S4E14: @WesternWaterGirl Gives Social Media a Reality Check

UNCORRECTED TRANSCRIPT

0:00:01 - (Chris Clarke): 90 miles from Needles, the Desert Protection Podcast is made possible by listeners just like you. If you want to help us out, you can go to 90 miles from needles.com donate or text needles to 53555 think the deserts are barren wastelands. It's time for 90 miles from needles the Desert Protection Podcast. Thank you, Joe, and welcome to this episode of 90 Miles from Needles the Desert Protection Podcast.

0:00:52 - (Chris Clarke): I'm your host, Chris Clarke, and today we have a really interesting interview with Teal Lehto, who, if you are the kind of person that follows social media, you might know her as Western Water Girl. If you don't and you are on TikTok or Instagram or Bluesky or Threads, places like that, I absolutely recommend following her. She does some great work educating folks about water politics and drought and climate change and snow melt and all those related things, mainly in the Colorado river basin, though she does stray outside of that from time to time.

0:01:33 - (Chris Clarke): We're just really glad that Teal agreed to spend some time talking with us, and I think you're going to enjoy this interview possibly as much as I did. That would be a lot, because I enjoyed it a lot. But there are a couple of things I want to talk about first, the biggest one being how are you? Serious question? I want to know. There's this phenomenon going on lately where you talk to people who pay any attention to things that are happening in this country, whether it's around immigration or rollback of environmental laws or assaults on trans people and other LGBTQ folks, and it can get daunting and it can get discouraging.

0:02:11 - (Chris Clarke): This past week has been really difficult for me. And so I've had this experience, and you may have too, of asking someone how they're doing, and their response is like, well, you know, yeah, I mean, the love of my life said she would marry me, but also the world's going to hell in a handbasket. Those of us who have not been badly affected yet by a lot of these issues on a direct, personal level have this kind of survivor's guilt about all the bad stuff that's happening to other folks. And it's difficult to know how to respond. And as a result, I think we get locked into little isolated bubbles where we're not sharing what we feel with other folks. And so I want to make a place for that.

0:02:57 - (Chris Clarke): People that care about the desert are really important. They're really special, and we need to take care of each other. So let me know how you're doing. If you want to, you can call 760392 1996. That's a Google voice number I don't pick up. You will not run the risk of having to have a live conversation on the phone, but you can leave a voicemail. And if you tell me how you're doing in a voicemail and you say it's okay for us to use it on the show, we might just do that because it'll help me to hear how you're doing and it probably will help other people, too.

0:03:35 - (Chris Clarke): It's just a thought, you know, but what you're going through may well really help somebody else that is going through a similar thing. And none of us are alone, even though we often really strongly feel that way. So I want to hear how you're doing. You can also email me at chris90miles from needles.com if you'd like, or if you don't want to call 760392 1996. You can go to our website at 90miles from needles.com.

0:04:05 - (Chris Clarke): you will find a little tab there that says leave us a voicemail message. And you can do that there without touching a phone. We work in isolation so much of the time, and even when we do get together at big demonstrations or whatever, there's hardly ever time for conversation, for sharing fears and hopes and ideas and such. So let me know how you're doing. Even if I don't know you. I do care about you, as do a lot of other people.

0:04:30 - (Chris Clarke): Secondly, we have a couple of donations I wanted to mention and thank people for. Jorah Fogg, good friend. I've worked with her on a few different issues here and there, and she sent along a generous donation with a note attached that said, keep the podcast alive. Thank you, Jorah. We will do our best. And Lorraine Turk, who is a longtime donor. In fact, she was one of our first donors before we even started the podcast.

0:04:59 - (Chris Clarke): Lorraine has been an activist in my neck of the woods in the Morongo Basin portion of the Mojave Desert in California for longer than I've been here. And she already has a very generous recurring donation going forth every month, but she added yet another donation on top of that. So, Lorraine, I'm just really glad you like what we're doing here. The last thing I wanted to mention before we get into the interview is I don't know how closely you're following the stream of ridiculous and juvenile proclamations, executive orders, things like that that are coming out of the White House, but In the last 36 hours or so, the toddler in Chief put out a message on his badly misnamed social media network, Truth Social, which advocated turning Alcatraz back into a prison to house what he called the, quote, worst of the worst, end quote. Although that presumably did not include current members of his administration.

0:05:50 - (Chris Clarke): But who knows? Stranger things have happened. At any rate, there's been a lot of commentary on this, much of it focusing on the fact that this prison was closed down in 1963, 62 years ago, for reasons. It was falling apart. It was no longer safe either for the inmates or for the non incarcerated people that work there. It has been exposed to Salt Air since 1963. I'm talking about an island in the middle of San Francisco Bay on a desert protection podcast, because this actually has relevance to the deserts.

0:06:23 - (Chris Clarke): Alcatraz was bestowed onto the National Park Service by Congress in 1972 to become part of the Golden Gate National Recreation Area. Now, Trump is not particularly worried about protocol or what's legal and what's not legal. It's all about just whatever harebrained scheme he cooks up in his swiftly declining a brain. But it would not be legal for him to arbitrarily and unilaterally declare Alcatraz to be a prison. Again, only Congress has the power to do that. Congress is in charge of the size and shape and existence of national parks. It's their decision. It's not the White Houses carving off a 22 acre island from one of the most visited national parks in the country.

0:07:03 - (Chris Clarke): If he gets away with it, which is entirely possible, if he's really serious about this, I mean, he is patient zero for Trump derangement syndrome. So he may entirely forget about this within the next week. But if he's serious and Congress lets him get away with this, so many of the places that we love in the desert for their natural beauty, their isolation, their protection of cultural resources or historical resources currently under the stewardship of the National Park Service in the desert could be yanked away and privatized if we let him get away with Alcatraz.

0:07:35 - (Chris Clarke): In fact, he probably imagines a private company running a prison on Alcatraz. So what happens to Alcatraz could happen to Grand Canyon, it could happen to Zion, it could happen to Canyon de Chelly, it could happen to White Sands, it could happen to Big Bend in Saguaro. And Trump already has his eyes on BLM national monuments throughout the west. Entirely in the Southwest, in fact, from Bears Ears and Grand Staircase to Chuckwalla and Ironwood Forest and Oregon Mountains outside of Las Cruces, no good can come of this.

0:08:09 - (Chris Clarke): If this idea doesn't get flushed down the plumbing of his short term memory, we're going to have to push back hard. This would set a horrible precedent. I'm going to leave that Freudian slip in there. But I did mean to say horrible precedent, but enough about him for now. Tia Lahto is a water rights activist in Colorado, the founder of Western Water Girl social media account that educates people on water conservation and related issues in the Colorado River Basin and elsewhere.

0:08:38 - (Chris Clarke): And we are very lucky to have her joining us on this episode. Welcome, Teolato Teal, it's wonderful to have you here in the studio.

0:09:14 - (Teal Lehto): Thank you so much for having me. I'm like really excited to have this conversation.

0:09:19 - (Chris Clarke): So we were talking a little bit about what your schedule has been like for the last couple of weeks. What's going on in your work life here.

0:09:29 - (Teal Lehto): There's a lot happening. I work in full time in like, public lands protections and there is a lot of attacks on public lands right now. I also am the chair of my county's Democratic Party, so that is a whole lot of work at this time. And then I've been working with the resistance rangers to really raise awareness for the attacks that are happening not just in national monuments and national parks, but to public lands in general.

0:09:52 - (Teal Lehto): But they're also doing some really cool work to organize creators behind the scenes so that can all kind of like work together. And so that's been really cool, but it's also been a very full plate.

0:10:02 - (Chris Clarke): Yeah. Do you get any chance to eat and sleep and go for hikes and things like that?

0:10:08 - (Teal Lehto): I do my best. I've gotten to do some mountain bike rides this year, so that's good.

0:10:13 - (Chris Clarke): Excellent. And where are you based out of?

0:10:16 - (Teal Lehto): I live in Durango, Colorado, which is a pretty small town near like the Four Corners.

0:10:22 - (Chris Clarke): Yeah, that's definitely within our sphere of influence. We haven't done a whole lot of Colorado stories, sadly, but I'm hoping to get to southwestern Colorado sometime soon once our travel budget gets a little boost. We're looking at a couple of really scary executive orders coming out, one that was supposed to drop on Tuesday on Earth Day, stripping nonprofit status away from at least a few environmental groups working on climate and related issues.

0:10:49 - (Chris Clarke): That one seems to have gotten caught up in the Trump administration's usual extremely competent, efficient workings. But you've had a couple other EOs in mind that have been keeping you, if not up at nights, at least busy during the day.

0:11:09 - (Teal Lehto): The executive order that's been most top of mind for me is probably the one attacking climate organizations, because I do think that can have a very widespread impact on the ability of green organizations to do the work they've been doing. Even if they were to pivot away from the climate work they've been doing, if they have a history of doing that work, it's possible that they could still lose their charitable status, which is super frustrating.

0:11:30 - (Teal Lehto): That one in particular has been keeping me up at night because there's so much good work that's being done. And the reality is, if that happens, those organizations are just going to pivot all of their funding for, like, active programming for the stuff that they're actively doing in the world to make the world a better place to litigating. So everything just goes on pause. And there's so many projects that are being worked on right now that it would be such a bummer to see them just fall to the wayside and who knows if they'll get picked up again.

0:11:55 - (Teal Lehto): But another executive order that's been really top of mind for me is it appears that Donald Trump is planning on attacking national monuments. And it seems like he's specifically going to target national monuments that were made in the Obama and Biden era. And a lot of them are monuments that were tribally led or have some kind of like tribal cooperative management agreement, co stewardship agreement.

0:12:18 - (Teal Lehto): And I thought that work that the Biden administration had done to like really bring tribal co management to the table is like the most tangible steps we've taken towards the land back movement in the United States, which is something that I care really deeply about, having lived on stolen land for my entire life. And it's just really, it's disappointing to me that those are the specific monuments they're going to attack.

0:12:39 - (Teal Lehto): Also, there's specifically Bears Ears is the monument that's closest to me, and it's the one that I've been to the most. And it's frustrating to me to see that, like, we already went through this in 2018. Trump already tried to undo Bears Ears and he lost in litigation and he's like, ready to pick up that fight again. And that's super frustrating. And those landscapes are amazing. I don't know if you've ever been to Bears Ears. I haven't been to Chuckwalla yet, but I've been to Grand Staircase, Escalante. Those are some of the ones that are on the list. There's six that were identified today in a Washington Post article, and they just are really incredible landscapes. A lot of them contain incredibly valuable cultural assets in addition to, like, ecological values.

0:13:18 - (Teal Lehto): So it feels very targeted, like, which monuments he's attacking are the ones he believes are gonna. I shouldn't say he the admin, because it's not just him making these decisions, it's a whole table of people. The admin is making this decision to, like, specifically target people's ability to have hope. That's part of the reason why they were originally planning to release them on Earth Day, was we're gonna take this hope away from you. So that's really concerning.

0:13:41 - (Teal Lehto): And then there's another executive order unrelated to public lands or anything. But like I said, I am the chair of my county's Democratic Party, and the rumor is that today there'll be an executive order signed against ActBlue, which is the Democratic online fundraising portal that my party uses. That seems like a pretty straightforward attack on the political apparatus of his opposition party.

0:14:06 - (Chris Clarke): Yeah. And being that we're a 501C3, I can't really get into how much that sucks, but that's, that's pretty, pretty upsetting. And I have seen Bears Ears. I haven't spent a lot of time there, but I cruised through or I drove past. Bears Ears is a better way of putting it. On my way from Moab to. To Bluff and places like that. And as a perk for being a guest on our podcast, you can get a guided tour of Chuckwalla next time you're in this area. It's a gorgeous place.

0:14:37 - (Teal Lehto): I will take you up on that offer.

0:14:39 - (Chris Clarke): Excellent. So you are best known for talking about water politics and social media. I want to talk to you about how the social media end of things works for you, but we haven't really discussed the, the Colorado river or other Southwestern rivers for a few months on this podcast, and it would be good to get an update if you have one.

0:15:04 - (Teal Lehto): Yeah, there isn't a ton of change. We're in, like, a stalemate in the Colorado River Basin. I don't know as much about other basins. I know that all the basins in the west are governed by like, the same doctrine, which is called the doctrine of prior appropriation. And I personally think that is a very antiquated and out of date way to manage water, but there's no movement in the west to change that anytime soon. It would take legislation in several states. And like in my state, Colorado, it's literally enshrined in our state constitution.

0:15:33 - (Teal Lehto): So it's going to take a lot to change that. But what's happening in the Colorado River Basin in particular, is they're negotiating new guidelines for going forward after 2026. Literally, what they're negotiating is how much each state has to cut off their usage when the reservoirs reach certain low water levels, because it puts the infrastructure at the reservoirs and dams in danger. So, like when Lake Mead or Lake Powell gets to certain reservoir levels, then certain states will lose access to water.

0:16:00 - (Teal Lehto): And right now, there's a stalemate between the upper basin and the lower basin. The lower basin is entitled to 7.5 million acre feet, regardless of what the flows are throughout the whole basin. And the upper basin kind of that's not fair. There's a real possibility that there will be less than 7.5 million acre feet in a season, which is, like, very possible. And without the storage of Lake Powell and Lake Mead, which are both very low, they're at like 30 to 35% capacity capacity.

0:16:26 - (Teal Lehto): It makes it really difficult for the upper basin to fulfill those compact obligations. And there's this, like, looming nuclear option of what's called a compact call, which is where the lower basin states would say, basically, screw you guys, we want all of our water. You guys need to cut off your own users and send the water downstream. And I don't know about other states in the upper basin, but in Colorado, our water management authority has already come out and said that there's, like, literally no infrastructure in place to actually fulfill that obligation. If the lower basin states were to do so, we're possibly heading to, like, maybe the Supreme Court, maybe the BOR will just make a decision.

0:17:03 - (Teal Lehto): There's also some questions about the functionality of Glen Canyon Dam, which is the dam that creates Lake Powell. It wasn't designed to operate in low water levels. And we're looking at a reality where low water levels will be the norm there. So the lower basin really wants to. To see some kind of plan for redoing the plumbing at Lake Powell or rerouting or some people believe in a plan called Fill Lake Mead first, which would reroute around Glen Canyon Dam and would basically eliminate Lake Powell and store all of that water in Lake Mead.

0:17:33 - (Teal Lehto): That per basin does not like that plan at all, though.

0:17:37 - (Chris Clarke): What do you think about it?

0:17:39 - (Teal Lehto): I think that I am continuously frustrated because this. And even in the way I just presented this, the argument is presented as the upper basin versus the lower basin. But the reality is that almost all of the senior water rights holders in the Colorado river basin are alfalfa farmers, especially those with the most powerful and largest and most senior water rights. The most powerful and Senior water rights in the entire basin are alfalfa farmers in the Imperial Valley.

0:18:04 - (Teal Lehto): And nowhere in any of these discussions is there talk of like banning the export of alfalfa, even though the United states accounts for 60% of the global alfalfa market and we are the last developed nation to allow the export of that crop. So there's some policy things we could be enacting that would greatly benefit the situation, but nobody wants to talk about that because they have a lot of power having such large and senior water rights. It's not just the Imperial Valley farmers, there's also upper basin alfalfa farmers.

0:18:34 - (Teal Lehto): When I see these negotiations, I really just see it as alfalfa farmers in the upper basin being like no, you first. And alfalfa farmers in the lower basin being like, no, you first. Yeah. And then on top of all of that is we had money set aside to pay these alfalfa farmers to use less water. But Trump the admin immediately rescinded those funds. That's what we were able to use to stabilize the basin for a while. And that funding is no longer available. So there's a lot of questions about what do we do? And we did not have a good winter season we're about to see. I don't know if you allow cursing on your podcast, but I do think about just some shit hit the fan.

0:19:07 - (Chris Clarke): We have that coveted Apple podcasts explicit rating going on and when you come down to Chuckwalla we can climb up on a ridge on the south end of the monument and just thumb our noses at the Imperial Irrigation district. But yes, it's fascinating to me that alfalfa, which is not particularly a high value crop compared to chili peppers or something that would grow just as easily in especially in the Imperial Valley. You could grow some kick ass chilies in there and at least we wouldn't necessarily be exporting acre feet of water in the process of sending the crops wherever. It just has always struck me as ludicrous.

0:19:53 - (Teal Lehto): Oh absolutely. I think a big. There's two reasons why this is happening. There's more than two, but two main reasons why this is happening. Number one is you can get like up to 10 cuttings of alfalfa in a single season, especially down in the Imperial Valley because they basically have a year long growing season. So it just makes it so you can like get a lot out of the land. And then the other piece is that concept of the doctrine of prior appropriation that sounds like a really complicated thing, but it really just means like first in time, first In, Right.

0:20:19 - (Teal Lehto): But it also means that you have to use all of the water in your water, right? Or you tempt fate to allow you to lose that water. Like if you have 10 acre feet, nobody gets 10 acre feet as their water, right? But anyways, if you had 10 acre feet in your water, right, and you only used eight of them, the state could be like, okay, well you only get eight next year. And that's like end of story. So they're like incentivized to use as much water as they possibly can to fulfill their full water right.

0:20:44 - (Teal Lehto): And that water right is also tied to their property value. So there's like a real monetary incentive for them to grow water intensive crops, which is a bummer. We should not have a system like that.

0:20:56 - (Chris Clarke): No, absolutely not. How did you decide to start spreading the word about western water issues on social media? And how has that been going?

0:21:06 - (Teal Lehto): Oh, boy. This is a bit of a long story, so I'll try to be really quick about it. But it's usually something I'm good at with my TikTok experience. But I in college had a club dedicated to water resource issues. I also was a raft racer and I represented the United States at the World Rafting Championships two years in a row. And one of the things that really like struck me from that experience was that every single team was asking me about the Colorado river and if I had run the Colorado river and what was happening in the Colorado River. I didn't know before that, but rafting was actually born in the Colorado river basin, invented. And so there's like this special reverence. And I realized, wow, I should probably look more into this, what's happening with this river.

0:21:42 - (Teal Lehto): So I founded this club on campus called h2.org, but then I graduated in May of 2012. So I basically went to spring break. And then they were like, never come back. I was like, no, what am I gonna do? Because I was really excited. I was doing like dam tours and like, we toured our wastewater treatment facility, which I know for some people wouldn't be that exciting, but it was for me. And we, like had guest speakers. I attended the Colorado Water Congress. I was part of a thing called the Animas River Community Forum, which is something for like my local river, which is part of the Colorado river watershed.

0:22:10 - (Teal Lehto): But right after I graduated, I basically was cut off from all of that. Like, I was no longer the token college student. And so nobody really wanted to have me involved. And I cared very deeply and I wanted to show up, but I kept getting this, aw, sweetie, you're so passionate. There must be another way for you to be involved. And I just was so tired of hearing that at one point in time, in the state of Colorado, we have a thing called the Colorado Water Plan, and there's different basins in Colorado, so each basin has, like, a table where people get together and talk about their water future, and then they report to the statewide table, if that makes sense.

0:22:41 - (Teal Lehto): I applied to be a volunteer representative for my county on the Colorado Water Plans, like, Southwest Basin Roundtable. And I got that exact same response from my county commissioners, who were like, oh, sweetie, like, you're so passionate. Maybe there's another way for you to be involved. And the day I got the rejection letter from that is the day I recorded my first video, because I was like, I am so tired of this. I just want to be part of this conversation. I'm somebody who cares. I'm intelligent. I understand what's happening.

0:23:06 - (Teal Lehto): And I also think that there's a bit of tunnel vision with a lot of water policy officials where they're so close to the problem that they can't take a step back and just be like, this whole thing doesn't make sense. So, yeah, that's how I initially started my platform. And the very first video I posted was talking about how we were in a mega drought. It was the driest period of time in the last 1200 years in my region.

0:23:30 - (Teal Lehto): And I pointed out that the 1200 years ago was when the Ancestral Puebloans started fleeing southwestern Colorado and a lot of the area that I live in. So I was just talking about, like, the concept of climate anxiety and how people think of climate anxiety as somebody crying over polar bears on melting ice. And, like, for me, it's like a genuine, gripping fear for, like, can I build a life in this place that I love? Is there going to be water coming out of my tap in 15, 20 years?

0:23:57 - (Teal Lehto): And I don't know the answer to that still. It's not really that clear. The first video I posted went viral, which was awesome. I had a creator who had 3 million followers reposted it, which was so kind of them. And it just kicked off my account. And then after that, it became really clear that, like, people were thirsty, pun intended, for knowledge about what's happening with water in the basin. Because all of the reporting was just at this, like, really high level.

0:24:20 - (Teal Lehto): And the way that people communicate about these issues is very like, well, obviously it's use it or lose it, rather than being like, yeah, so this doesn't make a lot of sense. And, yeah, and I honestly was not super great at social media before that. I actually had to text a friend of mine to be like, how do you use the green screen feature on TikTok? Like, I had never really made a TikTok or anything before that. So when I look back at that first video, it's, like, painful to watch because the quality is so low compared to what I can make now.

0:24:49 - (Teal Lehto): But that also should be encouragement for anybody out there who's listening, who's. I don't know. I don't know how to do this. I didn't either. You should just start.

0:24:56 - (Chris Clarke): Yeah, I can second that. Because if you listen to the first episode of this podcast, it's clear that we learned as we went. It's. It's an easy thing to do, and it makes you more authentic, I think, to be really bad at first. So how would you characterize the reaction? It seems like you get a lot of positive feedback. I also am well aware that I am not a woman on the Internet, and so I don't know how that really works, except that I've heard stories from roughly 50% of my friends about what it's like.

0:25:27 - (Chris Clarke): How. How's the response?

0:25:29 - (Teal Lehto): I'd say overwhelmingly positive. I. Most people are like, this is so cool. I've never heard anybody talk about this way. I've gotten a lot of people being like, you've inspired me to get involved. And I love hearing stuff like that. Heard so many people be like, I had no idea this was going on. And I think that's so important to be reaching those people. That's something that I think the environmental industry in general is really bad at doing, is, like, we assume that people already care, and you actually have to make a solid pitch for why people should care before you can even move into what they should be doing about it.

0:26:02 - (Teal Lehto): So that's great. I will say that being a woman on the Internet and also being in, like, a science communication kind of space, I do get a lot of mean comments, but honestly, a lot of them are like, you're ugly. Or your voice is annoying. And I'm just like, okay, like, you're ugly, too. I don't care. I wasn't here to look pretty for you. But the thing that does bother me the most, and it's been a shocking journey as a creator, and I think a lot of people don't know this, but if you use the words climate change in a video, in a post, in a comment, you will get death threats. I've gotten more death threats related to that than anything else. A lot of them are bots, I think. They don't really appear to be like real accounts, but some of them are genuinely from real accounts. I've had a gentleman who lives a few counties over from me make videos about me, like using my face, saying that I'm an eco terrorist for like caring about the environment.

0:26:53 - (Teal Lehto): I've never proposed any kind of violence in favor of the environment. To be clear. I do not believe in that. I do not condone violence. So it is like out there, it's a thing. But I would say way more people are really kind to me.

0:27:05 - (Chris Clarke): That's great. I'm really glad to hear that.

0:27:08 - (Teal Lehto): Yeah.

0:27:08 - (Chris Clarke): Because it is a contentious space at times.

0:27:11 - (Teal Lehto): Yes, absolutely. And then also I will say that my own family was very funny about this because before I started my account, I was actually thinking about going to law school to be a water lawyer. And then I started my accounting, it took off and I was like, oh, I'm just gonna do this for a while. I didn't. I told my family that I didn't know how long the wave would be here, but I planned on surfing it as long as I could.

0:27:28 - (Teal Lehto): And my grandparents were like none too pleased to hear about that. They were like, no, you should be going to law school. Like, they were really upset. But I did an interview with a local NPR affiliate station and that interview got kicked up to, to the morning edition with npr. And my grandma heard it, or I guess one of her friends heard it and was like, is this your granddaughter? And then after that my grandparents have been like, what you're doing is so cool.

0:27:51 - (Teal Lehto): So once NPR said it was good.

0:27:56 - (Chris Clarke): That's excellent. What topics have gotten the biggest response for you?

0:28:00 - (Teal Lehto): Great question. The video that I have had that blew up the most was a video about something called high flow experiments in the Grand Canyon. Which is when they like released a ton of water from Lake Powell to like flush sediment out of the Grand Canyon in 2023. I believe it was when we had that really good winter and it was just a really cool video. It was like really fascinating to see that much water like pouring out of these river outlet works. I just think people were really interested in that. Also in the video I like definitely put on a little bit of a dude bro raft guide vibe and was like, dude, this is sick. And I think people were really into that.

0:28:33 - (Teal Lehto): But overall people are really into like water accessing. I think people are really mind blown to learn that one in three homes on the Navajo Nation don't have access to running water right now, I think that's, like, hard for people to grasp because, like, you assume that every home in America has running water unless you choose to be off grid and not the case nationwide only, like, 49% of tribal homes have running water. So it's like there's a huge water equity disparity in the United States, and people are very interested in that.

0:29:05 - (Teal Lehto): And then I also think people are just, like, confused by what happening and looking for somebody to break it down sometimes. I describe it as, I think the people who are directly involved in water negotiations in the Colorado river basin kind of act like the Catholic church in the medieval times in that, like, they use their own language and they have this sacred knowledge that they don't necessarily want other people to have or start questioning because then it unravels the whole system.

0:29:31 - (Teal Lehto): So they do this whole, like, oh, sweetie, you're so naive. You're so passionate. People still do that to me at conferences and I'll have to be like, no, I'm actually an expert in this thing. Like, I'm not naive. I'm actually looking at this with a realistic lens and saying, this doesn't make sense. Yeah.

0:29:49 - (Chris Clarke): Just as an aside to any listeners that are older, white CIS heterosexual men, I just want to say, cut that shit out. It's not good. How about topics that you thought would get a little bit more traction that just fell flat? Have you had that experience or put some effort into. Into a post that you thought was really important and it just sat there?

0:30:14 - (Teal Lehto): Oh, yeah, there's like a running joke, not just for me, but, like, amongst most creators that I know that any video that you put a lot of effort in is going to flop. And then the video that you do basically no effort for and just bait on the side is the one that's going to do well. Which is frustrating. But one thing that I've noticed in starting my platform that I find to be the most frustrating about having algorithms like rule the conversations that we're having is that solutions do not break through the algorithm.

0:30:37 - (Teal Lehto): People really like to engage with, like, problems and issues. And the algorithm really prioritizes when people are upset because being upset really drives engagement. It gets you to leave a comment, it gets you to share the post. But every time I post a video where I'm like, here are the five things we need to do to solve this problem in the basin, it just goes nowhere. It's so frustrating to me. And I see this not only in my content, but also with other creators. When they make more positive toned videos that are about solutions and a positive outlook. It just does not seem to perform nearly as well in the algorithm.

0:31:15 - (Chris Clarke): Yeah, I've in fact noticed that in my own writing pre algorithm, back in the days of blogs, I would put a ton of research into something and put it out there and there'd be like two comments and something that I dashed off when I was feeling like particularly snarky or pissed off at some conservative blogger or something like that. I would go viral maybe. Think about doing that, folks. If you like a post and it proposes a new way of looking at something or a way to fix a problem or address a problem, go ahead and share that because the algorithm isn't going to be helpful.

0:31:52 - (Teal Lehto): Absolutely. The other thing you can do is leave a comment. Something I think a lot of people don't know about algorithms is that a lot of times they try to show content to similar profiles as those who have already engaged with that content. For example, if I post a video about climate change and the first three comments are like climate change deniers leaving me death threats, then it's going to look for more accounts that are also climate change deniers to see that content.

0:32:15 - (Teal Lehto): Flip side is, if the first three comments are people being like, this is wonderful and I love this, then like, those are the kinds of accounts that content is going to reach. So you can actually have a pretty direct impact on what side of the Internet somebody's content goes to just by leaving a comment.

0:32:29 - (Chris Clarke): That's fantastic. And I had not thought of that before. That's really wonderful. I've taken up a bit of your time in a very busy month. I have very much appreciate that. Is there anything that you had hoped I would ask you that I did not?

0:32:44 - (Teal Lehto): No, not necessarily. I always like to leave my podcast interviews with just like a call for people to start speaking up on whatever they care about. I never started my platform expecting it to blow up. Like, I literally told my partner that if five people see my video, it'll make me feel better because I just needed somewhere to talk about this because I cared so much. And I know there's a lot of people out there that feel that way about other issues.

0:33:05 - (Teal Lehto): And I just think people would be shocked to see how much they can get done just by speaking up and using their voice.

0:33:11 - (Chris Clarke): And how many people see a video that you put up on, say, TikTok or Instagram or wherever you post.

0:33:18 - (Teal Lehto): Great question. Sometimes my videos only get like a thousand views, which is a real bummer because I have like almost 70,000 followers on TikTok. The algorithm does its algorithming, but like I posted a recent video that got like about 200,000 views. I say 100,000 is like a pretty good performing piece of content for me. I'm happy with anywhere over a thousand, under a thousand. I'm like, oh wow, the algorithm really did not like this content.

0:33:43 - (Chris Clarke): So where can people find you? I've mentioned Instagram and TikTok and I am an old guy, so there's probably venues that I don't know about as well.

0:33:52 - (Teal Lehto): Instagram and TikTok are definitely my main platforms and everything that I post on Instagram is everything I post on TikTok also gets posted to Instagram. But Instagram has the added benefit of I also post memes there which are really funny. I don't post those to TikTok. And then if you want like a deep insight into my brain, then you can check out my account on threads, but they're all the same username.

0:34:14 - (Chris Clarke): Western Water Girl yes, till Ledo. Thank you so much for joining us. This has been a real pleasure to talk to you and I'm extremely pleased and yet unsurprised that we have at least one mutual friend.

0:34:26 - (Teal Lehto): Thank you so much for having me. This was like a really fun conversation. I really enjoyed it.

0:34:29 - (Chris Clarke): Excellent. And that wraps up this episode of 90 Miles from Needles, the Desert Protection podcast. Huge thanks to Teal Lehto for joining us on this episode. You can follow her on various social media platforms. Just look for Western Water Girl. All one word. I also want to thank Jorah Fogg and Lorraine Turk again for their generous donations. You can follow their example@90miles from needles.com donate big thanks as well to Joe Jeffrey, our voiceover guy, and Martin Mancha, our podcast artwork creator.

0:35:17 - (Chris Clarke): Our theme song, Moody Western, is by Brightside Studio. Other music in this episode is via slipstream. A little bit of 90 miles from Needles News here. I'm going to be in Salt Lake City at the end of May from the PM of the 27th on until Saturday the 31st for a conference on grazing in public lands, which should be very interesting even if by that time there isn't a new executive order mandating that free range cattle be counted for purposes of Congressional elections apportionment.

0:35:45 - (Chris Clarke): After that Salt Lake City conference, instead of coming straight home, I'm gonna go spend a couple of days in the Moab Monticello Blanding area. I'm gonna see if I can put together an interview with people that are working to defend national monuments in the vicinity there. I might have to figure out an excuse to return home through Boulder, Utah so that I can stop at Hell's Backbone Grill. But at any rate, if you're interested in having me speak to your environmental group, your college green club, your church, your Rotary club, mountain biking group, whatever, just holler.

0:36:17 - (Chris Clarke): You can reach me at chris@90miles from needles.com happy to stop anywhere along my route to talk to you. I am recording this during a rare rainy May day in the Mojave Desert. It's a little interesting, and quite frankly, I'm a little concerned confused because when it starts to rain, I usually look at what direction the rain's coming from. Winter storms blow in off the Pacific. Monsoon rainstorms in the summer come up from the south off the Sea of Cortez, AKA the Gulf of California.

0:36:51 - (Chris Clarke): There's really only a couple of small mountain ranges between there and my house, and summer rains can make it up this way without much trouble. But this rain is interesting because it's coming to us from the north. About an hour ago it was pouring in Las Vegas and that cell moved over us. Three hours drive south and it just finished pouring here. And I don't have a rain gauge, so I have no idea how much has fallen, probably less than half an inch over the last 36.

0:37:20 - (Chris Clarke): But having that rain come in from the north is really interesting. And I went to the Usual Suspects online, you know, Weather Underground, etc. To look at Doppler radar, and I found out that this rainstorm is appearing to come from the north because it's actually coming off the Gulf of Mexico and getting trapped in a very, very large counterclockwise wind pattern that covers West Texas, New Mexico, Colorado, Utah, a little bit of Wyoming, Nevada, and Arizona, as well as this part of Southern California.

0:37:51 - (Chris Clarke): That strikes me as strange. I honestly have no idea whether that's normal or not. It's not something I've noticed before. May is a little early for us to get monsoonal rainstorms, and this one seems to be a monsoon that's just coming from further east. At any rate, the garden is definitely appreciating it. The creosote and the cacti and the agaves and such are looking really, really happy. This is episode 90, if I've counted right.

0:38:17 - (Chris Clarke): It's the 90th episode that we put out throughout the entire history of this podcast, not counting the short teasers that we put up in 2021. I'm toying with ideas about how to celebrate our hundredth episode I'm thinking of finding a place where we could have a public event. As soon as we get whatever we have planned for our hundredth episode nailed down, which will probably be July. Ish. I will let y'all know.

0:38:41 - (Chris Clarke): In the meantime, stay well. If it's raining where you are, go out and celebrate, and I will see you at the next watering hole, which right this second, is in the middle of my yard. Bye now. 90 miles from Needles is a production of the Desert Advocacy Media Network.