Air Date: Week of January 3, 2025

Former FHWA administrator Shailen Bhatt (left), Coffee County Commissioner Jimmy Jones (center left), Pastor Timothy Williams (center), Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg (center right), and Robert Bullard (right). This photo was taken when Secretary Buttigieg visited Shiloh, Alabama to survey flooding damage caused by the widening of Highway 84. (Photo: Andrew Skerritt)

The African American residents of Shiloh, Alabama whose homes were flooded by a state highway expansion say they are still waiting for the full measure of environmental justice promised by the outgoing Biden Administration. EJ expert Dr. Robert Bullard of Texas Southern University joins Host Steve Curwood to tell the story.

Transcript

CURWOOD: As the end of President Biden’s term approaches on January 20th, the African American residents of a southeast Alabama hamlet called Shiloh say they are still waiting for the full measure of environmental justice promised by the Biden Administration. Back in 2018 the State of Alabama widened and raised nearby Highway 84, sending major cascades of water into Shiloh where it flooded foundations and overwhelmed septic systems. When the state was slow to respond, residents ultimately took their case to the US Department of Transportation. Their concerns went unanswered until April of 2024 when Secretary of Transportation Pete Buttigieg decided to visit Shiloh to see for himself.

BUTTIGIEG: I don't claim to have a magic wand on me, but I got a lot of tools, and we have a lot of tools in this administration, which we are determined to put to work to benefit this community. President Biden made very clear from day one of his administration that he expects all of the tools of our administration to serve everybody, include people, including people who've been left out and excluded in the past. That's part of what our travels recently have been about, using federal dollars to address places where sometimes in the past, federal dollars were part of the problem, and we are not going to let that happen again.

CURWOOD: After the Buttigieg visit, the State of Alabama agreed to fix the highway drainage and stop the flooding, but the Shiloh residents were left on their own to pay for the damage to their homes. They remain outraged, and environmental justice expert and Texas Southern University Professor Robert Bullard, grew up near Shiloh. He serves on Biden’s White House Advisory Council on Environmental Justice and recently wrote an open letter to Secretary Buttigieg. It implores him to use his last days in office to provide a just resolution. Professor Bullard joins me – welcome back to Living on Earth!

BULLARD: Glad to be here.

CURWOOD: So what prompted you to go public with your letter?

BULLARD: Time was running out. The highway was built under the first Trump administration in 2018. The community had flooded for two years under the Trump administration. It actually had flooded almost four years under the Biden administration. It was an emergency that something be done and resolution be had and not bleed into another administration.

CURWOOD: What exactly do you say in your letter?

BULLARD: Hard working residents of Shiloh, Alabama, which is Elba where I grew up, have worked hard for their homes and should not have land that, in many cases, go back to land that was first owned by their ancestors,land dating back, like my family, to the 1870s Reconstruction. So you have homeowners and landowners that survived slavery, survived Jim Crow segregation, but somehow is having a problem of coming through this flooding caused by tax dollars by highway. And that's as simple as I can put it.

CURWOOD: Now there was a voluntary resolution agreement between the Federal Highway Administration, which of course, is supervised by Secretary of Transportation, Pete Buttigieg, and the Alabama Department of Transportation that addressed the complaints of the residents. Why do Shiloh residents see this voluntary resolution agreement as only a partial victory here?

BULLARD: The Title Six civil rights complaint that was filed by the residents two years ago was settled and and the US DOT is requiring the state to fix this flawed highway, but it stopped short of requiring fixing the damage to people's homes, to their sewer, septic systems that's overflowing, the ruin, to the driveways that's cracking, to the fact that some of the homeowners are losing their homeowner's insurance. So there's a complete devastation that this flooding has caused. And just to fix the highway is not enough. It's not a total victory.

CURWOOD: Talk to me about your level of disappointment with the action by Pete Buttigieg and the US government here.

BULLARD: The residents and the Bullard Center were able to get Secretary Pete Buttigieg to come to Shiloh. He came there in April. He walked the grounds. He saw the damage, he saw the highway, how incredibly weird and crazy engineering was that had gone into building the highway, and he promised the community, and so he promised this community to be made whole. He said that the flooding and the damage was not the residents' fault, and that he would look to the federal government using Inflation Reduction Act and the bipartisan infrastructure dollars we’re talking about, billions of dollars that's available for the fixing highways that have destroyed communities, in some cases, decades ago. And so the community had high hopes, and I had high hopes that something would be done. This was back in April. The community is saying, it would be a total disgrace for the Secretary of Transportation to leave office and not fix this highway and fix the damage that's been caused by this community.

CURWOOD: So what would a just resolution look like?

BULLARD: The residents are saying that they want their homes and their property made whole for all the damage that's been caused, whether it's, in some cases, there are some homes that are beyond repair, and there are some residents who want to be relocated because they have no trust in Alabama Department of Transportation to really fix that highway. It's been patched up over the years, and there's no guarantee that it will be remedied in a way that it will never flood again.

CURWOOD: Now, to what extent can the Biden administration say, well, we just can't push the money out the door. You would say…

BULLARD: They had four years and they're coming down to the wire, and we say, go across the finish line with a victory. We would say, go and do what you can do with the days that you have left, and make sure that justice right now is not delayed.

CURWOOD: What do you think is the lesson for Shiloh and other environmental justice communities coming out of this struggle?

BULLARD: Well, I think the lessons learned is that you can never stop fighting, and when you have worked hard, paid your taxes, and then you have tax dollars being used to destroy the homes that you have built and the taxes that you have paid have been used against you, it means that we have to understand that anytime hardworking people are successful in achieving the American dream of home ownership, of getting property, owning businesses, that it's not safe, and it's never something that you can stand by and see this injustice unfolding in front of your eyes. I wrote a book 20 years ago, 2004 called, "Highway Robbery: Transportation Racism & New Routes To Equity." If I had to put a a picture on the cover of that book today, I would put Shiloh, the poster child for transportation racism.

CURWOOD: Robert Bullard is a professor at Texas Southern University and an icon in the study of environmental justice for the last 40 years. Dr. Bullard, thank you so much for taking the time with us today.

BULLARD: Thanks for having me.

CURWOOD: So far there has not been a definitive response from Alabama or the US Department of Transportation about compensating the residents, but the community of Shiloh says it will not give up its fight until justice is done. Statements from the Biden Administration and the State of Alabama are on the Living on Earth website, loe.org.

Editor's note: An Alabama DOT spokesperson said they "have been engaged with the Federal Highway Administration for quite a while as they work the process of the voluntary resolution agreement" and that they "anticipate having more to say on the matter in the coming days."

The full statement from Secretary Pete Buttigieg can be found in the links below.

 

Links

Read Robert Bullard’s Open Letter

To read the Voluntary Resolution Agreement, visit the FHWA Office of Civil Rights webpage

Inside Climate News | “How Racism Flooded Alabama’s Historically Black Shiloh Community”

Secretary Buttigieg Statement on Shiloh residents’ request for full compensation