By The Associated Press
Black residents say they have been dealing with flooding that damaged their homes and posed risks to their health ever since the state expanded a highway through their community in south Alabama six years ago.
“It’s causing our houses to sink,” said Timothy Williams, a longtime resident of the Shiloh community in Coffee County. “My home has sunk three feet. The roof is cracked. The foundation is cracking. It has destroyed our homes, destroyed our family.”
In 2022, the Federal Highway Administration began investigating complaints that the project to expand Highway 84 disproportionately harmed Shiloh residents because of their race.
Earlier this month, the federal government closed the investigation and reached an agreement with the state to address the flooding problem that the community has experienced since 2018.
But, the Alabama Department of Transportation continues to deny violating the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which prohibits race discrimination in federally-funded programs.
The department “is not admitting to any wrongdoing, and the federal highway is also not concluding that the state agency has violated any rule,” says the voluntary agreement. “Nonetheless, ALDOT has willingly agreed to undertake the actions outlined in this Agreement.”
But Shiloh residents say the plan does not do enough to compensate them, as they face loss of homeowners insurance, the inability to repair their homes, ongoing issues with septic tank overflows and backups, and pests, such as snakes and mosquitos.
“You did it to us and we need you to fix it,” said Williams, who is speaking on behalf of the community as many residents say they fear retaliation.
“We need you to fix the problem and then compensate the people,” Williams told AL.com. “Make the people whole because why did we have to be traumatized for six years and you know you did it intentionally to get us off the property and everybody’s not going to, they’re not just going to give up their property.”
Sixteen community members signed a petition asking for a compensation fund, relocation assistance to move to the other side of the highway where residents don’t deal with flooding, and support for residents who remain in their homes.
They also want assurance that no other community will experience the same thing, beginning with an investigation into what went wrong.
“We ask you to resolve this matter now and give the Shiloh community the justice it needs and deserves and has been waiting for six-plus years before this Administration comes to an end on January 20, 2025,” Williams wrote in separate letters to U.S. Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg and ALDOT Director John Cooper.
In the agreement, Alabama said it would deepen the existing water holding area for excess runoff from the highway, among remedies to ensure that the flow of water would not continue to harm the community. The federal and state agencies said they are committed to helping the community with septic issues by involving the Environmental Protection Agency and the Alabama Department of Environmental Management.
Williams said his home is among 13 that were affected by the flooding and shared a letter with AL.com in which a remodeling company, JNB Services LLC, declined to work on his property because of safety concerns.
“Upon further evaluation, there are substantial structural issues easily visible from the cracks in the walls, foundation and sagging roof,” the general manager wrote. “It is the recommendation of our company (that) the residence is unsafe so JNB services will not perform any remodeling.”
Williams said the community was not regarded as flood-prone and he never needed flood insurance before the highway expansion.
“And so now what the insurance company is doing is taking our insurance from us,” Williams told AL.com. “As of September 29th, I have no coverage on my house whatsoever.”
Jimmy Jones, who represents the Shiloh community on the Coffee County commission, said he has been working on the issue from the beginning and the county even submitted an engineering design to the state transportation department years ago to deepen the water area.
“It wasn’t a county problem, we were just trying to help the local residents,” Jones told AL.com. “So I guess it took the federal government highway department to get them to look into it.”
The state agency did not reply to questions from AL.com regarding Jones’ comments.
State Rep. Rhett Marques, who represents the community, said he was happy to hear about the agreement but declined to comment on residents’ additional demands.
“We have been working on that for two or three years to try to keep the water from coming into those properties,” Marques told AL.com.
Josh Carnley, who represents Shiloh in the Alabama Senate, did not respond to a request for comment.
Months ago, Williams filed a complaint with U.S. Rep. Barry Moore’s office, alleging that Shiloh residents were being harmed by the highway construction because of their race. The congressman’s office later sent people to the community to investigate what was happening, Williams told AL.com.
Two weeks after the release of the agreement, Williams received an email from the lawmaker’s Dothan office saying it was closing the case opened on the flooding concerns.
“Our office will be closing out your case this afternoon and wishing the Shiloh community well,” Shannon P. Smith, Moore’s director of constituency services at the office, wrote Tuesday.
Robert Bullard, a scientist known as the father of environmental justice, said it’s understandable that the Shiloh residents don’t see the agreement “as a cause for mass celebration or resolving painful years of suffering and being disrespected and drowned by a highway paid for in part with their tax dollars.”
“To achieve a just solution, the Shiloh residents need to be made whole beyond fixing the highway flooding,” Bullard said in a statement on the website for his Center for Environmental and Climate Justice.
Williams said the community continues to experience the impacts of the flooding including an increase in frogs, rats, mosquitoes, and snakes, specifically water moccasins.
“We got snake problems,” he said. “It’s a retention pond over to the right of my house and that’s where the snakes come out of. The snakes, the rats, you name it.”
