Blue River restoration - Tim Fobes from HDR

Tim shared the efforts to restore normal aquatic and riparian habitats to a section of the Blue River from 53rd Street to the confluence with Brush Creek in eastern Kansas City. The project has two purposes: flood control/conveyance and habitat restoration. Learn about some of the construction and design methods, and what benefits have already been seen. Listen to the podcast.

Rick Besancon, P.E. -- sewer bats

Rick Besancon, P.E. of Burns & McDonnell explained about the grey bats (Myotis grisescens) in the Pittsburg, KS storm sewers. Grey bats are an endangered species. Burns & McDonnell worked with bat ecologists from Missouri State University to modify the new box culvert installation for bat habitation. Listen to the podcast.

Book reviews by Jerry Richardson, Ph.D., P.E., D.WRE

Jerry Richardson will be a returning guest on the show to share his passion for nonfiction books about rivers and water. Here is a list of possible radio interview subjects:

• Rising Tide: the great Mississippi flood of 1927 and how it changed America, by John M. Barry.
• Down the Colorado: diary of the first trip through the Grand Canyon, 1869, by John Wesley Powell and Eliot Porter.
• The River of Doubt: Theodore Roosevelt's Darkest Journey, by Candice Millard.
• The Blue Nile, by Alan Moorehead.
• The White Nile, by Alan Moorehead.
• The Journals of Lewis and Clark
• Sources of the River: tracking David Thompson across western North America, by Jack Nisbet.
• Cadillac Desert: the American West and its disappearing water, by Marc Reisner and John Lust.
• Longitude: the true story of a lone genius who solved the greatest scientific problem of his time, by Dava Sobel.

Biochemical oxygen demand - Deb O'Bannon, Ph.D., P.E.

Your, host, Dr. Deb, outlined why we measure BOD (biochemical oxygen demand), why it's often done for five days (five days along the Thames from London to the North Sea), how the test is completed, and what we do with the data (wasteload allocations). She also explained why this archival test is still useful when we have gas chromatographs and other high-tech laboratory instrumentation. This show is part of a set of shows on water quality testing (see/hear also 5/10/09 and 3/15/09 on "Water, Water Everywhere". Listen to the podcast.

Storm and hurricane formation - Andy Bailey returns

Andy Bailey of the National Weather Service in Pleasant Hill, MO returns. Andy and Deb described the physics of thunderstorms and hurrricanes in layman's terms. Listen to the broadcast.

Copper toxicity interview on KSHB-NBC 41

Lenexa Mexican restaurant problem. The reporter wanted to know if backflow from the carbonated fountain machine could cause copper problems in the drinking water drawn from the dispenser.