"Cahokia Heights, a Black Illinois community, was already drowning in sewage. Now it faces the loss of crucial federal repair money."
"At 76, Patricia Greenwood has given up on trying to name whatever now grows in the yard. It isn’t grass, she said. That died many floods ago and never returned.
The water in her kitchen has never run clear in her memory. Even the dog refuses to drink it.
She is one of many Cahokia Heights, Illinois, residents whose homes have repeatedly flooded with sewage and feces for as long as four decades.
“Mentally, it’s horrible,” Greenwood said.
Earlier this year, a bottle filled with water from her tap glowed under an ultraviolet light — lit with signs of sewage contamination after it was tested by a coalition of legal advocates and volunteers. It confirmed what three generations in her family home had already suspected."
