SANTA ROSA, Texas — Along the Rio Grande, more than 400,000 mostly poor people live in ramshackle neighborhoods where sewage runs in open ditches. Although the U.S. Congress has set aside $300 million to improve sanitation, more than a quarter of that has gone unspent, a federal audit shows.
The need for better hygiene was obvious during a recent afternoon rainstorm, when brothers Angel and Salvador Badillo sat under a tin roof with a couple of friends, sipping beers as the open drainage ditch in front of their clapboard house filled like a moat.
Soon, neighbors’ septic tanks could begin to overflow, creating a smelly and potentially disease-ridden mess.
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