com.
25

Much of Marchand and Meffre’s work on Detroit can be found on their website:
http://www.marchandmeffre.com/detroit/index.html

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 was rediscovered, explorers found voids in the hardened ash. When they filled these voids with
plaster, they discovered the forms of bodies frozen in time. The images of Detroit as if captured
in a natural disaster, frozen in time yet on display for the world to see, imply the mummification
of its residents, no longer part of the world around them but instead inanimate specters bound to
a forgotten time and place.
For residents of Detroit, there are parallels but still no confusion between the economic
decline of Detroit and the destruction that may accompany a natural disaster.
Well we’ve been suffering from this, economic disaster for almost 30 years, in the city of
Detroit. If it had been a tornado, we still would’ve, or a hurricane, we still would’ve been
entitled to some relief from the government, but because it was economic, then it became
our fault.
–Nadeen, an African American woman, activist, and a resident of Detroit
As Nadeen described, the kind of physical destruction in the city is akin to having been struck by
a tornado but unlike a tornado, the economic carnage of the city is blamed on the residents. The
financial investments for the city are for the economic vision of the city, not for its residents.
The depletion of resources from the city, such as industrial employment and grocery stores,
amounts to a slow starvation of a community through the denial of markers of community.
Instead of a natural disaster, others felt that the decline of Detroit was a social disaster
and a form of economic genocide.
Detroit reminds me in some ways of Rwanda and one of the ways in which it does is um
that both places are missing about a million people. That’s about how many roughly how
many either died during the genocide or fled the country and died in Congo and things
like that.
–Jane, a white woman and a resident of Detroit
Over the last fifty or so years Detroit’s population has declined by roughly one million people.
Although it is often implied that people have fled the state, Figure 7.1 indicates that much of the
population has been absorbed by the suburban communities. Through 1970 the population of the

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 three-county area of Detroit (Wayne, Oakland, and Macomb) continued to increase with a
predicted one percent growth rate. Beginning in 1970, the population plateaued. While births
and immigration to Detroit roughly matched deaths and outmigration, no population growth in
the region took place. Still assuming a one percent growth rate since 1970, roughly two million
expected residents in the region are unaccounted for.
As pundits, speculators, and developers envision a new Detroit that will be recovered
through green enterprises and a reimagining of urban space, questions remain about how to
demolish parts of the city that are no longer captured in the new vision. In the push to create a
new vision of Detroit, a modern urban renewal project is underway complete with procedures of
eminent domain and residential relocation. Blight being the decline of physical buildings but
also the wilting and dying of living organisms, it is apparent to many residents that blight
removal in the city of Detroit is not only about tearing down unsafe buildings but also in getting
rid of unwanted populations. Many residents felt that the future plans for Detroit involved the
discarding of unwanted populations, the city’s poor.
So yeah, there’s nothing. What do they want people to do? They don’t care. They really
want to discard them. I think. They really just discard Detroit and more and more poor
people, or sections, poor people, middle class people. Whatever you want to call…they’re
just more interested in just discarding them and saying, you know what, these people
aren’t part of the economy anymore.
–Peter, a white man, activist, and a resident of Detroit
Through disinvestment in services and through much of the discourse surrounding Mayor
Bing’s rightsizing’ plans, many residents felt that the plans for the development of Detroit did
not include increased resources for the city’s poor population. Rather, the aim seems to be the
introduction of new good people to replace the bad and defective people that have been deemed
unfit for the city’s future purposes. As detailed in Chapter 6, the recent exodus of Detroit’s
population was due in part to the collapsing housing market but also to the reduction in available

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 low-income housing and home loss due to tax foreclosures from liens assessed due to unpaid
water bills. These factors plus starvation for city services had the effect of pushing residents out
of the city. The residents left behind have been labeled as lazy, greedy, corrupt, incapable, and
incompetent. Often though, such language is levied only at city leadership while the residents
themselves are not even considered at all.
The making invisible of Detroit and its residents is acutely exemplified in Figure 7.3,
which is a map from a brochure for a suburban mall. In the map the upscale mall is not to scale
and it sits prominently outside of the boundaries of Detroit. Key to note in the figure, though, is
the complete absence of signification for the city of Detroit including prominent boundary
streets, such as Eight Mile Road. Although Chicago, Lansing, and Toledo are represented, the
city of Detroit is written entirely out of the map. The map communicates that the residents of
Detroit have no relevance to this space at all. For the mall’s purposes, they simply do not exist.
Detroit’s landscape has been constructed as an abandoned wasteland, devoid of people—
or at least people who are thought to contribute to the city’s vitality. Historically, Detroit’s
economy was productive; however, manufacturing is no longer a major contributor to the
economic base in the city. Neither, though, is Detroit’s current economy based upon extracting
products from the city. The principle resource for extraction from the city is water, but this
resource is plentiful at the present time. Control over water is the prime issue of concern rather
than depletion of water.
Struggle for control over Detroit’s water and sewerage system was brought to public
attention in 1977 when Judge John Feikens began federal oversight of the system (Halcolm
2013). DWSD was out of compliance with the Clean Water Act for violation of its National
Pollutant Discharge Elimination System (NPDES) permit for releasing contaminants into the

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 waterways. Particularly problematic were the combined sewage overflow (CSO) releases that
allowed contaminated wastewater to be released during rain events. At the time the wastewater
system was backing up and causing sewage releases into the basements of homes, so DWSD
addressed the problem by opening gates to allow direct releases of waste into the rivers. Since
that time DWSD has installed basins to hold more of the waste stream back and added screening
and chlorination to provide some level of treatment during rain overflow events. Judge Feikens
oversaw the water system for over 36 years, even after DWSD came back into compliance with
the Clean Water Act. In 2010 Judge Feikens retired and was replaced by Judge Sean Cox, who
continued to oversee the water system until 2013.
During Judge Feikens’ tenure, he along with Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick26 identified Victor
Mercado as the prime choice to take over leadership of DWSD in 2002. Mercado was viewed as
a strong candidate because of his background in economics, twenty-five years of experience in
the industry, and for his experience working in private industry (Elrick 2002). Claims by the
suburbs that the system was mismanaged were supported in particular by two major scandals
regarding contracts for DWSD. In 2009 it was discovered that two years earlier Detroit City
Councilwoman Monica Conyers accepted bribes from James Rosenthal, the Vice President of
Synagro. Through their arrangement Synagro was given a $1.2 billion contract to handle solid
sewage waste incineration for the city (Swickard 2009).
While allegations of corruption and bribery emerged during the end of Kilpatrick’s final
term as mayor, accusations of corruption with the water department reached an apex with the
corruption trial of Kilpatrick, his father Bernard Kilpatrick, family friend and contractor Bobby
Ferguson, and Victor Mercado. In 2012 Victor Mercado pleaded guilty to conspiracy for his part
in a corruption scandal that funneled large contracts for services with DWSD to friends of the
26

Kwame Kilpatrick served as mayor of Detroit from January 2002 to September 2008.

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 Kilpatrick family (US Attorney 2012).
Everything really was brought into sharp focus, and the dynamic changed dramatically in
December when Mayor Kilpatrick, former Mayor Kilpatrick, Victor Mercado, the former
director of DWSD and many of the mayor’s other associates were indicted on federal
RICO charges stemming from alleged bribes, corruption, and contract favoritism at the
plant. – State Representative Kurt Heise, R-Plymouth
Although in the past Detroit had been successful at staving off calls for regionalization or
privatization of the water system, with these scandals momentum increased for outside
intervention over the water system. State Representative Kurt Heise, R-Plymouth introduced
House Bills in 2011 and 2013 with the intent of regionalizing the Detroit Water and Sewerage
Department. In Heise’s plan all 125 customer communities within the DWSD service area
would be members of a regional consortium. Those member communities would meet at least
once a year to elect a nine member executive board of which Detroit, Wayne, Oakland, and
Macomb Counties would be permanent members. Local community representatives would be
rotated in and out of the executive board on either a two- or three- year rotating basis. The board
would have the authority to hire an executive director to oversee the administration of the water
department and the board would have input into all contracts made with DWSD. In Heise’s plan,
ownership of the water system would remain with the city of Detroit but decision-making power
over the system would be held by the regional authority.
Neither of Heise’s 2011 or 2013 bills were signed into law but in 2013 a regional
authority over the board was established anyway. In 2013 Governor Rick Snyder appointed
Kevin Orr to be the emergency financial manager for the city of Detroit. Orr proposed a plan in
which the city would lease the water system to Wayne, Oakland, and Macomb counties for a
period of 40 years (Selweski 2014). For their part, the three counties were cautious and
reluctant to buy into the plan. The plan calls for the counties to pay $47 million a year to the city

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 for a period of 40 years. The counties worried that not all information was being disclosed to
them regarding the fully extent of the obligations owed by the water department. In a memo,
leaders for the three counties expressed
… suspicions that the high-powered lawyers handling the negotiations for Orr have
withheld or manipulated information about the Department of Water and Sewerage’s
legacy costs related to pensions and retiree health care, anticipated expenses for
upgrading a neglected network of pipes and pumps, and $113 million worth of past-due
water bills, mostly among Detroit customers. (Selwski 2014)
A major objection to shouldering the burden of DWSD’s financial debt was the high
number of past due accounts for residents in the city. Chief deputy Oakland County
executive, Gerald Poisson, who served under Oakland County Executive L. Brooks
Patterson, said that “suburbanites shouldn’t be forced to shoulder the large and swelling
burden of non-payers” (Laitner 2014).
He, along with Patterson’s top financial guru Robert Daddow, said Detroit’s negotiators
proposed a deal that, in effect, requires suburban water and sewerage customers to
subsidize the system’s cost to supply the large fraction of Detroit’s customers —
estimated at 40 percent — who can’t or won’t pay their bills (Laitner 2014).
Although Detroit residents owe a sizeable debt to DWSD, at an estimated $113 million of $6
billion worth of debt approximately 1.8 percent of DWSD’s debts are attributable to nonpayment by low-income residents in the city. The move to have the counties lease the water
system from Detroit was characterized by some as “just trying to get revenue from the
suburbs” (Wisely 2013). The subtext of the conflict over DWSD remains a conflict between
the city and the suburbs shrouded in the city’s racist legacy, which sees residents of the city
as incompetent, corrupt, and greedy.
The water is the most contested thing in Detroit. And the water is what is owned by the
city and it is the one thing that white people haven’t been able to move. Can’t move the
river. Can’t move the water. And it’s owned by the city of Detroit, which is a black city.
And it really is, it’s not just the issue of privatization. It’s the issue of race that
completely, completely informs that whole fight. Because Detroit is Black and the

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 suburbs are white. … But white people in their bones, in their bones do not want to have
to buy water from Detroit. It’s one more thing that they don’t think they should have to
pay black people for and I really do believe that even when they don’t know it that’s
what’s bothering them. … So the privatization of the water department and the entire
infrastructure would be the last thing that Detroit owns. It’s the last thing we own.
–Maria, a Hispanic woman, activist, and a resident of Detroit.
Residents in Detroit view efforts to regionalize the water system as a move to take
control away from the city of Detroit—to deny them of the one asset identified as affording
them power and independence. Those from the suburbs claim that these arguments are race
baiting, playing the race card, and plainly racist. By pointing to mechanisms through which
race has systemically disenfranchised residents in Detroit, those from Detroit are accused of
introducing race as a topic where it was not explicitly present before. Just like with the
depictions of Detroit as hollowed out and vacant and with the map of Detroit without Detroit,
race is present in its absence. The avoidance of the topic provides a mechanism through
which to delegitimize and discount arguments of marginalization, while at the same time
reinforcing the lattice that binds the region. Although neither the size nor the source water
for the system will change under the proposed regional authority for DWSD, as part of the
move towards creating a regional governance system, Orr has recommended removing
“Detroit” from the name of the regional authority; the new authority is expected to be called
the Great Lakes Water and Sewer Authority (Pardo 2014).
If regionalization of the water system is not successful, an alternative remains which
is to privatize the water system. Although city of Detroit residents are widely opposed to
privatization of the water system and suburban municipalities are not, the likelihood of
privatization is still unknown given the debts that the city and DWSD currently face. Given
the debts that the department currently holds, it is unclear how a private entity would be able
to make a profit. Nonetheless, private companies have expressed interest in purchasing the

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 system. The condition on selling DWSD to private entities would be that they are permitted
to increase water rates, an issue that should not sit well with suburban communities that
already feel that their rates are unreasonably high (Snell 2013a).
The abandonment narrative of Detroit casts the city as a space ready for growth and
renewal. Because of Detroit’s productive past as well as its decay caused by abandonment, the
city is seen in need of being destroyed in order to rebuild. Through a metabolic metaphor,
Detroit’s development is in a catabolic phase, undergoing a dismantling and breaking apart in
order to move into an anabolic phase of rebuilding. The city is constructed as a wasteland in
order to make it ready for new economic forms to move in. In the short term, new economic
forms are exploitative and wasting. These comprise waste generating industries, such as fossil
fuels refineries, as well as waste exploiting industries. Waste exploiting industries include both
those that are brought under TIF reimbursement programs as well as non-profit organizations
that benefit from the accumulation of poverty and individuals constructed as needing
interventions to correct themselves for their poor behavior and bad health outcomes. The
draining of land and human in Detroit is akin to a vampire leeching blood, depleting life but not
eliminating it (Neocleous 2003). The oikeois body of Detroit experiences wasting from
malnourishment of resources and the diseases of racism and greed, with which it is afflicted.
This process makes way for a new vision of Detroit that is devoid of poor and
residents of color. By casting the space as wasteland and the people as invisible or
incompetent, the city is splayed open to be repopulated with an “improved” population and
new industrial developments. Such developments are cast as green energy, industries, and
innovation, which are mostly positive improvements towards the health of the city space but
these improvements are not for the existing residents. They are for the new Detroit. The

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 current residents are expected to step aside for the new order.
It’s easy to hurt someone when you don’t even have full respect for that person as a
human being. You know, because if you say a slight thing right, excuse me- that means
that person has some value. And their space is valued, I’m acknowledging you as another
human being, so when you lose that, that means you lose value of the person.
–Rhonda, an African American woman, activist, and a resident of Detroit
By creating the space of Detroit as mismanaged and crumbling, and the people as
disappeared, less valuable, and less competent, the intervention to overrule democratic
processes in the city seems natural. Detroit has had appointed managers for the city, the
schools, and the water system who have all been granted exceptional powers to make
decisions for the systems that they are administering, including making contracts, setting new
governance structures, and eliminating jobs, services and programs. In Detroit this
exceptional state is the rule of order.
This rule of order is consistent with Agamben’s understanding of biopolitics wherein the
sovereign is defined by its ability to make live or let die (Agamben 1998). In the cases of both
Lowndes County and Detroit thanatopolitics (the power over death) is found in the wasting of
the populations (Agamben 2002). As the power of the subjects of the sovereign is diminished to
the point of death, or in Detroit’s case, political death, the power of the sovereign is increased
(Agamben 2002). It becomes increasingly reasonable to suspend democratic processes and
introduce dictatorial governance over the city and its services while the condition of the space
and the residents is diminished.
Discussion: A Wasting Economy
Lowndes County and Detroit share important features that motivate the development of a
new theory of economic activity not previously described in the environmental sociological
literature. In each case these communities have moved beyond either a resource extractive or

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 industrial manufacturing/productive setting into an economic condition of decline. This
condition is indicated by a conceptualization of the space as worthless, bad, degraded or
contaminated and in need of remediation. The residents are characterized as powerless,
incapable, and absent. Because residents are not seen as present or capable of caring for the land,
which has value for development, intervention is required to introduce new governance
structures that give order and value to the area. The end product is the creation of subjectivities
for the residents who accept their fate in being managed or who disappear politically, by moving
away, or by death.
The two case studies indicate that a wasting economy should be characterized by the
following traits:
•

Wasting occurs as an active process of decline. By drawing not from a resource
definition of degraded “waste” but instead using the public health concept of “wasting,”
attention to the process of decay and degradation is emphasized.

•

Degradation of human and non-human spaces take place concurrently, both physically
and discursively.

•

As an active process, wasting economies fits within a metabolic understanding of
capitalism, wherein wasting operates as a catabolic precursor to future anabolic
production.

•

Contrary to framings that see environmental degradation as destructive to capitalist forms,
wasting economies provide a conduit through which environmental degradation serves to
enhance capitalist economic production.

•

Through the apparent disorder that arises from wasting, increased legitimacy for
totalitarian state intervention emerges, creating exceptional forms of order that are normal

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 for the context. Rather than disorder, these forms create order through new governance
structures.
The discursive production of spaces and humans as wasted is key to the theory of wasting
economies. As Valerie Kuletz (1998) found in the desert lands near Yucca Mountain, which are
occupied by Native Americans, a wasteland discourse serves to construct a space as vacant and
empty all the while making way for the utilization of that space for other purposes. In the case of
Yucca Mountain, government, military, and scientists sought to designate the area for uranium
dumping. The mapping, statistical, and measurement techniques used by scientists to describe
the area rendered the Native American occupants invisible and classified sacred land as barren
and disposable. With Lowndes County the land was characterized as defective and nonproductive. In Detroit, it is seen as contaminated, abandoned, and decayed. Like the Native
American populations described by Kuletz, residents in Lowndes County and Detroit are largely
considered as inconsequential, either as invisible to productive processes or incapable of
participating in them.
Were these two communities considered as final products, such contexts appear to be
stagnated and thus theoretically uninteresting. The findings presented in this dissertation,
however, indicate that these communities are not places of no economic activity but rather a
form of economy that works through the construction of the human and non-human spaces as
decaying, dying and in need of intervention—intervention that stands on the necks of the
communities and declares, “see, they are dying! They need my assistance to save them!” Such a
framing makes way for new and increased governmental forms. Judith Butler (2004) argues that
the new forms of governmentality raised in settings such as those in Lowndes County and

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 Detroit, instead of diffusing power as predicted by Foucault’s theories, increase state sovereignty
at the expense of dehumanizing subjects.
Although environmental sociological theories of degradation focus on the catastrophic
outcomes of capitalism, this work suggests a strengthening of governmental forms. This is in
contradiction to arguments that environmental degradation leads to increasing entropy. Laura
McKinney (2012) argued that increasing entropy is the outcome of processes of production and
consumption; the creation of waste products is an indication of disorder. This argument comes
from the second law of thermodynamics, which states that physical processes are never 100
percent efficient (nor can they be more than 100 percent efficient from the first law of
thermodynamics). As such, systems produce waste energy in the form of heat, which is not
useable by the system. McKinney directly applies the second law of thermodynamics to
capitalist systems in saying that production and consumption necessarily lead to efficiency loss
and new waste forms that are non-recoverable by the system. For McKinney, low entropy
products are those with the greatest capacity to do work for society, to be remade into usable
forms, while high entropy products are those with the least potential for reuse. The theory of
wasting economies indicates that the direct application of the second law of thermodynamics is
inappropriately reductionist as it fails to consider how wasting forms have potential to work for
systems of production. Ultimately, McKinney’s theory is important for considering the limits of
habitable environments but it is limited itself in its failure to consider how this process does not
undermine new forms of order created through dynamic systems of production.
Conclusion
Wasting economic theory is consistent with the literature on environmental justice
struggles, which has focused on the siting of toxic waste facilities, but goes beyond this literature

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 to develop a theory of the process through which this social and environmental organization
takes place. The environmental justice movement developed from the anti-toxics arm of the
environmental movement. This history has oriented the scholarship towards investigations of the
distribution of contaminant burdens in marginalized communities (Bullard 1993; Bullard 1999;
Bullard 2005; Hannigan 1995; Martinez-Alier 2003). The findings of the 1987 study
commissioned by the United Church of Christ, published in a report entitled Toxic Wastes and
Race in the United States (UCC 1987), are exemplary of this work. This study showed that race
was the most significant factor correlated with the location of toxic waste facilities, even after
controlling for income status. In spite of these important findings, they occupy a static,
demographic analysis without significant elaboration on the mechanisms through which
environmental inequalities operate. Broadly, the area of environmental justice scholarship has
been criticized for lacking a core theoretical framing and consequently lacking a cohesive
structure (Pellow and Brulle 2005). By drawing attention to how environmental injustices
operate through coproducing degraded human and non-human spaces, the theory of wasting
economies adds importantly to environmental justice studies.
The theory of wasting economies complements and builds upon existing theory in the
area of political economic theories of the environment. It extends Bunker’s (1984) analyses of
extractive economies by considering ‘what takes the place of an extractive economy after the
available resources have been depleted?’ While an extractive economy predicts environmental
devastation, wasting economies provide a mechanism through which new capitalist forms take
place through environmental degradation. Quite in line with Molotch’s growth machine, both
Lowndes County and Detroit demonstrate mechanisms through which the organization of space
in these settings is contingent on the control and development of land for economic growth.

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 What the theory of growth machines does not address is how communities may use shrinkage
and economic catabolism to move through to new stages of economic growth.
Finally, a wasting economy is predicated on structures of domination that render certain
populations as more and less valuable than others. Persistent, entrenched racism is characteristic
of the manifestation of a wasting economy in Lowndes County and Detroit. Casting the
populations as invisible is made possible through colorblind narratives that discount structures of
marginalization. These are communities in which racial narratives have worked to delegitimize
black political forms, resulting in totalizing control over governance structures especially in
Detroit. Race in these cases is fundamental to the ways in which wasting has appeared in the
two communities.
In the final chapter a discussion of the limitations of the theory of wasting economies will
be discussed in relation to its fit to the two case studies. As well, a more general analysis of the
limitations of the methodological approach for this dissertation will be discussed. In particular,
wasting economies largely ignores the role that individuals play in resisting such processes. The
discussion in the final chapter will elaborate on how residents in both communities have indeed
resisted this process through their everyday life practices. Consistent with the feminist
perspective that ‘the personal is political’ (Hanisch 1970), there are numerous ways in which
residents in both settings challenge the process that would otherwise deny their power and selfdetermination. Within this understanding, the final chapter will conclude with recommendations
for addressing sanitation challenges in the two settings as proposed by community members.

273

 CHAPTER 8

CONCLUSION

The flows of power that are captured by urban water circulation also suggest how the question of
urban sustainability is not just about achieving sound ecological and environmental conditions,
but first and foremost about a social struggle for access and control; a struggle not just for the
right to water, but for the right to the city itself (Swyngedouw 2004, p4).

Summary
The purpose of this work was to examine the social context of impaired access to
sanitation in the United States through an analysis of two case studies. The answer to the
question (what does impaired sanitation access look like in the United States?) is that sanitation
access is contingent on the flow of water through multiple social-environmental forms. The
material flow of water is bundled with other services that are necessary for living an urbanized
lifestyle. Water is bound to the energy required to treat water and convey it to households and
the physical and financial resources necessary for maintenance and operation of those
conveyance systems. Water accessibility is dependent on the coupled availability of adequate
housing to enclose and insulate the conveyance system and to distribute water away from the
home when its usefulness has been depleted. Within homes, water is tied to its material
characteristics, its heat, purity, and volume, for its use in cleansing bodies internally and
externally. More than the simple provision of water itself, sanitation requires a concert of
services and denial of any one of those services can lead to impaired sanitation access.
Sanitation encompasses a holistic interpretation of water metabolism within bodies,
social practices, and human-environment spaces. Water is vital for all known life and it holds
moral and spiritual value in all cultural systems. Availability of clean water is associated with

274

 privileged classes, good health, economic development, and organizational power while
exposure to unclean water and poor sanitation is associated with poor classes, bad health,
immoral behavior, and stripped political autonomy. This work supports the work of Eric
Swyngedouw (2004) who finds that mapping the flow of water through social systems provides a
map of social power.
Throughout human history, the control of water has facilitated the development of
governance structures and great power has come to civilizations that have been able to harness
flows of water to meet the needs of population and agriculture. While the mechanisms of disease
transmission were not understood until the last 150 years, populations did use the elimination of
water from public spaces to improve aesthetic conditions and, due to a false belief in miasmas, to
improve health outcomes.
Water management in the United States first focused on moving excess water away from
population centers but treatment of water to reduce disease transmission was not attempted. In
fact, water treatment would not come until much later and even in the early twenty-first century
little municipal and industrial water is treated to potable standards. At best, this water is treated
to background levels so as not to increase the loading of pathogens in the environment.
Early efforts at water regulation in the United States aimed to protect water for
commercial use particularly for shipping transport. A foundation for water pollution regulation
was laid in 1899 with the River and Harbors Refuse Act and in 1948 with the Federal Water
Pollution Control Act but significant regulatory enforcement power did not come until 1972 with
the passage of what would later be called the Clean Water Act and in 1974 with the Safe
Drinking Water Act.

275

 The transition from privately operated water systems to publicly operated water systems
came about because of a need for massive infrastructural development, which was not profitable
for companies that lacked the economies of scale that municipalities possess. Water accessibility
in the United States was targeted not through a call for universal public access but rather as part
of major infrastructural investments that were made to stimulate the economy after the Great
Depression. The country struggled to gain economic footing in those turbulent times, but it was
war, more so than the infrastructural development brought about through the Works Progress
Administration and social security programs initiated by the Social Security Act, that
resuscitated the nation’s economy.
The timing of major programs that worked towards improving environmental conditions
and water quality coincided with another period of significant social strife in the country. Earth
Day came on the heals of widespread civil unrest during the 1960s, the Civil Rights Movement,
the Black Power Movement, rioting in city centers across the country, and the Vietnam War.
Major public investments in water and wastewater infrastructure and stricter environmental
regulations demonstrated state legitimacy during a period in which state authority was
questionable. Such regulations, however, placed new financial constraints on businesses.
Major regulatory changes came about for banking and finance that began to unravel
protections put in place in 1933 with the Glass Steagall Act, which itself was necessary because
of financial gambling that brought about the stock market crash in 1929. The deregulation of the
banking industry in the 1980s coincided with a scaling back of public infrastructural investments
and social security financing. Pushing further into easing opportunities for corporate profits,
NAFTA reduced tariffs and restrictions on international trade. At the same time that
employment opportunities for low-income populations became destabilized, further cuts into

276

 welfare programs made financial resources for marginalized groups even harder to come by.
The deregulation of the banking industry in the 1980s brought about increased housing access for
minority households and increased mortgage profitability though predatory lending practices
until the market again collapsed in 2007 due to rampant foreclosures and the instability of
subprime loans.
Throughout the twentieth century, sanitation as the control of water and wastewater
infrastructure has been an important tool of state building that derives its authority through the
provision of an essential service to the citizen population. It has served to enhance authority of
the state publicly during politically contentious periods. It also represents an important resource
that the government has control over which industries are fundamentally reliant upon. Through
delivery of public water to industry and though public private partnerships in the management of
water, an intimate connection between industry and government through water governance has
been maintained. In the United States, the provision of sanitation has adhered to an opportunistic
market model, where privatization is desirable if profits can be guaranteed. Government
provides the financial scale to build infrastructure but operation of water systems has a
gravitational pull towards private enterprise over public welfare.
For the public, sanitation functions as a racial project of the state. To understand how
this is, it is necessary to examine sanitation through its material expression. The United States is
founded on core principles of individuality, rugged individualism, and the right to achieve wealth
through private enterprise. Although the governance of the United States operates significantly
to enhance the generation of private wealth, this drive is antithetical to state authority. A purely
individualist structure moves towards anarchy so mechanisms of asserting state authority are
necessary for state power. Water as a material object flows from government, through private

277

 spaces, and back again, figuratively providing a conduit for the justifiable entrance of
governance structures into private residences. In this way, in a very Foucauldian framing of
power, water operates as metaphor for state power. Through Agamben’s work on bare life, this
dissertation asserts that state authority is also derived from the establishment of an unsanitary
subject, the object of exception who is excluded from accepted conditions of basic life borne by
all citizens of the state. In identifying who lies at the boundary of acceptable living for citizens,
the authority to define the terms of acceptable living is asserted.
Unsanitary subjects experience poor sanitation conditions that are naturalized based upon
the experiences of poverty. In particular, minority populations are exposed to a complex of
impaired sanitation conditions through varied mechanisms that restrict access to bundled water.
Historic inequalities have led to racialized outcomes including segregation and higher rates of
poverty among minority populations. Such inequalities, however, are made invisible through
colorblind arguments that reify individual explanations over structural and systemic
understandings, thus facilitating further marginalization. This experience is entrenched through
what Oliver and Shapiro (1997) call the “sedimentation of racial of racial inequality” (p50).
The treatment of unsanitary subjects is an attempt to understand the social field within the
metabolic rift theory. That is, although metabolic rift theory speaks to the extraction of resources
from rural spaces and the deposition of wasted products in urban spaces, as of yet the theory is
not used to understand this process through its impacts on the exploitation of human bodies.
Marx argued that “the social nature of labour …causes the waste of life and human health”
(Marx 1894, p56). Using Marx’s attention to wasted life, this work addresses this oversight in
the literature and elaborates on the metabolic experience of humans inside the rift.

278

 While Marx pointed to a fundamental disjuncture in capitalist production, which is the
source of the rift, he also stated that capitalism has an incentive to maximize profits through
waste recycling. This waste recycling is not to deposit back into natural metabolic systems but
instead to extract the maximum value from resources until that extraction is no longer profitable.
We refer to the reconversion of the excretions of production, the so-called waste, into
new elements of production…This waste, aside from the services which it performs as
new element of production, reduces the cost of the raw material to the extent to which it
is again saleable, for this cost always includes the normal waste, namely the quantity
ordinarily lost in processing. The reduction of the cost of this portion of constant capital
increases pro tanto the rate of profit, assuming the magnitude of the variable capital and
the rate of surplus-value to be given (Marx 1894, p50).
This statement indicates that recycling and regeneration are not counter to capitalist production
but essential to maintaining profits. As such, an analysis that moves beyond a simplistic
economic collapse from capitalist extraction is warranted through a deeper framing of the
political-economic occurrence of wasting.
While waste literature does examine how end products are used and how economic forms
are developed from these end products, this study does not attempt to do this. Instead, it focuses
on how wasting itself is productive for new forms of economy and increasing state legitimacy.
The theory of wasting economy proposed herein looks at how human-environment landscapes
are constructed as waste, which is premised on the ordering of certain populations as less
valuable than others. Based on the case studies, this process takes advantage of racial
inequalities that render those classified as unsanitary subjects as disposable.
Lowndes County and Detroit are racialized landscapes that have been broadly
categorized as low-income, black communities. They are both settings where movements for
black political power challenged both local and national power structures through the call for
black independence. The systematic withdrawal and denial of resources to these communities

279

 abandoned them to places that could be characterized later as failing to adequately develop,
failing to maintain proper governments, and failing to value equality over equity by disavowing
contemporary and historical racial injustices. The resource starvation of these spaces rendered
them as spaces in need of government intervention, with poor sanitation conditions as clear
evidence of that need.
Future Work
The theory of wasting economies provides a mechanism for understanding how desperate
conditions of poverty coexist with wealth in a developed country, such as the United States, and
how the exclusion of certain populations is not accidental to development processes but essential
to this particular form of economic development. Wasting economies offers a theory for
understanding processes of exposure in environmental justice struggles and how systems of
inequality are exploited to produce wasted spaces.
As an initial effort in developing a theory of wasting economies, certain expectations for
the theory require further exploration and development. To distinguish a wasting economy as a
real form and more than an exhausted extractive economy or a collapsed productive economy,
the economic forms should not be expected to move immediately back into an extractive or
productive economy. While ultimately cycling through these economic forms may be legitimate,
a wasting economy is not just a peak or trough between cycles but a transformed structure with
its own economic traits.
In particular, wasting economies are not characterized largely by extractive industries or
productive industries (or service, technology, or communications industries for that matter) but
instead by wasting industries. These wasting industries may be toxics industries that enjoy the
wasted status of the landscape. The wasted landscape characterizes the presence of toxics

280

 industries as inconsequential to lost and foregone spaces. The continued production of a space as
lost and foregone then is essential to that status as inconsequential. Green, recycling, and
sustainability industries can also be indicative of a wasting economy if those industries derive
their legitimacy through their relationship to that space as a wasted landscape. In this way these
industries are much like non-profit organizations that were described as poverty pimps, which do
not inject transformative change and increased wellbeing into the landscape but instead derive
their existence and profitability from the impoverishment and decay of the landscape. One can
think of many other places that may be described as possibly having wasting economies that
deserve further investigation. With an estimated 3,000 to 10,000 non-governmental
organizations (NGOs) operating in the small nation (Kristoff and Panarelli 2010), Haiti offers
another possible example of a wasting economy.
Limitations
The focus of this dissertation was to examine the processes that lead to impaired
sanitation conditions among low-income residents in the United States. To this aim, the
organization of the analysis has focused on the structural and systemic factors that have led to
marginalization and exclusion of affected populations. This leads to a critique of this work that
it does not examine how community members resist these processes or what role the agency of
individual actors plays in pushing against the formation of a wasting landscape. This is a valid
critique and an important component of an overall understanding of residents’ experiences in
Lowndes County and Detroit. In no way do I intend to refute this and in fact, resistance
activities permeate this analysis, even though they do not form part of the theory of wasting
economies as described. The point here is to describe the forces in play that lead to the
domination and oppression of the groups considered for this study and to elaborate on what

281

 impacts those forces have on shaping daily lived experiences.
While Detroit and Lowndes County have prominent, formal, organized movement
histories, everyday practices also constitute resistance activities. The concept of everyday
resistances arises out of third wave feminism that views personal life experiences as political
experiences. Although second wave feminism gave birth to the phrase “the personal is political,”
in this frame feminists were attempting to engage non-participants in the feminist movement by
helping them to realize that personal experiences are managed through political processes
(Hanisch 1970). Third wave feminists and some second wave feminists of color pushed back at
this definition by calling for a recognition that personal life practices are themselves political acts
(Fixmer and Wood 2005; hooks 2000). In this vein, Asef Bayat (2010) has looked at how daily
practices can themselves be aggregated in the form of “non-movements,” which have movementlike traits in their cumulative effects. The practices of illegal water hook-ups in Detroit and
illegal, alternative sewage disposal systems (e.g. straight pipes, off-the-shelf septic tanks, and
using fifty-five gallon drums as septic tanks) in Lowndes County could be looked at as nonmovements given the scale of practice in each setting.
Formal political activities in Lowndes County included the organization of community
members and local governance for the recruitment of businesses and industries to come to the
area, the organization of the Black Belt Sewer Authority, which was supposed to oversee the
management of the planned decentralized wastewater treatment system, and the recruitment of
political and public figures to take recognition of the plight of residents in the county. Informal
resistance activities in Lowndes County included withdrawal of participation from the
decentralized wastewater system planning and from research activities. One significant form of
resistance in Lowndes County is through the maintenance of personal firearms, which serve as a

282

 warning against attempts at intimidation and exploitation. It was said several times, ‘everybody
here has an equalizer.’
Detroit also has multiple forms of formal and informal resistance practices. In 2010
Detroit played host to the United States Social Forum, which brought tens of thousands of
activists to the city to organize and draw attention to struggles in the city. The work through
MWRO is explicit political organization around water rights struggles and this has materialized
in the form of picketing, lobbying political leaders, developing alternative policy plans and
presenting those plans to political leaders, and establishing the People’s Water Board as a
shadow board to hold the Detroit Water Board accountable to the city’s residents. Informal
actions in Detroit that can be conceived of as resistance activities include using people like ‘the
Mayor’ to turn services back on after they have been disconnected, filling in service shut-off
holes with gravel or cement, practicing water hauling, avoiding public speaking to maintain
security, squatting, and using services in abandoned homes that have not had the utilities
disconnected. Finally, given the withdrawal of city services and resources, refusing to leave the
city and choosing to build or maintain a life in the city is a political act of resistance as well.
Recommendations
The problems facing Lowndes County and Detroit are larger than the expression of septic
and water challenges over which residents have been able to raise alarm. Addressing these
problems requires attention to economic forms that exploit hierarchical ordering of populations
to the extent that some members of the population are squeezed to the bare essence of living. No
specific policy changes can solve these pervasive and wicked problems. To end there, however,
absolves the author of responsibility in trying to improve conditions of inequity when those
injustices seem too difficult to face. This will not do. Interview participants in both Lowndes

283

 County and Detroit crafted solutions to their immediate problems and many of these solutions
are promising. In conclusion, I share those recommendations.
An effort to develop a decentralized wastewater system has been undertaken and presents
a possible long-term solution for the management of wastewater for clustered homes in the rural
county. Wastewater is rich in nutrients and can be applied as fertilizer for non-consumable crops.
Given that residents in Lowndes County expressed difficulties in paying for high energy bills,
wastewater management could also be coupled with nutrient recovery through the development
of a biofuels energy cooperative. Such a cooperative could produce biofuels crops like switch
grass, which could be pelletized to produce energy for distribution or sold to homes for fuel.
As an alternative to the proposed decentralized (or, rather, a semi-centralized sewer
system) residents living in household clusters could take advantage of anaerobic digesters for
methane production, which could also provide a source of energy. Although the energy would
be unlikely to be adequate to power homes, it could supplement costs for system operation or
maintenance. Additionally, one engineer stated that septic systems often accumulate nonbiodegradable bulk as a result of washing machines. Using a lint trap on a washing machine and
regularly cleaning the lint trap could reduce the frequency with which septic systems need to be
maintained and thus also reduce the cost to the homeowner for maintenance. A program to
distribute inexpensive filters coupled with educational seminars or public service announcements
could provide significant cost savings for residents. Providing homeowners information about
the financial consequences of putting chemicals into a septic system, which kill off helpful
bacteria and cause the system to fail, would also be beneficial.
Finally, the difficult problem facing septic system operation in Lowndes County is the
management of volumes of water that cannot be processed with existing soil structure. One

284

 option is to reduce the amount of water that needs to be managed. While appropriate septic
systems cost thousands, low-flow toilets cost only a couple hundred dollars. Encouraging
composting and greywater27 recycling would further reduce the amount of water that needs to be
managed by the system. In order for greywater recycling programs to be successful, Alabama
public health law may need to be changed in order to allow for surface discharge of greywater.
Michigan Welfare Rights Organization put forward the Water Affordability Program as a
policy recommendation for recovering costs while maintaining service to low-income
households. They recommended a sliding payment scale based on a minimum two percent
annual burden for water costs. Separately, they have recommended a flat forty-dollar monthly
water bill based on typical national residential water costs. In addition to water accessibility,
public policies that prevent the packaging of utilities together would protect residents from
losing all services if they are forced to have one service shut off. Similarly, water bills should
not be put onto the property taxes as this produces a negative poverty interaction, compounding
low household income with housing insecurity. Previous lobbying efforts helped to bring about
the Vendor Pay program, which allowed for direct payments to vendors and bill forgiveness
programs. While imperfect, this program was helpful in keeping utilities on for some households
and the same or a similar program should be an option for low-income households.
Although poverty advocates are criticized for demanding free services, often this is not
the case. The challenge is not to provide services for free to low-income populations but to
provide affordable services and ensure that basic standards of living are achievable. To meet
these aims, graduated payments for services should be allowed otherwise when minimum
payments are unachievable, non-payment and increased debt burden result. When needed

27

Greywater is typically considered as residential wastewater in exclusion of toilet water. This water can include
water from bathing, washing clothes, and sinks.

285

 resources are well-beyond the financial reach of low-income residents, graduated enforcement of
codes coupled with programs to achieve long-term compliance may be necessary to facilitate
improved access and public health for residents and their neighbors.

286

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309

 APPENDIX A

DATA SOURCES

Lowndes County
Interviews
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.
7.
8.
9.

“Sarah” is an African American woman, activist, former resident of Lowndes County
“Andrew” is a white man, environmental engineer, non-resident
“Carol is a white woman, public servant, former resident of Lowndes County
“Jerry” is a white man, health professional, non-resident
“Justina” is an African American woman, environmental professional, non-resident
Tim and Scott, are white men, public health professionals in Lowndes County
“Earl” is a white man, environmental consultant, non-resident
“Sydney” is a white woman, Lowndes County resident
“Carter” is an African American man, health professional serving Lowndes County, nonresident
10. “Elizabeth” is an African American woman, Lowndes County resident
11. “Clarence” is an African American man, Lowndes County resident
12. “Kurt” is a white man, wastewater professional, non-resident
13. “Steve” is a white man, public health professional, non-resident
14. “Sally” and “Martha” are white women, “Andrew” is a white man, and “Ida” is an
African American woman, environmental professionals, non-residents
15. “Louis” is an African American man, activist, non-resident
16. “Bailey” is an, African American woman, Lowndes County resident
17. “Dan” is a white man, consultant, non-resident
18. “John” is a white man, environmental engineer, non-resident
19. “Logan” is a white man, environmental engineer, non-resident
20. “Clare” is a white woman, environmental professional, non-resident
21. “Paula” is a white woman, public servant, Lowndes County resident
22. “Owen” is an African American man, “Brian” is a white man, “Molly” is an African
American woman, state public servants, non-residents
23. “Chris” is a white man, public servant, Lowndes County resident
24. “Ben” is an African American man, public servant, Lowndes County resident
25. “George” is a white man, public health professional, non-resident

Field notes (FN#)
1. Field notes October 2009
• Elderly African American woman’s home, Lowndes County, Alabama
• Elderly African American man’s home, Lowndes County, Alabama
2. Field notes October 2009
• Health professional’s office, Montgomery, Montgomery County, Alabama

310

 3. Field notes January 2010
• Office of Public Health Professional
Arrest Records (AR#)
1. “Alice,” Race: Black, Sex: Female, Arrest Date: 23 December 1999
2. “Gus,” Race: Black, Sex: Male, Arrest Date: 29 March 2001
3. “Adelle,” Race: Black, Sex: Female, Arrest Date: 12 March 2001
4. “Julian,” Race: Black, Sex: Male, Arrest Date: 3 April 2001
5. “Ralph,” Race: Black, Sex: Male, Arrest Date: 23 December 1999
6. “Irene,” Race: Black, Sex: Female, Arrest Date: 23 December 1999
7. “Zina,” Race: Black, Sex: Female, Arrest Date: 7 November 1999
8. “Hazel,” Race: Black, Sex: Female, Arrest Date: 25 April 2002
9. “Leona,” Race: Black, Sex: Female, Arrest Date: 13 March 2001
10. “Melvin,” Race: Black, Sex: Male, Arrest Date: 13 March 2001
Town Hall Meetings (TH#)
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.
7.
8.

April 2002, “Bible” Baptist Church, Lowndes County, Alabama
May 2002, “Faith” Baptist Church, Lowndes County, Alabama
May 2002, “City” Town Hall, Lowndes County, Alabama
May 2002, “Temple” Baptist Church, Lowndes County, Alabama
May 2002, “Grace” Baptist Church, Lowndes County, Alabama
March 2003, “Trinity” Baptist Church, Lowndes County, Alabama
March 2003, “Grace” Baptist Church, Lowndes County, Alabama
April 2003, “Calvary” Christian Church, Lowndes County, Alabama

Additional Residents Impacted by Sanitation Challenges
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.
7.

“Terrence Fields” is an African American man, Lowndes County resident
“Sandra Fields” is an African American woman, Lowndes County resident
“Irene Mason” is an African American woman, Lowndes County resident
“Howard Mason” is an African American man, Lowndes County resident
“Gus Stewart” is an African American man, Lowndes County resident
“Dorothy Stewart” is an African American woman, Lowndes County resident
“Daisy Baker” is an African American woman, non-resident

Detroit
Field notes (FN#)
4. Field notes June 2010: Meadow’s Interview
Interviews
1. “Bill” is an African American man, resident of Detroit
2. “David” is an African American man, activist, resident of Highland Park
3. “Donna” is a white woman, activist, resident of Detroit
4. “Edda” is a multiracial woman, resident of Detroit

311

 5. “Fran” is a white woman, activist, resident of Detroit
6. “Helen” is a white woman, resident of Detroit
7. “Jane” is a white woman, resident of Detroit
8. “James” is a white man, activist, resident of Detroit
9. “Jessica” is a white woman, activist, resident of Detroit
10. “Lauren” is an African American woman, works for the city, resident of Detroit
11. “Maria” is a Hispanic woman, activist, resident of Detroit.
12. “Toni” is an African American woman, activist, resident of Highland Park
13. “Augusta” is an African American woman, activist, resident of Detroit
14. “Meadow” is an African American woman, resident of Detroit
15. “Mike” is a white man, works for the water department, resident of Detroit
16. “Nadeen” is an African American woman, activist, resident of Detroit
17. “Paige” is a white woman, resident of Detroit
18. “Peter” is a white man, activist, resident of Detroit
19. “Ramon” is an African American man, attorney, resident of Detroit
20. “Renee” is an African American woman, resident of Detroit
21. “Rhonda” is an African American woman, activist, resident of Detroit
22. “Roger” is an African American man, activist, resident of Detroit
23. “Sophia” is a Hispanic woman, resident of Detroit
24. “Tiana” is an African American woman, activist, resident of Detroit
25. “Jade” is an African American woman, activist, resident of Detroit
26. “Walter” is a white man, resident of Detroit
27. State Representative Kurt Heise, R-Plymouth, non-resident
Truth Commission28 Participants
1. “Carl” is an African American man, resident of Detroit
2. “Samantha” is a white woman, activist, resident of Detroit
Subjects of the Documentary “The Water Front,” Miller 2007
1. “Aiesha” is an African American woman, resident of Highland Park
2. “Gloria” is an African American woman, resident of Highland Park
3. “Isaac” is an African American man, resident of Detroit
4. “Tasha” is an African American woman, resident of Detroit

28

In 2008 MWRO held a Truth Commission in which they asked residents to come to give testimony about their
experiences with high water rates, estimated billing, and water shutoffs. The Truth Commission was video taped
and submitted to the United Nations in an effort to get help for what MWRO felt were violations of human rights
related to water.

312

 APPENDIX B

TABLES

Table 3.1. Household Water Bills (Including Sewer When Relevant) After Privatization
(FWW 2010)

Table 3.2. Comparison of Household Water, Sewer, and Plumbing Failures by Poverty
Status, 2009 American Housing Survey Data (US Census 2011)

Lacking some or all plumbing
facilities
Moderate physical plumbing
problems
Primary source of water perceived
not safe to drink
Water supply stoppage in the last
3 months
Flush toilet breakdown (no
working toilet) ever in the last 3
months
Public sewer breakdown in the
last 3 months
Septic or cesspool breakdown in
the last 3 months

Households
in Poverty

Households
Not in
Poverty

Relative
Risk

95 %
Confidence
Interval

1.47 %

0.69 %

2.13

[1.71, 2.66]

0.20 %

0.07 %

2.90

[1.58, 5.34]

9.23 %

5.63 %

1.64

[1.51, 1.78]

2.96 %

2.63 %

1.12

[0.97, 1.30]

1.77 %

1.10 %

1.61

[1.32, 1.95]

1.84 %

1.06 %

1.73

[1.38, 2.17]

0.70 %

1.07 %

0.65

[0.36, 1.16]

313

 Table 6.1 Percent of the Population in Poverty (US Census Undated b, US Census 1995, US
Census 2005b)

314

 Table 7.1. Estimated Population in Lowndes County, Alabama from 1830-2010 within US
Census Year by Race (SSDAN 2014, US Census 1971, UVA 2004).
Note that due to historic inconsistencies in the reporting of race, these are approximate numbers
only. Although the non-white and non-black population is small in Lowndes County, this table
does not accurately reflect this population due to its aggregation into the “white” category in
some years and the “total population” in others.
Census
Year

Total
Population

1830
1840
1850
1860
1870
1880
1890
1900
1910
1920
1930
1940
1950
1960
1970
1980
1990
2000
2010

9,410
19,539
21,915
27,716
25,719
31,176
31,550
35,651
31,894
25,406
22,878
22,661
18,018
15,417
12,897
13,253
12,658
13,473
11,299

Total
Free
Black
21
14
8
14
20,633
25,528
26,987
30,889
28,125
22,016
19,632
19,204
14,796
12,438
9,963
9,742
9,408
9,841
8,293

Total
White

Total
Slaves

Total
Black

Percent
Black

Percent
White

5,001
6,956
7,258
8,362
5,086
5,645
4,563
4,762
3,769
3,390
3,246
3,457
3,222
2,979
2,934
3,291
3,177
3,464
2,870

4,388
12,569
14,649
19,340
----------------

4,409
12,583
14,657
19,354
20,633
25,528
26,987
30,889
28,125
22,016
19,632
19,204
14,796
12,438
9,963
9,742
9,408
9,841
8,293

47 %
64 %
67 %
70 %
80 %
82 %
86 %
87 %
88 %
87 %
86 %
85 %
82 %
81 %
77 %
74 %
74 %
73 %
73 %

53 %
36 %
33 %
30 %
20 %
18 %
14 %
13 %
12 %
13 %
14 %
15 %
18 %
19 %
23 %
25 %
25 %
26 %
25 %

315

 APPENDIX C

FIGURES

Figure 3.1: Combined Sewer System During Dry and Wet Weather (EPA 2004, p2-2)

Figure 3.2. National Annual Allotment for Clean Water State Revolving Fund (EPA 2011a;
HBrothers 2012)

316

 Figure 3.3: Access to Complete Plumbing in the United States, 1940-2010 (US Census 2004)

Figure 3.4. Incomplete Plumbing Distribution within the United States, 2000 US Census

317

 Figure 4.1. Example schematics and pictures of raised mound septic systems.

 

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318

Figure 6.1. Average Percent Unemployment for Lowndes County and Detroit by Available
Year (BLS 2013)

Figure 6.2. Detroit Low-Rise Residential City (Sugrue 1996, p21)

319

 Figure 6.3. Demographic Change in Detroit by US Census (US Census 2000, US Census
2005, US Census 2014).

1943 1967
Riots Riots

Figure 6.4. Percent of the Population in Poverty (US Census Undated b, US Census 1995,
US Census 2005b)

320

 Figure 7.1. Population Change Across Detroit Metropolitan Area

Figure 7.2. Unemployment in the City of Detroit versus the Metropolitan Area (BLS 2013)

321

 Figure 7.3. Map from a Suburban Mall Brochure (2010)
Indicates the location of the mall relative to other major cities. Significantly, no labels that
would be considered boundaries of Detroit are shown while Chicago, more than 200 miles away,
is denoted. Note: the name of the mall has been redacted from this image.

322