The Water Zone

Upper Water Management

Featured guests were John McPhee, General Manager and Dan Winterton, Director of Marketing of the Toro Irrigation and Lighting division. McPhee and Winterton discussed their division's sustainability mission which includes their commitment to responsible environmental practices as well as assisting customers in enhancing the health of their landscapes and our planet's eco system. Through their award winning product innovations, education activities, industry and public outreach, they are partnering with water agencies throughout the world helping to define, teach and instill world-class water management techniques to irrigation.

(Podcast recorded on December 17, 2020)

CEO and Chairperson of Sustainability

Special guests, Rick Olson, President and CEO of The Toro Company, and Angie Snavely, Director and Assistant General Counsel, Sustainability Chairperson for The Toro Company, discuss the company’s mission and current activity around sustainability and water conservation.

(Podcast recorded on December 10, 2020)

Hellas, Fellas

Rob De Thomas, General Manager of Hellas Construction. Hellas Construction company is the largest sports complex construction company in the US. Mr. De Thomas discusses the significant growth in synthetic turf and explains the newest technologies utilized for the installation of synthetic turf.  In addition, he discusses how they work with their clients to detail pertinent information about drainage, maintenance and the differences in synthetic turf used for soccer, baseball, football, track and etc.

(Podcast recorded on November 19, 2020)

Up to Standards

Special guest Scott Rowan, Director of Asset Management for DMB Community Life, Inc. California and Arizona communities shares landscape and water issues that face daily scrutiny. Scott explains his work with landscape contractors to establish guidelines for how work should be performed and measured. He also comments on what he sees as the future of landscapes.

(Podcast recorded on November 12, 2020)

Hall of Famers

Featured guests Don and Dave Hendrickson, recent inductees to the Green Industry Hall of Fame, detail their 50 year history in the irrigation and agriculture industries. They describe how they launched Hendrickson Brothers Irrigation Distribution and the many state of the art irrigation products they designed such as pressure regulators, drip irrigation manifolds and flow control regulators.

(Podcast recorded on November 5, 2020)

Burgess is Our Guest

Featured guest is Brandon Burgess, Conservation Specialist from Chino Basin Water Conservation District. Brandon discusses water conservation methods and technologies as well as their specialized education courses that are presented to both homeowners and landscape professionals at their facilities. He also speaks about the special programs they offer to perform free irrigation system site audits for their district's homeowners and commercial property owners.

(Podcast recorded on October 22, 2020)

Water like Gold

Featured guest, Merav Ben-David PhD, an ecologist in Wyoming, and candidate for the U.S. Senate, discusses how climate change will affect the world's water availability. She also details her studies on how the California and Wyoming fires greatly diminish critical water supplies and what we need to do to preserve our most precious resource.

(Podcast recorded on October 15, 2020)

Giving Back with Purpose

Featured guest is John McIntyre, managing director for the American Family Insurance Institute for Corporate and Social Impact. They are a division of American Family Insurance that operates as a venture capital investment company. The institute invests in visionary start-up entrepreneurs who are building a scalable social enterprise in the areas of economic opportunity, healthy youth development, learning and achievement and resilient communities. 

(Podcast recorded on October 8, 2020)

Blue Ops

Featured guest was Mr. Ghassan Korban, Executive Director of the New Orleans Sewerage and Water Board.  Korban provides a history and current status of the organization and addresses how they are building resilience in the face of a changing climate into their working operations.  He describes the repetitive flooding conditions of the city, the broken water and sewerage pipelines, and the antiquated 100 year old pumping systems, and what actions they are taking to help meet the demanding conditions.

(Podcast recorded on October 1, 2020)

When Sparks Fly...

Featured guest Elliot Grossbard from the Global Water Solutions Connect organization joins The Water Zone to address outside the box technologies that could couple water and energy together to solve significant water issues. Elliot also discusses how atmospheric water harvesting systems could be utilized to help reduce forest fires caused by high voltage electrical tower sparking.

(Podcast recorded on September 17, 2020)

Back on Aquatrac

Featured guest Jim Kauth, President of Aquatrac, Inc., located in Arizona, describes many stories of both HOAs and commercial property owners that have experienced extremely high water bills.  Aquatrac provides both irrigation, horticulture and arborist consultation to help develop a proper water management solution for property owners.  As a certified water manager, Jim also explains about various city’s rules pertaining to irrigation, turf and available rebates for utilizing EPA WaterSense-certified products.

(Podcast recorded on September 10, 2020)

Desmond in the Rough

Featured guest was Lou Desmond, President of Desmond and Louis with offices in California and Washington. Lou discusses the serious flooding that Washington experiences and how mitigation by lawmakers is not resolving the issue.  He states that many legislators want to take property from homeowners utilizing emanate domain practices and obtain those properties with little payments to the property owners. He shares how more water storage facilities need to be built in the state.

(Podcast recorded on August 13, 2020)

H2O TLC

Featured guest Trace Blackmore, President of Blackmore Enterprises, a company that specializes in water treatment systems, joins The Water Zone. Trace discusses how he got started in the industry, entered into a leadership role, and launched the podcast "Scaling Up H2O" which provides specialized webinars and training about water treatment technologies and operation. His company helps hospital and commercial clients design, install and manage on-site water treatment operations. Trace also addresses the deadly Legionella problems found in many water cooling towers and how to remedy the situation.

(Podcast recorded on August 6, 2020)

Climate Conversation

Featured guests were Luigi Romolo, Minnesota State Climatologist, and Ken Blumenfeld, Senior Climatologist of the Minnesota Department of Natural Resources, State Climatology Office, join The Water Zone to describe how they track changes in their state's weather with their own various data management tools, which provides climate services to the people of Minnesota. They offered a scientific view of what’s next for the climate of their state.

(Podcast recorded on July 16, 2020)

Mecham, You Bet-cham

Featured guest Brent Mecham of the Irrigation Association (IA) was just honored for his lifetime contributions to the irrigation industry.  Brent joins The Water Zone to discuss how he got interested in irrigation and his progression from student to landscape designer, to landscape contractor, to water management, and to his most recent position with the IA.

(Podcast recorded on July 9, 2020)

Trust the Process

Hosts Rob Starr and Chris Davey of The Water Zone discuss the technology of center pivots that are utilized in farming, as well as drip irrigation systems and how they help greatly to reduce water usage. They further spoke about the thought process needed in building a backyard vegetable garden and what decisions need to be addressed before the physical work gets started.

(Podcast recorded on June 18, 2020)

Lauria and Tank Talk

Featured guests Jim Lauria, VP of Sales and Marketing for Mazzei Injector Company, and Adam Tank, Director of Software Solutions at Transcend Water, join The Water Zone to discuss their new podcast about all things water. They believe that education about water and technology is an extremely important subject which must be shared with everyone.  They share their passionate advocation for water and vision with a broad view of the water industry.  They further discuss how they help water agencies and water-related companies promote their personal water stories through various media.

(Podcast recorded on June 11, 2020)

Something Borrowed, Something Green

Hosts Rob Starr and Chris Davey of The Water Zone explore the scenario of utility companies leasing smart irrigation systems and low-voltage lighting products to their customers. This conveys how consumers and commercial users can obtain these important water and electrical solutions for low payments, and even qualify to receive rebates for leasing these products. They spoke about a company, called Liberty Utilities, who have operations in 14 states across the U.S. and launched such a program.

(Podcast recorded on June 4, 2020)