Providing safe, clean drinking water to all people is one of the most basic roles and responsibilities for a functioning civil society. Yet, 50 years after passing the Clean Water Act, the United States–the richest country in the history of the world–often falls short of this rather modest goal. Aging infrastructure, rising costs, and ineffective governance structures all impede the ability to deliver safe water to everyone in America. And, although it seems like drinking water should be non-partisan, it too can become a prisoner of the political and cultural fights that have woven their way into seemingly every aspect of American life.

In this episode, we speak with Anna-Lisa Castle, Policy Director, Clean Water & Equity at the Alliance for the Great Lakes about the challenges that communities face in ensuring clean water is available to all and the potential solutions.

Note for listeners–we recorded this before passage of the Inflation Reduction Act, so you will hear us lamenting the inability to move infrastructure legislation through Congress. That said, I don’t think anything we discussed has been made irrelevant as there’s still much to do with implementation of the law and there remains a long list of unfunded infrastructure projects that have to be addressed if we’re going to have clean water for all.

Links:

Prairie Rivers Network (prairierivers.org)

Alliance for the Great Lakes (greatlakes.org)

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Music: www.purple-planet.com