🎙 What’s in the Water: West Virginia’s WaterKeeper on the Future of Appalachia's Rivers

What’s in the water? West Virginia’s Headwaters WaterKeeper talks with @KateTucker about the future of Appalachia's rivers and what we can do to protect and conserve clean water for all of America.
HOPE Is My Middle Name season 3, episode 7 - What’s in the Water: West Virginia’s WaterKeeper on the Importance of America’s Rivers
Almost Heaven, West Virginia isn’t just coal mines and country roads. Called the Birthplace of Rivers, the state sits on the Eastern Continental Divide, where 40 rivers and 56,000 miles of streams provide drinking water for millions of people from the Chesapeake Bay out to the Gulf of Mexico.
And yet, while West Virginia serves the country with her pristine headwater streams, there are entire counties in the state that have been on boil water alerts for years, with wells contaminated by coal mining and fracking, with no infrastructure for clean drinking water, with no funding, and no real plan. Compounding that are issues of food insecurity, poverty, and addiction. With limited access to well-paying jobs, education, and broadband, West Virginia’s population continues to dwindle, and it leads the nation in opioid deaths.
Where is the HOPE for a place like West Virginia? It’s in the people and it's in the water, according to Angie Rosser, West Virginia’s Headwaters WaterKeeper and executive director of West Virginia Rivers Coalition. As Angie says, “We're well-positioned geographically, resource-wise, to have this paradigm shift around what it means to develop natural resources [...] as something to preserve and hold up, as something we are the keepers of. You can experience this and it will make meaning for your life, your family, your connection to nature and the bigger world around us. So I'm excited about that and that’s why I'm not leaving. I'm staying here.”
Join us for a delightful conversation on rivers, resilience, and restoration born in the hills of Appalachia on this season finale episode of HOPE.
EPISODE HIGHLIGHTS
00:00 West Virginia’s 2014 Water Crisis
00:54 Introducing Angie Rosser
03:33 River songs
05:07 Connection to water
10:38 First swim - childhood memories of water
14:09 Importance of West Virginia’s water
19:25 Protecting rivers in West Virginia
22:38 Lack of basic infrastructure
25:29 Vulnerability of water supply
26:00 Living in Chemical Valley
29:29 Is the water safe to drink?
30:53 Community resilience after the flood
35:15 Clean water a basic human right
39:28 Energy transition in West Virginia
42:41 West Virginia's potential for transformation
43:47 Connection and hope in rivers
LISTEN 🎙
Apple Podcasts:
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LEARN 📔
wvrivers.org/
SUBSCRIBE 🎬
@KateTucker
@ConsensusDigitalMedia
CONNECT 🌍
/ katetuckerm. .
consensusdigitalmedia.com/
If you liked this episode, listen next to Tim and Beth Reese: Building Small Town Resilience in West Virginia on HOPE Is My Middle Name season 2, episode 3 • 🎙 Tim & Beth Reese: Bu...
Follow Kate’s adventures through West Virginia on Made In America h • Best of West Virginia ...
Hosted and executive produced by Kate Tucker, Hope Is My Middle Name is a podcast by Consensus Digital Media in collaboration with Reasonable Volume.

[@KateTucker]

Love love loved talking with Angie! Can't wait to get back down to West Virginia💚

[@cindytucker9698]

So interesting to hear of what's being done to preserve our waterways in WVA where my mother's family is from.

[@kimtucker5234]

So cool to hear more about a part of my family history in WV! I remember as a young girl visiting my grandparents home in Sutton by the Sutton Dam, we would play in the little waterways around their house and playing in the creeks...cool to hear Angie and what she shared, a busy lady!