Florida resilience, from the Capitol to the Everglades.
Irela Bagué, David Rathke and Pepper Uchino trade notes on Florida's legislative session, then talk with guests about Everglades storage, emergency management or a city's One Water plan. The tone is collegial and fluent in budget detail, built on a recurring conviction that Florida's environment is its economy.
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Resilient Forward is a Florida show about the unglamorous machinery of resilience: budgets, reservoirs, utilities and the people who run them. Irela Bagué hosts alongside co-hosts David Rathke and Pepper Uchino. The three introduce one another as friends, and they sound like it. Many conversations start in Tallahassee. The hosts track the session closely, from House Bill 1035 and Senate Bill 302 on nature-based solutions to a budget pushed into a special session and line-item vetoes that left some local stormwater projects short. Utilities come up again and again, with tight local budgets, aging infrastructure and new wastewater rules that carry real costs. Then a guest arrives, and the subject narrows to something concrete. Dr. Erik Stabenau of The Everglades Foundation walks through the drought. The historic system could store water and the current one cannot, so water gets pushed out to the St. Lucie and the Caloosahatchee instead of flowing south. The fix he describes is the accelerated EAA reservoir, which holds wet-season water, cleans it and moves it south through the dry season. Dr. Colin Polsky, Associate Vice President for Florida Atlantic University's Broward Campus and a co-leader of the Florida Office of Ocean Economy, sketches a clearinghouse connecting marine researchers with workforce credentials. He also recounts port-oriented startups pitching at Port Everglades. Gary Hubbard of the City of Winter Haven explains a One Water Master Plan built as an adaptive, 50-year document, with every city department on an integrated water team. In the episode featuring Jonathan Lord, Director of Emergency Management, the talk turns to the phone-call network that ties county emergency managers together and to the local mitigation strategies Florida counties keep. A year-end guest reframes resilience as risk management, naming heat as the chronic threat and defending tree canopy as practical rather than sentimental. Conference talk adds texture, from wave attenuation devices to reef arches that double as fish nurseries. One idea threads through all of it and is spoken more than once: the environment is the economy. The register stays friendly. Session fatigue, a nod to the Miami Hurricanes, a complaint about the heat in Key West and a rotating closing line keep the policy load from feeling heavy, and 'stay salty my friends' turns up more than once. The catalog also holds episodes dated 2019 and 2020 with a wider brief, including a COVID-19 series featuring Florida legislators, a physician and a psychotherapist, plus conversations about a net-zero solar home, green building and festival sustainability. For a starting point, 'Florida’s Dry Season: The Everglades & Our Water System' pulls the show's water focus into one guest conversation about storage, drought and restoration. Black & Veatch sponsors the show, and producer Anna Fiot is thanked by name.
Made for: Suits a listener who follows Florida water, coastal and emergency policy and wants bill numbers, budget lines and reservoir projects explained in a friendly, conversational register by the people working on them.
What sets it apart: It stays local and specific: Florida's legislative session, Everglades storage and county emergency management, discussed by three hosts with easy rapport and a steady belief that the environment is the economy. It suits a listener who prefers state-level policy detail to broad climate commentary.
Resilient Forward is a podcast that showcases resilient solutions and features innovative strategies, products, and services from prominent members of the business community, industry leaders, advocates, and elected officials who are all engaged in developing and implementing resilient solutions in their organizations.
Florida's dry season is a plot twist if you only budgeted worry for hurricanes.
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Short reviews from the PlayNext desk, based on the episodes we processed.
A Florida water conversation that connects Tallahassee's unfinished budget to the practical work of resilience.
Florida's water story gets a useful turn here, as a state often framed by too much water has to sit with the problem of too little. Mirela Baguette, David Rathke, and Pepper Uchino tie that tension to Tallahassee's unfinished budget, the pressure of a 60-day legislative session,…
A clear, lively guide to the bills, budgets, and ocean-economy choices shaping Florida's resilience.
Florida's ocean future is framed through the working parts of a legislative session: proposed budgets, coastal protection, Everglades restoration, water infrastructure, and nature-based solutions.
A year-end Florida resilience conversation linking water, heat, sea level rise, and local choices to the work ahead.
Resilient Forward closes 2025 with resilience framed as continuing civic work, not a single disaster narrative. Irela Vague, David Rathke, and Pepper Uchino revisit major wins, water milestones, a hurricane-free Florida year, and the agenda forming around the upcoming Florida…
A conference recap that frames One Water as a practical question about connected systems.
Florida resilience gets a practical, slightly rangy tour as the hosts look back at a record-breaking conference and ask what changes when separate pieces of the water system are treated as one connected puzzle.
A wide-ranging Florida resilience episode that connects water, history, and hurricane risk with practical clarity.
Florida's resilience story is strongest when hurricane preparation is tied to the older water and safety choices that still shape life in the state.
Local power, explained from the ground up.
Environmental policy with public health consequences.
Sustainability translated into business consequences.
["Resilient Forward opens with Florida's budget standoff, Senate Bill 302 on natural shoreline restoration, and a biosolids bill that could affect wastewater utilities and local budgets after sine die and an April special session.", "Mirela Baguette, David Rathke, and Pepper Uchino credit Senator Liliana Garcia, Representative Jim Mooney, and Senator Boyd for pushing statewide standards, Biscayne Bay protections, and seagrass restoration.", "Dr.
Florida's ocean economy is framed here as a statewide scale story, with Colin Polsky citing 909,000 jobs, 59 billion in labor income, and 96 billion in gross state product.
["Resilient Forward closes 2025 with a Florida resilience roundup that covers the conference's jump past 600 participants and the return to Sunseeker in Charlotte Harbor on September 23-25, 2026.", "Irela Vague, David Rathke, and Pepper Uchino track the refiled natural infrastructure bill, the one-water and resilience-grant funding fight, and the beach-management debate over critically eroded miles and the unchanged $50 million allocation since 2019.", "Dr.
Resilient Forward recaps the 2025 Florida Resilience Conference and the One Water discussion that followed, with Irela Baguette, David Rathke, and Pepper Uchino pointing to a turnout above 600 attendees.
Florida's budget fight, restoration wins, and emergency-management planning share the same episode, starting with a $115.1 billion state budget and about $570 million in line-item vetoes.
Host Irela Bagay interviews meteorologist John Morales about hurricane season and climate resilience.
Host Irela Bagay interviews Caroline Lewis and Gabby Rodriguez about the Clio Institute's work in climate literacy and resilience.
Host Irela Bagay interviews psychotherapist Lina Acosta-Sandal about managing homeschooling and parenting challenges during the COVID-19 crisis.
Host Irela Bagay interviews Representative Ana Maria Rodriguez about the impact of COVID-19 in Florida and the importance of resilient solutions to environmental challenges.
Host Irela Baguette interviews Stephen Bourne from Atkins about his work helping communities evaluate and improve their resilience to climate change challenges.