THE EARTHJUSTICE BLOG
When the town’s toilets flush, guess what ends up in African-American yards
Nine residents of Rochelle, GA are suing their city government for discharging the city’s raw sewage onto their properties
Alisa Coe and Bradley Marshall—attorneys in our Florida office—took off on a two-hour drive last month and ended up 60 years away in the rural Georgia town of Rochelle, where black people live on one side of a railroad track and whites on the other.
You’ve heard of this place if you pay attention to news; last weekend the national media was reporting on the local high school’s first interracial prom … ever.
But even as the media focused on the prom, Alisa and Bradley faced up to the town’s mayor and chief of police, who bullied the two attorneys as they investigated claims that the city’s sewer system routinely dumps raw sewage into the streets and yards of the black community (but not the white community). The mayor used his car to block the attorneys’ car when they drove into a black neighborhood, and then screamed and threatened them with arrest. The chief of police pulled up with his lights flashing and told the duo to call him before coming back to Rochelle.
Those fellas obviously didn’t know who they were messing with.
Alisa and Bradley are members of a legal team led by managing attorney David Guest, who is famous in Florida for such things as ignoring alligators as he wades through the Everglades investigating environmental offenses. The whole team’s infused with that spirit.
Related articles
- Decades Of Sewage Dumping Continues In The Black Dominated Suburb Of Rochelle Georgia (purposegiven.wordpress.com)
- Georgia town allegedly diverting sewage to black neighborhood (salon.com)
- Rochelle, Georgia, Town that Just Held Its First Integrated Prom, Is Now Allegedly Pushing Sewage and Waste to Black Neighborhoods (blackchristiannews.com)
