EPA Listening Session

December 12, 2006, 8:30 AM – 5:00 PM

Oral Statement from Sister Sharon Dillon, ED of the Franciscan Federation

My name is Sister Sharon Dillon, and I am the Executive Director of the Franciscan Federation of the United States, with over 100,000 associate members. This summer, our faith network, representing over 10,000 Franciscans in the United States, adopted a resolution to work to protect the waters entrusted to us, and to act to ensure that governments meet the responsibility of providing access to clean and safe water, something we view as a free gift from God.

 In light of the water crisis facing our world today, we are eager to collaborate with agencies and organizations that pursue both increasing access to water and maintenance and improvement of the public infrastructure that provides this fundamental need. Water is a sacred gift and, as Franciscans, we address Water as our Sister. Therefore, we want to thank the EPA and all the participants for holding this listening session on the best ways to provide water in contaminated small [or any] systems. In answering this question, we believe it is vital to consider the equities as well as the efficiencies of this issue and in doing so we believe that there are lessons to be applied from the way our nation has shared the abundance of its resources in the past.

 From our nation’s earliest days, our policies recognized that prosperity depends upon the universal availability of effective and affordable public utilities.  Indeed, the postal service subsidized service to small towns and remote areas by ensuring that letters destined for far-flung locations traveled for the same price, whether from Washington to Philadelphia or Washington to the Oregon frontier. During the first few decades of the twentieth century, government subsidies helped bring rural communities into the nation’s phone system at a price affordable to community residents. And during the New Deal, the Tennessee Valley Authority was created to extend electrical service to people in the rural South. The TVA was not cheap, and some might have argued that it would be more efficient to simply deliver free candles to those in the region, but doing so would have left a considerable number of our fellow Americans quite literally in the dark, ensuring the continued marginalization of some of the poorest regions of the United States.

 In comparison, our government ought not accept schools, factories, hospitals and other such places to be divided between those who have continued access to safe, clean water and those which are limited to bottled water. Not only is this unjust but inhumane. How much water each student, employee or patient should receive becomes a cost-driven assessment.

 Our government’s commitment to sharing the fruits of prosperity helped build a strong economy, healthy communities, and national prosperity unparalleled throughout human history.  This was possible only by treating affordable communication and access to safe and reliable electricity as rights of citizenship. As our nation moves into the twenty-first century, access to safe, clean, affordable water should be regarded in the same way.  More-over unlike mail, telephones, and electrical power, access to water is essential to human life. We view it as a free gift from God. We must view water not only as a right conferred by society, but as a basic human right, a gift given for our very life sustainability.

 Applying principles of subsidiary, the rights to water must be met by the level of government closest to the problem—but only to the extent that localities possess the resources to confront the issue on their own. Because local towns and state governments couldn’t meet their own electricity demands, the federal government had to intervene with funding and technical assistance to assure that residents of the Tennessee Valley had access to electricity in the same manner that others did throughout the country. The national government may in the same manner bear responsibility for assuring that those with contaminated local water systems have access to clean water from their taps, a right that the vast majority of Americans take for granted. Delivering bottled water and requiring some individuals to go through the inconvenience and hassle of hauling and storing water, and having to use contaminated water for bathing, laundry and other hygienic needs violates the essential tradition of equity that has clearly been established in the provision of communication and electricity resources. It is disrespectful of the dignity of the human person. There are no doubt a number treatment options, based in part on the particular needs of each community - it is the job of the government or organization in question to figure out which is most appropriate in order to deliver safe and convenient water to those affected by arsenic in their small town systems. Safe and clean water is not optional, it is vital.

 Like the ease of communication and access to electricity, easy access to safe water is a component of our national social fabric. Water is a more vital part of our shared heritage than the postal system or the electricity grid. We believe that it is vital that the water policies of the EPA acknowledge and affirm water as a human right, (a God given gift) and establish policies that protect all Americans’ right to safe and convenient water, taking into account both efficiency and equity. Water is our Sister, and that relationship is as relevant as a “sister” in my familial relationship.

 We are only one of many faith communities concerned about access to water. We urge the EPA to think about long-term solutions and public infrastructure to address the questions before us. Water is a gift freely given, how are we to care for and nurture this gift, not only for ourselves but for our future generations?