`2024 Research Prize`
Imaging Underground: Illustrating Wastewater Challenges and Opportunities to Inform and Empower Alabama’s Black Belt Communities

“Imaging Underground” will produce a Wastewater Design Manual for stakeholders and municipalities in the Black Belt. It will include three components: a history of regional wastewater practices, an explanation of cluster system functions, and suggested tools to give communities control over design decision-making during the economic development driven by new wastewater systems.

Aurélie Frolet
Emily McGlohnAuburn University School of Architecture, Planning and Landscape Architecture

Jillian Maxcy-BrownAuburn University Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering

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The Rural Studio cluster system demonstration site is in Newbern, a rural Black Belt Alabama town. © Tim Hursley.

JuryCarson Chan Carol Coletta Iker Gil (Chair) Alex Krieger Shannon Nichol

What impressed me the most about “Imaging Underground” was the proposal’s ability to address a wide range of issues, including infrastructure design, racial justice, and sustainability. The idea of producing a Wastewater Design Manual for stakeholders and municipalities seems to be an incredibly generous, useful, and proportionate way for students to contribute to Black Belt communities.Carson Chan, 2024 Research Prize juror

Underserved communities in the rural Black Belt of Alabama have an urgent wastewater problem. Fifty percent of Black Belt residents are connected to municipal sewers while the other half treat their wastewater with onsite systems, like septic tanks. Constructing an integrated sewer system is financially out of reach for most of these communities. Further, while the Black Belt is named after its rich soil, below the topsoil is impervious clay, which causes many septic systems to fail. Because of high costs to maintain and replace septic systems, residents have resorted to “straight-piping” untreated sewage to ditches behind homes when systems fail, creating a major health and environmental crisis. In 2018, The Consortium for Alabama Rural Water and Wastewater (CARWW) partnered with Auburn University and Rural Studio to pilot a new wastewater treatment idea: a low-maintenance decentralized cluster system that reduces operational and maintenance costs while mitigating health and environmental risks.

Communicating clearly and accessibly about alternate wastewater systems with the communities that need it most is crucial for increasing access to humane sanitation in the Black Belt. Implementing cluster systems would address the health and environmental crisis, and spur economic growth in areas currently struggling to attract businesses due to inadequate wastewater systems. We propose to produce a Wastewater Design Manual for stakeholders and municipalities including three components: a history of regional wastewater practices, an explanation of cluster system functions, and suggested tools to give communities control over design decision-making during the economic development driven by new wastewater systems.

The diagram shows the Rural Studio grounds including the existing septic field (bottom left) and the new demonstration site of an effluent-only sewer (top left). The cluster system will connect sixty homes through a network of small-diameter pipes designed for clay soil which transfer liquid waste to a semi-centralized septic treatment facility, 2024. Diagram by Emily McGlohn.

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Making the invisible visible is a skill we must learn if we have any hope of solving our most pressing problems. The team from Auburn is doing that, supported by the trust with locals built over many projects and many years. The subject—wastewater infrastructure—is not sexy, but it’s critical. The lessons from this team’s work will have broad applicability and great promise for educating and engaging people on issues that affect their lives every day.Carol Coletta, 2024 Research Prize juror

Working closely with the Black Belt’s rural communities who have been experiencing hazardous failures in conventional approaches to wastewater infrastructure in the region’s clay-dominant soil conditions, this exciting project builds upon an outstanding foundation of local knowledge, dialogue, and prototype testing to deliver creative, clearly communicated, and affordable wastewater treatment. The innovative “cluster system” of wastewater treatment keeps the project practical, replicable, and, arguably, sociable, as it is attuned to each local neighborhood and sub-regional condition. This locally informed, community-inclusive, and thoughtfully scaled infrastructure solution offers an important case study as we all seek ways to design and retrofit the built environment to be more culturally empathetic, ecologically attuned, affordable, and equitable.Shannon Nichol, 2024 Research Prize juror

Rural Studio cluster system demonstration site, Newbern, Alabama, 2024. © Tim Hursley.

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The ribbon-cutting event at the demonstration site, Newbern, Alabama, 2024. Rural Studio.

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A close-up of the pilot system, Newbern, Alabama, 2024. Rural Studio.

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We are thrilled with the opportunity the SOM Foundation has granted us to advance a sustainable, equitable, and water-secure future in rural Black Belt communities of Alabama. Funding from the SOM Foundation Research Prize will allow us to produce and disseminate the Wastewater Design Manual, equipping Black Belt residents with the knowledge and tools to identify and implement suitable wastewater solutions for their communities. The manual will include educational materials illustrating the current systems, health and environmental issues, and alternative systems for mitigating impact.Aurélie Frolet, Emily McGlohn, and Jillian Maxcy-Brown

Aurélie Frolet
Auburn University
School of Architecture, Planning and Landscape Architecture

Emily McGlohn
Auburn University
School of Architecture, Planning and Landscape Architecture

Jillian Maxcy-Brown
Auburn University
Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering

Aurélie Frolet

is an Assistant Professor of Architecture at Auburn University. Her research and pedagogy focus on the design and representation of water infrastructure at various scales, including questions of drinking water access, equity in wastewater systems, and coastal resilience. Frolet is part of the Gulf Adaptation Design Studio at Auburn, an interdisciplinary team of landscape architects, biosystems engineers, and graphic designers that lead seminars and studios centering on flood resilience, funded by the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. Frolet has also co-led a sponsored studio at Syracuse University’s School of Architecture examining New College in Sarasota and its vulnerabilities to sea level rise. She is the recipient of the Robert James Eidlitz Travel Fellowship from Cornell University through which she investigated the agency of architectural design to shape water infrastructure in the former Roman Empire. Frolet received her MArch from Cornell University AAP in 2018, where she was awarded the Richmond Harold Shreve Award for her thesis project on Los Angeles’s drinking water reservoirs. She has practiced in several offices including Morris Adjmi and Bjarke Ingels Group. In 2020, she cofounded the architectural practice ASDF, which was named Best of Practice by Architect’s Newspaper in 2021.

Emily McGlohn

is an Associate Professor and Extension Specialist in APLA at Auburn University. Emily earned her Master of Architecture degree from the University of Oregon. Her undergraduate Bachelor of Architecture degree is from Auburn University. She is a registered architect in Virginia and Alabama. Dedicated to supporting architectural practice through design education excellence, McGlohn teaches third-year design studio at the Rural Studio in Newbern, Alabama. Since 2017 she has served as the third-year level studio professor and coordinator. Building and teaching at Rural Studio helps her to intimately understand and therefore critique contemporary building enclosures and systems. Her students’ work advances Rural Studio’s goal of developing a single-family affordable home for use by other housing non-profits across the country. McGlohn is also the community engagement coordinator for the Rural Wastewater Demonstration Project. This project is a joint effort among three state universities to bring a community-wide decentralized cluster wastewater system to Newbern, Alabama. Access to proper sanitation systems is vital to successful housing. She is also a community liaison, having established strong community ties in Hale County through Rural Studio’s community-enhancing building projects. She is on the board of the Newbern Community Foundation.

Jillian Maxcy-Brown

is an Assistant Professor in the Civil and Environmental Engineering Department at Auburn University. She earned a PhD in Civil Engineering from the University of Alabama and a BS in Engineering with a Civil Engineering concentration from LeTourneau University. Maxcy-Brown is a member of the Consortium for Alabama Rural Water and Wastewater Management (CARWW), a partnership of stakeholders from universities, nonprofits, community leaders, government agencies, and legislative offices to enable a variety of water-related solutions throughout rural Alabama. She is also the co-chair of the National Onsite Wastewater Recycling Association’s (NOWRA) Emerging Professionals Committee, which is dedicated to workforce development, recruitment, and advocacy on behalf of young and early career professionals in the onsite wastewater sector. Her research is focused on the intersection of technology, policy, funding, and culture to mobilize affordable, long-term solutions that address the pressing water and wastewater issues in underserved communities throughout the US.

2024 Research Prize Imaging Underground: Illustrating Wastewater Challenges and Opportunities to Inform and Empower Alabama’s Black Belt Communities

`2024 Research Prize`
Imaging Underground: Illustrating Wastewater Challenges and Opportunities to Inform and Empower Alabama’s Black Belt Communities