AquaDiary: Water Mysteries, Science & News

Syracuse, New York gets its drinking water directly from Skaneateles Lake. No filtration plant, no treatment beyond chlorination... and it has worked perfectly for 130 years. Then in 2024, the lake recorded 145 confirmed harmful algal blooms. The year before: 19. This episode is about what changed, what the science actually shows, and what 165,000 people probably don't know about the water coming out of their tap.Environmental scientist Ally and Finger Lakes local covers the full story: the

On the night of August 21, 1986, the residents of Cameroon's Nyos valley went to sleep and never woke up. Nearly 1,700 people and thousands of livestock were found dead by morning. No signs of struggle, no visible cause. Just silence and 4 very confused survivors.The lake was the murderer.In this episode, we cover the full story of Lake Nyos: the night of the disaster, the survivors who described a strange smell and sudden darkness, the scientists who pieced together what happened, and the

In 2014, a harmful algae bloom shut off drinking water for nearly half a million people in Toledo, Ohio. The city spent 65 million dollars responding. They've invested half a billion dollars in upgrades since. And every summer, the blooms come back.Harmful algal blooms are getting worse. And the reason why is more complicated than most people realize, and more alarming than most officials or lake managers are admitting.In this episode, environmental scientist and host Ally breaks down the full

Beach closures after rain aren't random. They're the result of a stormwater and sewer system that was never designed to handle what we're asking it to do — and in hundreds of American cities, including many in New York State, that system is sending raw sewage and dozens of chemicals directly into lakes and rivers when it downpours.In this episode, environmental scientist Ally breaks down how stormwater runoff works, what combined sewer systems are and why they overflow, what the New York State

The water in your glass right now has existed for over four billion years. It has been part of oceans, glaciers, clouds, rivers, and yes — other living things. It is the same water, cycling endlessly.In Episode 1 of AquaDiary, environmental scientist and host, Ally breaks down the water cycle - not the oversimplified version you learned in school, but the full picture. How water moves through evaporation, condensation, precipitation, transpiration, and infiltration. What a watershed actually is and

What are toxic algae, and how dangerous are they really? In this episode of AquaDiary, Ally breaks down the health risks of harmful algal blooms (HABs), including cyanotoxins like microcystin, how exposure can affect people and pets, why dogs can die within hours, what the health advisory limits are federally and by state, what toxic blooms mean for lakes and drinking water systems, how to find out if your state is monitoring for cyanotoxins, how to see if you're being exposed to toxins in your

Owasco Lake supplies drinking water to 45,000 people in central New York. In 2016, it made history, for the wrong reason. Cyanobacterial toxins were detected in the finished drinking water of a New York State public water system for the first time ever. Since then, the blooms have gotten worse, the lawsuits have piled up, and a number that gets cited constantly in the press may not be telling the whole story. In this episode, environmental scientist and Owasco local, Ally Berry, goes inside the

Welcome to AquaDiary, where the gap between water issues and scientific reality finally gets filled in. Understanding Water, Beneath the Surface.You’ve seen the stories: water contamination scares, mysterious lake phenomena, harmful algal blooms, fish kills, water crises, shifting water laws. But what do they actually mean? And how concerned should you be?Behind every story is context that rarely makes it into the hands of the public. Scientists understand it. Reporters summarize it. But the full