Neighbors come together to get running water
Catholic Spirit, October 2007, In Our Parish
By Enedelia J. Obregón
Senior Correspondent
Connie Gonzales has learned that there are two kinds of power: Money and organized votes.
She doesn’t have much money. But she has learned how to harness the power of organized votes. And she likes the results.
“It feels good to feel that power,” Gonzales said. She doesn’t feel helpless any more.
Gonzales and her neighbors at Plainview Estates, most of whom are parishioners at Santa Barbara Parish, learned about people power through training they received from Austin Interfaith.
Through their organized efforts they have solved a problem that had been plaguing them for the last seven years –– lack of water in the Plainview Estates neighborhood, which is part of the Hornsby Bend community in eastern Travis County.
Austin Interfaith, which Santa Barbara Parish joined last year, is made up of primarily religious congregations, including 10 from the Austin Diocese. Austin Interfaith addresses issues affecting families such as education, infrastructure, affordable housing, immigration, health care and job training.
Austin Interfaith receives funding from the Catholic Campaign for Human Development, a domestic anti-poverty, social justice program of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops. CCHD helps support and teach people so they can be empowered to address justice issues affecting them.
Holy Cross Father John Korcsmar, the diocesan director of the CCHD, said Austin Interfaith receives funding because it is an organization that “helps people form groups that can get organized and act on their own behalf.”
Deeply rooted in Catholic social teaching, the CCHD raised more than $100,000 last year in the Austin Diocese through the annual special collection that is taken up in all parishes.
About 75 percent of the money goes to the national office, although the diocese got back from national more than it collected, Father Korcsmar said.
The CCHD helps set up organizations as well as projects within an organization that can continue on their own.
“Some people say that you can’t empower people; they have to empower themselves,” Father Korcsmar said. “We help them organize so they can get the power to act on their own behalf.”
That was the reason the National Conference of Catholic Bishops established the CCHD in 1969. Empowerment and participation are what Gonzales and other members of her family and neighbors have learned in the past year from Austin Interfaith.
Doug Greco, lead organizer for Austin Interfaith, started meeting with Gonzales and others after Santa Barbara joined AI. All AI member organizations pay dues on a sliding scale so no one member has more power than another.
“They pay dues to the organization so they can gain expertise in how to solve their problems,” Greco said. “Austin Interfaith does not solve their problems for them.”
After meeting with Greco at various homes, the neighbors identified and then rallied around one issue affecting most of them: the lack of water.
It was then that Gonzales, 41, a single mother of three, emerged as a community leader, no longer a lone voice on the issue.
By then she was quite angry and frustrated. She tried for seven years to get someone to help her get a dependable source of water after her well, which her grandfather drilled more than 35 years ago, ran dry. The well supplied water to five family members and their families.
“I figured I was probably the first one and eventually it would affect everybody,” she said. “I said, ‘Let’s get together and join forces so we can make a difference’. But, you know, if something doesn’t personally affect somebody, they’re not going to support you,” she added. No one stood up to help her.
So she continued on her own, calling on the Hornsby Bend Utility Company, which provides water for a nearby neighborhood of newer and expensive homes. She called on county commissioners and anyone she thought could help.
Deacon Joe Arellano, the business administrator at Santa Barbara Parish, was one of those Gonzales approached. He had never run out of water but came close to it during last summer’s drought. That’s when he decided to join the neighborhood efforts.
“It’s sad but no one helped Connie until they were affected,” he said. “Until it hit home then it became everybody’s problem.”
The soft-spoken deacon has lived all of his 68 years in the neighborhood, which is made up mainly of clapboard houses and mobile homes. He had never been involved in community organizing, but he now knows what it takes to get those with money power to listen.
“When we join forces, we get something done,” he said. “When one is by himself, nobody listens.”
Aside from getting results, he said neighbors have grown closer as they have worked together. The neighbors also learned how to hold each person accountable.
After much negotiation, the Hudson Bend Utility Company agreed to fund 75 percent of the $476,000 it would cost to bring water lines and hook up the homes if Travis County would fund the remaining $115,000. Residents then turned to the Travis County Commissioners Court for help, targeting County Judge Sam Biscoe for support.
The turning point in getting the county’s support came in April when about six AI member congregations, including St. Catherine of Siena, Our Lady of Guadalupe and Dolores parishes along with some Lutheran and Baptist churches, showed their support for the people of Santa Barbara Parish.
“When each parish announced how many members they had, their (commissioners) eyebrows all went up,” Gonzales said. “They knew they were constituents.” The vote was unanimous.
Deacon Arellano gives full credit to Gonzales, who worked for so long by herself and never gave up.
“She went to the newspaper and TV, but she couldn’t get anybody to listen,” he said.
The problem began in April 2000 for Gonzales, who has lived most of her life on the five acres that her grandfather bought in the early 1960s. They and many other Hispanics bought land there because they were not allowed to buy land in other areas of Austin.
Among those living on the five acres are her uncle Carlos Gonzales and her cousin Rosita Sayer.
Sayer and other family members pooled their meager resources and bought a 2,000-gallon buffalo tank. Every three or four weeks, a water truck delivers water and fills the tank for $65. That’s for showers, washing dishes and flushing the toilet. To do laundry they drive into Austin, and they just forget about watering their lawns.
Before then, Connie Gonzales and her three children ages 21, 17 and 11 spent 10 months hauling water in five-gallon jugs from neighbors whose wells had not run dry or from her sister in Austin, where they’d often go to shower.
They know it won’t be long until they have meters and water lines running to their homes from the Hornsby Bend Utility Company. Each family must pay $510 to get their meters connected.
For Sayer and Gonzales, this means they will not have to live like second-class citizens on the land where their grandparents are buried and where Sayer’s 18-month old granddaughter, Ellise Rodriguez, is growing up.
“She is the sixth generation in my family to walk on this land,” Sayer said. “It’s not just land; this is personal.”
Gonzales said she was asked why she didn’t sell and move away.
“Land has no value without water,” she said. “And this is what my grandfather left us. He told us not to ever sell outside the family. I’ll never sell.”
Gonzales’ grandparents and a couple of cousins are buried in a family cemetery under a tall pine tree planted at their grandfather’s request. So with or without water, the land is holy ground, but the new water system will make it even more so, Gonzales said.
The special collection for the Catholic Campaign for Human Development is the weekend before Thanksgiving, Nov. 17 and 18.
For information on the CCHD, visit their Web site at www.usccb.org.