Colorado River megadrought got you down? Lighten up, and feel some hope, with TikTok’s ‘WesternWaterGirl’
Teal Lehto honed her short, snappy explanations of the West’s complex water problems guiding rafting trips down the Animas River in her hometown of Durango. She often had lulls of a minute or less in between shouting paddle commands to the tourists in her boat — squeezing in a tidy explanation of how water rights work before yelling “all forward” to her boatmates to keep them from ramming into rocks. After running the same stretch of river a few times a day for months, the timing became second nature. … That same formula works on TikTok, just trade the tips for likes and followers. On the app, Lehto goes by “WesternWaterGirl,” and her clips regularly garner hundreds of thousands of views. Since joining the app in April, she’s amassed nearly 48,000 followers who tune in for her fast-paced, snarky and often profanity-laced takes on the West’s water crisis.