https://www.al.com/news/2024/06/after-decades-of-wastewater-struggles-a-ray-of-hope-in-alabamas-black-belt.html

The town of Newbern doesn’t have a lot to it. There are a handful of churches, of course, some empty storefronts along Alabama Route 61 and about 133 people living in older houses or mobile homes scattered throughout the area.

But soon the tiny town in Hale County will have a 3-inch sewer line running north to south through the heart of town, a potential lifeline to bring a modern, working sanitation system to an area that desperately needs it.

Civil engineering professors at the University of South Alabama, Auburn University, and the University of Alabama have been working on designing a new kind of hybrid sewer system that can meet the inherent challenges of Alabama’s Black Belt, and now there is a working prototype in Newbern.