The Sewage Crisis Drowning America’s Poorest Town
In Cahokia Heights, Illinois, years of sewage backups have left residents grappling with bacterial infections, mold, and neglect. Will a federal order end the crisis?
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The Sewage Crisis Drowning America’s Poorest Town
In Cahokia Heights, Illinois, years of sewage backups have left residents grappling with bacterial infections, mold, and neglect. Will a federal order end the crisis?
by Adam Mahoney December 12, 2024
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Each time it rains, even if it’s just a light rainfall, the streets of Cahokia Heights, Illinois, flood. But that’s not all. Those floodwaters bring in a nightmarish brown tide, a disgusting slurry that engulfs the area, dragging with it the stench of human excrement and decay.
With such constant and high floodwaters, people have resorted to using boats to navigate the coffee-stained water that inundates their neighborhoods, while homes suffer the long-term damage of mold and residents reel from bacteria exposure. It’s a story that has become far too common in rural Black communities. With aging infrastructure and dwindling local budgets, drinking water and sewage crises have propped up nationwide in Black communities.
Despite years of warnings, pleas for help, and several lawsuits, state and local officials have failed to address Cahokia Heights’ crisis even after receiving tens of millions of dollars of state and federal support since the late 1980s. The stench of neglect has been inescapable there in the 75% Black city— formed by the merger of the three towns of Centreville, Alorton, and Cahokia — that was deemed the poorest place in America in 2018.
Yet, the U.S. Department of Justice, the Environmental Protection Agency, and Illinois just put forth a move that they claim will usher in a new reality for residents. On Tuesday, the agencies announced that they were putting the city under a consent decree. On average, less than four municipalities are put under such agreements every year, and rarely are they ever implemented in a town so small. (Cahokia Heights has fewer than 18,000 residents.)
This agreement mandates the city to pay a $30,000 civil penalty and invest an estimated $30 million in long-overdue infrastructure upgrades. The settlement stems from the city’s repeated violations of the Clean Water Act, with over 300 illegal sewage discharges since 2019, and acknowledges the four decades worth of mismanagement of funds by various city officials.
While this action marks a crucial step toward remediation, residents remain wary, knowing that promises have often been broken in the past. The EPA put the city under a similar agreement just three years ago, and little has changed.
“America is the place to come to. It is the land of everything, but look at how we living over here. So how is it the best?” said Yvette Lyles, as she tried to fight back tears. “We deserve more than this, but it seems like the government can only offer halfhearted solutions.”
The new ruling also highlights a tricky predicament state and federal governments face when enforcing local solutions: how do you compensate community members for decades of untold mental, physical, and financial traumas? And, most importantly for government leaders, who foots the bill?
Read More: Chemical Plants Destroyed These Black Towns. The EPA Hopes New Regulations Will Help.
Lyles has lived in the area for decades and has experienced firsthand what it’s like to live in a home where floodwaters routinely bring raw sewage into her living room, kitchen, and basement. Twice, she’s been infected with Helicobacter pylori, a bacterium that’s more common in developing countries with poor sanitation.
She lost 12 pounds during her first infection, and 15 pounds during the second. Her son was sickened by the bacteria, too, and so was much of the town. A recent university-led study found that more than 40% of adults tested in Cahokia Heights were also infected with the bacteria, which leads to serious respiratory conditions. Over the past several decades, neither the local health agency nor the Illinois Department of Public Health has investigated the possible health effects or fully informed residents of the risks.
“Clean water is a basic necessity, and when you are paying bills for your sewage treatment, and still get other people’s crap floating into your house every month making you sick, you really question ‘What is really going on in the United States of America?’” she added.
Residents, advocates, and lawyers told Capital B that the consent decree promises to fix some sewer infrastructure issues, but it falls short in a big way. The timeline for repairs – which requires them to be concluded by 2035 – is far too long, they said, and means that many of the community’s aging residents might not see any real change in their lifetimes.
“We’ll be dead before this is resolved,” Lyles said. “I’m already so exhausted by all this.”
But that is not the worst part, they said. While the plan mentions fixing the infrastructure, it doesn’t do anything to immediately stop the floods or the ongoing sewage backups that have been part of daily life. As a result, the same problems — contaminated water, unsafe living conditions, and constant flooding — will keep happening. The city lies in a low-lying area, where even light rains trigger flash floods reaching up to 2 feet. This deluge quickly overwhelms the aging septic system, creating puddles filled with raw sewage that can linger for weeks. While the area has pump stations meant to direct waste away from homes and streets, these pumps, like much of America’s infrastructure, date back to World War II and are barely operational.
“We are disheartened by the significant gaps in the DOJ’s and IAG’s settlement,” said Nicole Nelson, one of the attorneys representing the community. “While this decree may offer some surface-level improvements, it does not provide the immediate, robust relief that this community needs and deserves. This community deserves much more than promises of future repairs; they deserve immediate intervention.”
This lack of urgency and action from the city, the DOJ, state agencies, and the EPA feels like another broken promise to a community that’s been waiting for justice for far too long, said Lyles.
The community is still waiting for the real change it has been fighting for, hoping that this time, the government’s commitment will build up like flood barriers that finally protect them instead of washing away yet another empty promise.
“They say a change is coming, but I’ll believe it when I see it in practice,” Lyles said.
