Johnson at blackagendareport: shitting on the poor: especially if they're black.
"South of East St. Louis, down in the broad flood plain of the Mississippi known as the American Bottom, there is a little town that is gradually sinking in a flood of human waste. "
"signs of the floods everywhere: abandoned houses surrounded by swampy yards, drainage ditches filled with brackish water, little wads of toilet paper hanging waist-high from the bushes"
" a moderate rain can flood the intersections and lowlands of Centreville. When it rains heavily, much of the town is submerged in two or three feet of water. "
"Almost all of the water that surrounds the houses and floods the roads is dangerously contaminated. The sewer system in Centreville works as poorly ... many of them run backward. Small fountains of raw sewage bubble up into the yards twenty-four hours a day, flowing into fetid sluiceways that run between the houses. Some days, especially in the summer, the whole town smells like an outhouse. And when it rains, and the water begins to rise, the sewage follows the water, out into the drainage ditches and the roadways, across the yards, into the houses.Many of the houses in Centreville ... bow in the middle, where the foundations are gradually sinking into swampy ground."
"Centreville looks like the future—a future unfolding at the confluence of climate catastrophe, structural racism, infrastructural deterioration, and widespread indifference to black suffering."
"By the late 1980s, the city’s sewer system was failing"
"Cornelius Bennett, showed me a sheaf of receipts from a plumbing company that, after repeatedly cleaning out the pipes running under his yard, finally told him they would not take any more of his money."
“After the white folks moved, they stopped doing stuff out here,”
" the 1986 completion of Interstate 255, which looped traffic around the southern edge of the Metro East region, and was eventually (in 2002) declared by the Army Corps of Engineers to be impeding the flow of water "
"Water and sewer service in Centreville and several of the surrounding municipalities is (and has been since the 1970s) provided by Commonfields of Cahokia ... In a 2012 federal court case, Commonfields general manager, Dennis Traiteur, Sr., testified in court that “everyone” at Commonfields was “hired for political reasons.” The practice apparently extended to his own son, Dennis Traiteur, Jr., who was hired by Commonfields in 2009 as assistant superintendent, though he was found by the court to have “no experience with wastewater or supervisory skills.” Public watchdogs have documented a litany of other abuses at Commonfields, including the failure to make board meeting accessible to the public and threatening to sue members of the public who attend the meetings."
"Many of the huge emergency pumps that are scattered throughout the township show no signs of having functioned for years: their machinery is covered with dust and cobwebs, and water pools around their bases when it rains. In 2009 the Illinois state EPA declared that the Harding Ditch, which drains the American Bottom, contained hazardous levels of fecal coliform. It has become, effectively, an open sewer."
"The repeated floods have left behind a residue of black mold that comes up through the floor of the Greenwoods’ house. It rots away the windowsills, tints the glass yellow, and stains the curtains as it crawls up the walls. Mrs. Greenwood washes the curtains with Clorox, but the mold comes back again and again. She’s gone to the Red Cross office in nearby Belleville, and brought home flood cleanup kits. They work for a couple of weeks, and then the smell comes back."
" Last April her bathroom backed up—sewage coming out of toilet, sink, and shower—and would not clear. Mr. Greenwood, who was recovering from quintuple bypass surgery, nevertheless cut a hole in the floor of the bathroom and tried to dig down under the house in a futile effort to clear the area around the inundated sewer pipes. Today, the hole in the bathroom floor is covered with a piece of plywood, and there is a constant backwash of sewer water in their shower."
" will not say anything more about the smell than that it smells really bad—they are too polite to name the odor that haunts their lives, as if they are worried that visitors might be offended by the words."
"Mrs. Greenwood answers that it comes “from the people above us”—the people who live on the higher ground that surrounds Centreville: the more prosperous suburbs of Belleville, O’Fallon, and Collinsville. In Centreville, the flow of social power, storm water, and even human waste all follow the same course."
" “Bring us back some help,” Mrs. Greenwood told me when I last said goodbye to her, standing in her front yard, “tell them we’re still here.” "
https://www.blackagendareport.com/american-bottomsidd
