The Green Builder Media Network
From breaking news and market signals to deep dives on sustainability, value, policy, resilience, and meaning, the Green Builder Media Podcast Network brings together the industry’s most trusted voices to explore how homes are designed, built, valued, and lived in.
The Green Builder Media Network
The Impact Series: Deirdre Irwin on What's Really Driving Florida's Water Shortage
Use Left/Right to seek, Home/End to jump to start or end. Hold shift to jump forward or backward.
It looks like there’s water everywhere. There isn’t.
In this episode of The Impact Series, Mike Collignon sits down with Deirdre Irwin—water conservation leader with over 30 years at the St. Johns River Water Management District—to unpack a surprising reality: Florida doesn’t have a water shortage. It has a cheap water shortage.
Behind the palm trees, rainfall, and coastlines is a system under pressure—from population growth, overuse, and rising costs of alternative water sources. And the solution? It’s already reshaping how homes are built.
In this episode:
• Why Florida is restricting water despite heavy rainfall
• The real reason water costs are rising—and what’s coming next
• How builders went from voluntary programs to mandatory water rules
• The role of irrigation, HOAs, and homeowner behavior in the crisis
• Why reclaimed wastewater may be the future of drinking water
This isn’t just a Florida story. It’s a preview of what’s coming to water systems everywhere. Watch the full conversation. Then rethink what “water abundance” really means.