The need for more treatment marshes to clean polluted water before it can be released into the Everglades is a crucial topic discussed in the episode.
Declining water quality and its impacts on seagrass beds critical for manatee diets is cited as a major threat.
The podcast episodes cover various aspects of water pollution, including its causes, impacts, and efforts to address it.
Several episodes focus on the issue of water pollution caused by septic systems, nitrogen runoff, and industrial effluents, and their effects on ecosystems like the Everglades and the Santiago River in Mexico. Examples include Loved to Death (Part 1), Troubled Waters on Cape Cod: Sticker Shock (Part 2), and Sewer of Progress: Corporations, Institutionalized Corruption, and the Struggle for the Santiago River.
Other episodes discuss the threat of water pollution to specific species, such as the impact of declining water quality on manatee habitats in Manatees, and the pollution of the Xochimilco wetlands in Mexico City endangering the axolotl in Cooling amphibians & carbon-capturing mollusks.
The podcast episodes also highlight efforts to address water pollution, such as the challenges and slow progress of the Everglades restoration project in How to Save the Everglades and Lessons on the limits of ecosystem restoration from the Everglades, as well as innovative solutions like fog catchers and flower waste recycling in Flower power, cloud catchers & green cobalt.