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Blue Dot: Water in California: past, present, and future

Shasta Dam spillway
US Bureau of Reclamation
Shasta Dam spillway

Host Dave Schlom is joined by two members of the nonpartisan Public Policy Institute of California to discuss one of the most important issues for the Golden State: water!

Letitia Grenier is the Director of the PPIC's Water Policy Center, Jeffrey Mount is a senior fellow there, and Professor Emeritus of Earth and Planetary Sciences and founding director of the UC Davis Center for Watershed Sciences are also there.

In a wide-ranging discussion, we talk about water in the West in general and in California specifically. As someone (the quote is attributed to Mark Twain but that's possibly apocryphal) once said, "Whiskey is for drinking and water is for fighting over."

In the arid west, that is certainly true, and water wars have been a huge part of California's history. But there are ways that managing water with science as a guide can lead to better outcomes for communities and fisheries -- especially the imperiled Chinook salmon fishery which has basically collapsed in the state.

Dave Schlom is the longtime host and creator of Blue Dot. From surfing to Voyager in interstellar space, rock guitar to orcas in our imperiled oceans, the topics on Blue Dot are as varied as the host’s interests and connections -- which are pretty limitless! An internationally respected space history journalist, Dave is also deeply fascinated by all aspects of the grand workings of nature’s awesome machinery on scales ranging from galactic to subatomic. And topics take in all aspects of the arts and sciences.
Matt Fidler is a producer and sound designer with over 15 years’ experience producing nationally distributed public radio programs. He has worked for shows such as Freakonomics Radio, Selected Shorts, Studio 360, The New Yorker Radio Hour and The Takeaway. In 2017, Matt launched the language podcast Very Bad Words, hitting the #28 spot in the iTunes podcast charts.