By Phoebe Taber<\/p>\n\n\n\n
In the Captain America meeting room on the eighth floor of the Omni Hotel, Catherine Coleman Flowers was interviewed by John Schwartz on Saturday, Nov. 15, 2025.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Flowers is an environmental and climate justice activist, founding director of the Center for Rural Enterprise and Environmental Justice (CREEJ), and author of \u201cHoly Ground: On Activism, Environmental Justice and Finding Hope.\u201d She has also been featured on Forbes\u2019 50 Over 50 list, Time\u2019s 100 Most Influential People of 2023, received the 2025 TIME Earth Award and was named a 2020 MacArthur Fellow.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
As an advocate for environmental health, Flowers\u2019 story has been deemed the \u201cErin Brockovich of sewage.\u201d Similar to Brockovich, an environmental activist who helped build a case against groundwater contamination by Pacific Gas & Electric Co., Flowers started as a citizen concerned for the civil rights of those living in rural communities.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The panel\u2019s topic was supposed to center around Flowers\u2019 recent book, a collection of personal and political essays revolving around climate change, human rights, rural poverty and reproductive justice. Instead, Schwartz and Flowers took the opportunity to focus on unequal sanitation and sewage access in marginalized communities.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Flowers\u2019 story started when she moved to Lowndes County, Alabama. There, she witnessed a majority Black population being disenfranchised by the failure of local sanitation systems. These poorer communities lacked access to functioning septic systems, with Flowers stating, \u201cIf you don\u2019t have the tax base, you can\u2019t pay for it.\u201d People were being arrested for not having a functioning septic system, an issue that provoked Flowers to take action.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Flowers soon founded CREEJ, an organization built to combat environmental injustices. Its mission statement is to \u201c[r]educe health and economic disparities and improve access to clean air, water and soil in marginalized rural communities by influencing policy, inspiring innovation, catalyzing relevant research and amplifying the voices of community leaders, all within the context of a changing climate.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
A key focus of Flowers\u2019 panel was that this issue does not only affect people of color. While Lowndes County is predominantly Black, poor sanitation and sewage access affect all people in those communities, with Flowers adding, \u201cIt doesn\u2019t harm people based on race.\u201d Anyone near these areas is at risk of disease and harm. \u201cMost of these systems are built to last 25 years, and they\u2019re well past that,\u201d Flowers said. Even if people have access to a septic system, it may still be dysfunctional. She told the story of residents who have to evacuate their homes before storms, fearing \u201csewage being pushed back into homes.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Flowers also mentioned the worsening effects of climate change on the issue. Longer and more severe storms bring more water, causing these systems to overflow.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Despite these challenges, Flowers holds on to hope. She believes the next generation holds the answer.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cAll of the great ideas have come from young people. The great changes in history have come from young people,\u201d Flowers said. \u201cSo my hope, and the reason why I speak to young people, is that they\u2019re the ones who are going to find the solution.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cThey\u2019re not in a box. They think differently than the way we think. Where some of us have been trained a certain way, young people are very different. Just stay focused, they are the hope for the future.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
At the Texas Tribune Festival, Catherine Coleman Flowers highlighted rural sanitation challenges in Lowndes County, Alabama, and urged the next generation to help find solutions.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4103,"featured_media":9007,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-9006","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.austincc.edu\/accent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9006","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.austincc.edu\/accent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.austincc.edu\/accent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.austincc.edu\/accent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4103"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.austincc.edu\/accent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9006"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/sites.austincc.edu\/accent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9006\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.austincc.edu\/accent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/9007"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.austincc.edu\/accent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9006"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.austincc.edu\/accent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9006"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.austincc.edu\/accent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9006"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}