The Collective Tap: Conversations About Water

Native Americans used Indiana’s waterways long before colonization. While they derived many of the same uses, the Indigenous relationship to water bears some fundamental differences from the one exhibited most often today.

Being on the water is a special experience and provides a wide range of benefits. Fishing, paddling, bird watching, or walking along the water’s edge–all of these experiences can help forge a deeper relationship with this most essential element and inspire a greater interest in its protection.

This podcast has focused on the many ways that humans use water, but there are many more creatures big and small that depend on our waterways as well. In this episode, we talk about wetland habitats, unique species, conflicts with development, and how to help protect water and wildlife.

From earliest times, waterways have been the backbone of human communities. That history hasn’t always been positive, but there are signs that our relationship to these waterways is changing for the better.

THE COLLECTIVE TAP is a podcast about water and the many ways we interact with this critical resource every day. Some of those uses are obvious: washing dishes, swimming, or watering plants. Others are less obvious: generating energy, building roads, and manufacturing goods that travel far from the water’s source to reach their destination. But even given those many uses—and the many more users who expect clean water on demand—it’s easy to take for granted how critical this one resource is to life.

What, exactly, is the value of water? We try to answer this question through a series of engaging conversations with experts in their fields, and, hopefully, inspire a new appreciation of the waters you call home.

This season we’ve looked at some of the hidden uses of water. Energy production, manufacturing processes, and wastewater treatment (did you know stormwater is treated as a waste stream for which municipalities must comply with a regulatory permit?) all have the potential to produce pollutants that are felt in different ways. In this episode, we explore some of the hidden impacts of that pollution–impacts that have often been ignored.

After we use water–to wash dishes, shower, use the toilet, or even as part of an industrial process–where does it go? What’s in it, what happens to it, and how does it affect our water resources? In this episode, we talk with some of the people involved in treating and testing wastewater about this critical infrastructure.

A 2014 study by the Indiana Chamber of Commerce reported that Indiana’s manufacturing economy is more reliant on a sustainable and adequate supply of water than any other state in the nation, and manufacturing is the largest part of Indiana’s economy. In this episode, we talk with the Chamber as well as a couple of the state’s best known manufacturers about the relationship between water, production, and the state’s economy.

When you flip on your light switch, no water comes out, but you are using water all the same. In fact, Indiana ranks third in the nation in total coal consumption, and water is a big part of that consumption. We discuss the role water plays in producing the energy we use every day and how the state is planning for the future of Indiana’s energy needs.

THE COLLECTIVE TAP is a podcast about water and the many ways we interact with this critical resource every day. Some of those uses are obvious: washing dishes, swimming, or watering plants. Others are less obvious: generating energy, building roads, and manufacturing goods that travel far from the water’s source to reach their destination. But even given those many uses—and the many more users who expect clean water on demand—it’s easy to take for granted how critical this one resource is to life.

What, exactly, is the value of water? We try to answer this question through a series of engaging conversations with experts in their fields, and, hopefully, inspire a new appreciation of the waters you call home.