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waterloop: exploring solutions

Episodes

#181: The Elevation of DEI in Los Angeles
May 22, 2023

#181: The Elevation of DEI in Los Angeles

The Los Angeles Department of Water and Power has established an Office of DEI that is focusing on an array of work and has a top executive that reports directly to the general manager rather than the human resources department.

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#180: Dissecting Distrust In The Tap
May 15, 2023

#180: Dissecting Distrust In The Tap

Over the past 20 years, trust in public institutions has plummeted and sales of bottled water have skyrocketed. A new book titled Profits Of Distrust explores how these trends are related and the correlation between distrust of tap water and …

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#179: The PFAS Puzzle: Lessons On Health
May 9, 2023

#179: The PFAS Puzzle: Lessons On Health

The emergence of PFAS has epidemiologists and toxicologists working to understand the health impacts. Researchers in North Carolina are on the leading edge of the science and discuss what is known about human health impacts.

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#178: Envisioning Water In The Year 2050
May 1, 2023

#178: Envisioning Water In The Year 2050

What will water look like in the year 2050? Envisioning the future and the forces shaping it can help the water utility sector to plan and be proactive.

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#177: Living With Water In New Orleans
April 17, 2023

#177: Living With Water In New Orleans

The traditional use of large, engineered infrastructure to manage water is not enough in New Orleans. This episode explores how the city is adopting a Living With Water approach to bolster its resilience.

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#176: Funding To Fight Lead: How Denver Did It
April 4, 2023

#176: Funding To Fight Lead: How Denver Did It

This episode is part of a series, Funding To Fight Lead. There are perhaps 10 million lead service lines in the ground in the U.S. and it may cost $50 billion to remove them. The series explores financing lead service …

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#175: The PFAS Puzzle: Lessons On Advocacy
March 27, 2023

#175: The PFAS Puzzle: Lessons On Advocacy

High levels of PFAS in the Cape Fear River meant local advocates had to learn about the complex chemicals and at the same time provide information to concerned community members and take steps to address the pollution.

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#174: 50 Years Of Restoring Rivers
March 23, 2023

#174: 50 Years Of Restoring Rivers

For 50 years, American Rivers has worked to protect and restore waterways across the country. Going forward, the goal is to protect one million miles of rivers and remove 30,000 dams by the year 2050

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#173: The State Of Water Research
March 20, 2023

#173: The State Of Water Research

Science has always been foundational to water management. That tradition continues in 2023, with a staggering breadth and depth of research underway.

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#172: EPA's Move To Regulate PFAS
March 15, 2023

#172: EPA's Move To Regulate PFAS

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has proposed drinking water regulations for several types of PFAS, the so-called forever chemicals that are pervasive in society and the environment and pose a risk to human health.

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#171: Funding To Fight Lead: State & Local Policy
March 13, 2023

#171: Funding To Fight Lead: State & Local Policy

State and local policies play a central role in financing of lead service line replacement. The ability of utilities to use public funds for work on private property is often the key challenge.

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#170: Changing The Color Of Water
March 6, 2023

#170: Changing The Color Of Water

Analysis has shown a significant lack of diversity in the sources cited in media coverage. The Color of Water platform was created to counter this trend.

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#169: Green Mortgage Grows In New Orleans
Feb. 27, 2023

#169: Green Mortgage Grows In New Orleans

Nearly two decades after Hurricane Katrina, there are continued efforts to make New Orleans more resilient to storms and climate change. A recent innovation is the green mortgage, a program that helps lower-income people buy ...

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#168: The PFAS Puzzle: Lessons On Drinking Water
Feb. 20, 2023

#168: The PFAS Puzzle: Lessons On Drinking Water

The Cape Fear Public Utility Authority in Wilmington, N.C. found itself in a difficult situation when high levels of PFAS were discovered in its water. How should the utility manage the forever chemicals, particularly in the absence of drinking water …

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#167: Profiles Of Black Conservationists
Feb. 13, 2023

#167: Profiles Of Black Conservationists

A conservationist is profiled each day during Black History Month by Sierra Taliaferro, founder of the Green Obsidian page on Facebook. In this episode, she talks about five years of writing the profiles and shares examples of people she is …

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#166: Funding To Fight Lead: The Menu Of Options
Feb. 6, 2023

#166: Funding To Fight Lead: The Menu Of Options

The ways to fund lead service line replacement and some of the key financial aspects are discussed in this episode with Cynthia Koehler of the WaterNow Alliance and Tim Male of the Environmental Policy Innovation Center.

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#165: The PFAS Puzzle: Lessons On Science
Jan. 30, 2023

#165: The PFAS Puzzle: Lessons On Science

This episode is part of a series The PFAS Puzzle: Lessons From A Contaminated Cape Fear. The forever chemicals were dumped in the North Carolina river for nearly 40 years before being discovered. The series explores how a com...

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#164: New Jersey’s Look At Affordability
Jan. 22, 2023

#164: New Jersey’s Look At Affordability

How can the affordability of water bills be properly addressed without consistent and comprehensive data? New Jersey decided to get a clearer look at the situation. A state law now requires all water utilities to report on a ...

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#163: Expansion of waterloop
Jan. 18, 2023

#163: Expansion of waterloop

Nonprofit media outlet waterloop is expanding its coverage of solutions to today’s critical water challenges, including features on lessons learned from PFAS pollution in North Carolina’s Cape Fear River, options for funding ...

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#162: Mentality Of A Mentor
Jan. 10, 2023

#162: Mentality Of A Mentor

How does someone develop the mentality of a mentor and create opportunities for others? For Tim Alston it started in high school, when the people selected for a leadership program didn’t reflect the diversity of the student population.

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#161: Pivot Back To Nature
Dec. 5, 2022

#161: Pivot Back To Nature

During the last century, large engineering projects were used to control water resources. But in many ways, that man-made infrastructure is failing to meet challenges in the 21st century such as drought, flooding, pollution, ...

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#160: Hold The Salt
Nov. 15, 2022

#160: Hold The Salt

In an increasingly thirsty world, there is much potential in desalination, the process of removing salt from seawater. But desalination has historically posed challenges - it consumes massive amounts of expensive energy, prod...

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#159: Turning Polls Into Policy
Nov. 2, 2022

#159: Turning Polls Into Policy

In a recent poll, U.S. voters overwhelmingly agreed that water is a human right, clean waterways are important, and infrastructure investments are critical. While those results are encouraging, the real value of polls are in ...

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#158: P3 For The Community
Oct. 24, 2022

#158: P3 For The Community

P3 involves a public agency partnering with a private entity on a project. A twist on the traditional public-private partnership puts the community first and focuses on its challenges and opportunities. This approach works pa...

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