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waterloop

Episodes

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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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 line re...

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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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 standards, information about health impacts, and…

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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 highlighting this year.

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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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Jan. 30, 2023

#165: The PFAS Puzzle: Lessons On Science

Dr. Detlef Knappe of North Carolina State University is one of the leading scientists who found PFAS in the Cape Fear River and has conducted continued research on its presence.

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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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Oct. 17, 2022

#157: The Clean Water Act Owner’s Manual

2022 is the 50th anniversary of the Clean Water Act, which fundamentally changed regulation and management of water resources in the U.S. The Clean Water Act Owner’s Manual was created to help people understand and use the la...

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Sept. 26, 2022

#156: A New Approach To Agriculture

Algae blooms that pollute waterways, produce toxins, and cause dead zones are one of the most widespread and challenging environmental problems in the U.S. Nitrogen and phosphorus from agricultural land is the leading fuel fo...

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Sept. 19, 2022

waterloop #155: Journalism For Justice

Problems of environmental justice and water equity haven’t historically received proper coverage by traditional media. And if they did get in the news, chances are the reporter didn’t look like the impacted population.

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Sept. 12, 2022

waterloop #154: Latino Leaders Learn

Despite the direct and often disproportionate impacts of water problems on Latinos in California, there was historically a lack of water knowledge and advocacy by the leaders in their communities. That led to the creation of an organization to educate ...

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