A surprising group of investors is fueling a global scramble for water in the most unlikely of places – the Arizona desert. As wells run dry, there’s a race for profits.

Cynthia Rodriguez
Cynthia Rodriguez is a senior radio editor for Reveal. She is an award-winning journalist who came to Reveal from New York Public Radio, where she spent nearly two decades covering everything from the city’s dramatic rise in family homelessness to police’s fatal shootings of people with mental illness.
In 2019, Rodriguez was part of Caught, a podcast that documents how the problem of mass incarceration starts with the juvenile justice system. Caught received an Alfred I. duPont-Columbia Award for outstanding journalism in the public interest. Her other award-winning stories include investigations into the deaths of construction workers during New York City's building boom and the “three-quarter house” industry – a network of independent, privately run buildings that pack vulnerable people into unsanitary, overcrowded buildings in exchange for their welfare funds.
In 2013, Rodriguez was one of 13 journalists to be selected as a Knight-Wallace Fellow at the University of Michigan, where her study project was on the intersection of poverty and mental health. She is based in New York City but is originally from San Antonio, Texas, and considers both places home.
The Post-Roe Health Care Crisis
Abortion bans are confusing doctors about what’s still legal. Reveal investigates the effects on pregnant women and the growing influence of anti-abortion crisis pregnancy centers.
The Long Campaign to Turn Birth Control Into the New Abortion
Now that the fall of Roe v. Wade has ended the constitutional right to abortion, many in the religious right have a new goal: undermining trust in, and limiting access to, hormonal contraception – including the pill.
Listening in on Russia’s War in Ukraine
Secretly intercepted phone calls from Russian soldiers in Ukraine reveal how fear and propaganda fueled Russia’s violence against its neighbor.
Locked Up: The Prison Labor That Built Business Empires
Companies across the South profited off the forced labor of people in prison after the Civil War – a racist system known as convict leasing.
A Family Divided Over Jan. 6: ‘Traitors Get Shot’
As the threat of criminal charges looms over Donald Trump, a look into the case against the first insurrectionist to be prosecuted.
How Democracy Survived the Midterm Elections
Following the 2020 election, it looked like the midterms could create more chaos. But mostly, they didn’t. Why?
The Long Campaign to Turn Birth Control Into the New Abortion
Now that the fall of Roe v. Wade has ended the constitutional right to abortion, many in the religious right have a new goal: undermining trust in, and limiting access to, hormonal contraception – including the pill.
Locked Up: The Prison Labor That Built Business Empires
Companies across the South profited off the forced labor of people in prison after the Civil War – a racist system known as convict leasing.
The Religious Right Mobilized to End Roe. Now What?
Abortion will soon be illegal in many states. What the anti-abortion movement plans to do next and how another religious movement is fighting back.