On Sept. 29, Pastor Timothy Williams will lose the property insurance coverage for his home in rural Elba, Alabama. It’s another mark on a long list of recent letdowns for him in the aftermath of a persistent flooding crisis born by the expansion of a highway next to his home. Williams is not the only one disproportionately impacted by flooding in the South.

Since the state raised and expanded U.S. Highway 84 from two lanes to four, virtually every time it rains, water rolls down the highway and from drains beneath the highway, engorging several homes in the historically Black neighborhood known as Shiloh.

The floodwaters have seeped into homes and led to septic tanks overflowing, turning their yards into murky lakes. Since 2018, Williams’ house has slowly sagged into the earth and his roof has split apart as a result.

Williams’ situation may be unique, but it speaks to a larger problem of how Hurricane Helene and flooding in the South has disproportionately impacted Black Southerners as Republican officials have worked to weaken Americans’ abilities to bring civil rights complaints, and severe weather events have made insurance companies less likely to insure homes across the region. The future of some elements of the Civil Rights Act are under attack and have already been weakened in nearby Louisiana, and as dozens of insurance companies leave the South because of climate change, Black rural homeowners are left high and dry at disproportionate rates.

With the increasing frequency of extreme weather due to climate change combined with a gas pipeline that runs underneath the neighborhood, the threat of disaster in Williams’ neighborhood is constantly increasing. Last year, residents brought a civil rights complaint to the federal Department of Transportation. They alleged that their community was disparately impacted by flooding in the South when the highway expansion led to storm drains being directed toward their homes and that it was done because it was Black-owned land that was gaining in property value.

The complaint prompted a visit from some of the most prominent Black environmental justice leaders and even U.S. Secretary of Transportation Pete Buttigieg. “There is no way I’m going to forget what I just heard,” Buttigieg said during the visit. “I don’t claim to have a magic wand on me, but I have a lot of tools.”

Read the full article about flooding in the South by Adam Mahoney at Capital B News.