Explore every episode of the podcast AquaDiary: Water Mysteries, Science & News
| Title | Pub. Date | Duration | |
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| Algae Toxins: Drinking Water, Dogs & Health Risks | 03 Apr 2026 | 00:32:00 | |
What are toxic algae, and how dangerous are they really? In this episode of AquaDiary, Ally breaks down the health risks of harmful algal blooms (HABs), including cyanotoxins like microcystin, how exposure can affect people and pets, why dogs can die within hours, what the health advisory limits are federally and by state, what toxic blooms mean for lakes and drinking water systems, how to find out if your state is monitoring for cyanotoxins, how to see if you're being exposed to toxins in your drinking water, and why public awareness still lags behind the science. She also explores emerging research into possible long-term neurological risks, including whether certain algae toxins may one day be linked to diseases like Alzheimer’s. Topics covered: toxic algae, mattoon water crisis, harmful algal blooms (HABs), cyanobacteria, cyanotoxins, microcystin, anatoxin-a, BMAA, algae toxins, dog deaths from algae blooms, toxic lake water, harmful algal bloom health risks, cyanotoxins in drinking water, algae blooms and pets, lake water safety, tap water contamination, public health, water treatment, health advisories, emerging research, and environmental science. References:
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| What Causes Algal Blooms? | 03 Apr 2026 | 00:34:40 | |
In 2014, a harmful algae bloom shut off drinking water for nearly half a million people in Toledo, Ohio. The city spent 65 million dollars responding. They've invested half a billion dollars in upgrades since. And every summer, the blooms come back. Harmful algal blooms are getting worse. And the reason why is more complicated than most people realize, and more alarming than most officials or lake managers are admitting. In this episode, environmental scientist and host Ally breaks down the full science of toxic algae blooms to help you think like a scientist, including the ancient biology behind them, how phosphorus fuels toxic growth, how lake stratification and turnover distribute nutrients through the water column, and why new peer reviewed research suggests that even lakes with reduced pollution are still experiencing blooms. This is the science behind the headlines, explained. References:
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| Sewage, Stormwater, and Beach Closures — What's Actually In Your Water After It Rains? | 03 Apr 2026 | 00:28:11 | |
Beach closures after rain aren't random. They're the result of a stormwater and sewer system that was never designed to handle what we're asking it to do — and in hundreds of American cities, including many in New York State, that system is sending raw sewage and dozens of chemicals directly into lakes and rivers when it downpours. In this episode, environmental scientist Ally breaks down how stormwater runoff works, what combined sewer systems are and why they overflow, what the New York State Sewage Pollution Right to Know Law means for you, and why your lake looks and smells different after a heavy storm - scientific facts, articles, and research - all in plain English. Topics covered: stormwater runoff, combined sewer overflows, CSOs, impervious surfaces, water pollution, beach closures, New York water quality, drinking water safety, lake pollution, SPDES permits, green infrastructure. | |||
| The Same Water Has Existed For 4 Billion Years. Where Has It Been? | 03 Apr 2026 | 00:34:31 | |
The water in your glass right now has existed for over four billion years. It has been part of oceans, glaciers, clouds, rivers, and yes — other living things. It is the same water, cycling endlessly. In Episode 1 of AquaDiary, environmental scientist and host, Ally breaks down the water cycle - not the oversimplified version you learned in school, but the full picture. How water moves through evaporation, condensation, precipitation, transpiration, and infiltration. What a watershed actually is and why it determines the quality and quantity of your drinking water. What a water budget is, how aquifers work, how long water can actually stay in a lake or glacier, and why water residence time matters more than most people realize. This is the foundation of everything AquaDiary covers. Understanding how water moves is understanding why it gets polluted, why some places run out of it, and why protecting it is more complicated than it looks. | |||
| Toxic Water in the Finger Lakes: The Owasco Lake Mystery | 02 Apr 2026 | 01:05:19 | |
Owasco Lake supplies drinking water to 45,000 people in central New York. In 2016, it made history, for the wrong reason. Cyanobacterial toxins were detected in the finished drinking water of a New York State public water system for the first time ever. Since then, the blooms have gotten worse, the lawsuits have piled up, and a number that gets cited constantly in the press may not be telling the whole story. In this episode, environmental scientist and Owasco local, Ally Berry, goes inside the science, the data, and the regulatory fight that has turned one Finger Lake into a test case for water policy across New York State. What's really driving the algae blooms? Where is the phosphorus actually coming from? And why is the science more complicated (and more interesting) than the headlines suggest? References:
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| Intro: How to Understand Water | 19 Mar 2026 | 00:15:47 | |
Welcome to AquaDiary, where the gap between water issues and scientific reality finally gets filled in. Understanding Water, Beneath the Surface. You’ve seen the stories: water contamination scares, mysterious lake phenomena, harmful algal blooms, fish kills, water crises, shifting water laws. But what do they actually mean? And how concerned should you be? Behind every story is context that rarely makes it into the hands of the public. Scientists understand it. Reporters summarize it. But the full picture often gets lost somewhere in translation. This is a podcast for anyone who drinks water, lives near a waterbody, or has ever wondered about water science and the manmade systems that manage it. No technical background or fancy lab coat required. Together, we’ll build a foundation in water science so you can understand the how and the why behind any story you encounter. We’ll unpack complex headlines, explore recurring environmental issues, explain water science and manmade systems, and dive into lake mysteries and folklore that keep curiosity alive. This is the story of water: explained clearly, honestly, and directly to you. If there’s a topic you’d like covered, leave a comment. | |||
| Exploding Lakes: The Lake Nyos Disaster | 10 Apr 2026 | 00:22:14 | |
On the night of August 21, 1986, the residents of Cameroon's Nyos valley went to sleep and never woke up. Nearly 1,700 people and thousands of livestock were found dead by morning. No signs of struggle, no visible cause. Just silence and 4 very confused survivors. The lake was the murderer. In this episode, we cover the full story of Lake Nyos: the night of the disaster, the survivors who described a strange smell and sudden darkness, the scientists who pieced together what happened, and the remarkable engineering now keeping it from happening again. We also break down the science of limnic eruptions: how volcanic CO₂ silently accumulates in deep water under immense pressure, what causes a lake to suddenly "explode," and which lakes around the world (Lake Kivu) are still primed to do the same thing today. This is a story about geology, chemistry, tragedy, survival, and what happens when nature operates by rules most of us never knew existed. Resources:
Support the show on Patreon, and see the scripts and notes before they're released! | |||
| Syracuse Drinks Unfiltered Lake Water from Skaneateles Lake - It May Soon be a Problem | 17 Apr 2026 | 00:46:21 | |
Syracuse, New York gets its drinking water directly from Skaneateles Lake. No filtration plant, no treatment beyond chlorination... and it has worked perfectly for 130 years. Then in 2024, the lake recorded 145 confirmed harmful algal blooms. The year before: 19. This episode is about what changed, what the science actually shows, and what 165,000 people probably don't know about the water coming out of their tap.Environmental scientist Ally and Finger Lakes local covers the full story: the strange mechanism shaking phosphorus loose from the lakebed, the research from Syracuse University and SUNY ESF happening right now, the gaps in the watershed management plan, what you should and shouldn't do if you have a private intake, and a cautionary reference to Toledo, Ohio — where 400,000 people lost safe tap water for three days in 2014. Toledo had a filtration plant. It still failed. Syracuse doesn't.This is not a scare piece. The finished drinking water tested clean in 2024. But the trajectory is worth understanding before it becomes a crisis instead of a question. Only 165,000 people depend on it. Citations are not included in this episode as it exceeded the character limit. Please support the show on Patreon for $3 a month to see the full citations and script before it's released. https://www.patreon.com/c/TheAquaDiaryPodcast | |||
| Billion Dollar Water Scam? Bottled Water vs. Tap Water | 01 May 2026 | 00:39:44 | |
Bottled water is less regulated, less safe, and less transparent than your tap — and the industry spent billions making sure you never found out. In this episode of AquaDiary, environmental scientist Ally breaks down the science, the scandals, and the corporate playbook behind the bottled water industry. From FDA loopholes and hidden contamination to Nestlé pumping 130 million gallons for $200 a year while Flint had no clean water. This is the episode the bottled water industry doesn't want you to see. What we cover:
Read your water quality report free at EPA.gov. Test your well. Know what's in your glass. Well water test kit recommendations + affiliate links:
Full reference list available on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/c/TheAquaDiaryPodcast | |||
| The Lead Pipe Problem Is Worse Than We Thought | 24 Apr 2026 | 00:33:33 | |
Lead pipes and lead poisonings aren't problems we've solved. They're under streets across the country right now, and new evidence suggests the problem is significantly larger than official data ever indicated. In this episode, environmental scientist Ally breaks down the full story of lead in American drinking water: the aging infrastructure nobody wants to pay to fix, the chemistry that keeps most of us safe and exactly what destroys it, and the cities across New York and the northeast with lead levels that should be making national headlines. What we cover:
There is no safe level of lead exposure. But there are things you can do, and understanding the science is the first one.
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| The Dark Secrets of NY's Best Tasting Water: Rochester, NY | 08 May 2026 | 00:49:46 | |
Rochester was voted the best-tasting municipal water in New York State. Then they found a body in the reservoir. In March 2024, a maintenance worker discovered a man's body in Rochester's Highland Park Reservoir. It had been there for 24 days while water continued flowing to tens of thousands of taps. The water tested safe, but the story of how this was possible opens up something much larger about a city drinking from two of the most protected lakes in the country while simultaneously managing 15,000 lead pipes, two reservoirs out of federal compliance for nearly 20 years, and a chemical legacy in the watershed that took state environmental archives and a stonewalled FOIL request to piece together. In this episode, environmental scientist Ally covers: 🔬 Where Rochester's water actually comes from — two glacier-carved Finger Lakes supplying 37 million gallons a day since 1876, with completely undeveloped shorelines and 6,800 acres of protected state forest. ☣️ The PCB scandal buried in the Canadice watershed. A private landowner draining transformer fluid into a tributary feeding your drinking water reservoir, and the fish test results still sitting in "draft form" two years after collection. 🚰 15,000 lead service lines still in the ground, what the city is doing about it, and how to get your water tested for free. 💀 The full story of Abdullahi Muya, the 29-year-old who drowned in Highland Park Reservoir in February 2024 and wasn't found for 24 days. and the federal compliance rule that's been deferred since 2006 that connects to the story. 🧫 The bloom science nobody in Rochester is talking about. Internal phosphorus loading documented in Hemlock and Canadice specifically, legacy septic systems still releasing nutrients 80 years after demolition, and the seiche dynamics that can trigger algal blooms from inside a protected lake with zero external input. 🧪 A University of Rochester study that found microplastic concentrations jumping from 10 particles per milliliter at the source to over 1,500 by the time it reached distribution. The source was clean, the pipes weren't. 💧 City water vs. suburb water, PFAS, disinfection byproducts, the Skaneateles comparison, the fracking fight nobody remembers, and what you can actually do The water is safe. It's also complicated. This episode explains why. Full citations at the AquaDiary Patreon (but comment if you want something): https://www.patreon.com/c/TheAquaDiaryPodcast Free lead testing: WaterTest@CityofRochester.gov | |||
| Love Canal: They Called Her Hysterical | 15 May 2026 | 00:38:52 | |
21,800 tons of toxic chemical waste buried under a neighborhood and a school. Hundreds of families in Love Canal had no idea. This is the story of America's most infamous environmental disaster, and the woman whose anger created federal law. Lois Gibbs was a 27-year-old housewife when she discovered her children were being poisoned by groundwater contamination seeping up through the soil beneath their home. State officials dismissed her community health survey as "useless housewife data." They told her to go home and tend her garden. She organized 90% of her neighborhood, held two EPA representatives hostage, and forced the creation of Superfund , the federal law under CERCLA that has since forced cleanup at over 1,300 hazardous waste sites across America. As an environmental scientist and a woman, I'm telling this story the way it has never been told: through the water science and groundwater chemistry that made the contamination possible, the institutional misogyny that almost stopped the fight, and the fury of a mother who refused to leave her toxic neighborhood until every family was safe. | |||
| Onondaga Lake: Sacred Site, Founder of Democracies, and America's Most Polluted | 22 May 2026 | 00:31:15 | |
The scientists who worked on this cleanup all signed NDAs and wouldn't speak with me. And mercury is still being found. In April 2026, routine marina renovations at Onondaga Lake uncovered mercury in sediment nobody had ever tested, in a lake declared cleaned up. The DEC says the origin is "unknown." The Onondaga Nation says they've been ignored for twenty years. And the experts who know the most about what's really in that lake cannot legally speak about it. This episode covers the full contamination history of Onondaga Lake in Syracuse, NY, once designated as the most polluted lake in America. We dig into the Solvay Process Company's century of industrial dumping, 165,000 pounds of mercury discharged between 1946 and 1970, the mudboils in the Tully Valley still delivering salt and silt downstream through Onondaga Nation territory every single day, and the roster of companies — Honeywell, General Motors, National Grid, Crucible Specialty Metals, and others — that turned a sacred Haudenosaunee site (and the founding site of both the US and Haudenosaunee democracy) into a federal Superfund site. We also explore what the Onondaga Nation has said from the beginning: that this cleanup was never enough, that their legal claim to their own homeland was dismissed on a technicality, and that the water their people have given thanks to for over a thousand years was declared clean without their agreement. This is Part 1 of a two-part series. Next time, we will cover the cleanup, the eagles that came back, the fish that are still toxic, and the question with no clean answer: what does it mean to remediate a lake when the polluter gets to decide when it's done? Further reading:Onondaga Nation land rights: onondaganation.orgRobin Wall Kimmerer, Braiding Sweetgrass (Milkweed Editions, 2013)Glenn Coin, Syracuse.com/NNY360, May 2026This episode had 28 citations. You can see them all by supporting the show on Patreon for $3 a month: https://www.patreon.com/c/TheAquaDiaryPodcast | |||