For most of her 85 years, Georgianna Grant lived without sufficient sewage treatment. Like many of her neighbors, her home on a rural patch of land in the unincorporated Lowndes County community of Hicks Hill had a failing septic tank that leaked wastewater into her yard. Her daughter still has a pipe that spews raw sewage from the back of her mobile home directly into a fetid open cesspool in her yard.
After a locally grown public health effort received more than $2 million in federal funding earlier this year to install new wastewater treatment systems at the homes of low-income people across the Black Belt county, Georgianna Grant’s name was near the top of the list to receive help.
But Grant never lived to see it. She died of COVID-19 complications this spring before her system could be installed.
Now her daughter and many other Lowndes County residents who were counting on the nascent program to address their longstanding wastewater treatment woes have been left in the lurch.
For generations, hundreds of residents of Lowndes County have, like the Grants, straight-piped wastewater into their yards or lived with broken septic tanks that cause raw sewage to back up into their homes when it rains. The more than $2 million of federal funding that was awarded to the Lowndes County Unincorporated Wastewater Program Sewer Board earlier this year was many people’s best hope for obtaining costly wastewater treatment systems.
The program would have footed most of the initial bill for the installation of the systems – which were expected to cost thousands of dollars each – and residents would have had to pitch in $500 to $1,000 each and pay upkeep costs. The first such system was installed behind local wastewater treatment advocate Perman Hardy’s home in rural Collirene earlier this year.
But now the federal money has been returned to the U.S. Department of Agriculture, according to the board’s incorporator, Sherry Bradley, director of the state Bureau of Environmental Services.
“I received information this past Friday that the USDA funding had gone back. They rescinded the grant,” she said.
Sherry Bradley, director of the state Bureau of Environmental Services (left), and Perman Hardy stand on June 22 behind Hardy's house in rural Lowndes County, where a wastewater treatment system was recently installed. (Connor Sheets | csheets@al.com)
The USDA grant required a 25% local funding match, and Bradley led a drive that raised over $695,000 from business leaders, politicians, and other donors. Some of that money has been returned to donors, but Bradley said she hopes the sewer board will be able to move forward with wastewater system upgrades even without the federal grant.
“I have received a lot of phone calls from people that want to help with this project and I’m so happy to hear that,” she said. “I’m going to let them see what we’ve done and from there they can contribute whatever they want to contribute.”
The federal funds were rescinded after a recent political dispute in Lowndes County resulted in Hardy being removed from the sewer board. The Lowndes County Commission voted to remove her from the board on June 28, after the commission’s chairman, Charlie King, claimed that had she never been formally appointed. Former county commissioner Carnell McAlpine maintains that he personally made the appointment “in ’15 or ’16.”
Either way, Hardy’s removal from the board effectively voided USDA documents that she had signed to secure the grant funding, Bradley said. Bradley urged King to reappoint Hardy to the board, but King refused. As such, Bradley said she had to return a large portion of the matching funds, which prompted the loss of the federal grant.
Asked Tuesday what he thinks about the latest development, King said he doesn’t understand why the funds had to be returned.
“All I can tell you is that I had an opportunity to appoint a board member to the sewer board and I did that,” he said. “It’s now up to that board to make it work.”
Hardy said she is upset that “some people who want control” made decisions that resulted in the loss of $2 million that could have gone a long way to help low-income people.
“All this stuff they’re saying about the board wasn’t formed correctly and everything, that’s all just noise,” she said.
“We finally got a solution for the sewage problem out in the unincorporated parts of Lowndes County, and for this to happen is just so sad. I don’t understand it. … Do you not want people to live better? Do you not want them to have better health?”
Perman Hardy speaks on June 22 reception celebrating the wastewater treatment initiative at the Lowdnes Interpretive Center in White Hall. (Connor Sheets | csheets@al.com)
McAlpine said Tuesday that he is dismayed that the funding is no longer available to help people and improve public health in his community.
“I think it’s unfortunate that it happened, and I hate to see it not be successful,” he said. “Because that is a serious issue in this county with the sewage, and I hope something can be worked out.”
King said that “the people will not perish” due to the loss of the federal funding.
“The county commission will do what they need to do to make it happen and help these people and get them the septic systems that are needed,” he said Tuesday. Last month, he told AL.com the commission would raise funds to pay for wastewater treatment systems for low-income people in Lowndes County, but exactly how it plans to do so remains unclear.
Hardy said she will not stop advocating to improve wastewater treatment in her community.
“I’m gonna keep on fighting to find a way to help the people of the unincorporated areas of Lowndes County,” she said. “I’m not gonna get discouraged. I’m gonna keep going. I’m still gonna continue to raise my voice and even though this was a blow, I’m not gonna get discouraged.”