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I think that often the disconnect between Washington and what’s happening in the community is that a lot of the people making the decisions that impact these communities have never been to these communities.
Catherine Coleman Flowers, author of Holy Ground: On Activism, Environmental Justice, and Finding Hope
Place and personal circumstance can play a decisive role in how one perceives the purpose and effectiveness of government. According to a 2021 study, in 2010 an estimated 37% of the U.S. population lived in unincorporated areas—places without municipal government and the services it might provide.
Central Alabama’s Lowndes County, for instance, has a population of just under 10,000 people. Sixty-two percent of homes here are in unincorporated areas. A 2023 door-to-door survey led by the Center for Rural Enterprise and Environmental Justice found 90% of homes in the county dealing with poor or failing sanitation infrastructure.
Catherine Coleman Flowers grew up in Lowndes County. In Holy Ground: On Activism, Environmental Justice, and Finding Hope, she writes about her experience growing up in rural America without the amenities and public services many take for granted in a developed country. Catherine combines personal memoir with historical analysis to trace her ancestral community ties and her own journey from public school teacher and daughter of two civil rights activists to her role today as a highly respected leader of the environmental justice movement and recipient of a MacArthur Foundation “genius” grant.
Listen in as Ten Across founder Duke Reiter and Catherine Coleman Flowers discuss the pursuit of equitable sanitation infrastructure in the U.S., perspectives on democracy, and what causes the extremely divergent qualities of life found in the Ten Across geography.
Related articles and resources:
Holy Ground: On Activism, Environmental Justice, and Finding Hope (Catherine Coleman Flowers, 2025)
Waste: One Woman’s Fight Against America’s Dirty Secret (Catherine Coleman Flowers, 2020)
“Researchers fear grants for studies on health disparities may be cut in anti-DEI push” (NPR, March 2025)
“’Canary in a Coal Mine’: Data Scientists Restore a Climate Justice Tool Taken Down by Trump” (Inside Climate News, Feb. 2025)
“A landmark investigation brings environmental justice to rural Alabama” (Grist, May 2023)
“Filthy Water: A Basic Sanitation Problem Persists in Rural America” (Yale Environment 360, Dec. 2020)
“Hookworm, a disease of extreme poverty, is thriving in the US south. Why?” (The Guardian, July 2017)“Invisible and unequal: Unincorporated community status as a structural determinant of health” (Social Science & Medicine, Vol. 285, Sept. 2021)
Credits:
Host: Duke Reiter
Producer and editor: Taylor Griffith
Music by: Gavin Luke
Research and support provided by: Kate Carefoot, Rae Ulrich, and Sabine Butler
Guest Speaker
Catherine Coleman Flowers is an environmental justice activist focused on addressing inequities in U.S. waste and water sanitation infrastructure in rural communities. She is the founder of the Center for Rural Enterprise and Environmental Justice and the author of Holy Ground: On Activism, Environmental Justice, and Finding Hope. Catherine is also a practitioner in residence at Duke University and former Vice Chair of the White House Environmental Justice Advisory Council. Her 2020 book, Waste: One Woman’s Fight Against America’s Dirty Secret won her the 2020 MacArthur Fellowship, otherwise known as the “genius grant.”
