The Justice Department on Tuesday launched an environmental justice investigation into whether a rural Alabama county discriminated against Black residents by denying them access to adequate sanitation systems and exposing them to increased health risks.

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       The federal probe of the health departments in Lowndes County and the state of Alabama comes in response to years of complaints from civic activists about sewage backups caused by failing septic tanks and exacerbated by climate change, including increased flooding.

       “Sanitation is a basic human need, and no one in the United States should be exposed to risk of illness and other serious harm because of inadequate access to safe and effective sewage management,” said Assistant Attorney General Kristen Clarke, who oversees the Justice Department’s civil rights division.

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       Clarke said the investigation will include site visits, interviews with residents and consultations with subject matter experts. The goal is to determine whether the situation appears to violate Title VI of the 1964 Civil Rights Act, which prohibits jurisdictions and entities that receive federal financial assistance from discriminating on the basis of race, color or national origin.

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       If federal investigators discover Title VI violations, they will work with officials in Alabama in hopes of pursuing voluntary solutions. The Justice Department also could move to impose its own reforms if necessary.

       Clarke linked the alleged deficiencies in Lowndes to decaying infrastructure networks across the country that disproportionately affect poor and minority communities. She pointed to the $1.2？trillion infrastructure bill approved this month by a bipartisan congressional majority as a way to rectify some of those issues.

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       Lowndes is a sparsely populated county located between the cities of Selma and Montgomery. Most of its nearly 10,000 residents live in unincorporated areas that are not connected to municipal sanitation systems. Nearly three-quarters of residents are Black.

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       Many lack access to even the most basic municipal sewer systems — a consequence of years of underinvestment in infrastructure in poor and minority communities, environmental advocates say.

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       On rainy days, the septic systems that residents rely on to treat waste often fail to drain properly into the region’s heavy clay soil — leading to raw sewage bubbling up into yards and homes. And federal officials said the high cost of purchasing septic tanks has led some residents to instead construct stopgap measures, including using “crudely constructed” pipes or ditches, in an attempt to redirect wastewater away from their homes.

       Clarke cited a 2017 study from Baylor University that tied the county’s poor sanitation system to a local outbreak of hookworm, an intestinal parasite once thought to be eradicated in the South that hatches in moist soil and latches onto barefooted humans.

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       “Fecal matter and other raw sewage can back up into the residences, sinks, toilets and bathtubs without effective septic systems,” Clarke told reporters on a conference call. “The heavier rainfall and flooding, exacerbated by current climate change, saturates the impermeable soil, and the waste matter has nowhere to go.”

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       In a statement, the Alabama Department of Public Health declined to comment on the federal government’s allegations but pledged to cooperate with Justice Department investigators “to have this matter resolved as quickly as possible.”

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       Catherine Coleman Flowers, an environmental activist in Alabama who has long rung the alarm on the raw sewage coursing through poor and rural swaths of the state, said Tuesday that she was relieved to see the federal government taking the community’s concerns seriously. In the past, she said, law enforcement agencies arrested and charged some residents for using unsanitary septic systems or related violations.

       “I’m very happy to see the federal government act,” said Flowers, who since March has served on the Biden administration’s White House Environmental Justice Advisory Council. “Hopefully the people of Lowndes County can get some justice and be heard, instead of being criminalized for lack of access to sanitation.”