Water Shelf Podcast

"The Water Recycling Revolution" by Bill and Rosemarie Alley

The dynamic writing team Bill and Rosemarie Alley [http://www.alleyandalley.com/the-books.html] discuss their latest book, The Water Recycling Revolution: Tapping into the Future (Rowman & Littlefield, 2022) [https://www.bloomsbury.com/us/water-recycling-revolution-9798881808709/]. What's revolutionary about recycled water? How did we get over the "yuck factor"? What are recycled water developers currently getting right and wrong? Find out here! Dr. William M. Alley is Director of Science and Technology for the National Ground Water Association. Rosemarie Alley writes fiction, poetry, and nonfiction and is a literacy specialist.

"Legal Geographies of Water" by Cristy Clark

Cristy Clark [https://cristyclark.com/] explores the "pluriverse of water realities" in her new book, Legal Geographies of Water: The Spaces, Places and Narratives of Human-Water Relations (Earthscan Routledge, 2025) [https://www.routledge.com/Legal-Geographies-of-Water-The-Spaces-Places-and-Narratives-of-Human-Water-Relations/Clark/p/book/9781032225968]. Enjoy our lively conversation about how legal geography can both explain and improve human-water relations, what the human right to water actually means, and how Marvel Multiverse films may actually help us understand the "ontologies of living waters." Dr. Cristy Clark is an Associate Professor at the Canberra Law School.

“Body in a Barrel" by Aaron Mead

Season 3 of the Water Shelf Podcast begins with a bang! Aaron Mead [https://www.ameadwriter.com/], author of Body in a Barrel: A Las Vegas Mafia Crime Novella [https://www.amazon.com/Body-Barrel-Vegas-Mafia-Novella/dp/B0FNT2TY38], talks with me about his fictional treatment of Lake Mead’s slow, climate-change-induced unveiling of long-immersed depths. Building on his written Water Shelf interview [https://mavensnotebook.com/2025/12/26/author-interview-aaron-mead-body-in-a-barrel-a-las-vegas-mafia-crime-novella/], Mr. Mead discusses his water industry and theological studies roots, two layers that contributed complexity as well as publication challenges for his path-breaking work. Mr. Mead is a Senior Engineer with Metropolitan Water District of Southern California.

"Living with Water Scarcity" by David Zetland

David Zetland [https://www.kysq.org/bio.html] gives a powerhouse interview on his many decades of writing on water, the commons, and climate change. He discusses his recently reissued book Living with Water Scarcity (2014/2023) [https://www.kysq.org/lwws/] which does a wonderful job explaining water economics to the general reader. We also get into why water managers fail and, in his opinion, why academic publishing has lost its luster. Professor Zetland is a senior university lecturer in political-economy at Leiden University College in the Netherlands. In addition to Living, he has published The End of Abundance (2011) [https://www.kysq.org/teoa/], The Best of Aguanomics (2018) [https://kysq.org/bestof/index.html], and The Little Book of The Commons (2022) [https://www.kysq.org/lbc/]- all freely available for download at kysq.org [https://kysq.org/]. Note to listeners: The interview recording contains minor sound quality issues, probably due to the long-distance conversation.

"Replumbing the City" by Sayd Randle

In this episode, Sayd Randle [https://www.saydrandle.com/] joins us from Kathmandu, Nepal, to talk about her fascinating new book, Replumbing the City: Water Management as Climate Adaptation in Los Angeles (University of California Press, 2025) [https://www.ucpress.edu/books/replumbing-the-city/paper]. We discuss her ethnographic approach to water and the challenges and opportunities of localizing urban water supplies. She also gives us a peek at what she's now working on halfway around the world. Dr. Randle is Assistant Professor of Urban Studies at Singapore Management University.