AquaDiary: Water Mysteries, Science & News

Onondaga Lake: Sacred Site, Founder of Democracies, and America's Most Polluted

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

Love Canal: They Called Her Hysterical

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.

The Dark Secrets of NY's Best Tasting Water: Rochester, NY

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

Billion Dollar Water Scam? Bottled Water vs. Tap Water

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: 1. Why bottled water is regulated by the FDA (not the EPA), and what that actually means for your safety 2. 45–64% of bottled water is just filtered tap water with a mountain on the label 3. The 60,000% markup you're paying, and where that money goes 4. Bottled water contamination cases the public was never told about 5. How chemicals leach from plastic bottles into your water 6. The Nestlé extraction scandal, and the communities that fought back 7. What 23 million private well users need to know 8. What you should actually drink, and how to filter it affordably 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: * Varify: https://amzn.to/4eTDaHh * Tapscore: https://amzn.to/3OChncN * Safe Home: https://amzn.to/49ogLOP Full reference list available on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/c/TheAquaDiaryPodcast

The Lead Pipe Problem Is Worse Than We Thought

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: 1. How East Coast water infrastructure came to be 2. The science inside lead pipes that most reporting gets wrong 3. What really happened in Flint — and the one detail nobody explains 4. New York cities with lead levels higher than Flint at its worst 5. A new study suggesting utilities manipulated lead reporting data5. What lead exposure does to children and adults 6. Five things you can do to protect yourself starting today There is no safe level of lead exposure. But there are things you can do, and understanding the science is the first one. * 🔗 EPA certified filter guide: https://www.epa.gov/water-research/consumer-tool-identifying-point-use-and-pitcher-filters-certified-reduce-lead * 🔗 NRDC lead pipe interactive map: https://www.nrdc.org/resources/lead-pipes-are-widespread-and-used-every-state * 🔗 NY lead service line map (NYLCVEF): https://nylcvef.org/lead-service-lines-in-new-york-state-interactive-map/ * 🔗 Syracuse lead service line map: https://experience.arcgis.com/experience/f6f39da4d69b436584b174de9fddf2d8 * Support the show on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/c/TheAquaDiaryPodcast