Co-creating sanitation justice: community-based monitoring and mitigation of climate-exacerbated pollution

Sanitation access in the U.S. is widespread but still not universal. Communities lacking safe sanitation suffer from disproportionate exposure to environmental contaminants and increased vulnerability to climate change. This project aims to address these intersecting issues in a rural, majority Black community in Lowndes County, Alabama, where inadequate sanitation, including malfunctioning septic tanks, can lead to prohibitively expensive maintenance and irreversible algal blooms that compromise ecosystems and livelihoods. In collaboration with community organizations, such as the Center for Rural Enterprise and Environmental Justice, this project will relate sanitation contaminant exposure to demographic indicators, prioritize effects of climate change stressors on sanitation-related health impacts, and design improved sanitation infrastructure that maximizes economic viability and community engagement.