By Noa Climor
UConn Journalism
In 2023, Gov. Ned Lamont stood on the lawn of a house in Hartford’s North End as he committed $85 in state funds to help residents living with flooding from combined sewage overflows and flooding. He admitted that the North End had “been disproportionately impacted by sewer overflows for a long time.”
Ignored for too long, residents of the North End were and were victims of ‘political apathy,’ argued J. Stan McCauley, president of the Greater Hartford African American Alliance.
In an interview, McCauley said those in power were too slow to respond to residents’ suffering and complaints about damage to buildings and fears for their health.
McCauley said officials felt a lack of urgency to help those who cannot make as big of an impact with their votes.
McCauley, a semi-retired television producer, said the alliance “took on the issue of sewage—you know, raw sewage backing up into people’s houses and basements.”
The Greater Hartford African American alliance support residents in championing solutions for sewage overflows. He said the alliance’s interest began when activist Bridgitte Prince, who herself lost belongings in flooding, spoke at one of their meetings.
McCauley said the question of discrimination around this problem is an interesting needle to thread. The sewerage system all over Hartford is a century and a half old, not just in the North End. But he argued less effort to correct it was happening in the North End due to the community being largely people of color.
McCauley said that although climate change has brought more intense storms that cause flooding, the reason for the major problems in the North End is not in itself climate change.
“This is not a flooding issue,” he said. “This is sewage overflow.”
In big storms, the sewage pipes do fill up and sometimes back up. But he said the overflows are not caused exclusively by the storms. He added that street flooding in storms is a separate matter.
“Our fight from the greater Hartford African American Alliance was holding the Metropolitan District Commission, the MDC, accountable in finding a way to mitigate and stop sewage from coming into people’s homes.”
He said he believes that backflow preventers installed in some buildings “were defective and do not work. I am sensitive and understand the MDC’s point of view, but at the same time, the problem must be fixed.”
Much of the state’s committed $85 million, part of the MDC’s $170 million program to improve the sewerage system, is going to correcting problems with the laterals from the street to private homes, and in a grant program to prevent backups into houses. The grants covered $9 million to residents and has been paused, the state comptroller’s office said.
McCauley said more funding is needed.
When Lamont announced the funding to help the North End back in 2023, he said wealthier towns in Connecticut would have refused to accept such flooding for so long. The governor told CT News Junkie’s Hugh McQuaid, “If there was sewage bubbling up in a basement of Guilford or Greenwich, they’d be getting that fixed overnight. Well, we’re going to be getting it fixed right here on Granby Street and beyond.”
McCauley said that disparity comes down to finances and how money affects politics.
“The people in Greenwich are very actively involved, and there’s a lot of money, and money translates to political power,” he said. “People in Hartford are poor for the most part and don’t have political power that is reflected in how they vote.”
He added, “The problem has to be fixed, period. They must fix the problem.”
TOP IMAGE: J. Stan McCauley with production equipment. Photo from his LinkedIn profile page