What About Water? with Jay Famiglietti

Karen Kidd takes us underwater, metaphorically speaking. She tells us how pharmaceuticals, birth control and mercury affect fish and aquatic life — and how they got there in the first place.

Freshwater is essential for life on Earth, but analysts at the World Bank say more often than not, there's either too little, too much, or the water is contaminated and polluted.

We look at whether desalinating ocean water and piping it across the desert would really solve water scarcity, why some cities and towns keep flooding, and how much is too much, when it comes to pumping freshwater out of underground aquifers.

In Season 5 of What About Water, host Jay Famiglietti connects with scientists and regular people who are trying to solve some of our planet's trickiest water problems. Armed with the latest scientific expertise, he brings listeners a message of hope for this planet’s water future.

The meat and dairy industries are some of the biggest water users in the American West, thanks to one of cows' favorite foods – alfalfa. As aridification continues across the American southwest, water is becoming far more scarce on the Colorado River. A critical source of water for roughly 40 million Americans, we look at why so much of the Colorado River's freshwater goes toward growing water-intensive hay crops, and at what can be done to significantly scale back consumptive use in the future.

In this episode, we hear from people who've traveled from around the world to see the Hoover Dam. With white bathtub rings marking a long-past high water mark, Lake Mead is severely overdrawn. Together with Lake Powell, America's two biggest man-made reservoirs are losing water faster than ever as cities, towns and farms withdraw their legal allocations.

To find out why farmers in this region keep growing such water-intensive crops, our producer Megan Myscofski meets up with alfalfa farmer Larry Cox. They tour his farmland near Brawley, in California's Imperial Valley. With no potable water, Cox's home, farm and livelihood depend entirely on his farmland's senior water rights from the Colorado River. Leaving the fields fallow is not an option.

Jay then sits down with Dan Putnam, an expert on alfalfa and other forage crops at the University of California, Davis, and Sarah Porter, director of Arizona State University's Kyl Center for Water Policy. They discuss why it's so difficult legally and economically to uproot water-intensive crops such as alfalfa, and they bring up solutions to get ‘more crop out of each drop’. They also discuss what cities and urban areas will have to do, to ensure there's enough water to support everyone in the lower Colorado River basin.

In our first mini-episode of the summer season, we turn to three guests from our past seasons to explore Indigenous ways of knowing, and to look more closely at the sacred nature of water -- how various people understand it, conserve it and co-exist with it.

Janet Pitsiulaaq Brewster shares how climate change is affecting Indigenous reconciliation efforts in Canada and what melting permafrost means for the Inuit of Iqaluit.

Deon Hassler gives hope to a new generation of Indigenous water operators in the face of long-term boil water advisories.

And Josée Street shares her story of learning the lessons of western science, while the teachings of her family and culture bubble under the surface.

You can find their full episodes from our previous seasons here:

S3E2 (On Thin Ice: Iqaluit's Water Crisis) featuring Janet Pitsiulaaq Brewster: https://www.whataboutwater.org/s03e02/

S2E11 (Broken Promises, New Solutions: The Future of First Nations Water Quality) featuring Deon Hassler: https://www.whataboutwater.org/s02e11/

S3E9 (Tasha Beeds: Walking with Water) featuring Josée Street: https://www.whataboutwater.org/s03e09/

We'd also like to hear your thoughts, in our What About Water Listener Survey. As a thank you, we will plant a tree through One Tree Planted for each survey our podcast listeners complete.

Water is one of the main ways we experience the effects of a changing climate. As flooding, drought, and climate extremes grow widespread, the way we use every drop counts.

This season, join What About Water with host Jay Famiglietti, as we meet the people adapting to our planet's new water realities, with innovative ideas, strategies, and most importantly -- a sense of hope.

Whether it's traditional knowledge or cutting-edge technology, this season is all about the way humans adapt and dive deeper into water solutions for a thirsty planet.