Pushing Painful Problems onto the Powerless: The Concept of Not in My Backyard

By Clara Copley, Jordan De Lanoy, and Joe Magnani 

Most quarters, a group of students at WWU gathers to discuss a recent book or set of podcasts about environmental justice. This post reflects our discussion of Cathrine Flowers’: Waste: One Woman’s Fight Against America’s Dirty Secret, in Spring 2022.

The concept of “not in my backyard” stems from peoples’ wanting to keep their neighborhood or community safe, quiet, and separated from the realities of the outside world. The problem is that the people whose voices are usually heard the loudest are those of whom societal privilege has provided them the medium to preach it. Unfortunately, new industrial projects and polluting industries tend to end up in the backyards of areas with low-income and higher percentages of people of color. Many of these areas were historically redlined and saw very little investment by city or state government and inadequate political representation.  

Catherine Coleman Flowers’ Waste: One Woman’s Fight Against America’s Dirty Secret depicts how Lowndes County, Alabama is a clear example of marginalized communities being left behind by concepts like NIMBY. Lowndes County is in rural Alabama where raw sewage runs from residents’ homes and into their yards due to the lack of widespread municipal sewage systems and a reliance on individual septic tanks for each home. Many of these septic tanks are failing. Residents face the risk of heavy fines and arrests if they’re unable to install the proper septic tanks, costing about $10,000, which is financially unattainable for many residents whose monthly income is a fraction of this (p. 128).  

The lack of action taken by agencies like the Alabama Health Department, and the systemic inequality that Lowndes County faces has led to a resurgence in hookworm, a parasite called “the germ of laziness” that causes an array of health issues, like “diarrhea, fatigue, and anemia, and can impair cognitive and physical growth in children” (p. 135). A study by Baylor University found that of the 55 residents they tested, almost 35% of them were infected with hookworm. This preventable disease is only resurging in rural areas of Alabama where little funding for infrastructure is given by local and state governments.  

Benign neglect is a policy of disinvestment meant to disenfranchise black communities and continue the cycle of poverty. Political influence, like what NIMBY utilizes, is a key way to disrupt this lack of accountability and action by local governments and polluting corporations by reaching a higher pedestal on which these disparities can be voiced. Unfortunately, many of these communities don’t have adequate political influence or higher level politicians that will fight for them. Flowers decided early on to make a “conscious decision not to allow political differences to limit” her ability to talk with politicians and other high ranking individuals about Lowndes County’s plight (p. 103). She was able to network and introduce people with voices in politics to the issues with raw sewage and disseminate it to a wider audience with the hope of sparking government aid in working to solve the increasingly systemic problem before it got even worse. 

Image source: 

A pool of sewage lying steps away from a mobile home in Lowndes County, Alabama. 

https://www.huffpost.com/entry/sanitation-open-sewers-black-belt_n_5a33baf5e4b040881be99da5

Flowers, Catherine Coleman. Waste: One Woman’s Fight against America’s Dirty Secret. New Press, 2022.