Water, Water Everywhere: KERA Kicks Off Its Yearlong Look at the Trinity River

By Robert Wilonsky Mon., May 11 2009 at 5:23 PM

Categories: Memo from The Boss, News

Courtesy Margaret A. Purse/KERA

A Trinity River Navigation Company stock certificate from 1892

As I mentioned a couple of weeks back, KERA's working on an enormo Trinity River project with pieces for radio, TV and Internets. Today, we got a sneak peek at a major slice of the pie, which includes everything from an interactive timeline to video testimony, as KERA's Meg Fullwood forwards along the link to Living with the Trinity: A River's Story (also the name of Schutze's in-the-works autobiography, ghostwritten by Rod Dreher). The radio component begins airing tomorrow during Morning Edition and runs through week's end; the morning story will re-air later in the day during All Things Considered, then come available on the KERA Web site.

Shelley Kofler gets things started on Tuesday with a piece titled "Where Do We Get Our Water?," which will deal with "the vast system of reservoirs and treatment facilities that provide water for North Texans." On Wednesday, Kofler "explores how much water we need, looks into the reservoir system built after the 1950s drought and planning for future needs." That'll be followed by B.J. Austin's Thursday story about water consumption in Dallas. On Friday, Bill Zeeble closes out the series -- for now -- with a story about water availability issues in the middle of a long-term drought.

Meg says that new content will pop up on the site throughout the summer, including "an educational component and new video pieces," which will be followed in the fall by further radio stories and, finally, a KERA-TV documentary. All this is made possible, but of course, with a grant from the Meadows Foundation. And the letter "T."

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