For Immediate Release – August 26, 2024
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‍‍Sierra Club Executive Director Ben Jealous Joins Dr. Robert D. Bullard on “Journey to Justice” Kickoff in South Alabama on Tuesday August 27

Environmental Leaders Will Tour the Black Shiloh Community Threatened by Highway Flooding and a Fossil Gas Pipeline

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HOUSTON, TX – Monday,  August 26, 2024 – Two of the nation’s leading environmental leaders, Dr. Robert D. Bullard, Director of the Bullard Center for Environmental and Climate Justice at Texas Southern University and Sierra Club Executive Director, Ben Jealous, will participate in a “Journey to Justice” tour on Tuesday August 27 in Elba, Alabama’s Black Shiloh community. Shiloh has been plagued with flooding.  Residents believe the flooding is caused by a federally funded highway expansion project.  Elba is Dr. Bullard’s hometown.  “We are excited to have Ben Jealous, who heads the nation’s largest environmental organization, visit the Shiloh community and see a textbook case of environmental injustice and highway robbery in my hometown,” says Dr. Bullard, who is often called the “father of environmental justice.”    

The Sierra Club published two of Bullard’s 18 books and the organization’s Dr. Robert D. Bullard Environmental Justice Award is named after him.

"To visit here again and feel not only the love this community has for its members but also bear witness to the heartache they've had to endure together is a powerful thing. For this to happen anywhere, let alone the hometown of the Father of Environmental Justice, is an irony that we must not accept. I thank Dr. Bullard and the entire Shiloh community for opening their doors and once again welcoming me to see firsthand the disruption and destruction playing out on the ground here. Environmental racism must have no place in this nation—particularly in the deep South where families are still working to correct the injustices of nearly two centuries of the kind of politics and policies we must all work to defeat. I urge our government to work across all levels—federal, state, and local—to end this nightmare and give the proud people of Elba the justice they deserve," said Ben Jealous, Sierra Club Executive Director. 

The Black Shiloh community has been burdened with ongoing flooding after the elevation and expansion of U.S. Highway 84 into a four-lane road. Investigative reporting conducted by ABC News in Fall 2023 uncovered glaring disparities and differential treatment of Shiloh’s Black property owners compared to White property owners along the 4.5-mile stretch of the highway as    

The tour will be led by longtime Shiloh resident and community leader Pastor Timothy Williams.  “The flooding from the US 84 Highway expansion project has turned Shiloh homeowners’ American Dream into a hellish nightmare for more than six and a half years. This is right and it needs to be corrected now,” states Williams.

Some Black Shiloh residents' land has been in their families since Reconstruction. Now their inheritance is being stolen by highway flooding. Dr. Bullard and his colleagues chronicled this pattern two decades ago in their 2004 book, Highway Robbery: Transportation Racism and New Routes to Equity.  Before the highway was built in 2018, land in the Shiloh community was level and the community did not flood. After the highway was expanded into four lanes and elevated more than 10 feet on an existing dirt road, Shiloh becomes a lake during hard rains—flooding septic systems and causing sewage backups in homes.  These extra flood-damage related costs are especially burdensome for elderly and low-income families on fixed incomes. The Bullard Center started a GoFundMe Shiloh Flood Fund to assist the flood victims pay these extra costs. Donations are still accepted.   

Post-highway flooding of the community is causing subsidence with homes sinking into the red clay and contributing to structural damage to homes foundations. Homeowners’ flood-related claims are being denied by insurance companies. Some residents are at risk of losing their homeowners insurance altogether.  Shiloh homeowners are left with mounting bills resulting from highway flooding.  

Shiloh residents also face the threat of a fossil gas pipeline they recently discovered. The fossil gas pipeline was dozens of feet away from Shiloh residents’ homes prior to the US 84 highway expansion was rerouted along the Alabama Department of Transportation (ALDOT) right of way, just a few feet from residents’ homes.  A gas pipeline leak occurred in the Shiloh community on the evening of December 31, 2023. Southeast Gas Company was called, and they replaced two gas pressure regulators. Shiloh community residents are requesting that ALDOT give Southeast Gas permission (use of its right of way) to relocate the gas pipeline away from their homes.

Although the highway flooding and pipeline problem was created more than six years ago under the Trump-Pence administration, the community and its allies are calling on the Biden-Harris administration’s USDOT Secretary, Pete Buttigieg, to take proactive steps and use its oversight authority to leverage federal transportation funding such as the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law,  Inflation Reduction and related infrastructure funds going to the Alabama Department of Transportation (ALDOT) to correct the flooding and pipeline problem and make the Shiloh residents whole.  

The visit will start with a Press Briefing and Community Tour at 10:00 am CST in Shiloh, AL(Location: 14632 US Highway 84 Elba, AL 36323), which will be followed by a brief discussion of Next Steps from 11:25 am to 12:10 pm CST in Shiloh, AL (Location: 14632 US Highway 84 Elba, AL 36323). Along the tour, Shiloh homeowners will describe their concerns, priorities, and needs directly to Ben Jealous and senior staff of the Sierra Club. The testimonies will use to direct technical, legal, and funding assistance resources to address the problems identified by the residents.

Media Coverage: Media planning to attend in person are encouraged to RSVP by 5 P.M. CST on Monday August 26, RSVP to David Castillo at David.Castillo@tsu.edu.

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About the Bullard Center for Environmental and Climate Justice

The Robert D. Bullard Center for Environmental and Climate Justice at Texas Southern University was launched in 2021 to address long standing issues of systemic inequality and structural racism that cause disproportionate pain, suffering and death in Black and other people of color communities. The Bullard Center works to promote environmental, climate, economic, energy, transportation, food and water and health justice. Texas Southern University is a student-centered comprehensive doctoral university committed to ensuring equality, offering innovative programs that are responsive to its urban setting, and transforming diverse students into lifelong learners, engaged citizens, and creative leaders in their local, national, and global communities.