A United Nations official investigating poverty in the United States was shocked at the level of environmental degradation in some areas of rural Alabama, saying he had never seen anything like it in the developed world.

“I think it’s very uncommon in the First World. This is not a sight that one normally sees. I’d have to say that I haven’t seen this,” Philip Alston, the U.N.’s Special Rapporteur on extreme poverty and human rights, told Connor Sheets of AL.com earlier this week as they toured a community in Butler County where “raw sewage flows from homes through exposed PVC pipes and into open trenches and pits.”

Economic inequality and racial discrimination have also been linked with civil rights abuses, particularly in Alabama and other states across the South. Police shootings of unarmed black men and women are also of deep concern to the U.N.

…the U.S. “has been very keen” on other countries being investigated by the U.N. for civil and human rights issues.

“Now, it’s the turn to look at what’s going on in the U.S.,” Alston said.

…“Politicians who say, ‘There’s nothing I can do about that’ are simply wrong,”

Alabama Has the Worst Poverty in the Developed World, U.N. Official Says

Sigh….