Summary
Across the U.S., wastewater and sanitation systems are failing, contaminating water supplies and harming ecosystems.
Many rural areas across the country, such as the Black Belt region in Alabama, do not have access to sewers and centralized wastewater treatment offered through public utilities. The vast majority of septic systems in this region function poorly or are failing due to factors such as unsuitable soil conditions, seasonal flooding and rising temperatures.
This project is piloting a new approach to wastewater treatment in rural Alabama to demonstrate that improved wastewater treatment technologies and management models can yield health, economic and environmental benefits for rural communities in the U.S. The project is testing and scaling wastewater treatment systems in several communities in the region. These systems will connect neighboring homes and businesses on a single system that collects, treats and re-uses water, reducing upkeep costs. The project will collect data before and after the systems are installed to measure the health and environmental impact of improved wastewater treatment.
The project will also guide communities and local governments across the United States on how to use newly-available public funding to improve their wastewater infrastructure. It will work to identify the wastewater technology best suited to different communities based on factors like soil, geography and existing wastewater systems. It will also create metrics to identify under-resourced communities across the United States most urgently in need of improved wastewater systems to ensure that federal agencies like the Environmental Protection Agency effectively allocate public funding to them.
The project aims to provide immediate benefits to households at the pilot sites, including demonstrable improvements in public health and a reduction in toxic discharges to the environment. It will also provide a model for transitioning to more resilient and sustainable wastewater infrastructure, which could be deployed throughout Alabama and the U.S.
Partners:
Statistics
- 90%of septic systems in Alabama’s Black Belt are functioning poorly or failing due to unsuitable soil conditions
- $10,000 to $30,000is the average cost of installing a septic system for a single household
- 80 millionU.S. residents lack access to sanitary sewers
Team
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Maura Allaire
Arizona State UniversityProject LeadRead Full Bio arrow_right_altMaura Allaire is an Assistant Professor at Arizona State University. With expertise in water resource economics, her research focuses on the development of improved strategies for...
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Amal Bakchan
Texas A&M UniversityProject Team (former)Read Full Bio arrow_right_altAmal contributed to the project from 2021-2023 as a postdoctoral fellow at the Department of Civil, Coastal, and Environmental Engineering at the University of South Alabama. Her...
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Jillian Maxcy Brown
Auburn UniversityProject Team (former)Read Full Bio arrow_right_altJillian Maxcy-Brown contributed to the project from 2022 to 2024 as a postdoctoral fellow at the Department of Civil, Construction and Environmental Engineering at the University...
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Joe Brown
University of North CarolinaProject LeadRead Full Bio arrow_right_altJoe Brown is an associate professor of Environmental Sciences and Engineering who focuses on detection methods for pathogens and pathogen indicators in the environment, water and...
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Lacey Christian
University of South AlabamaProject TeamRead Full Bio arrow_right_altLacey Christian is a research project coordinator for the Department of Civil, Coastal, and Environmental Engineering at the University of South Alabama. She has an interest in...
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Mark Elliott
University of AlabamaProject LeadRead Full Bio arrow_right_altMark Elliott is an associate professor in the Department of Civil, Construction and Environmental Engineering focused on understanding the challenges and opportunities of water and...
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Olivia Harmon
University of North Carolina at Chapel HillProject TeamRead Full Bio arrow_right_altOlivia Harmon is an environmental sciences and engineering PhD student at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, researching wastewater infrastructure in rural Alabama....
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Todd Hester
University of AlabamaProject TeamRead Full Bio arrow_right_altTodd Hester is project coordinator and field manager in the Department of Civil, Construction and Environmental Engineering at The University of Alabama. He has spent the last 12...
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Upmanu Lall
Columbia UniversityProject LeadRead Full Bio arrow_right_altUpmanu Lall is the director of the Columbia Water Center and the Alan and Carol Silberstein Professor of Engineering, and the chair of the Department of Earth and Environmental...
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Megan Lott
University of North Carolina at Chapel HillProject TeamRead Full Bio arrow_right_altMegan Lott is a postdoctoral fellow in the Department of Environmental Sciences and Engineering at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. As a public health...
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Ricardo Rubio
Project TeamRead Full Bio arrow_right_altRicardo Rubio is a post-doctoral scholar at Arizona State University’s Water Institute under the guidance of Drs. Maura Allaire and Upmanu Lall. He has primarily conducted...
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Sara Schwetschenau
Rand CorporationProject Team (former)Read Full Bio arrow_right_altSara contributed to the project from 2021-2022 as a postdoctoral research scientist at the Columbia Water Center. She completed her Ph.D. at Carnegie Mellon...
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Bihu Suchetana
Indian Institute of Technology RoorkeeProject Team (former)Read Full Bio arrow_right_altBihu Suchetana participated as a visiting associate research scientist at the Department of Earth and Environmental Engineering, Columbia University from 2023 to 2024 for the...
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Kevin White
University of South AlabamaProject LeadRead Full Bio arrow_right_altDr. White is Professor and Chair of the Department of Civil, Coastal and Environmental Engineering with many years of experience studying onsite and small-community...
Go Deeper
Publications
Bakchan, Amal & White, Kevin. (2024). Identifying Socio-Technical Challenges to Decentralized Wastewater Infrastructure Management in the Rural Alabama Black Belt. 690-700.
Backchan, A., White, K. (2024). Sustainable Development in Rural Underserved Communities Through Improved Responsible Management of Decentralized Wastewater Infrastructure: A focus on the Alabama Black Belt. Environmental Science & Technology.
Elliott, M. A., Bakchan, A., Maxcy-Brown, J., D'Amato, V.A., Hallahan, D., White, K.D., Stallman, C., Bradley, S. (2023). Sustainable wastewater management for underserved communities using federal infrastructure funds: Barriers, bottlenecks, and tradeoffs. Water Security, Volume 20, 100152, ISSN 2468-3124.
Jordan, M. Mallory A. Jordan, Ann S. Ojeda, Eleanore A. Larson, and Stephanie R. Rogers
Environmental Science & Technology (2023). Investigating the Relationship between Surface Water Pollution and Onsite Wastewater Treatment Systems. 57 (44), 17042-17050.
Maxcy-Brown, J., Elliott, M., Krometis, L. a. H., Brown, J., White, K. D., & Lall, U. (2020). Making waves: Right in our backyard-surface discharge of untreated wastewater from homes in the United States. Water Research, 190, 116647.
Maxcy-Brown, J., Capone, D. & Elliott, M.A. Characterizing the nature and extent of access to unsafely managed sanitation in the United States. Nat Water 1, 915–928 (2023).
Maxcy-Brown, J., Elliott, M.A., Bearden, B. (2023) Household level wastewater management and disposal data collection in the U.S.: the history, shortcomings, and future policy implications. Water Policy 1; 25 (9): 927–947.
Maxcy-Brown, J., Elliott, M.A., Barnett, M.O., Krummen, K., Christian, L. (2024) Evaluating Statewide Wastewater Affordability for Users of Sewer Systems and Onsite Wastewater Treatment Systems Based on Household Incomes at the Census Tract Level. Journal of Water Resources Planning and Management, Vol. 15o, No. 10.
Maxcy-Brown, J., Wilson, T., Chai, R., McCaskill, H., Bakchan, A., Christian, L. Elliott, M.A., Barnett, M.O., White, K. (2024) The Past, Present, and Future of Wastewater Management in Alabama’s Black Belt. Journal of Sustainable Water in the Built Environment, Vol. 10, No. 4.
Schwetschenau, S., Kovankaya, Y., Elliott, M., Allaire, M., White, K. D., & Lall, U. (2022). Optimizing scale for decentralized wastewater treatment: a tool to address failing wastewater infrastructure in the United States. ACS ES&T Engineering, 3(1), 1–14.