Quick hits: Honeybees have feelings, too; $50 million in venture capital raised to bring more doctors to rural America

Here's a roundup of stories with rural resonance; if you do or see similar work that should be shared on The Rural Blog, email us at heather.chapman@uky.edu.

The U.S. must embrace climate-smart agriculture, but some provisions in the Inflation Reduction Act meant to encourage such practices are off the mark, write an environmental studies professor and a Harvard Law School policy fellow. Read more here.

A company has raised $70 million in venture capital to bring more doctors to rural America. Read more here.

Aging farmers and ranchers are much more likely to die by suicide than their younger counterparts, a new study shows. A big part of that may be because they're less likely to talk about mental-health struggles. Read more here.

The Environmental Protection Agency and the Agriculture Department have announced a new pilot program to help 11 underserved rural communities get proper wastewater sanitation. EPA and USDA will partner with state and tribal governments to help communities identify and pursue federal funding opportunities. The communities are in Alabama, Kentucky, Mississippi, New Mexico, North Carolina, West Virginia, and on tribal lands. Read more here.

The Department of Health and Human Services will distribute more than $15 million in grants to help rural communities combat drug abuse and overdose deaths related to psychostimulants such as methamphetamines and cocaine. The rate of overdose deaths associated with psychostimulants is generally higher in rural areas. Read more here.

Scientific experiments indicate that bees are surprisingly intelligent and appear to have basic emotions, according to a new book. Read more here.

Speaking of: the critter commonly known as the Asian giant hornet or murder hornet (which eats honeybees) is getting a gentler name: the Northern giant hornet. The name change proposal to the Entomological Society of America cited the rise of anti-Asian hate crimes during the pandemic, and posited that "connecting a scary insect, already associated with murder and attempted eradication, to Asia, might stoke more anti-Asian sentiment," Oliver Whang reports for The New York Times.

USDA and EPA officials tour Black Belt county to see chronic sewage problems, a disproportionately rural issue

Department of Agriculture Undersecretary for Rural Development Xochitl Torres Small, EPA Administrator Michael Regan and activist Catherine Coleman Flowers toured a mobile home park in Lowndes County, Alabama, with standing pools of raw sewage in the yards. (AL.com photo by Dennis Pillion)

"On the eve of the Selma Jubilee, commemorating the 'Bloody Sunday' march that helped catalyze support for the Voting Rights Act 57 years ago, the head of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency toured Alabama’s Black Belt to witness a different kind of struggle: the battle for clean water and basic sanitation," Dennis Pillion reports for AL.com. EPA Administrator Michael Regan, Agriculture Undersecretary for Rural Development Xochitl Torres Small and other EPA and USDA officials "went to three different properties in Lowndes County Saturday, seeing homes where malfunctioning septic systems discharged untreated sewage into backyards and in between mobile homes, and where some residents had nowhere to go to address their sewage issues."

The group was led by author and activist Catherine Coleman Flowers, the founder of the Center for Rural Enterprise and Environmental Justice, who won a MacArthur Foundation "Genius Grant" in 2020 for bringing attention to the issue in her native county and other rural areas, Pillion reports.

More than 2 million Americans lack access to clean water, according to a 2019 report by clean-water advocacy non-profits DigDeep and the U.S. Water Alliance. It's a problem that disproportionately affects rural residents and those in substandard housing. Because rural Black, Latino and Native American residents are more likely to live in substandard housing, they're more likely to be affected.

A key to the problem is that rural populations are often too spread out to make traditional utility lines cost-effective, and sewers are the most expensive basic utility. Cash-strapped local or tribal governments are increasingly on the hook to pay for water system improvements, according to the DigDeep report. The 2021 infrastructure package earmarked $29.3 billion in grants over five years for counties to upgrade their water systems. But rural counties may miss out on much of that money, since they often lack the manpower and know-how to compete for or spend such grants.

Regan said the situation was "unacceptable" and clean water and safe sewage systems were a "basic right" that every American deserves, Pillion reports. Regan continued: "Straight piping into lagoons, failing septic systems, waste and raw sewage backing up into yards into homes, seeing children have to walk around delicately so that they don’t sink or get bogged down into their own front yards. This is not the America that we all know it should be."

Feds relax rules for local and state governments' relief funds; 'a major win for many smaller communities'

"State and local governments receiving pandemic aid payments under a $350 billion federal program gained new flexibility and further clarity with how they can use the funding, under a final rule that the U.S. Treasury Department issued," Bill Lucia reports for Route Fifty. "The 437-page rule-making document released Jan. 6 provides additional information on how aid recipients can spend money from the American Rescue Plan Act on capital expenditures, employee pay and water, sewer and broadband projects, among other areas."

According to the final rule, local governments can use $10 million of their relief payments to pay down revenue losses. That allows them "to spend the money on a broad range of general government expenses without jumping through administrative hoops outlined in an earlier version of the rule. This is a major win for many smaller communities," Lucia reports. The guidelines also clarify that governments can use some funds for water, sewer, and broadband projects.

The final rule takes effect April 1, but aid recipients can start following the final guidelines now, the department said. "Treasury made clear that state and local government aid recipients are still barred from dumping their aid into "rainy day" reserve funds, using it for debt service payments, or depositing it into pension funds to pay down liabilities," Lucia reports. "The rule also specifies that states cannot use their funding to "directly or indirectly" offset reductions in tax revenue resulting from changes in law or policy, beginning on March 3 of last year. The law's restrictions around offsetting tax reductions have been facing legal challenges brought by multiple states."

Rural stakeholders encouraged to speak up to get federal aid for water systems; more funds may be on the way

As state and local governments decide how to spend their share of federal pandemic aid, rural water experts are encouraging stakeholders to educate themselves about the available aid and speak up about their water-system improvement needs, Daniel Vock reports for Route Fifty.

The $1.9 trillion American Rescue Plan Act included $350 billion in direct aid to help state and local governments cope with the economic fallout of the pandemic, but the law also allows recipients to use the money for other priorities such as water infrastructure, Vock notes.

Liz Royer, executive director of the Vermont Rural Water Association, is encouraging rural water systems in her state to tell town officials about their needs. Royer said some of the smallest systems would have few other options to get money from the state, especially those run by fire districts instead of town governments. But even small amounts of funding could be critical to small water systems.

"You’re not going to do a loan application [through the state] for a $10,000 or $20,000 project," Royer told Vock. "But some of these very, very small systems may only have 50 customers, so for them to do an upgrade that’s going to cost $25,000 is going to be a big hit to their customers with low incomes."

Mike Keegan, a regulatory analyst for the National Rural Water Association, told Vock that educating local government officials about the aid will be one of the biggest hurdles for rural water systems to get a share of the funding.

Meanwhile, federal aid specifically for rural water systems continues to flow. The Agriculture Department Rural Development office is allotting $307 million to modernizing rural drinking water and wastewater infrastructure in 34 states and Puerto Rico. Click here for a list of recipients, and click here for more information about the program or to apply).

Congress may approve more money for water-utility improvement as well. Earlier this month the House passed a $715 billion infrastructure bill that would authorize up to $117 billion in drinking-water projects over five years and $51 billion for wastewater infrastructure, Vock reports. 

Most Republicans opposed the Democrat-led bill, but a narrower bill focused on water infrastructure only passed the Senate with only two dissenting votes in April. That bill "would spend up to $35 billion over five years on water infrastructure. That includes nearly $15 billion each for both the clean water and drinking water state revolving funds," Vock reports. "While the Senate bill’s authorization levels might look small compared to the House’s levels, it would still nearly double the money for the drinking water fund in the first year and increase those levels after that."

Small water systems may have a hard time beefing up cybersecurity at a time their vulnerability has been revealed

The Feb. 5 hacking attempt on a small Florida water system shines a "highlights dire weaknesses in critical infrastructure and has federal policy-makers paying attention to industrial control systems, such as those also used by electric utilities, which are often managed by local municipalities," Mariam Baksh reports for Route Fifty.

The attack, which cybersecurity experts say was likely carried out by amateurs, was possible because of an outdated operating system, poor password security, and other weaknesses, Baksh reports. Federal authorities have issued recommendations to other water systems to stave off similar attacks, but such strategies may be difficult for rural utilities with little funding or personnel. 

Joseph A. Davis of the Society of Environmental Journalists provides an excellent explainer about public water systems in the U.S., including the security weaknesses many face, what funding is available to protect against cyberattacks, and story ideas and reporting sources.

The Bioterrorism Act of 2002 required water systems above a certain size to conduct vulnerability assessments and submit the results to the Environmental Protection Agency. Those assessments are exempt from the Freedom of Information Act and are meant to be kept secret, but loopholes can allow hackers (or journalists, for that matter) to learn more: "The same water systems were also required to draw up Emergency Response Plans for dealing with a terrorist attack," Davis reports. "In doing so, utilities were to coordinate with other agencies like police or hazmat units. The 2002 law did not require these to be disclosed, but did not explicitly forbid disclosure either. So a resourceful journalist could possibly get a look at the local plan."

Though Congress authorized and appropriated hundreds of millions of dollars in grants in the early 2000s to help local utilities beef up their security, few agencies and utilities seem to have improved their security much, Davis reports. Some funding was specifically earmarked for smaller water systems, according to a federal report. The report also says water systems may also find funding through Department of Homeland Security grants.

However, Davis notes that garden-variety water pollution is likely a greater threat to water systems ill-equipped to deal with it.

Quick hits: How FCC has wasted broadband money; Rep. Kinzinger says he's following his duty as an evangelical

Here's a roundup of stories with rural resonance; if you do or see similar work that should be shared on The Rural Blog, email us at heather.chapman@uky.edu.

Book review: A political memoir, Rural Rebellion, describes how Nebraska became a Republican stronghold. Read more here.

Shifting economic recovery trends in the U.S. food-service sector affect the animal protein industry. Read more here.

Justin Timberlake says his upbringing in the rural South helped him relate to his character in his new movie Palmer, about an former football player who returns to his small town after a decade in prison. Read more here.

The last in a five-part series on Ajit Pai, chair of the Federal Communications Commission under President Trump, examines how the agency's choices for rural broadband buildout subsidies wasted money. Read more here. 

Rep. Adam Kinzinger, R-Ill., talks about why he felt it was his duty as an evangelical Christian to vote for Donald Trump's impeachment. Read more here.

Arrestees in the Capitol riots include a disproportionate number of current and former military. Read more here.

Registration is open for an online class series aimed at teaching beginners how to draft proposals for rural health grants. Read more here.

Pandemic relief and changes to a federal tax form last year may mean taxpayers get a smaller tax return this year or may end up owing money. Read more here.

Rural sanitation activist Catherine Coleman Flowers writes that policymakers must consult more rural voices. Read more here.

What's in the bipartisan relief bill for agriculture and more

A bipartisan group of senators has released a pair of coronavirus relief bills that aim to provide economic aid for American workers and small businesses. The bills were originally one $908 billion plan unveiled earlier this month, but the senators split them into two bills they believe have a better chance of passing. The first bill is a $748 billion comprehensive measure, and the second bill provides $160 billion for state and local funding (click here for a Tax Foundation estimate of how much each state would receive).

"The $748 billion measure is expected to include additional funding for the popular Paycheck Protection Program, schools and unemployment insurance, as well as more money for vaccine development and distribution, coronavirus testing and contact tracing. Both Republicans and Democrats agree on these measures," Grace Segers reports for CBS News. "The second bill, however, would address two issues that have been sticking points between Republicans and Democrats in negotiations over a relief package: $160 billion for state and local governments, a priority for Democrats, and a liability shield for businesses, key to Republicans. Republicans oppose the former, while Democrats think the liability shield could hurt workers."

The $748 billion bill earmarked $13 billion "to address Covid-related impacts on farmers, ranchers, growers, etc., and rural communities, Ben Nuelle reports for Agri-Pulse. From that funding, $600 million will go toward fishery disaster relief, and an undisclosed amount would go to the Agriculture Department's Rural Development agencies to fund water and wastewater programs.

Other measures in the $748 billion bill:

• The U.S. Postal Service would get $10 billion from the treasury without having to repay it, but would have to disclose how the money is spent. The USPS Board of Governors would have to present a plan to Congress within 180 days to ensure the service's long-term solvency.
• $10 billion to support child-care providers struggling economically.
• $6.25 billion for broadband build-out.
• $3 billion to to help underserved areas—especially rural areas—with broadband hotspots, computers, and other needs for distance learning.
• $200 million for internet-connected devices for libraries in low-income and rural areas.
• $475 million for the Federal Communications Commission's Covid-19 Telehealth Program, with 20% set aside for small, rural health-care providers.
• $100 million to the Department of Veterans Affairs for Telehealth and Connected Care Program.
• $3.15 billion to substance-abuse prevention and treatment block grants.
• $1.3 billion for opioid response grants to states.
• An unspecified amount (possibly none needed) for expanding access to medication-assisted treatment by allowing limited extension of telehealth waivers and eliminating the requirement for practitioners to apply for a waiver through the Drug Enforcement Administration in order to prescribe buprenorphine.
• An extension of the eviction moratorium until Jan. 31.
• $25 billion in rental assistance.
• $35 billion for health-care providers.
• 16 weeks of unemployment benefits at $300 per week.
• 16-week extensions in base unemployment benefits and the unemployment program for gig workers and independent contractors.
• $300 billion for small-business relief.
• $82 billion for schools.
• $13 billion in emergency food assistance.

Quick hits: pharmacists could administer kids' vaccinations; what post-pandemic food supply chains could look like

Here's a roundup of stories with rural resonance; if you do or see similar work that should be shared on The Rural Blog, email us at heather.chapman@uky.edu.

The federal government will allow pharmacists to administer routine immunizations to children as young as three. Read more here.

Residents of Alabama's Lowndes County lack adequate wastewater systems and must regularly deal with sewage backing up into their yards and homes. Environmental activist Catherine Coleman Flowers, who has spent the past 20 years bringing attention to the issue, says it's only one of many such rural areas. Read more here.

A California lawsuit alleges that kids are falling behind because of distance learning, and that the state hasn't done enough to provide students with technology like computers or hotspots so they can learn. Read more here.

A policy expert discussed what post-pandemic food supply chains could look like. Read more here.

In rural areas, Covid-19 is an obstacle to healthy development for children of color. Read more here.

The Department of Health and Human Services has published new hospital-capacity data that it says is more accurate than previous estimates. Read more here. A scientific probe in November found that HHS data varied wildly from state-aggregated data. Read more here.

Nearly one in four North Dakotans know someone who has died from Covid-19. Read more here.

The U.S. Department of Agriculture's Rural Development is seeking applications for Rural Energy for America program. Read more here.

An editorial in the Las Vegas Sun cites rural issues the Biden administration and other Democrats must address, including reducing the power of large agri-businesses. Read more here.

Quick hits: New books explore Dolly Parton's music; new podcast series examines the 1980s farm crisis

Here's a roundup of stories with rural resonance; if you do or see similar work that should be shared on The Rural Blog, email us at heather.chapman@uky.edu.

Decades of corporate-friendly farm policies wrecked rural America, writes a retired Wisconsin dairy farmer. Read more here.

Prisons and jails continue to be a major vector for coronavirus transmission. Read more here.

Two new books explore Dolly Parton's music. Read more here.

The agricultural downturn in recent years was seen as the most challenging stretch for the farm economy in decades. Agricultural Economic Insights has launched a new podcast series, "Escaping 1980," that examines the 1980s farm crisis that brought a wave of bankruptcies and reshaped the industry. Listen to the first episodes here.

Though rural areas disproportionately voted for President Trump, most of his voters came from cities and suburbs; rural areas only have about 20% of the nation's population). Read more here.

A new book chronicles a rural Alabama woman's battle to access basic sanitation services, revealing the scope of the problem for many rural residents and the factors that feed the crisis. Read more here.

Covid-19 deaths shift rural attitudes about pandemic

When the coronavirus pandemic first hit the U.S. at the beginning of the year, it mainly affected urban areas, and rural residents tended to take it less seriously. But as federal efforts to limit the spread of the disease often faltered, the United States' "extraordinarily high case load — more than 6.5 million so far — and death count have translated into steadily growing acceptance of the preventive steps scientists recommend," The Washington Post reports.

In rural Vermont, for example, twin brothers Cleon and Leon Boyd died within days of each other, and 11 immediate relatives were infected. "The Boyd family’s harrowing experience rippled through the towns where they lived and worked, sharply altering attitudes toward the coronavirus and spreading adoption of social distancing and face coverings," the Post reports.

The Post story also notes the death of Pamela Sue Rush in rural Lowndes County, in Alabama's Black Belt, where a quarter of the residents live below the poverty line. Many live in small mobile homes that make social distancing difficult, and they also often lack a functioning septic system, which can encourage the spread of disease. Rush, 50, has two children. 

Rural water and sewage utilities, often left out of pandemic relief, struggle to keep operating when customers can't pay

Many rural water and sewage utilities struggled to pay for long-needed maintenance even before the coronavirus pandemic. But with so many residents out of work and unable to pay their water bills, rural utilities are finding themselves stretched too thin to stay fully operational.

"Rural water and wastewater systems have largely been left out of federal and state pandemic relief, and yet they play critical roles in local economies. Homes rely on them, of course, but so do small businesses such as eateries and large companies such as manufacturers and processing plants," April Simpson reports for Stateline. "As the virus stretches further into smaller communities, these systems are fighting for their survival under long-standing economic and structural weights."

The vast majority of public water utilities are rural, though the larger urban ones serve more people overall. "Of 150,000 public water systems, 97 percent are in communities of 10,000 residents or fewer, according to the Rural Community Assistance Partnership, a national network of nonprofits whose work includes assistance to and training for water and wastewater systems," Simpson reports.

"With many states maintaining a moratorium on water shutoffs, water systems have fewer ways to deal with unpaid bills. Some advocates worry the moratoria are permitting customers to dig themselves into a deeper hole since they’ll be on the hook to pay their growing bill eventually. Meanwhile systems are providing service for free without any assurance that a local government would step in to help," Simpson reports. "Municipal and nonmunicipal systems are generally funded by user rates, not tax dollars. Small systems may not have the reserves to call on when customers facing hardship are unable to pay their bills."

Though many large water and sewage systems also face funding and maintenance issues, smaller and rural utilities have fewer resources, usually serve fewer people, and don't have as many employees who can run things if one of them becomes infected or must stay in quarantine, Simpson reports.

Report: more than 2 million Americans lack clean water

More than two million Americans lack access to clean water, according to a new report by clean-water advocacy non-profits DigDeep and the U.S. Water Alliance. The U.S. doesn't have a reliable, central data source to track how many Americans lack access to water and sanitation, according to the report. So DigDeep founder George McGraw commissioned experts from around the country to piece together the data.

The problem disproportionately affects rural residents, especially Native Americans on reservations, and those in substandard housing, the report found. Because African American and Latinx populations are more likely to live in substandard housing, they're disproportionately affected too.

Moreover, states and local or tribal governments are increasingly on the hook to pay for water system improvements. "Today federal funding for water infrastructure is a small percentage of what it once was. Across the country, 44 million people are served by water systems that recently had Safe Drinking Water Act violations," Lauren Morales reports for NPR.

Native Americans are the worst off, according to the report. Out of every 1,000 Native American households, 58 lack plumbing, compared with three of every 1,000 white households, Morales reports. Navajo Darlene Yazzie said she has to drive nine miles away to access fresh water, and the price is going up soon. She has a windmill-powered well, but the well is dry when the wind isn't blowing, she told Morales. "Yazzie said the windmill water isn't safe for humans anyway. Officials told her arsenic and uranium levels are too high. Yazzie and many others give the water to their animals, even though they plan to eat them," Morales reports. But it's often prohibitively expensive to build water pipelines to remote tribal nations in the Southwest: the Indian Health Service estimated it would cost $200 million to provide basic water and sanitation access to the Navajo Nation.

The problem isn't limited to reservations. Martin County in rural Eastern Kentucky has gained national attention because its water system is so terrible. Things got so bad there that state regulators ordered the water district to sign a contract giving control to outside management by tomorrow or face serious financial penalties. "State regulators placed the blame squarely on the district’s past and current management, saying officials made 'little to no effort to repair and replace aging infrastructure in order to maintain an adequate level of service to its ratepayers,' failed to keep adequate financial records, and failed to hire a permanent general manager," Will Wright reports for the Lexington Herald-Leader.

After Midwest flooding, hazards remain

Residents in Hamburg, Iowa, piled up ruined belongings and housing materials. (Photo: Des Moines Register, Brian Powers)

Record flooding has wreaked havoc in the Midwest this spring, but even where waters have receded, dangers remain. In addition to debris and infrastructure damage, "floodwaters overwhelmed private wells, sewage lagoons and public water systems, soaked over a million bushels of corn and soybeans, and picked up propane, anhydrous ammonia and fertilizer tanks," Donnelle Eller reports for The Associated Press. That has left "orphaned containers filled with industrial chemicals, pesticides, diesel fuel, oil and other potentially hazardous materials."

Local, state and federal officials are working together on the massive clean-up effort. Farmers, elevators and businesses have been ordered to destroy grain contaminated by river water, and state air-quality laws have been lifted to allow residents to burn crops, debris and damaged household items, Eller reports.

Officials are concerned about the raw sewage that many cities pumped into rivers for weeks after the floods hit. Mike Crecelius, the emergency management director in Iowa's Fremont County, is warning people not to go into the Missouri River without protection. "There are a number of municipalities north of us dumping raw sewage into the water. There are orphan tanks floating around, with valves coming off, losing pesticides, insecticides, acids and fertilizers," he told Eller. "You don’t know what’s in the water."

Though the volume of the floodwaters diluted some of the chemicals, environmental specialists also worry about the potential damage to fish and plants in the rivers, and the impact that could have on the larger ecosystem, including the people who eat the fish and get drinking water from the rivers, Eller reports.

Small water, sewer systems show vulnerablity to hackers

Nearly 70,000 small and mid-sized water and wastewater systems in the U.S. are vulnerable to hackers, according to interviews with security experts and water company operators, Blake Sobczak reports for Energy & Environment News.

For example, hackers hit the water and wastewater facilities of the Fort Collins-Loveland Water District last month, infecting the computer systems with ransomware. Ransomware encrypts a victim's computer files, refusing to unlock them until a ransom has been paid online, Sobczak notes.

"Some larger utilities are well-positioned to thwart an attack by hackers backed by a foreign government, said Michael Arceneaux, managing director for the Water Information Sharing and Analysis Center, the industry's clearinghouse for getting the word out about the latest hacking threats and vulnerabilities," Sobczak reports. "But in a sector that encompasses tens of thousands of local water systems, securing America's vast and disparate drinking water supply remains a significant challenge."

Cybersecurity for water utilities is only lightly monitored by the federal government and often ignored by state utility commissions. But water security is critical after a disaster: "In many emergency planning exercises, it isn't the lack of electricity that triggers chaos and widespread casualties. It's the lack of clean water that forces people from their homes," Sobczak reports.

"Sixty-three cyber vulnerabilities were uncovered in the 'water supply' sector in 2018, according to federal data, accounting for 15 percent of all industrial security problems. Only the energy and manufacturing sectors had more vulnerabilities in 2018," Sobczak reports. Power distributors use many of the same equipment providers and use similar computer systems as water utilities, and so may be vulnerable to the same kinds of cyberthreats.

Package from six-month investigation explores lack of clean, reliable drinking water in Appalachian parts of Ky. and W.Va.

A collaboration among media outlets aims to bring attention to the lack of clean, reliable drinking water in Eastern Kentucky and Southern West Virginia and spur public debate and change. Will Wright of the Lexington Herald-Leader, Caity Coyne of the Charleston Gazette-Mail, and Molly Born of West Virginia Public Broadcasting spent nearly six months interviewing dozens of residents, water district officials and experts before yesterday's publication of the multimedia "Stirring the Waters" package. The series was coordinated by The GroundTruth Project's Report for America initiative, a national service program funded in Appalachia by the Galloway Family Foundation.

Among the investigation's key findings:

• Because water districts in Central Appalachia are understaffed and underfunded, they can't adequately perform routine maintenance. That leads to quality and reliability problems for customers and doesn't address long-term infrastructure problems.
• Some districts routinely produce water with high levels of dangerous chemicals that can harm the most vulnerable customers, such as infants, pregnant women and the elderly; this violates the Safe Water Drinking Act.
• Grants are the most sought-after source of funding for water projects, but there has been less and less of that money available in recent years. Low-interest loans are an increasingly popular source of funding, but the debt can overwhelm small water systems.
• Some grant funding awarded to districts are so narrowly focused that they can't be used to fix water districts' most pressing problems.
• Bill collection is the only real source of revenue for community water systems, but as the population in Central Appalachia drops, so do water systems' revenues.
• Local politicians often pressure water boards to keep rates unchanged rather than raise rates gradually, which sometimes leads to financial catastrophe.
• Nine community water systems in Southern West Virginia have been under boil water advisories for longer than five years. The state is aware of this, but there's no indication it's doing anything to help.
• A clearinghouse for West Virginia infrastructure projects estimates that $17 billion is needed to correct the state's water and sewage problems and connect everyone to central systems. That number will rise the longer problems are ignored.

Looking for solutions to sewage problems in Alabama's Black Belt -- and perhaps other rural areas with the issue

Lowndes County, Alabama
(Wikipedia map)

Thousands of low-income rural Alabama residents have had to live with inefficient or failing wastewater treatment systems for decades, sickening them and lowering their property values. Activists, researchers and journalists have pushed the crisis into the public eye, making officials pay more attention, reports Melissa Brown of the Montgomery Advertiser.

A United Nations team that investigates extreme poverty around the world toured the U.S. last year and reported that people in Alabama's Black Belt are "suffering the most dire sewage disposal crisis of any place [inspector Philip Alston] has visited in a developed country," Connor Sheets reported at the time for Alabama.com. Alston noted that residents in rural Butler and Lowndes counties often fall ill with infections from E. coli bacteria and hookworm because of the sewage -- ailments that he said were "very uncommon in the First World."

Lowndes County is one of the poorest counties in the state, with a median income below $28,000. So residents and towns can't afford to put in better waste-disposal systems -- which are more expensive there anyway. Civil engineer Kevin White told Brown that "Normally, it might cost $2,000 to put in a septic tank and a drain field in Mobile or Tuscaloosa . . . But in the Black Belt, with the poor soils, the system has to be so large or so complicated that we’re talking $8,000 to $10,000 or even more." White has been working on creating more innovative and affordable Black Belt wastewater solutions for decades; he led a study for the University of South Carolina more than 10 years ago that found that half of rural households in Bibb County had raw sewage pooling on the ground. He's currently studying similar conditions in Wilcox and Hale counties.

White says these rural areas need creative solutions, such as compost toilets or outhouses, or more efficient (but more expensive) toilet systems that use air and a small amount of liquid to flush. Brown notes, "Plumbing manufacturer American Standard sent a team of engineers to Lowndes County last year and is in the initial stages of developing potential product solutions for rural septic issues."

Catherine Flowers, a Lowndes County native and rural development manager for the Equal Justice Initiative, has been working with researchers at Duke University to explore policy changes, funding mechanisms and septic system engineering solutions to the problem. Flowers told Brown she hopes their work can help other rural communities across the U.S. struggling with similar issues.

"It’s not just a Black Belt problem. There’s no one-size-fits-all solution to this," Flowers told Brown. "I think what we’re putting together is a template for how these different entities can and should work together to find solutions. We’re working on a life-giving and life-sustaining solution."

Trump infrastructure plan is 25% rural, but states and localities would bear most financial burden for projects

Working on a water line near Torrey, Utah (Photo from National Rural Water Association)

President Trump announced his long-awaited infrastructure plan today, calling for federal investment of $200 billion, $50 billion of it designated for rural areas. But most of the money would have to come from state and local governments. UPDATE, Feb. 14: "Hardly anyone believes that $200 billion federal dollars will produce an additional $1.3 trillion investment from non-federal sources, especially when state and local budgets are being squeezed by rising costs for education and health care," writes William Galston of the Brookings Institution.

"The bulk of the dollars in the Rural Infrastructure Program will be allocated to state governors, giving states the flexibility to prioritize their communities’ needs," the plan says. "The remaining funds will be distributed through rural performance grants to encourage the best use of taxpayer dollars." The plan calls for "reducing regulatory barriers" to infrastructure projects, including faster permitting, with a “one agency, one decision” structure for environmental reviews, which could last no longer than two years.

The plan says it is designed to spur investment of $1.5 billion in infrastructure, the great majority of it from state and local governments and private sources. "Critics say that will lead to higher state and local taxes, and an increased reliance on user fees, such as tolls, water and sewer fees, transit fares and airline ticket taxes," David Schaper reports for NPR. "Half of the funding, $100 billion, will be used as incentives to entice cities, counties and states to raise at least 80 percent of the infrastructure costs themselves. . . .That's a radical departure from the way many projects are funded now. Funding for federal-aid highways, including interstates, is usually allocated in an 80-20 federal-state split."

Schaper reports, "Critics worry that would lead to only projects that could generate revenue, such as toll roads or bridges, getting funded." Revenue-generating projects are usually in urban areas; rural areas tend to rely more on direct government support. The plan also has a subsidy for the Rural Utilities Service, a Department of Agriculture agency that funds broadband, electric, water and wastewater projects, and new mineral-lease revenues to fund projects in national parks and on other public lands infrastructure. It also opens the door to sales of assets by government-owned utilities: the Tennessee Valley Authority, the Southwestern Power Administration, and the Bonneville Power Administration in the Northwest, The Daily Yonder reports.

Schaper adds, "Senior White House officials who briefed reporters over the weekend say the plan is aimed at fixing the current system of funding infrastructure that they say is broken in two ways. The first is that the country has been under-investing in infrastructure, leading a state of growing disrepair. The American Society of Civil Engineers gives the nation a grade of D+ for the condition of transit, highway, bridge, rail, water and other infrastructure, and says the country is in need of an investment of $2 trillion more than is currently budgeted. The second way the White House says the system is broken is in the lengthy federal permitting process, which officials say can take five to 10 years or longer, driving up costs."

U.N. investigator reports on extreme U.S. poverty, decries pollution and disease in Alabama

Activist Aaron Thigpen shows Philip Alston a sewage pool. (Photo: Connor Sheets, AL.com)

A United Nations team that investigates extreme poverty and human rights around the world turned its gaze on the United States earlier this month with a two-week tour of cities and towns, at the invitation of the American government. The team's conclusion? In a report published Dec. 15, Philip Alston, the UN's special rapporteur on extreme poverty and human rights, wrote, "The United States is one of the world’s richest, most powerful and technologically innovative countries; but neither its wealth nor its power nor its technology is being harnessed to address the situation in which 40 million people continue to live in poverty."

Though the U.S. is one of the world's wealthiest countries, Alston reports, it has startling inequalities compared to other developed countries: Its health-care expenditures are much higher, but there are fewer doctors and hospital beds per person than in other developed countries; Americans tend to live shorter and sicker lives, are more obese, have the highest youth poverty rate, and the highest infant mortality rate in the developed world.

The Australian-born investigator said that he also saw positive steps, such as an "amazing" community health initiative in Charleston, W.Va., that gives 21,000 patients free medical and dental care, and "extraordinary resilience and community solidarity in Puerto Rico." But people in Alabama's Black Belt are "suffering the most dire sewage disposal crisis of any place he has visited in a developed country," Connor Sheets reports for Alabama.com.

Alston toured communities in the Black Belt's Butler and Lowndes counties "where residents often fall ill with ailments like E. coli and hookworm - a disease of extreme poverty long eradicated in most parts of the U.S., in part because they do not have consistently reliable access to clean drinking water that has not been tainted by raw sewage and other contaminants." Alston told Sheets that what he saw in rural Alabama was "very uncommon in the First World."

Delta Regional Authority creates fund to address emergency infrastructure needs in 8-state region

DRA service area with LaSalle Parish highlighted

The Delta Regional Authority has granted $300,000 in emergency funding to replace a damaged tank that supplies water to more than 1,000 residents and businesses in Louisiana's rural LaSalle Parish. DRA has little money compared to its model, the Appalachian Regional Commission, but recently created an infrastructure fund that can be used for emergencies.

The deterioration of the Nebo Water System's tank was an immediate risk to the lives of those using the tank, the system said in its funding application to the DRA. LaSalle Parish is under a boil water advisory and the Louisiana National Guard has been providing bottled water to locals. Restaurants, schools and other organizations are unable to prepare food, beverages and ice that require municipal water, and the the community pool is closed.

DRA has provided water and sewer service to more than 66,000 residents across eight states since it was created by Congress in 2000 to "help create jobs, build communities, and improve lives through strategic investments in economic development," it said in a news release.

500,000 U.S. homes lack sewage disposal systems; problem especially bad in rural Black Belt

Lowndes County, Alabama
(Wikipedia map)

About 500,000 U.S. homes—mostly in poor, rural areas—lack basic plumbing, Sabrina Tavernise reports for The New York Times. Numbers are especially high in some areas of the Black Belt, "so called more for its soil than its demographics." In Lowndes County, Alabama, one of the poorest counties in the nation, only half the population is on municipal sewers and a University of South Alabama survey found that "about 35 percent of homes had septic systems that were failing, with raw sewage on the ground. Another 15 percent had nothing."

Many residents are unable to afford to pay thousands of dollars for septic systems, Tavernise writes. Another problem is that the hard clay soil in this county is bad for burying things—in particular, septic tanks. Lacking a septic tank, many residents instead run a plastic pipe from their toilet under their yards and into the woods behind their houses.

Parrish Pugh, an official with the Alabama Department of Public Health, said the problem with that is that state law "forbids the use of 'insanitary sewage collection,' and the responsibility for that rests squarely with the homeowner," Tavernise writes. "Resisting is not only illegal, but could have health consequences: Raw sewage can taint drinking water and cause health problems." He told Tavernise, “My parents had a pipe that ran into the woods, and that’s good enough for me. But we didn’t know as much about disease back then. People are more educated nowadays. They are more concerned.”

Tavernise writes, "The state health department begs, cajoles, and eventually cites people who have problems and do not fix them. In the early 2000s, the authorities even tried arresting people. That prompted a public outcry and the practice soon stopped, but one person spent a weekend in jail and others were left with criminal records. The department cited about 700 people in the 12 months that ended in March, often because someone complained."