Episode 27: Women in Water

 “No water, no life. No blue, no green.” - Sylvia Earle. We are excited to feature a special Women in Water podcast in celebration of Women's History Month! Hear from three incredible leaders in the Clean Water Movement: Deirdre White of ASDWA and Source Water Collaborative, Lynn Thorp of Clean Water Action and Source Water Collaborative, and Jennifer Peters of Clean Water Action. They chat about their passion for water, current work, and advice for women thinking about a career in water. www.cleanwater.org/podcast

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Given the nature of the world in general, many of the leaders in our organization were men 20 years ago, and I'm really glad to say that now many more of our members are women. And also the leaders of our partner organizations are women. So it's great to see a change in diversity in the gender and also ethnicity as we move forward. Hello everyone. Welcome to the All Live Down Stream, a Clean Water Action podcast. In each episode, we will be interviewing leading environmental and their work in the field. We'll dive deep into topics from drinking water and climate change to environmental justice, plastic pollution, and toxic chemicals. I'm your host, Jenny Vickers, the National Communications Manager for Cleanwater Action. So it is Women's History Month as river recording this. So in recognition of that, we're hosting a very special Women and Water podcast today, featuring three incredible leaders in the Clean Water movement. Deirdre White is a project manager at Association of State Drinking Water Administrators and co-chair of the Source Water Collaborative. Also here today as Lynn Thorpe, campaigns Director at Cleanwater Action and Co-Chair at Sourcewater Collaborative. And Jennifer Peters, water programs Director at cleanwater. Action. Welcome to We All Live Downstream. I'm so happy to have you all here. Hi, I am Deirdra and I'm Lynn. Thanks for being here today and Happy Women's History Month. before we get started, I do wanna learn a little bit more about your background, where you're from, where you live, and really what first drew you to the water policy world and what excites you about it today. Well, hi, I'm Deirdra and I live in Warrenton, Virginia. And I grew up in Virginia, just outside of Washington DC and throughout my life, I spent lots of time swimming, fishing, kayaking, water skiing in the Virginia Rivers, including the Potomac River and the Chesapeake Bay that are all polluted. and really it was through all that time I spent on the water that I began to learn and care about water quality and the environment. And I've always cared about people. And it was when I started working at the Association of State Drinking Water Administrators, that I realized how important it is to be a public servant whose job it is to ensure the safety of the nation's drinking water and public health. And this importance has really driven my passion for the work I do for our members and with other partners, and with the Sourcewater Collaborative to advocate for preventing pollution, protecting the environment, and especially for addressing impacts to our drinking water sources. I'm Lynn. I'm, I'm from Washington DC area and still here inside the beltway. And I have worked on environmental issues for about 30 years but came to clean water over 20 years ago. And I just wanted to mention that when I came to Clean Water Action, I didn't know very much about drinking water specifically. and I knew other related environmental issues and all the things that affect drinking water, and I didn't really think that I wanted to learn more about drinking water. but it turns out that I very much did. And the whole question of how we treat our, how we take care of our precious drinking water sources, and then how we store and treat and distribute drinking water and all the many complications and opportunities there is the most exciting thing I've done in my whole career. So that's how I got here to this podcast today. Hi everyone. This is Jennifer and I got my start in the water world pretty quickly after college I grew up in San Mexico, but I went to college in Northern California. And I, right outta college, I started working in an AmeriCorps program called Watershed Stewards Project. So I got my certain water being out in the field you know, trying to improve habitat for endangered and threatened salmon species. So it was amazing experience. But for about three years, I can't, as, as I around in the field started looking into environmental policy and went to graduate school in New York and thought I would work on climate change. So this was about 18 years ago when I was looking to go to graduate school and everyone in my program wanted to work on climate decided different and was like, well, I'm gonna work on water. And it's just stuck with me every ever since. But I think it's cause I'm constantly learning new things. Cause when you're working at policy you have to understand the science, even if you're not a scientist. And even if you're not a lawyer, you need to understand how the law and the regulations can be used to solve problems. And I think that's really what keeps me going and keeps me excited every day is like how complex these issues are. And so you have to be really creative when you're thinking about. Thank you so much for letting me know how you got started. I'm, I'm also very passionate about water as well. I've been at Clean Water Auction for a very long time. I'm an Aquarius and I love to spend all of my time, if possible, by bodies of water. So and, and protecting it is probably the most important I can think of. So thanks for all you do. It is, like I mentioned before, it's Women's History month. So do you women in the water world have any thoughts on how things have changed in different parts of that world in terms of women's participation, recognition leadership? Yeah, so this is Deirdre and given the nature of the world in general, many of the leaders in our organization were men 20 years ago. And I'm really glad to say that now many more of our members are women and also the leaders of our partner organizations are women. So it's great to see a change in diversity in the gender and also ethnicity as we move forward. Yeah. This is Lynn. Hi. Yeah, and I would echo that - it's true in the wider environmental world advocacy, and public health advocacy too. You know, there was like so much in the world when I started my career. There were a lot of men in leadership and, and just a lot of men in the room. And that's the way things were in a lot of fields. But I've seen big changes over several decades. and I think particularly true in water advocacy with our environmental allies and also in, in our work intersecting with people like other reg like regulators, like Deirdre's members, but also the water utilities, drinking water systems who bring us our drinking water. You know, like, like many things a world of men at one time, but that's changed so much just in the time I've been engaged. So that's, that's good to see. So Deirdre, you mentioned that you work at the Association of State Drinking Water Administrators. Can you just tell us more about your work there? Sure. Our acronym is ASDWA, and our members are the Drinking Water Program administrators for the 50 states territories, Navajo Nation and DC. And they are the people that regulate and provide technical assistance and funding for the public water systems to make sure your tap water is safe. So this includes implementing the Safe Drinking Water Act, also providing funding for water infrastructure projects. And these same people also coordinate with many different partners to support drinking water source protection, which in many states is a voluntary program. So when I was learning about you know, your organization, the Source Water Collaborative, and all the work that the three of you do together, it seems like you three work together on a number of different issues and projects. So what is it about Clean Water's national work that brought you all together? So over a decade ago Jennifer and I and others in Clean Water Action had observed that while we often had issues where we didn't entirely agree with drinking water utility folks, or even with Deirde's members or people at Environmental Protection Agency EPA, about everything that needed to be done, we had some common ground in making sure that, for example, water pollution that could be controlled elsewhere didn't end up in our drinking water and then cause us public health risk, you know, because we're drinking it or increased cost for our communities and for my water bill. so we started intentionally trying to find that common ground and work together where we could and recognize that we wouldn't agree on everything, but that we had a lot to learn from each other. And that led us into often trying to find out, well, what, what do as ASDWA members, the state regulators who implement the Safe Drinking Water Act, those are Deirdre's members. What, what do they know about this drinking water problem? What can we learn about how the Safe Drinking Water Act works for them in real life? And what can we do about that? How can we make things better in our work based on that knowledge? And sometimes can we speak together? And that's how we come to here <laugh>. And this is Jennifer adding on that, I would say, you know, we have a shared interest pollution prevention particularly using the tools of the federal Clean Water Act, which regulates surface waters, but because a lot of our drinking water sources do come from surface waters. You know, we have a shared interest in protecting those waters. There's a lot of powerful tools available that we can address that. And also, when we're you know, say advocating for EPA or other decision makers to you know, make decisions about different pollution challenges that impact drinking water, we have power together, you have the environmental and the drinking water community together in one voice saying each day, we need you to have stronger protections here. So I mentioned this earlier Deirdra and Lynn are both co-chairs of the Source Water Collaborative. Can you tell us a little bit more about that? The Sourcewater Collaborative started back in 2006, Clean Water Action and a diverse set of organizations came together to elevate the idea that we need to put protecting our drinking water sources. As a primary consideration, we were people from drinking water utilities and from government and from the environmental community and the public health community and others. And, and it's, it's interesting that we talk a lot about drinking water, but we don't always realize that every activity we do can affect it and cause those public health problems and complications and increased costs I mentioned before. So how we build our communities and our buildings and how we grow our food and make our energy and our products, all those things impact our drinking water. So the Source Water Collaborative comes together to help people at the local level, the state level and the, and the national level. influence activities and decisions that can affect our drinking water sources, those, you know, the rivers and lakes and bays where we get our drinking water or underground sources too, so that we are protecting them better. And last year, Deidre and I began to serve as co-chairs of what is now a 30 member collaborative. And it's quite an honor to do that at this time where there's quite a bit of attention on big serious drinking water challenges, but also I think a lot of opportunity to do more around protecting those drinking water sources. Yeah, and I would just add to that and say that, you know, collaboration is really the key to sourcewater protection and the diversity of our membership brings different perspectives and is the strength of the collaborative. And the Source Water Collaborative members represent the same people who are part of those local efforts on the ground to implement projects and activities that protect the drinking water sources. Our members include the water utilities, USDA, the Soil and Water Conservation districts, local planners, state and federal government, many other partners. And so, as Lynn said, we all have this common goal of protecting drinking water sources and connect in that way. So I know that some of your work together also has to do with PFAS chemicals, which are in the news this week because of the US Environmental Protection Agencies proposal for drinking water limits for some p FFA s for those not familiar pfas are known as Forever Chemicals because they never really go away. They're found in everything from pizza boxes and clothing to cookware and firefighting foam. They're associated with severe health impacts, cancer and development, developmental impacts and infants and children. they can be found in our blood and they're found in our water supplies. pretty scary stuff. Can you talk about some of the p FFA s issues you all have been working on? Yes, definitely. Here at Clean Water Action, we are working on PFAS chemicals from a number of different directions. You know you'll be hearing more from us about that proposal from Environmental Protection Agency around the first ever drinking water limits on some of the PFAS chemicals. That'll be a big effort for us to comment to EPA while this comment period is open.And then in a state's offices and at the national level, we're working on PFAS products to try to limit their use. So you know, the less we use the less they're in the environment working on all, all sorts of other policy efforts at the state and federal level to control these notorious chemicals. So here I think it would be good to especially focus on some of the places where with Deirdra and ASDWA members. And with the Source Water Collaborative, we've been looking at what we can do to be together part of the solutions on PFAS chemicals. And I'll just add to that, that many of ASDWA's discussions with our members have focused on the entire lifecycle of PFAS from the creation of the chemicals through manufacturing production and disposal, and the proposed drinking water regulations that just came out this week that our members are gonna have to implement under is just one part of all the work that needs to be done to protect public health from PFAS contamination. And our work is really focused on, you know, how to help the water utilities and how to ensure that the the regulation will not impact the rate payers and the customers of the water utilities to large extent, although there is gonna be a lot of work to do and we do expect there will be huge costs. So just in general looking at prevention of PFAS from contaminating drinking water sources, and I'll give a plug and say that, you know, prevention is much less costly than cleaning it up after the water has been polluted. I wanna jump in and say, I forgot to mention that at working on EPA's drinking water regulation proposal so far it's a very bold proposal. It's very complicated and as Deirdra said, it will have costs. And if there was ever a better argument for protecting the source and not having to clean these chemicals up in our drinking water, this proposal is it. Have already said. And so a lot of the focus of, of my own work on pfas has been really looking more closely at the tools of the clean water and how those tools can better be used to address PFAS. And so because PFAS are so ubiquitous and you know, many consumer products, but also, you know, industrial products as well, you know, an area where EPA in my hasn't been at and looking at revising those standards to require these facilities to limit their discharges of pfas into waterway around the country. And you know, today there are no limits for any industrial category to address their PFAS discharges. And so these are push and standards that epa revises on an industry by industry basis. And you know, we've been pushing them to like look you know, look for stream approach to be requiring all facilities that discharge using technology address discharges because, you know, whether you're a textile facility or say an organic chemical manufacturer, at the end of the day you're gonna be coming to use very similar technology to get water discharges. And so that's one thing we've really been pushing focus more. They have taken some action in that area, haven't actually proposed regulations yet. There are in the process of gathering information in order to draft those proposals and then you, things that we can do now that a lot of states or, well actually not as many states we are, this states Michigan and in Colorado, they've proactively looking at Clean Water Act permits. So these are the water pollution permits for individual facilities. And you know, PFAS is most definitely a pollutant that can be regulated under the Clean Water Act. And so a lot of states have been you know, requiring some of these different PFA chemicals or you know, monitoring, which is very important for collecting data to figure out like where we seeing the most PFA pollution and from what type of industries as well. And so that's a really, and EPA thankfully has been paying attention to what places like Colorado and Michigan have been doing and came out with at the end of last year with a memo. Cause the way are responsible for most of the clean water permits permits, EPA does handle permits, but for the most part, states are in the lead as far as implementing the level at a local level. And so this is, is very clearly directing states to use authority of the water permit program, which is that through that but then also there, there's things they can do. Cause what happens is a lot of times wastewater treatment that are treated like how, you know, wastewater comes from people's homes or sewage, that they also oftentimes are accepting waste from industrial facilities. So there's what's called a pre-treatment standards program in the Clean Water Act. And so that's where these industrial facilities can do things to eliminate PFAS from their discharges before they pass through this, you know, municipal drinking, or excuse me, wastewater treatment plan. It doesn't necessarily have the right technology to address that discharge. And getting to that point that we've been mentioning of like addressing it upstream, you know, that's, you know, a, a way to go at the source of where the pollution is is coming from and not putting that burden on wastewater utilities who, in the same way drinking water utilities are not responsible for the PFAS that has gotten into, you know, drinking water that is going to people's homes. They're also not reson wastewater. Utilities are also not responsible for the pfas that's everywhere environment. But because the managers, they're the ones that are gonna end up paying the price for it. and also, you know, the customers that pay. And so that's why we're trying to really focus on how can we go further upstream. and there's also the benefit, it's not just about drinking water. We also care about, you know, fish and other aquatic that, and that's really important as well. Concentrate and other, and other wildlife. And that's a huge concern, particularly for communities, but depends on, on hunting or fishing. Yeah, I mean this is all incredibly important. I feel like we could do a whole nother podcast just about what you talked about<laugh>. So maybe we'll do that in the future because it's very fascinating. It sounds like you're approaching it from all angles. And I love what you mentioned too about prevention. I just wanna plug the recent victory that we have with Toxic Free Future and Safer States and getting REI to finally ban PFAS from its textile products and cookware from its suppliers. That was a really big victory that just happened and a big coalition. And it sounds like a theme that I'm hearing is like collaborate and work together on these issues. So I think it's incredibly important. So if someone's listening right now, you know, I just wanna just quickly ask like what is an essential piece of advice that you would give to young women if there are any listening right now, thinking about a career in water? Well one I one thing I would say this is Lynn again, is, is that there there are really opportunities and needs for people including women to do so many different things in the world of water. Even if you're just thinking about a, a drinking water focus, you know, people with all different kinds of background in career and work background and education can get involved. You know, not everyone has to be an engineer, but we need engineers and and, and in the advocacy side, not everyone has to be a lawyer, but of course we need those too. And just and working for water utilities, so many jobs from the day-to-day work that helps maintain the systems to running those complicated entities, there's, there's no end to the type of work we need to do and can do to come together and serve up this basic human need. And we need women at every level of, of work and and leadership. And so I would say to get out there and explore all the options for you. Yeah, this is Deirdre and I would just say go for it. There is a huge shortage in the water workforce for both government water jobs and also for water systems being operators and lots of other types of jobs. If you're into science or technology or some of the things Lynn mentioned, being a, a lawyer or an engineer, there's all types of jobs in the sector. and for women especially, it is very rewarding to serve as the public and you can really make a difference just in your job for the country at, at large or for in your community as well. So I just say go for it. we need more women in the industry. And are really important for me early on in my career. And I think first is I had really good mentors. and I think that's essential to find good mentors if you're not enjoying the people that you're working with, you know, if you're able to, you know, try to find another mentor, I think that's really important is to really know yourself and advocate for your own professional needs and goals. And then secondly, you know, don't be afraid to kinda jump around because the water sector is extremely broad. I mean, you've heard from us, you know, talking about, you know, there's people that work at the water utility level. There's people that work in government that are, you know, writing the regulations and policies. There's folks like Lynn and I working on the advocacy side. And, and so don't be afraid to jump around. You might find, hey, you like working in the private sector, you wanna be consultant. There's, there's, there's a role for you wherever you wanna land. And so I think that's really valuable. And, and I know for me, cause I was in a, a program where we worked with local government, federal government, state government, we also worked with timber companies and things like that. So I got exposed to a pretty broad array of folks working in the sector and it just, I felt most comfortable in the advocacy world. Cause I feel like, you know, we have a lot of flexibility in, in the work that we can do and, you know, say government operate. So I think that's what was appealing to me is just feeling that there's just a lot of opportunity. Thank you so much. very inspiring, all three of you. I, I loved hearing your stories and hearing more about your work on water and your leadership, most importantly in collaboration. So really appreciate everything that you guys have chatted about today with me. in our podcast, we are Clean Water Action Action is in our name. So we, we always like to end the podcast with a call to action. So how can people get involved or take action to protect clean water right now? So this is Deirdre and I would say find some like-minded partners. Learn about your local drinking water source. Get involved in local advocacy efforts or start or get involved in a local collaborative. The Source Water Collaborative has a map of all the collaboratives across the country. we probably haven't captured all of them and we'd like to get more started. So if you're interested, check it out on our website and just think about, you know, where you are where you live and what you can do to get involved. And we do have more resources on the website to help learn about more, learn more about what you can do. Yeah. And in addition to looking@Cleanwateraction.org for our calls to action I wanna put in a plug for something and I worked hard on this year with help from Jennifer and many, many others, which is@thesourcewatercollaborative.org website. You can find an online interactive in infographic tool and it helps you learn about what Jennifer was talking about, the Clean Water Act's powerful water pollution programs and how you can get involved in helping put them to work to protect our drinking water. So if you're so inclined that's a fun thing to check out and learn as little or as much as you would like. We also have tools for working with forestry partners and agricultural partners on our website as well. So there's a lot of different ways to get involved from many different perspectives working in many different areas and where there are different land uses. And this is Jennifer, I would that you know, whether or not interested in being a water professional yourself that just making a plug for you know, to care about water in your own community. There's lots of opportunities to get involved in the decisions that are being made. And we didn't talk about this in much detail, but the clean public participation. And so you know, I mentioned earlier these Clean Water Act permits that states are working on to address pfas and so that are plenty of opportunities for anyone to comment on theses come up, suggest developing a that with the folks at your state, whether it's your you know, public health in the environment or water quality department building those relationships because they, they wanna hear from the public. They really you know, wanna have that engagement is very, very valuable as well. Thank you so much. before we end today, is there anything else that you wanna mention or anything else maybe we forgot to mention? I would just say on the theme that We All Live downstream. I mean that, you know, resonates with me and with all of us. That we are all downstream of discharges and pollutants and other people's ways to water. And it is really upon us all to get involved and work together to support protection of our water sources and especially drinking water sources. I totally agree. Thank you so much. Thank you Deirdre, Lynn and Jennifer for being here and all the incredible work that you do. Very inspiring. Thank you for sharing your story with us for Women's History Month. It's a great way to celebrate. thanks to all of our listeners for joining us to help lift up women in Water leaders during this month of celebration. you can learn more about the Association of State Drinking Water Administrators at www.asdw.org. Lynn mentioned this. Go to the sourcewater collaborative website to learn more, especially check out that interactive infographic@www.sourcewatercollaborative.org. And then to learn more about cleanwater action visit cleanwater.org. If you'd like to support our work, you can click on Donate Your Support helps to keep our engines running, allows us to continue to fight for healthier communities, clean water, and a more just world. For all, be sure to subscribe to Clean Water Actions Podcast. You could search, we all live downstream. We're on Spotify, iTunes, Google Play, and all of your favorite podcast streaming apps. Thanks so much. Bye everybody.