What About Water? with Jay Famiglietti

Jul 22 2024 72 ep. 26 mins 78
What About Water? with Jay Famiglietti Podcast artwork

"What About Water? with Jay Famiglietti" connects water science with the stories that bring about solutions, adaptation, and action for the world's water realities. Presented by Arizona State University and the University of Saskatchewan, and hosted by ASU Professor and USask Professor Emeritus Jay Famiglietti.

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Go With the Flow: Erica Gies on Embracing Water's Natural Path

Jul 22 2024 30 mins  
What happens when we change our relationship to water? Can we stop trying to control water and just go with the flow? Erica Gies, environmental journalist, National Geographic Explorer, and author of Water Always Wins: Thriving in an Age of Drought and Deluge sits down with host Jay Famiglietti to discuss how the engineered control of water sometimes does more harm than good. We a

Sewage Spillover in 'Mexico's Toilet Bowl': The Endhó Dam Crisis

Jul 22 2024 27 mins  
The Endhó Dam north of Mexico City has been called “the largest septic tank in the world” and “Mexico’s toilet bowl”. Once designed to solve water problems in the region, it now receives wastewater from local industry and Mexico City. Arizona State University doctoral students Raquel Neri, in the School of Sustainable Engineering and the Built Environment, and Diego Pan

John Fleck on the Inconvenient Science of the Colorado River

Jul 22 2024 31 mins  
What happens when science gets in the way of ambition, politics, and progress? With a look back at the historical figures and forces that led to the overallocation of the Colorado River, and the consequences that continue to play out today, John Fleck joins Jay Famiglietti on What About Water? Fleck is a Water Policy Researcher at the Utton Center, University of New Mexico and co-a

Tapped Out: The Dire State of America’s Groundwater

Jul 22 2024 33 mins  
Humans are burning through our fossil fuels, and we're burning through our groundwater at an alarming rate. But are the powers that be even listening? On this episode, Dr. Upmanu Lall joins host Jay Famiglietti to discuss why we’ve reached an “all hands on deck” moment with our groundwater crisis. Lall and Famiglietti discuss (along with Dr. Bridget Scanlon) before the Presi

Water Costs Money: How Gary White and Matt Damon are Bridging the Gap

Jul 22 2024 33 mins  
The World Bank estimated in 2016 it would take $1.7 trillion USD to achieve universal access to clean water and sanitation by 2030. By other estimates that amount is now even higher. Gary White is the CEO and Co-founder, along with Matt Damon, of Water.org and WaterEquity. The two also co-wrote the book The Worth of Water: Our Story of Chasing Solutions to the World's Greatest C

Quenching Desert Thirst: What Will It ‘Take’?

Jul 22 2024 38 mins  
What is the true price of water? Considering growth and climate, how do we address the gap between demand and supply? Could we achieve water security by moving it across borders to dry regions like the American Southwest? John Take, Chief Growth & Innovation Officer at Stantec, discusses importing water, desalination efforts, and whether no infrastructure is the best infrastructure

Season 5 Trailer

Jul 15 2024 1 mins  
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 fr

Drilling Deeper Won't Fix This

Aug 15 2023 55 mins  
People in the lower Colorado River basin are now witnessing drastic cuts to their allotments. In many cases, developers find alternate sources of water by drilling into underground aquifers. But in places like Pinal County, Arizona, that groundwater is already becoming scarce. We hear from Stephen Q. Miller, who sits on both the Pinal County Board of Supervisors and the board for t

The Colorado River's Alfalfa Problem

Jul 14 2023 48 mins  
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

World Water Day 2023 with Autumn Peltier

Mar 21 2023 18 mins  
When Autumn Peltier was eight, she learned the tap water on a neighbouring reserve wasn’t safe to drink, or even to use for hand-washing. That injustice triggered her decade-long advocacy campaign for safe drinking water. She made headlines as a 12 year-old, admonishing Prime Minister Justin Trudeau at an Assembly of First Nations event for the choices his government had made for