There’s a lot going on with audio water programming. What could be better!? Hopefully you’ve had the opportunity to tune into Connecting the Drops— the program CFWE and Rocky Mountain Community Radio stations partner to produce. But today, we’re focusing on a similar program: H2O Radio, which just released a new story Snow Job, on the work of measuring snowpack.
Frani Halperin is producer and co-host of H2O Radio
By Frani Halperin, Producer, H2O Radio
H2O Radio is an audio magazine about water. It started like many ideas do, while sitting in a restaurant. Our host, Jamie Sudler and
I were already interested in water issues and felt a growing concern that the constraints on water both locally and worldwide weren’t
getting enough attention. We started a habit of asking our server (as they brought water to the table) if they knew where that water
had come from. The results from our random sampling were pretty revealing. Some did— but many hadn’t a clue— and that was
concerning.
We decided that we wanted to change that. Our goal was to expand what people pictured when they thought about water. Images of
mountain lakes or swimming pools would surely come to mind, but so should ones of hamburgers or energy or plastics because water
plays a role in nearly every aspect of our lives.
So how do we do accomplish our goal? Our tagline is “Following Water Wherever It Leads.” And that’s what we do. We track water
through many topics and report on what we find. Our topics so far have ranged from beer to bovines, and our stories have included
voices from Taos to Tel Aviv. We think if people better understood the myriad ways in which water touches their lives, they might get
more involved in protecting and conserving this resource upon which all of our lives depend.
We produce shows in various formats: Longer in-depth pieces, as well as a short weekly segment called “This Week in Water” which is
posted every Sunday and is a wrap-up of water in the news.
And although we have a global perspective, we take pride in being a Colorado nonprofit. For that reason, we have been involved in
keeping Coloradoans up-to-date on the State Water Plan in development. In early March, Jamie hosted a live
call-in show on KGNU with James Eklund, Director of the Colorado Water Conservation Board, Abby Burk with the Audobon Society
and Sean Cronin, the Chair of the South Platte Basin Roundtable. There are plans to continue the panels in the coming months.
We take our role seriously. We interview experts— from engineers and scientists to legislators and politicians in order to get the facts.
But we also try to make our stories personal so we talk to ordinary citizens to ask how water issues affect their lives. Why? Because
we’re all in this together. We see H2O Radio as a conversation about water and our collective water future together. For that reason, we
welcome input and feedback and encourage listeners to send story ideas they’d like us to cover or investigate.
Learn more at: H2oradio.org, follow us on Twitter at @H2OTracker or check us out on Tumblr at h2otracker.tumblr.com.
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