Out West (Presented by the Western Governors’ Association)

Western Governors’ Association
Out West (Presented by the Western Governors’ Association)

Welcome to Out West, the official podcast of the Western Governors’ Association. Tune in each month to hear experts debate the most important issues facing the region.

  1. MAR 28

    Leave it to Beaver: How Nature’s Engineers Help Mitigate Disasters

    The history of the West has always been defined by water. Long before settlers arrived, Indigenous peoples designed complex water management systems to cultivate the arid land. In the 19th and 20th centuries, large-scale engineering projects redistributed water across the West, enabling the region’s rapid growth. Today, western water resources are stretched thin, and as rivers and streams dry up, so too does the environmental resiliency that’s provided by healthy riparian zones.   To help address this issue, many western states are looking to beavers – long known as nature’s engineers – to ensure more water is retained on the landscape. New research shows that this will help restore biodiversity and mitigate the effects of prolonged drought, unexpected flooding, and catastrophic wildfires.     In this episode of Out West, WGA policy advisors Jonah Seifer and Zach Nowak spoke with beaver experts from around the region about how these aquatic rodents can help us restore balance to the West’s water systems.   For these discussions they were joined by Emily Fairfax, an ecohydrologist, beaver researcher, and Assistant Professor of Geography at the University of Minnesota; Chris Jordan, a Fisheries Biologist with NOAA’s Northwest Fisheries Science Center; Alexander Funk, the Director of Water Resources and Senior Counsel at the Theodore Roosevelt Conservation Partnership; Marshall Wolf, a Postdoctoral Research Associate at the Columbia River Inter-Tribal Fish Commission; and Jerry Altermatt, a habitat biologist with the Wyoming Game and Fish Department.

    43 min
  2. 10/04/2023

    The Heat Beneath Our Feet: Exploring the Potential of Geothermal Energy with Colorado Governor Jared Polis

    The potential of geothermal energy in the West is vast and offers significant advantages in the effort to expand renewable energy resources. Advances in technology and increased interest in developing domestic sources of low-cost, reliable, clean energy have brought greater attention to the energy potential of the heat beneath our feet. As Chair of the Western Governors’ Association in 2023, Colorado Governor Jared Polis launched The Heat Beneath Our Feet initiative to examine opportunities for and barriers to the accelerated development and deployment of geothermal energy technologies. Through a rigorous stakeholder process that included four workshops, six tours, a public survey, and a webinar series, the Heat Beneath Our Feet initiative generated recommendations for increasing the development and deployment of geothermal energy in the West. In this episode of Out West, Governor Polis shares some of his experiences from the initiative and discusses the policy recommendations outlined in the initiative report. You’ll also hear from Amanda Kolker, the laboratory program manager for geothermal at the National Renewable Energy Laboratory; Dr. Joseph Moore and Dr. John Mclennan, the Managing Principal Investigator and Co-Principal Investigator at the Utah FORGE Laboratory; Nick Goodman, the CEO of Cyrq Energy, and Paul Thomsen, the Vice President of Business Development at Ormat Technologies Inc.

    51 min

Ratings & Reviews

4.4
out of 5
5 Ratings

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Welcome to Out West, the official podcast of the Western Governors’ Association. Tune in each month to hear experts debate the most important issues facing the region.

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