I spent a while reading the actual primary sources both sides cite so you don't have to.

Short version: the studies finding an IQ effect are real and well-designed. So are the studies finding none. They're mostly answering different questions. Dose and timing turn out to matter more than "fluoride: yes or no." I walk through where the evidence actually lines up, and where the genuine open question still is.//

• Full citations and in-text citations on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/cw/TheAquaDiaryPodcast

• Free newsletter for updates and resources: substack.com/@aquadiarypodcast

• Learn more at aquadiary.org

Questions this episode answers:

• What is happening in Niagara County, NY right now

• How does soil radiation impact water supplies?

• What is "slag" and why is it radioactive?

• Is Niagara County linked to the Manhattan Project?

• Why did officials know about this for 40 years?

• What are agencies doing about Niagara County's radiation?

Sources & further reading:

This episode cites 22 sources.

• Full source list free on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/c/TheAquaDiaryPodcastFull script with in-text citations available to $3/mo members

Get involved:

• Local advocacy: Save Our Backyards Niagara

• Sign up for updates: https://substack.com/@aquadiarypodcast

• Upcoming events: aquadiary.org

Work with me:

Municipality, lake association, or organization needing help communicating a science or environmental issue clearly? Want me to speak at your next event?

• Email aquadiary.podcast@gmail.com

📍 Town of Niagara, NY | Niagara County, NY

In this episode I sit down with Rick Smith of Global Aquatic Research to unpack what's actually happening across the Finger Lakes right now: the PFAS-in-foam research out of Canandaigua Lake and what it means as the project expands, why harmful algal blooms are starting earlier and lasting longer, and what we know about lake foam. This one got more unsettling than I expected, in the best way.

🔬 Guest: Rick Smith, Founder, Global Aquatic Research📍 Filmed in Auburn, NY - thank you to ARMA for the equipment and assistance.

NOTE: This episode's interview segment was shot on a greenscreen. The background used behind Rick and me was purchased (and made custom) from an online marketplace and found to be AI-generated. I didn't know at the time of editing. I'll be vetting background sources more carefully going forward. All audio and footage of us is raw from the interview and unaltered.// Links:

• Follow Rick's Research: globalaquaticresearch.com

• Get Involved! - Introducing the Finger Lakes Foam Reporting Tool: https://www.globalaquaticresearch.com/finger-lakes.html

• NYSDEC HABs map & reporting: https://dec.ny.gov/environmental-protection/water/water-quality/harmful-algal-blooms/notifications

• Support the show on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/c/TheAquaDiaryPodcast

• Substack (free water quality guides): https://substack.com/@aquadiarypodcast

• Inquiries: aquadiary.podcast@gmail.com

• www.aquadiary.org

Hey Aquaholics,

I’ve had my hands, boots, (and one very unfortunate pair of socks) in a lot of water systems lately, so let’s catch up.

A Complete Tour of Municipal Water Filtration

If you’ve ever turned on a tap and just... trusted it, this last episode is for you. I stepped inside a (high security) water filtration plant and asked all the questions. Dave Rowley from the Rochester NY Water Bureau, showed us the inside of the Hemlock Filtration Plant and offered full transparency.

A few things that stuck with me:

• Dave is full of fun quotes throughout, one of my favorites being “fluoride isn’t making you stupid, the internet is.”

• There’s an old tugboat generator on site and the building was built around it. The replacement parts for the controls only exist on eBay. I did not expect municipal infrastructure to depend on eBay, but here we are.

This tour made me think about how infrastructure only gets attention when it fails, and how critical it is that we maintain it.

Nobody throws a parade for water that just works. Maybe they should.

Watch the full episode here.

I Sat Down with FingerLakes1’s In Focus Podcast

Had a great conversation for their In Focus series, talking through what AquaDiary is actually trying to do and why I think the Finger Lakes region is one of the most underrated places in the country to be paying attention to water right now.

Give it a listen here:

Coming Soon: Rick Smith on the Foam You’ve Been Seeing

This one’s been in the works for a while. I interviewed researcher Rick Smith from Global Aquatics Research last Friday about PFAS and harmful algal blooms, specifically the foam that shows up on Finger Lakes shorelines and what it might actually be telling us. We shot it on green screen, so I’ve spent more hours than I’d like to admit in DaVinci Resolve this week keying out the background and trying to make it look like Rick and I were never standing in front of a giant green wall. Post-production is a special kind of patience test. More on this one soon (hopefully this Friday).

Photo courtesy of Rick Smith on Canandaigua Lake

The Website Is Officially Live

www.aquadiary.org is up. You can see where I’ll be speakingh, find ways to support the show, and soon to come and (widely-requested) - merch.

Some “Aquaholics Anonymous” energy. ^{I regret nothing.}

Send me an email at aquadiary.podcast@gmail.com with water pun ideas.

The Thing I Keep Coming Back To

Here’s what a month of filming treatment plants and reading contamination reports back-to-back does to a person:

It makes you realize how much of environmental stewardship is invisible until it isn’t. The plant that quietly does its job for decades doesn’t make the news. The one that fails, or the contamination that gets buried for years before anyone finds out, does.

I think that’s actually the throughline of everything I’m working on right now, whether it’s a filtration plant that deserves more credit than it gets or a Superfund site that’s overdue for scrutiny it hasn’t received (please ask the EPA why they’re ignoring my FOIA requests please and thanks).

The good systems and the failing ones often look identical from the surface. The only way to tell the difference is to actually go look. That’s the whole job, really. Go look, ask who knew what and when, and tell people what you find in plain language.

Thanks for being here for it.

Ally

This is the most in-depth water treatment plant tour I've filmed on this show. We walk through the entire process step by step, including pH Adjustment, coagulation, filtration, disinfection, corrosion control, and fluoridation.

Beyond the treatment steps themselves, we see what it actually takes to run a plant like this day to day: how backwash filtering works to keep the filters clean and operating efficiently, how chemical storage and chemical feed systems are managed and maintained, and how the Water Bureau is approaching aging infrastructure, including an old tugboat generator still in use, for which replacement control parts can only be found on eBay.

We also get into how tap water testing compares to bottled water regulation, and why your annual water quality report is one of the most underused resources for understanding what's actually in your water.

Mentioned in this episode:

• The Bottled Water Scam: https://youtu.be/8t2hWfc-GfI?si=4L4Y5h6kXMPjlUfX

• Rochester Water Bureau on Lead Pipes: https://youtu.be/1ScftnN7g8s?si=QTJINwVLeM4vmDJr

About AquaDiary:

AquaDiary is an independent media project covering water quality, lake science, and the infrastructure most people never think about until something goes wrong. New episodes weekly.

Support the show on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/c/TheAquaDiaryPodcast

Substack (free water quality guides): https://substack.com/@aquadiarypodcast

Thanks to David Rowley and the Rochester Water Bureau for the access and the time.

Everyone covers the smoke in our lungs. Almost nobody covers what that same smoke does to our drinking water and lakes. This episode traces the whole chain: the light-blocking, algae-fertilizing double effect of ash on a lake surface, the "lake that turns to tea" carbon browning problem, the neurotoxin that works its way up the food chain into the fish on your plate, and what all of it means for the water coming out of your tap.

I also talked to a silvicultural forester with the U.S. Forest Service (speaking personally, not for the agency) about the century of fire suppression policy sitting underneath all of this, and about a genuinely strange soil chemistry mechanism that turns a burned hillside into a mudslide waiting to happen.

And yes, we go there on the oil and gas question: how much of this traces back to Alberta's oil sands, what the actual peer-reviewed attribution science says, and where that research runs out.If 2023 felt like a freak year, 2026 is making a strong case that this is just what North American summers look like now. For us, and for our lakes.//

AquaDiary is an independent water science and investigative podcast that aims to teach people about water resources

• 🎙️ All sources cited on Patreon, full scripts for $3/mo - patreon.com/c/TheAquaDiaryPodcast

• 📌 YOUTUBE MEMBERS — early access and monthly live Q&A

• 🧪 NEWSLETTER – Free PDF on how to read your annual drinking water report [https://substack.com/@aquadiarypodcast]

• 📩 SPEAKING + CONSULTING inquiries: aquadiary.podcast@gmail.com,

• New Website!

I want to tell you about a comment that’s been sitting with me for weeks and share some important updates.

Someone watching the Reflecting Pool episode wrote, half-joking, that the way I communicate science emulates the lessons in “Demon-Haunted World” by Carl Sagan. I didn’t set out to sound like anyone, but I couldn’t help but to take it as a compliment. I hate to admit; I had to look this book up because I had never heard of it before. Turns out, it just hit its 30th anniversary this year. What a coincidence. I’m also 30.

After 1 chapter, I can understand why they said what they did. Maybe I had somehow unconsciously absorbed Sagan’s old insistence that skepticism and wonder aren’t opposites, that you can hold a flashlight up to something and still be in awe of what it shows you. That is what we are doing here on AquaDiary - keeping the wonder of water alive and delving into scientific inquiry and investigation when the situation calls for it.

Sagan spent a career trying to hand people the tools to tell sense from nonsense without ever asking them to trust him blindly, and if there’s a north star for what I’m trying to do with this channel, that’s probably it.

Ironically, less than 24 hours later, I received an email from the Center for Inquiry - a nonprofit founded and inspired by great minds, such as Carl Sagan, Isaac Asimov, James Randi, Paul Kurtz, and Richard Dawkins. They wanted to know if I’d be willing to speak at one of their events, collaborate with them, and visit their library.

I’m sorry what? The same CFI that has hosted Neil Degrasse Tyson and Bill Nye? The same CFI that runs Skeptical Inquirer? Coincidences are a wonder too, aren’t they? The timing of the 30- year anniversary of Sagan’s book, the YouTube comment, and this email altogether is just incredible timing. I of course said yes, and will be meeting with them later this week to discuss logistics, topics, etc. I feel so incredibly grateful and respected to have been asked to contribute to their long-standing mission of defending critical thinking.

This is a great segue into how I’ve been sharing my research and sources since I started this podcast back in April.

Until now, my fully cited scripts have lived behind a $3 paywall or 7-day free trial on Patreon. I moved them there for a boring, practical reason. YouTube, Spotify, and Apple episode descriptions have a character limit, and my citations kept blowing past it as the research got more serious. But a few of you pointed out that a science communication platform asking people to pay in order to verify its claims is a strange look. You were right. This podcast is supposed to be the opposite of gatekeeping.

So, as of today, every citation for my existing episodes are now on Patreon in a 35-page document - organized by episode.

Lucky you, you can find it by clicking here.

The scripts and behind-the-scenes material stay in the $3 tier, (because journal access and equipment and production don’t pay for themselves) but the sources themselves shouldn’t have a price tag. The source list will become a free post with each episode release. And to everyone who pushed back on this, thank you. I don’t always get it right the first time, but I’m listening.

That same throughline, bringing people the receipts instead of the reassurance, is a lot of why I said yes when the Center for Inquiry invited me to speak. CFI has spent decades doing at a larger scale what I’m trying to do with a lake and a microphone: insisting that curiosity and rigor belong in the same sentence.

I’ll also be speaking at Cornell in October, which still feels a little surreal to type.

Between the two, and the conversations that have followed, I’ve decided to build a proper site for inquiries over the coming weeks, but if you want to get ahead of the line before it’s public, email me now at AquaDiary.Podcast@gmail.com. I am not charging for advice or local speaker events right now. My schedule is filling up fast & so is my inbox.

A couple more things I’m excited about: I’ll be popping up as a guest on another podcast soon! Stay tuned for that.

And I’m inviting a researcher (Global Aquatics Research, LLC) onto AquaDiary to discuss PFAS accumulation in lake foam (among other topics), which is exactly the kind of quietly alarming, deeply under-covered topic this show exists for.

I’ll share dates as soon as they’re locked.

Huge thank you to the Auburn Public Theater who has offered their studio to me for podcast interviews! Carey Eidel is a pretty cool guy if you haven’t heard of him. Thank you Carey!

Meanwhile, I’m deep in post-production on the Rochester drinking water episode, starting with the lead sampling footage. It’s a dense one. The lab technicians and the Water Bureau directors gave me a lot to work with, in the best way. I’m aiming for this Friday, the usual release day, but Rochester’s Water Bureau needs to review it before it goes out, so there’s a real chance it slips a few days past that. I’d rather it be right than rushed.

That’s the update. Thanks for reading this far, and for sticking with this odd little show as it keeps growing and keeps getting better.

— Ally

The most common question in the comments: is there actually a fix for algae? Copper sulfate. Silver. Hydrogen peroxide. Ultrasound. Aeration.

I went through every tool, and gave you an honest verdict on each one.Is there a silver bullet for algae? What actually kills a harmful algal bloom? What are cyanobacteria toxins and how dangerous are they? How do you tell if a bloom is toxic just by looking at it? What do lake managers actually do differently?

I'm Ally, an environmental scientist. I manage lakes and algae professionally, and I'm giving you the honest version of what works, what doesn't. Full disclosure.

32 citations from EPA, NALMS, and peer-reviewed toxicology and limnology journals. Full reference list on Patreon.🎙️

AquaDiary is water science for people who want to understand what's actually in their water.

📌 FOLLOW for new episodes every week

🧪 PATREON — full citations: https://www.patreon.com/c/TheAquaDiaryPodcast

📩 FREE NEWSLETTER: https://substack.com/@aquadiarypodcast

🌊 Inquiries: Send me a photo of your bloom, ask about your water, or invite me to speak at your next event: AquaDiary.Podcast@gmail.com.

Everyone’s covering the politics. Nobody’s covering the science.

Here’s the short version: the Reflecting Pool is eighteen inches deep, fully exposed to summer sun, completely still by design, and sits in a park full of geese. That combination, warmth, light, stillness, nutrients, is the exact recipe for algal growth. It has produced algae in this pool every single year since it was built, back in 1922. The 2012 renovation bloomed within weeks. The 2019 drainage was for algae growing inside the pipes. This outcome was not a surprise to anyone who manages water bodies professionally.

What’s being underreported is the species question. The bloom was publicly identified as non-toxic green algae, but researchers who examined the samples reported they struggled to fully characterize them because the remediation chemicals had already degraded the cells before the identification was complete.

Toxin assays came back inconclusive. Field scientists noted cyanobacterial characteristics including earthy scent and surface films consistent with cyanobacteria.

Then three birds turned up dead within 24 hours across the pool and an adjacent pond. Necropsies are pending.

The treatment-first, identify-second sequence is not consistent with standard harmful algal bloom response protocol. At a site visited by 24 million people annually, that gap matters.

I broke down the full picture in this week’s AquaDiary episode: the history, the contracts, the chemistry, the dead ducks, and what honest algae management at a site like this actually looks like.

Click here for the full episode

I started AquaDiary because water science is consistently underexplained in public coverage of stories exactly like this one. The chemistry, the biology, the management failures, they're not complicated, they're just not being translated. That's what this channel is for.

As a lake management associate and member of the North American Lake Management Society, I work on water bodies like this professionally. The standard of care for a system with a documented hundred-year history of recurring blooms is a management plan — a diagnostic document that characterizes the water body and surrounding land, quantifies where nutrients are coming from, and defines a monitoring-linked treatment protocol before any chemical intervention is selected.

One of those would have cost less than one percent of what was spent on paint. It was not part of this renovation.

That’s not a political observation. It’s just what the professional framework says.

If you have a waterbody you’re concerned about (lake, pond, etc.), I do this professionally! Feel free to email me for inquiries at aquadiary.podcast@gmail.com.

I'm an environmental scientist and work professionally inlake and algae management, and this is my professional breakdown of what actually happened, why it was completely predictable, and what the science says about the decisions that were made, including the species identification thatmay have been inconclusive before workers poured chemicals into the water.

The pool has had algae since 1922. This is not a newproblem. It is a physics and biology problem that no renovation has ever solved, and this episode explains why.

• All sources cited on Patreon for $3 a month: patreon.com/c/TheAquaDiaryPodcast

🎙️ AquaDiary is water science for people who want to understand what's actually in their water.
📌 YOUTUBE MEMBERS — early access and monthly live Q&A
🧪 NEWSLETTER – free PDFS on how to read your water report or analysis [https://substack.com/@aquadiarypodcast]
📩 SPEAKING + CONSULTING inquiries: aquadiary.podcast@gmail.com

We cover what microplastics are and why different studies report wildly different numbers (the range between studies is 400,000-fold — and that tells you something important), what the newest human health research actually concludes versus what it's still working on, why bottled water is measurably worse than tap water for microplastic exposure, and which water filters have the independent certifications to back up their claims (including an honest breakdown of the one I personally use and exactly where its certifications do and don't hold up.)

No panic. No dismissal. Just the science, the uncertainty, and what's actually worth doing about it.

• Sign up for the email list to get free guides: https://substack.com/@aquadiarypodcast

• Consider supporting the show on Patreon for early access to scripts and full citation lists: https://www.patreon.com/c/TheAquaDiaryPodcast

• In need of help? Email me at: aquadiary.podcast@gmail.com

Resources:

• NSF filter certification lookup (verify any filter's actual certifications): https://www.nsf.org/consumer-resources/water-quality

• EPA on microplastics: https://www.epa.gov/trash-free-waters/microplastics

Microplastic filter recommendations (affiliate):

1. Countertop RO: https://amzn.to/3Qvlmsg

2. Berkey: https://amzn.to/4oD8i0x

3. Ultrafiltration: https://amzn.to/4eSbja8

I want to tell you about the moment this story clicked for me.

I was sitting at my desk in Skaneateles, New York, maybe 200 feet from Skaneateles Lake, a lake I’ve been studying, swimming in, and frankly worrying about professionally for most of my adult lif, reading a press release about the largest semiconductor fabrication complex in the history of the United States being built forty minutes north of me.

The press release was glowing. Senators were quoted. The county executive used the phrase “Erie Canal Moment.” There were renderings of gleaming buildings and smiling workers in hard hats.

And I kept scrolling, waiting for the part where someone asked about the water.

I’m still waiting.

Here’s the situation, in plain language, from someone whose actual job involves understanding what happens to water when the land around it changes.

Micron Technology is building four semiconductor fabs in Clay, New York, just north of Syracuse, on a site that required clearing roughly 200 acres of freshwater wetlands. The project is backed by $6.1 billion in federal CHIPS Act funding and a package of state incentives. At full build-out, it represents a $100 billion investment and is projected to bring 9,000 direct jobs and 50,000 statewide.

Onondaga County is projecting a 60% population increase tied to this project. Sixty percent. In a metro area that has had essentially flat population growth for fifteen years.

That is not a rounding error. That is a different region. And all of those people, the engineers relocating from Austin and Phoenix, the families who come with them, the service workers and teachers and nurses who follow, will need to drink water.

I keep thinking about that number. Not the $100 billion. The 60%.

Let me tell you what I actually do for a living, because it’s relevant here.

I’m an environmental scientist and a lake management associate through the North American Lake Management Society (NALMS). I spend my professional life thinking about how water systems respond to pressure, including nutrient loading, climate stress, development, and withdrawal rates. I’ve inspected the Owasco Lake watershed and helped argue the cause for updated watershed rules and regulations to state agencies. I am the President Elect of the Owasco Watershed Lake Association. I manage lakes all over the country. I run a show called AquaDiary where I try to explain water science to people who didn’t sign up for a graduate degree but still want to understand what’s coming out of their tap. I don’t say this to brag. I say this to provide you with context on how I think and how often I’ve seen these patterns.

I am not an activist. I am not anti-Micron. I think the economic case for this project is real and I think this region has been waiting for something like it for a long time.

I am, however, a scientist. And the scientist in me has been reading the permits.

The thing about semiconductor manufacturing is that it uses PFAS, the forever chemicals. You’ve heard me talk about PFAS before. The same family of compounds that turned up in Hoosick Falls’ drinking water, the same chemistry behind the Dark Waters story, the same indestructible fluorinated molecules that the EPA has spent the last decade trying to regulate at the parts-per-trillion level.

Semiconductor fabs use PFAS because the chemistry of making a chip is extraordinarily aggressive. You’re etching microscopic circuit patterns onto silicon wafers using light and fluorinated compounds that resist heat, repel contaminants, and are chemically stable under conditions that would destroy almost anything else. You cannot currently make the chips in your phone without some version of this process.

A Cornell doctoral researcher analyzed wastewater from semiconductor fabrication facilities using non-targeted testing, meaning she didn’t just look for the compounds on a preset list, she looked for everything. She found 133 PFAS compounds in fab effluent. The EPA’s standard testing method covers about 40.

If your permit only requires testing for 40 compounds and you’re discharging 133, you can be in full legal compliance while releasing 93 things nobody is measuring.

In April 2026, New York State signed Micron’s wastewater discharge permit with zero enforceable PFAS limits.

I’ll let that sit for a second.

Now, and this is the part where I have to be careful, because I am a scientist and precision is the whole point, Micron’s wastewater does not flow into the Skaneateles watershed. The discharge path runs to the Oak Orchard Wastewater Treatment Plant, then to the Oneida River, then to Lake Ontario. That is a separate system from the lake that feeds 220,000 Central New Yorkers unfiltered tap water.

I want to be honest about that distinction, though, because the most alarming version of this story — “Micron will poison your drinking water” — is not what the science supports. And when scientists overclaim, we lose the credibility we need to make the argument that actually matters.

The argument that actually matters is this:

Lake Ontario is the supplemental drinking water supply for the Syracuse region. The City of Syracuse already draws on Lake Ontario water during drought conditions and periods of peak demand, via a pipeline built in the 1970s specifically because the region knew, even then, that Skaneateles alone couldn’t carry the load under stress.

Now add 250,000 new people. Now add the climate projections for the Great Lakes region, which consistently show more frequent and more severe droughts. Now consider that the Lake Ontario supply sits downstream of the Oneida River outfall.

The direct PFAS risk to your tap from a single fab, diluted into a lake that covers 7,500 square miles, is genuinely low under current projections. I want to be straight with you about that.

What is not low is the 20-year accumulation question for persistent compounds that don’t break down. What is not characterized is the 93 compounds nobody is testing for. And what is not in place is the monitoring framework that would tell us, definitively, what is being discharged and where it goes.

We are being asked to trust a system we haven’t built yet.

The other water story, the one I think is actually bigger, and almost completely absent from the public conversation, is simpler and slower and harder to make alarming.

Skaneateles Lake has an 18-year water retention time.

Water that enters that watershed stays in that lake for nearly two decades. That’s what makes it clean. That’s what makes it one of the only large public water systems in the country that qualifies to operate without a filtration plant, sending raw lake water to the taps of 220,000 people after treatment but without a full filtration stage. That waiver is not a luxury. For the communities that depend on it, it is load-bearing, and worth hundreds of millions of dollars in infrastructure they don’t have to build.

The 18-year retention time also means this: by the time a problem shows up in the water, the cause is years in the past. You are not managing in real time. You are managing against a two-decade lag.

The Skaneateles Lake Association, the only nonprofit organization solely dedicated to this lak, has formally raised concerns about the adequacy of infrastructure planning in the context of Micron-driven growth. Their argument is not “stop Micron.” Their argument is: the decisions being made right now will govern this lake for the next 50 years. The planning window is now. Not when the second fab breaks ground. Not when the census numbers come in. Now.

I think they’re right. And I think the fact that their letter hasn’t made it into a single major piece of coverage about this project tells you something about what we’ve decided to pay attention to.

Here’s what I keep coming back to.

The Erie Canal changed everything about this region. It also created problems nobody anticipated, ecological disruption, invasive species pathways, development pressures on waterways that had never seen that kind of use. We know this in retrospect. We have the benefit of 200 years of hindsight.

We don’t get hindsight on Skaneateles. We get this window, right now, where the permits are being finalized and the bonds are being debated and the growth is still a projection. That window closes.

I’ve spent my career studying what happens to water systems when people stop paying attention to the slow, boring risks. The dramatic risks get coverage. The slow ones don’t. And the slow ones are almost always the ones that matter most.

This is a slow one. I’m paying attention. I hope you will too.

The full episode, with the PFAS chemistry, the demand math, the permit record, and the SLA’s specific asks — is on AquaDiary now. Watch it on YouTube here.

And if you have water quality test results you want reviewed, or you’re looking for a speaker for your next environmental or water-focused event — that’s what I do. You can reach me through the website or email me at aquadiary.podcast@gmail.com

Ally Berry is an environmental scientist, certified lake manager, and the host of AquaDiary, an investigative water science show covering the lakes, rivers, and drinking water systems of the Northeast and beyond. She is based in the Finger Lakes region of New York.

This episode covers PFAS in semiconductor wastewater (what the science actually shows, including a Cornell study that found 133 PFAS compounds in fab effluent), the demand math for 250,000 new residents on a drought-stressed water system, and the specific concern the Skaneateles Lake Association has formally raised about the region's most critical (and most vulnerable) drinking water source. Skaneateles Lake feeds 220,000 Central New Yorkers unfiltered. Its 18-year water retention time means that by the time a problem shows up in the water, the cause is years in the past. The planning window is now.

This is not a "stop Micron" episode. The jobs are real, the economic case is real, and this region has been waiting for a growth driver like this for decades. It's a planning story. And right now, the planning is not matching the scale of what's being built.

I’m Ally, an environmental scientist in the Finger Lakes region — and on AquaDiary I turn everyday people into the kind of person who can read a water-quality report and know when to actually worry. This episode breaks down PFAS and PFOA in plain language: what “forever chemicals” are, how they got into drinking water, what they do to the human body, how one ordinary resident (Michael Hickey) cracked the case before any agency did, and — most importantly — the concrete steps you can take to check and protect your own water at home.

If you’ve seen the movie Dark Waters, this is the same chemical. That’s not a coincidence. It’s a pattern. And once you can see it, you can’t unsee it.

Check your own water:

• EPA — Find your local Consumer Confidence Report (annual water quality report): https://www.epa.gov/ccr

• EPA — PFAS in drinking water (the federal limits & why): https://www.epa.gov/sdwa/drinking-water-regulations-pfas

• EPA — Drinking water lab certification (find a state-certified lab for private wells): https://www.epa.gov/dwlabcert/learn-about-laboratory-certification-drinking-water

• CDC / ATSDR — PFAS and your health, in plain language: https://www.atsdr.cdc.gov/pfas/

• NSF — Look up filters certified to reduce PFOA/PFOS (NSF/ANSI 53 & 58): https://www.nsf.org/consumer-resources/water-quality/water-filters

See the whole script and today's sources on Patreon:

This general update episode covers where the show is going this summer, the Onondaga Lake investigation, and why I need your help to fund independent water testing in Saratoga Springs.

Please consider supporting the show on Patreon: The AquaDiary Podcast | Podcast for water science, news and mysteries. | Patreon

In April 2026, routine marina renovations at Onondaga Lake uncovered mercury in sediment nobody had ever tested, in a lake declared cleaned up. The DEC says the origin is "unknown." The Onondaga Nation says they've been ignored for twenty years. And the experts who know the most about what's really in that lake cannot legally speak about it.

This episode covers the full contamination history of Onondaga Lake in Syracuse, NY, once designated as the most polluted lake in America. We dig into the Solvay Process Company's century of industrial dumping, 165,000 pounds of mercury discharged between 1946 and 1970, the mudboils in the Tully Valley still delivering salt and silt downstream through Onondaga Nation territory every single day, and the roster of companies — Honeywell, General Motors, National Grid, Crucible Specialty Metals, and others — that turned a sacred Haudenosaunee site (and the founding site of both the US and Haudenosaunee democracy) into a federal Superfund site.

We also explore what the Onondaga Nation has said from the beginning: that this cleanup was never enough, that their legal claim to their own homeland was dismissed on a technicality, and that the water their people have given thanks to for over a thousand years was declared clean without their agreement.

This is Part 1 of a two-part series. Next time, we will cover the cleanup, the eagles that came back, the fish that are still toxic, and the question with no clean answer: what does it mean to remediate a lake when the polluter gets to decide when it's done?

Further reading:Onondaga Nation land rights: onondaganation.orgRobin Wall Kimmerer, Braiding Sweetgrass (Milkweed Editions, 2013)Glenn Coin, Syracuse.com/NNY360, May 2026This episode had 28 citations. You can see them all by supporting the show on Patreon for $3 a month: https://www.patreon.com/c/TheAquaDiaryPodcast

Lois Gibbs was a 27-year-old housewife when she discovered her children were being poisoned by groundwater contamination seeping up through the soil beneath their home. State officials dismissed her community health survey as "useless housewife data." They told her to go home and tend her garden. She organized 90% of her neighborhood, held two EPA representatives hostage, and forced the creation of Superfund , the federal law under CERCLA that has since forced cleanup at over 1,300 hazardous waste sites across America.

As an environmental scientist and a woman, I'm telling this story the way it has never been told: through the water science and groundwater chemistry that made the contamination possible, the institutional misogyny that almost stopped the fight, and the fury of a mother who refused to leave her toxic neighborhood until every family was safe.

In March 2024, a maintenance worker discovered a man's body in Rochester's Highland Park Reservoir. It had been there for 24 days while water continued flowing to tens of thousands of taps. The water tested safe, but the story of how this was possible opens up something much larger about a city drinking from two of the most protected lakes in the country while simultaneously managing 15,000 lead pipes, two reservoirs out of federal compliance for nearly 20 years, and a chemical legacy in the watershed that took state environmental archives and a stonewalled FOIL request to piece together.

In this episode, environmental scientist Ally covers:

🔬 Where Rochester's water actually comes from — two glacier-carved Finger Lakes supplying 37 million gallons a day since 1876, with completely undeveloped shorelines and 6,800 acres of protected state forest.

☣️ The PCB scandal buried in the Canadice watershed. A private landowner draining transformer fluid into a tributary feeding your drinking water reservoir, and the fish test results still sitting in "draft form" two years after collection.

🚰 15,000 lead service lines still in the ground, what the city is doing about it, and how to get your water tested for free.

💀 The full story of Abdullahi Muya, the 29-year-old who drowned in Highland Park Reservoir in February 2024 and wasn't found for 24 days. and the federal compliance rule that's been deferred since 2006 that connects to the story.

🧫 The bloom science nobody in Rochester is talking about. Internal phosphorus loading documented in Hemlock and Canadice specifically, legacy septic systems still releasing nutrients 80 years after demolition, and the seiche dynamics that can trigger algal blooms from inside a protected lake with zero external input.

🧪 A University of Rochester study that found microplastic concentrations jumping from 10 particles per milliliter at the source to over 1,500 by the time it reached distribution. The source was clean, the pipes weren't.

💧 City water vs. suburb water, PFAS, disinfection byproducts, the Skaneateles comparison, the fracking fight nobody remembers, and what you can actually do

The water is safe. It's also complicated. This episode explains why.

Full citations at the AquaDiary Patreon (but comment if you want something): https://www.patreon.com/c/TheAquaDiaryPodcast

Free lead testing: WaterTest@CityofRochester.gov

In this episode of AquaDiary, environmental scientist Ally breaks down the science, the scandals, and the corporate playbook behind the bottled water industry. From FDA loopholes and hidden contamination to Nestlé pumping 130 million gallons for $200 a year while Flint had no clean water. This is the episode the bottled water industry doesn't want you to see.

What we cover:

1. Why bottled water is regulated by the FDA (not the EPA), and what that actually means for your safety

2. 45–64% of bottled water is just filtered tap water with a mountain on the label

3. The 60,000% markup you're paying, and where that money goes

4. Bottled water contamination cases the public was never told about

5. How chemicals leach from plastic bottles into your water

6. The Nestlé extraction scandal, and the communities that fought back

7. What 23 million private well users need to know

8. What you should actually drink, and how to filter it affordably

Read your water quality report free at EPA.gov. Test your well. Know what's in your glass.

Well water test kit recommendations + affiliate links:

• Varify: https://amzn.to/4eTDaHh

• Tapscore: https://amzn.to/3OChncN

• Safe Home: https://amzn.to/49ogLOP

Full reference list available on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/c/TheAquaDiaryPodcast