Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Speaker A: Hi, this is Alan Townsend, Senior Program Officer for World Wildlife Fund and you're listening to the Water Values Podcast.
[00:00:07] Speaker B: The Water Values Podcast is sponsored by the following market leading companies and organizations by Advanced Drainage Systems Our Reason is water by 1898 & Co. Possibilities Powered by Experience by Woodard and Curran High Quality Consulting Engineering Science and Operations Services by Entera Innovation and Stewardship for a Sustainable Tomorrow by Xylem Let's Solve Water by the American Waterworks Association Dedicated to the World's Most Important Resource by Black and Veatch Building a World of difference by 120 water new rules need New Tools by Suez Digital Solutions Optimizing Water and by IDE Water Technologies, your partner in water treatment and sustainable desalination for six decades. This is session 280.
Welcome to the Water Values Podcast. This is the podcast dedicated to water utilities, resources, treatment, reuse and all things water. Now here's your host, Dave McGip.
Hello and welcome to another session of the Water Values Podcast. As my daughter Sarah said, my name is Dave McGinley and thank you for joining me. And of course thank you for your support over the last 11 plus years.
We've got a terrific show for you this month. Joe Whitworth, the President and CEO of the Freshwater Trust, joins us to talk about quantified conservation and how the Freshwater Trust has automated its processes to deliver better environmental results faster, cheaper and more efficiently. Joe crushes this interview and you're really going to love it. Joe is phenomenal.
Also, Reece Tisdale joins us for a Bluefield on Tap segment that recaps UN Climate Week and the Rethinking Water 2025 event at Columbia University put on by Science Water, which was a fantastic event by the way. Highly encourage you to attend.
But before we get to today's conversations, we always say thank you to our phenomenal sponsors at the top of every show. And we have a fantast set of sponsors in 2025 advanced drainage systems, 1898 and Co Woodard and Curran, Entera Xylem the American Waterworks Association, Black and Veatch 120 Water, Suez Digital Solutions and IDE Water Technologies. That, my friends, is a terrific collection of impactful companies that have affirmatively decided to support water industry thought leadership and education.
And I thank you all and I'd like for you, the listener, to please do me a favor.
If you work for or with any of those sponsors, please thank your boss or thank your contact the sponsor firm and let them know that you appreciate their leadership in the industry through the sponsorship. That little note of thanks goes a long, long way.
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Well, before we head on to the interview with Joe Whitworth, we've got a Bluefield on Tap segment with Bluefield Resources, Reece Tisdale. So take it away, guys.
Well, Reese, welcome back for another Bluefield on Tap. How we doing?
[00:03:44] Speaker C: Pretty good, Dave. Pretty good. It's been. I got to see you last week.
[00:03:47] Speaker B: Yeah, Amen. Yeah, it was great spending some time with you and I'm glad that you. You survived the game last night. You know, I was kind of worried about some cardiac issues given the Yankees. The Yankees loaded the bases on five pitches in the bottom of the ninth, and Chapman, Chapman was able to pull it out.
[00:04:07] Speaker C: This is what the follow is all about. Hopefully, at least it is this year. Hasn't been for a while in Boston, but super exciting.
[00:04:15] Speaker B: Yeah. Amen. So you alluded to it. Last week we spent time together in New York for Climate Week and the Rethinking Water Conference.
What are your takeaways? Kind of. What, what, what did you learn or what were the salient issues that you pulled away from Climate Week and Rethinking Water?
[00:04:32] Speaker C: Well, I've been going to what is, I guess UN Climate Week for now, five or so years. And part of that is because of the Rethinking Water vent put on my science capital, or Science Water is their water business.
And I thought it was maybe the best one ever. And I, and I think there were a couple of reasons for that. One, it did feel like water was a real part of the conversation. It's grown every year. And I think that's demonstrated by the Rethinking Water event up at Columbia University. I think they said there were as many as 1700 participants, which definitely the largest. And I thought that was really interesting.
And you know, and that is that being said, it's probably the biggest water event of the week. And for those who are not aware of this, there are about a thousand events that take place over the week in New York and including the president coming to the city. And so you can only imagine what traffic is like getting around the city. So I know, Dave, you and I, you know, we log some miles on our feet because it was just easier to do that.
[00:05:39] Speaker B: Yeah. Amen.
So in terms of the Rethinking Water conference, I know they had a number of different tracks and a number of different. And I agree with you, it was phenomenal just to see a ton of people out there. You know, I met Antoine Walter for the first time in person. I met with Travis Loop for the first time in person.
A lot of great people there.
What issues stood out to you in terms of what people were talking about?
[00:06:10] Speaker C: Well, I think one thing that it really stood out, and maybe this is part. Part of it is because signs had put on a separate event on. On the day before the Rethinking Water event and had to do with, you know, why to invest in water now. And that's their role. And I know they're collaborating with. With Columbia and putting on this conference. But I think the key is there and given. I mean, the government shut down today. So as we speak, the government is shutting down.
And I think the bottom line is the federal government is not going to bail anybody out. Right. Water is very local.
It's highly fragmented. These are things that we've talked about a number of times. And so what is the role of private or public capital? Right. So that'd be private equity or even the banks. You know, I participated in a couple events with some financial institutions as well.
And so everybody's trying to figure it out. Right. And so I think that's probably. That's one aspect of it. Another. You know, there are other things. Like, I know there was the discussion about pfas. There was. I mean, you led a discussion on Law 101. Part of the Rethinking event is educating people of the issues more broadly and what's happening. But I do think within a.
Within the topic itself, there are a couple, like, hotspot issues that need to be dealt with.
[00:07:36] Speaker B: Yeah, I agree with you. You know, finding new ways to finance and not just sitting around waiting for the federal government to bail, as you kind of said, bail people out because it's not happening. I think there are some new tools in the toolbox.
Personally.
I think especially for rural systems, the opportunity zone legislation in OB3 presents us, you know, a unique opportunity. We'll see how it gets used. I don't know that it can be used in every state, but that. That presents an opportunity. And I think my sense is that because there's. There's no federal bailout coming, there's all this PFAS regulation that is on the horizon in terms of compliance.
It's going to cause a lot of small systems to.
To face the reality that they need to consolidate.
And so I think there's going to be an opportunity to maybe bring us down from over 50,000 systems to maybe under 50,000 systems.
[00:08:40] Speaker C: Yeah, I mean, I've heard magic numbers out there that people have thrown about, whether it be as low as 6000 systems. I mean, that seems an extreme, maybe a pan decentralize this. I think you're right. Between PFAs lead and they're just workforce constraints. And then you add on things like cybersecurity and, you know, because digital systems are being rolled out in various ways, These small systems, 25,000 plus are being. They're going to get squeezed or are being squeezed. And in some cases, I think the number that, you know, I've talked to our friend Chad Sidel about, and that is, you know, if a system is less than three miles from another system, they probably should be combined. And there's a lot of resistance on both sides of the equation. Who's going to pay for it? What do they pay? You know, one system may be in worse shape than the other, but. Yeah, and that was part of the topic or conversation as well. And that's why, I mean, I know that signs they own central states, which is an investor in utility with a growing footprint in the water sector, and they're rolling up systems for that reason. They're seeing those opportunities.
[00:09:51] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:09:52] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:09:52] Speaker B: So that's an interesting point.
So when I spoke to Antoine and I also should throw in, Emily Lewis was there too. So sorry, Emily, I should have brought you up earlier, but in any event, when Antwan was talking with me, he asked me the question of should systems with fewer than 10,000 customers be forcibly consolidated?
And my response was no, because I think it may sound like a good policy, but to forcibly do it, to forcibly consolidate it may sound like a good idea, but it never turns out well in practice. I think we need to offer more carrots rather than sticks when talking about the regionalization consolidation problem.
[00:10:37] Speaker C: Yeah, no doubt. I agree with you completely. That will not fly.
That's not the way sort of we're set up as a country and that's the way the federal government can't come in or even the state government can come in. It's all about incentives. And I think that's part of the challenge. And I think that's part of rethinking water is highlighting. What are all of these issues? I mean, it's not just system. There are septic systems that need to be removed in places like, you know, Alabama or Southern states where, you know, they're basically, there are, you know, concerns about public health. And that's something I know that manual from. I guess he was at Columbia and he started that program. Now he's at University of Arizona. That was one of his discussion points as well. So it's not as simple as one system, one community next to another bringing together. It is more complex than that. Like I said, septic systems, but also there needs to be demonstrative benefits shown to these communities of why to do it.
[00:11:45] Speaker B: Yeah. Amen. Well, Reece, always great talking with you. Great synopsis of Climate Week and the Rethinking Water Conference, and look forward to seeing you again soon.
[00:11:55] Speaker C: Yeah, it was great to see you and all the other podcasters out there who knew.
[00:11:59] Speaker B: Yeah. All right, take care. Thanks, Reece. We'll talk to you next time.
[00:12:02] Speaker C: Take care.
[00:12:03] Speaker B: Bye.
As always, great information from Bluefield Research and Rhys Tisdale.
Now it's time for the main event, our interview with the Freshwater Trust President and CEO Joe Whitworth. Let's get that water flowing.
Well, Joe, welcome to the Water Values Podcast. Great to have you on. It's been a long time. I've been wanting to talk to you, and I'm glad that we finally found time to chat. How are you this fine day?
[00:12:27] Speaker A: Things are going well. Things are moving fast. I'm psyched to be here.
[00:12:30] Speaker B: Yeah. Awesome.
Well, for those who don't know you, could you provide a little thumbnail on your background and where you sit in the water industry?
[00:12:41] Speaker A: Well, the Freshwater Trust was founded by combining a couple of conservation outfits. One that was focused on wild fish conservation dating back to the 1980s. And the second one was interested in getting water in stream by helping landowners and irrigation operators improve their efficiencies and, you know, become more economically viable themselves while also putting some water in stream for the benefit of the stream. And the big motivator there was, we had a central hand enlisting most of the Pacific salmon under the Endangered Species act, but our intent there wasn't to put them on a list and then, you know, basically say no to everything. Right. Which is how modern environmental advocates have used that act.
Our motivation organizationally was to put them on the list, but then begin to do enough good things in the right places on a short enough time frame to have those fish rebound and making those protections under the act no longer necessary. And so it was more about playing offense than playing defense. And as the way that's played out over, say, the last decade, decade and a half that led us into technology and where now the Freshwater Trust has become something of a tech play for conservation.
And that's, that's opened up a lot of opportunity for our partners, the organization, and honestly, for waterways across the U.S.
fascinating.
[00:14:26] Speaker B: I love the, love the quantified conservation message that we'll get into.
I am kind of curious, though, how you came, you know, how did you, what spurred your passion for this? How did you get to the Freshwater Trust? What's your background?
[00:14:43] Speaker A: Well, you know, I don't know that I fully understood it until I wrote a book a few years ago, which is kind of a.
It's kind of a mental cage match. Right. And once you start really digging into the events that you both created and respond to.
What I found out was I, you know, look, I grew up bucking hay in the Midwest, right? But my dad was a carpenter and we were the first generation off the farm. So my vacation, so he's either on a roof in the summertime or bucking hay for one grandpa or the other for vacation. And so, you know, it was interesting. When I was a kid, I, I just always remember working with grandpa after supper, and we'd be down, like, hoeing the bean field, the low bean field. And, and he would always say, no man has the right to take more from the land than the land can take. And he always said that. And, you know, I'm five years old and I'm like, you know, he's my grandpa, so I bought that. And, you know, after he passed, about 12 years after he passed Blackbird Creek, which ran the length of our farm and, you know, you know, upstream, downstream was declared impaired under the Clean Water act from agricultural runoff. And I knew that, that ethos of, of having his farming operation and the natural balance of things, if they're working for one, they're working for the other. And I think that's shared by most agricultural operators. And yet they're caught in a much bigger economic system than they can have any individual impact on. And so that really drew me in to figure out, look, all things being equal, farmers are going to do the right thing. But the problem is all things aren't equal. And that has really been a deep well for me to draw on professionally, but then organizationally really focusing in on, you know, how do we make it easier for landowners to upgrade their works or adjust their management practices so they can be more profitable while also, you know, growing bushels of nature, if you will, in addition to their commodity. And that has been something that's been a driving force that's on the personal side, but on the, on the. More on the professional side, what that led us to is really trying to figure out what are, what are the hurdles between a landowner making a good decision and that decision being paid for and being implemented with relative ease. And there is.
There's simply too much process between the landowners and the actions that they want to take. And that's really defined our work over the last several years.
[00:17:48] Speaker B: So, I mean, that's fascinating. I love the. I love the background story, everyone. And just as you were talking there, I was just thinking to myself, you know, everyone has such a unique background that I've spoken with. And it's just, it's great to hear your story, but it also sounds like you are trying to make externalities be taken into account in an easier, like smooth breaking down the barrier so that externalities, and I'm talking in a classical economics sense, can be taken into account easier by decision makers. Is that a fair.
[00:18:23] Speaker A: Yeah, that's. That's a great way to characterize it. You know, externalities with regard to agriculture and water is obviously runoff. I mean, fertilizer is cheap and we have cultivated fields for a long time, so we have to, you know, add. Add in those nutrients so that they can grow for one more season or one more, one more crop rotation.
And the way that we've been able to work with, you know, public finance and private finance, we actually can reduce the inputs rather than make folks pay for externality. So we really stop things from happening, you know, stop the runoff from happening with various methods in the first place, while maintaining economic viability for the operation.
But, yeah, I mean, you know, look, we live in the ultimate closed loop, right? The biosphere doesn't have any more water, you know, today than it did when it opened up for business.
That hasn't changed. But particularly in the American west, when that water shows up, if it shows up and in what quality and condition it shows up, that has been altered dramatically by primarily agriculture, certainly other actions, you know, hydropower and, you know, what we do with hardened environments in cityscapes. But really what we've been able to do is connect all of these different pieces in kind of the water chain so that it can operate much more smoothly in a way that doesn't have those externalities left over at the end.
[00:20:08] Speaker B: Yeah, perfect. So the decision makers are taking those externalities into account to make decisions ahead of time before the problem accelerates after the Decision is made, but I am.
[00:20:20] Speaker A: Well, it's not so much that they take them into account.
It's not so much that an individual decision maker or set of decision makers are sitting there saying, what am I going to do about my externalities? What we're trying to do, I mean, what we're dealing with here is largely a system that should be integrated, that is not integrated.
And so you have.
There are all different types of monies that are available to help agriculture transition from what they used to be to what they ought to be.
The difficulty has been in the system itself. It's really hard for an individual landowner to navigate that. So we're really focused on the system and making improvements and adjustments to that so that the landowner who wants to engage in an upgrade process doesn't have to wait two, three years in order to get that improved, say, irrigation system on the ground.
Right now it's available to do that. But it's really hard for folks that are out there, you know, running a farm to be able to Write Technical Grant 1, Technical Grant 2, go get some matching money, figure out how they're going to finance it in the interim. And what we're trying to do is smooth that out. So there is no. There, there is no hurdles that are insurmountable. A lot of times folks will get into that and they say, hey, look, USDA has this program, Reclamation has that program.
I'm going to go after it. But they get halfway through the process and say, I am just outgunned on this. And so what we want to do is make that much more turnkey for the landowners so they can, you know, make a decision and get that on the field. You know, get that in the field now in three months, six months, rather than two years. Three years, yeah.
[00:22:23] Speaker B: So it almost sounds like without saying quantified conservation, you've done a great job nibbling around the edges.
So based on, on what you've just described, do you have any, any additional color that you'd like to add to how quantified? Well, you know what quantified conservation is?
[00:22:45] Speaker A: Well, the, the key to quantified conservation is that it provides a transaction, a transactable unit where different colors of money and different outcomes can be gotten, even though everybody says it a little bit differently.
And so where that started was we were working with a landowner years ago that wanted to fix a single mile of stream.
And it was about. It was going to take about, literally one week of work, of actual dirt work to do. We were replacing a culvert and it took us three years in permitting and funding processes in order to get the chance to do one week of work. And we have, you know, we have lawyers and grant writers and scientists on staff.
And that was at the time and actually still today, that's moving pretty swiftly through this air quotes through, through the system.
And so I took stock and said, well, you know, okay, three years, one mile. How many miles we got to deal with? And in our home state of Oregon, of the 115,000 stream miles, 80,000 of those stream miles required some form of redress.
And then I looked at how many, how many projects are getting done in a year. And a very generous number would be three. Excuse me, would be about 700 projects. And that is an extremely generous number.
But Even if those 700 projects all equated to 1 mile of help or benefit, 700 to 8,80,000 equals I should go flip burgers, because we're never going to. We're never going to get this fixed.
We then inventoried all of the federal dollars that are out there for freshwater health and restoration and on farm improvements.
And what we found was they all wanted to go to the same place, but they all said it differently. They all had different granting timelines, and none of it was coordinated. And so we looked at the outcomes that were needed and the outcome. There's 16 ways to fix a river, right? And it comes down to form and function, and probably seven of those ways. You know, stream bank planting, you know, fencing out cows, you know, getting more water in stream. They're pretty simple, but they can take care of about 85 to 90% of what, you know, what we would describe as the problem that needs to be addressed. And so once we knew those outcomes, it was kind of interesting. A guy by the name of Andy Bryant, who was, who went on to be the chair of Intel, I was explaining the problem to him. I'm like, look, we have all these different colors of money. We spend about 20 to 30 billion dollars a year on this problem in the US annually.
So it's not really a money problem.
We have literally thousands of people working the problem. It's not really a people problem. And there's a very small denominator of outcomes that we're chasing and a highly repetitive set of steps to get these things done.
And he kind of took it all in and he goes, well, you know, that's why God created software. And I'm like, you know, this was back in 2003, and I'm like, software, that's crazy talk. What do you like, that's the dumbest thing I've ever heard. And it discounted. And then I went home and did some homework on that and came back and said, hey, can we talk about that software thing again?
And from there, that's what led us into technology. And two things happened with that. The first one was we basically began to be able to automate the process, but by taking each project through the same set of steps.
What comes out of the tailpipe is pretty standardized.
And once we saw that, if you did that, it can render you this. You know, if you planted a, if you covered a tributary with shade, that will give you a thermal unit, a kilocalorie that could be sold to, say, a wastewater treatment facility that has a temperature issue that they need to address.
Or if you upgrade, you can, you can keep tons of sediment out, which are freighted with nutrients, kind of like panning for gold, and you can keep pounds of nitrogen or phosphorus out. And once we knew that we had a kilocalorie that could be bought by an entity that has ratepayers, or a pound of phosphorus that could be bought by ratepayers to meet compliance, because it doesn't matter whether it's a chilling tower or a filtration plant, nature can do those things for us. And now we can quantify that uplift so we can make transactions happen, generally speaking, for cheaper.
And that has what, that's what led us to certainly the quantification of environmental uplift by actions taken. So they're more of a biological fix that we can get for cheaper and last longer than kind of a gray built fix for some of the parameters that these permitted entities have to deal with with their, you know, their total maximum daily load permits.
[00:28:24] Speaker B: Fascinating. So it sounds like, again, going back to economics, you're lowering transaction costs so that these projects can get done.
How do you marry them up? How do you use technology to prioritize and then implement all these projects?
[00:28:41] Speaker A: Yeah, so that was kind of the second step. We were working with about a town of about 100,000 people, and they had a wastewater treatment facility that had a temperature requirement that they needed to deal with.
[00:28:54] Speaker C: Right.
[00:28:55] Speaker A: And their game plan was to take the treated wastewater and they were going to, they were going to dig a hole, pump it in, wait for a couple of days, and then pump it out so that it, you know, it would be cooled enough so that, you know, when they returned the water to the system, it was the correct temperature and that that price tag was pushing $20 million that, and that 20 million was just the capital cost. I mean, it wasn't. It didn't even get into the O and M piece. And we were able. And what they were trying to offset was 300 million kilocalories per day.
And so because we knew that if you can shade tributaries, you can cool the watershed and their point of maximum impact in a way that got them 600 million kilocalories for a little less than $6 million. And from the, The. The utilities perspective, they're like, okay, I'm in compliance with EPA and I'm saving $14 million. Sign me up.
And what we did there was. It was, we are. We're a 501C3.
And, you know, the way you think many 501C3s. And I will say we did too. We're like $6 million contract. We're rich.
And that's not the case. We. We were looking at saying, you know what, because this is a contract, we don't have to spend the full 6 million.
And we could use any margin that we made to till back into research and development of technology that we were really starting to lean into.
And that's when we started looking for the. We were able to look at the entire watershed and categorize and prioritize which of those fields and ownerships would give you the greatest amount of environmental uplift for the least amount of cost. And that's when we figured out how to X ray nature, if you will. So now we can sort through. We can sort through 30 million acres to find the 10,000 that matter, and then we can take the, you know, basically stack the resources in a way that we can get those best projects done. We ended up spending a little more than four and a half million bucks to do the actual, you know, on the ground work, which include.
Includes 20 years of maintenance and monitoring of those sites. But we, but then we split the. We split the savings with the city. And so we were still able to take some money for R and D, but we also saved.
Saved the municipalities some more dollars as well, which led to a later contract. And then, you know, because we did a good job, the town, the next town over did the same thing. And we've had a couple of repeat contracts with each, which has been, you know, it's been good for them, it's been good for us. But because we were able to send a consistent demand signal into a watershed with a significant pot of money that could fund those actions that actually led to a lot of jobs. I mean, there were native stock nurseries that jumped up and there were folks that could go in and do that work on the ground themselves. So it's had multiple benefits beyond the. First, we're going to get just the kilocalories for these folks because nature gives us multiple benefits, even though we're only transacting on one. We're getting a lot of other things.
[00:32:32] Speaker B: Very impressive. First off, let me say that second, how do you find willing participants? I mean, from utilities to farmers to ranchers to.
How do you convince someone that the system will work?
[00:32:47] Speaker A: Well, I'll tell you, getting that bird off the ground originally was tough. I mean, we, you know, we were, we were negotiating with EPA and the state corollary that, hey, look, we can get you these outcomes using their approved federal models, right?
But even though it was on the books as something they could do, it just didn't happen that much.
So, you know, we had to, we were, you know, we had to negotiate with the regulating agency.
We had to talk to, you know, talk to finance and legal and leadership within the municipalities.
And, you know, this is all the while we're doing all the technical pieces to get this ready to go so we can get the outcomes that we're after.
And what you do in, you know, I'm a big believer in, you know, the best advocates for conservation work in, in rural America are new pickup trucks. Because if you can engage in conservation and still get your next F350, your neighbor's going to wonder about that. And so you always look for those, those early adopters that you can go in and, you know, have a discussion and explain the risks, explain where it could go and then be willing to back up anything that gets sideways, which we, that's always our organizational posture. If something goes sideways, we will, we'll make it right no matter what. And it was funny because the first few were slow, but then, you know, the line of landowners started to sort of extend around the block, if you will. And we were able to get all those folks involved in a way that made sense to them. And so it really had a momentum effect. And it's always best, you know, look, people, when you're looking at change, they're sizing up risk.
And when you're across the table from them and, you know, if you, if you're not a producer or you're not a regulator, it's a little bit different. Right?
So those early ones are tough, but now that we have regulators that have said it's easier for agencies to talk to agents, say this, this actually works. It has some legs.
Municipalities that have had success and saved money can, can tell that story to others.
And the same is true of agricultural producers. So you know, you want to get the guys in Carhartts talking to the guys in Carhartts and once you do that, they can judge risk and say, I'm not gonna, I'm not going to make an outlay here or dedicate land or change my operation in a way that is going to bring me down. But it actually works and has a lot of other enhancing effects that can make me more money. And so what we really look for is what really solves each individual's self interested problem. And it's, you know, and I think that self interest is not a bad thing. Self interest is the way that we can actually carry what we've lifted here. But you really, you know, the tools that we've developed from the analytics, we convert all of this data into a map. And maps have this amazing way of melting away barriers, right? It's not me saying, hey, this is, this is where we should focus. It's not somebody else saying that it's a map that's driven by, by data where they live.
And once, certainly after we true it up and get, you know, make sure that every field is correct and the rotations are right and then folks, they can see it for themselves. And so it really got in. You know, you're immediately into sort of collaborative problem solving without even, we're not talking anybody into anything. The answer is right there in front of us.
And they say they can see that if I undertake these actions, I'm going to be kept whole or better and I'm going to get some other benefits out of that as a producer. And the key to all of this is agriculture.
Agriculture is unregulated. They will never be regulated.
And so we are, but they are both the, you know, agriculture. And I say this, you know, as a kid, buck and hay that still have beans and hogs in the family.
I mean, you know, it is both the problem and the solution.
And it's really, again, it's not anyone's fault. It's just how we set things up in the beginning. And so we're now just, we're not trying to wholesale change the system of how we operate. We're just trying to make a few tweaks here and there in how this whole thing operates so that we can have a smooth set of mechanics to essentially shorten the time from an idea to an action, right?
[00:37:51] Speaker B: So when, when, when you take all this into account, what do you, when you look out into the future, what are the biggest opportunities you see for leveraging the data driven approach, the quantified conservation that Freshwater Trust espouses?
[00:38:09] Speaker A: Well, I think we're, we're well on our way to doing that.
It has been, you know, we have worked on the, on both the, the legislative front, you know, we have a Watershed Results act that is in, in markup now on the Senate side.
We believe that sometime will pass.
But you know, the policy work with, with all of these federal agencies that do touch water, all of the state and municipal agencies, entities that touch water, as well as the funding that's affiliated, it's really about making sure that we can translate across all of those languages, if you will, and timelines to begin to integrate them.
So we have a few that are happening. I mean the technology travels well, right? So we're operating now. You know, when we started doing this, we were just operating in Oregon. Now we're operating in Central Valley of California. We have, you know, counterparties that are across several jurisdictions building on, you know, a $350 million investment from Sacramento Sewer.
We've got some things going on in the Snake river in Idaho that brings together, you know, everybody from Idaho power to the tribes to the irrigators, to both the states of Oregon and Idaho, which many of these parties would never, you know, would never really be able to collaborate. But we've been able to kind of use these pieces to bring them together. The technology really does kind of pull out all the needles in the haystack so we can see what needs to happen.
But it also enables the funders, state and federal, several different colors of money, if you will, that, that would be very difficult to do in a sequential, one by one by one, given all their granting cycles. And we can build kind of a finance stack, if you will, that can deploy. Once a qualified project shows and what that does, it just begins to automate what has been a, a very manualized and uncoordinated system.
So I think it's not a, you know, there's not a big magic bullet, but it's, it's by continually looking at how the, how these parts of a system that are kind of scattered across the shop floor can ultimately be, you know, put together as, you know, you know, a good sturdy, well, running tractor. Right, that's kind of where we're going. So it really is a multi sided transaction. But you know, policy matters, funding matters, but you have to always think about the end user and from a water quality perspective, the biggest task in front of us is how do we make these things work easily for a landowner who's making decisions around their water?
[00:41:28] Speaker B: Can you talk a little about data quality so that you avoid the junk in, junk out problem? I mean, how do you, how do you get data that's, that can be relied upon and your constituents can feel comfortable that investments they're making are going to pan out?
[00:41:46] Speaker A: Very real issue.
Basins and sub basins across the U.S. and we're primarily focused in the Western U.S. but they are, to your point, data comes in, data comes at us in all different kinds of ways. And it's largely a mosaic. Right. You know, some places, especially if you're dealing with well water, there are some basins that have 20 years of well water data that's outstanding, and then there are some basins that have, you know, nothing.
And then we have some that are a mosaic. The biggest receptacle of data, Texas A and M has, you know, basically since the Dust bowl cataloged all the slopes, all of the soils, all the crop rotations, all the aspects, and that has been, that's, that's been the very best for us. When looking at, you know, agricultural land, we augment that data with satellite imagery, sometimes lidar if needed, depending on what we're doing and how we're doing it. If you're dealing with, you know, moving water across the landscape, or if you're dealing with, you know, just understanding how water, how return flows happen after you, it goes across an irrigated field.
[00:43:09] Speaker B: We.
[00:43:09] Speaker A: Leverage NASA data in order to basically build these data informed maps that can give you scenarios. If you do this, if you put a pivot irrigation system on a flood irrigated field that is growing potatoes in Idaho, you can remove this much sediment and that much phosphorus from the return flows back into the Snake river and then we can start making those transactions happen so that we can place the right amount of money and no more where we need to. Because the big, the big thing here, the more we have focused on this by leveraging data and focusing on the outcome versus the process, what we can do is ensure like there is more than enough money in our system to fix every water problem that we have.
We just have to spend that money.
Well, and we have for the last 50 years not done that.
And again, it's not anybody's fault. I think people were working on their piece of the problem, but it's been nobody's responsibility to look at the entire accumulated impacts across a watershed. And now we have that ability so we can sort through a 40 million acres, find those 10,000, put the deals together for that small group of landowners that can truly make a difference there, keep them whole and even improve their financial picture based on what's happening with their, you know, what commodity and you know, what grade they're taking to market.
And then we're off to the races.
So I think that's, that's a big, it's not a very popular thing for me to say for, for folks that are out there, you know, seeking grants and saying, man, you know, all this stuff's up in the air and you know, we're getting clawbacks, you know, and bonding is tough, you know, to get things out there.
But when you begin to understand what we're paying for, what we're not getting on the regular, it's killing us. And so I think, you know, figuring out those inefficiencies and focusing again, conservation. Conservation and environmentalism are two different things, right? They're, they're in the same family, but they're different things.
And so the reality is we have to like, modern environmentalism is based on legal action, right? Most people that are operating, you know, within environmental groups and conservation groups largely, they're not out there doing work on the ground so much as they're, you know, they're, they're litigating, they're advocating and so forth. And so when you focus not on a procedure based approach to this problem and you focus on the outcome and start working back from there, that's when your hands are free to chase solutions as opposed to slowing bad things down and keeping bad things from happening. If you focus on outcomes, you can make good things happen. And that's kind of we just flip the switch really in about 2005 and said, look, we, you know, if you, if you look at this whole thing as a, you know, a capture the flag game, the conservation has like 10,000 people protecting one flag, but nobody was chasing the other one. And we said, look, we're going to go chase the other one. And we caught all kinds of heat for that. But, you know, over time, because we've stuck with it and now we're starting to put points on the board, people are saying, wow, you know what?
Things that would not have happened under a procedure based approach are beginning to happen on this outcome based approach.
And again, making a system easy for all the participants.
That's where technology comes in and automates what was once a very manualized system.
[00:47:33] Speaker B: Awesome work, awesome work. So, uh, Joe, you've been Great. Today I'd, I'd love to hear your leave behind message before we, before we say goodbye.
[00:47:41] Speaker A: I think, you know, if there's one thing that folks need to understand about water problems, if you will, is they're fixable.
They're fixable. With new tools, technology, when coupled with a consistent demand signal of all the different types of funds that we have that can be stacked and focused on outcomes, we can get all the way home on these things. And so it's more of a message of it's not just hope. I mean, we're seeing it happen. And so I think the big thing is we can fix this. We just have to adjust a little bit and look forward.
[00:48:26] Speaker B: Awesome.
Well, Joe, again, you've been terrific. I've really appreciated the opportunity to speak with you and the work you're doing is tremendous. For those who want to find out more about you and your work at the Freshwater Trust, where can people go to get that information?
[00:48:40] Speaker A: Is this a trick question?
TheFreshWaterTrust.org, come on.
[00:48:45] Speaker B: All right. Awesome.
Perfect. Well, yeah. So for those who want to learn more, go to the freshwatertrust.org thank you so much, Joe. It was great speaking with you and we'll talk again soon, I'm sure. Bye now.
[00:48:57] Speaker A: Thanks a ton, Dave. This was great.
[00:49:00] Speaker B: Absolutely loved Joe's interview. Technology adoption can be so hard and kudos to Joe for successfully implementing the solution within the Freshwater Trust's framework. Great job, Joe and team. Keep up the great work.
Well, I'd love to know what you thought about the interview. Please check out the Show Notes page for information and links on this episode. Just Google the Water Values podcast and click the first link that comes up. That's our home on the Bluefield Research website. Again, for long, long term, listeners know that the Water Values LLC and Bluefield Research LLC are not affiliates. We just have a joint marketing arrangement. And as part of that, Bluefield Research gives us a home on the web. Well, you can email me@david mcgimpseyentons.com and you can sign up for the newsletter at the aforementioned landing page on the Bluefield Research site as well. Thank you again for tuning in and I hope you make it a great day.
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