The U.S. Department of Justice on Friday terminated a groundbreaking civil rights law-based environmental justice settlement intended to improve water infrastructure in a low-income Black community in Alabama, calling it another step in the Trump administration's effort to eliminate anti-discrimination initiatives.

The DOJ and the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services reached the settlement with the Alabama Department of Public Health in 2023 under Title VI of the Civil Rights Act regarding sanitation risks in Lowndes County arising from inadequate water infrastructure, where residents have been building their own piping systems to transport bathwater, sewage and other waste away from their homes.

The DOJ said in a statement Friday that killing the agreement is in line with President Donald Trump's effort to "eradicate illegal [diversity, equity and inclusion] preferences and environmental justice across the government and in the private sector."

"The DOJ will no longer push 'environmental justice' as viewed through a distorting, DEI lens," Assistant Attorney General Harmeet K. Dhillon said in the statement.

The Biden administration touted the agreement as the first ever environmental justice settlement secured by the DOJ under civil rights law.

At the time, the Justice Department said Alabama's enforcement of sanitation laws threatened Lowndes County residents with criminal penalties and even potential property loss for sanitation conditions "they did not have the capacity to alleviate."

The types of wastewater systems commonly used in Lowndes County are incompatible with the type of soil there and often fail, the government said at the time. County residents, in order to keep their wastewater and raw sewage from further contaminating their property, have resorted to "straightpiping" instead.

Straightpiping is a wastewater system that uses ditches or "crudely constructed" systems to guide waste away from a home, the government said.

"The investigation has further shown that due to multiple barriers, most Lowndes County residents do not have the means to obtain, maintain or repair a functioning, ADPH-permitted onsite wastewater system," the agencies said in 2023.

Although the Alabama agency did not admit noncompliance with Title VI in the agreement, it did promise to take several other remediation actions such as expanding its public health information campaign to inform county residents about the risk of contact with raw sewage, sharing educational materials with health care providers for Lowndes County residents and formally asking the U.S. Centers for Disease Control for environmental health technical assistance.

The state also promised to determine what it would take to install onsite wastewater systems for each Lowndes County residence that has an inadequate one and to develop a public health and infrastructure improvement plan.

Agency spokesman Ryan Easterling said Friday that "the installation of sanitation systems and related infrastructure is outside the authority or responsibilities conferred upon ADPH by state law."

"Nonetheless, ADPH will continue working with subgrantees on installation of septic systems as contemplated by the interim resolution agreement until appropriated funding expires," Easterling said. "After that time, ADPH will support and be available to provide technical assistance to other organizations that may choose to engage in this work."

Stephanie Wallace, a project manager with the Center for Rural Enterprise and Environmental Justice, said the DOJ's move feels like "a slap in the face to all the people who the agreement was supposed to help."

"This agreement, being in place, was helping residents get the wastewater help that they needed," Wallace said Monday. "By cancelling the agreement, now these people are left in limbo again."

On Friday, the Justice Department said it is "working quickly" to close cases it deems to involve DEI under Attorney General Pam Bondi's memoranda directing department officials to cease such practices. The department did not respond to a request for information about how many and which cases have been closed.

Friday's action follows several big changes across the federal government affecting environmental justice and DEI work, including the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency closing its Office of Environmental Justice and External Civil Rights and putting on leave or firing hundreds of employees who did that work.

And the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau last month asked an Illinois federal judge to throw out its recent settlement of a redlining lawsuit that was filed during the first Trump administration, a case the agency's new chief is now denouncing as unjust and wrong.

--Additional reporting by Jon Hill. Editing by Brian Baresch.

Update: This article has been updated to include comment from a community organizer.