Black Alabamians Sue State Department of Transportation Over Repeated Flooding

Residents in the Shiloh Community have fought for years to remedy excessive stormwater runoff caused by an elevated highway. Now they’re suing.

Pastor Timothy Williams said he’s not giving up his fight for justice. 

It’s a battle that has garnered national headlines and brought prominent leaders, including then Secretary of Transportation Pete Buttigieg, to the small, historically Black community with the goal of addressing repeated flooding caused by the elevation of US-84, a project overseen by the Alabama Department of Transportation (ALDOT). 

Years into that battle, and despite a resolution agreement between state and federal officials meant to stem the flow of stormwater off the highway, little progress has been made to keep the flooding from inundating residents’ homes, according to community members.

Now, Williams and five other Black residents have brought their struggle to the courts, filing suit against ALDOT and John Cooper, its director.

“We got tired of waiting on ALDOT,” Williams said in an interview Monday. “We had high hopes that they were going to come on out and fix this issue in a timely manner. But we’ve seen they are not going to keep their promises, so we filed suit.”

In an e-mailed statement, Dalton Middleton, a communications specialist for ALDOT, said that the agency is aware of the lawsuit and “will be reviewing it.” In the past, the agency has denied that flooding issues in the Shiloh Community are the result of racial discrimination. 

The lawsuit, filed July 1 in federal court, alleges that the flooding in Shiloh continues to worsen as rainwater erodes the land around US-84. 

“The flooding and erosion continue, and at this time, it is not possible to know when it will stabilize,” the lawsuit said. “As the flooding has gotten worse and worse, Plaintiffs began to search for a way to stem the rising tide of water from every rain event.”

That search included filing complaints in 2021 and 2022 with the Federal Highway Administration, which helped fund the initial highway expansion, completed during President Donald Trump’s first term. 

Later, under President Joe Biden, the federal agency announced a voluntary resolution agreement it said would lead to relief for residents. 

The rollout of that agreement coincided with Buttigieg’s visit to Shiloh, where the then-cabinet official promised a “whole-of-government” approach to addressing the ongoing flooding. 

The voluntary resolution agreement laid out two options for addressing the continued flooding. One option would have involved purchasing additional right-of-way from residents in order to relocate a stormwater discharge point and construct a drainage ditch to divert rainwater away from homes to a “natural outfall point” south of the Shiloh community. If officials were unable to purchase the land needed for that plan, the agreement outlined a second option, involving the deepening of ditches and the construction of an additional detention basin to handle stormwater runoff from US-84. 

Despite the voluntary resolution agreement and Buttigieg’s commitment, residents have said the rain-induced floods have continued, putting at risk homes and properties that have been in their families for generations. 

“Suffice it to say, little to nothing has been done,” the residents’ lawsuit said. 

“We don’t have any trust in ALDOT,” Williams told Inside Climate News. “ALDOT has damaged our community and done nothing to fix that damage.”

Now, residents have asked a federal court to intervene, claiming that the flooding amounts to “a taking without just compensation in violation of the takings clause of the 5th Amendment to the United States Constitution, which prohibits the taking of private property for public use by a government entity.”

The flooding constitutes a “taking,” counsel for the residents argued, because “it impairs the use of enjoyment” of their property and homes and has decreased their property values. 

The suit asks for the court to award damages to residents to compensate residents for the loss of use and enjoyment of their properties, the diminution of the value of their properties and for damages “for the mental anguish of having the properties flooded.”

In addition, residents have requested that the court order ALDOT to either meet the conditions of the first option outlined in the resolution agreement or begin implementing option two. 

Robert Bullard, a Coffee County native who was a member of President Joe Biden’s Environmental Justice Advisory Council, has long said that the continued water woes in Shiloh are intentional, not simply the result of bad engineering. 

“Water goes downhill, and it doesn’t take a Ph.D. to understand that,” said Bullard, a distinguished professor of urban planning and environmental policy at Texas Southern University and director of the Bullard Center for Environmental and Climate Justice there. “This was done on purpose. This wasn’t an accidental ‘oops.’ ALDOT cared more about not flooding the highway than they did about flooding the community. That is unacceptable.”

Bullard has said that he will continue to return to Shiloh and advocate for a permanent fix for residents who’ve been subjected to stormwater runoff for years. 

“We’re going to be like the Terminator,” he said. “We’ll be back, and we have a laser focus. We want justice for Shiloh.”

Cover photo:  Pastor Timothy Williams has led the charge for change in the Shiloh Community he calls home. Credit: Lee Hedgepeth/Inside Climate News