I’ve been looking forward to it for weeks. Folks on Facebook have been posting up a storm and the twitter sphere seems abuzz with hashtags and mentions of the film. I’m talking about the film, DamNation, a documentary discussing the history of dams in America, our apparent love of building them, and the movement to remove them to restore the natural habitat. Check out the trailer below:
<iframe src=”//player.vimeo.com/video/41319363?byline=0&portrait=0″ width=”500″ height=”281″ frameborder=”0″ webkitallowfullscreen mozallowfullscreen allowfullscreen></iframe> <p><a href=”http://vimeo.com/41319363″>DamNation | Trailer</a> from <a href=”http://vimeo.com/feltsoulmedia”>FELT SOUL MEDIA</a> on <a href=”https://vimeo.com”>Vimeo</a>.</p>
Last night on June 5th there were 22 screenings across the country at Patagonia retail stores, a major sponsor of the film. I attended the showing at the downtown Boston store on Newbury St, and was impressed with the turnout; the place was packed with people of all ages and backgrounds. I chatted with a woman from Massachusetts Fish and Game and sat next to a guy from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.
After a short introduction of the history of dam building in America where I learned over 75,000 dams have been built in the last 150 years (!), the film moved on to focus on specific dams including the Glen Canyon Dam in Arizona, the Elwha Dam and the Grand Coulee Dam both in Washington. While the film featured other dams in the country, I was most struck by these three that they focused on.
As a outdoor recreation guide in Washington, I can remember driving to Olympic National Park and seeing the newly free-flowing Elwha river for the first time. As the film highlighted the 20 year struggle to remove the dam, I kept thinking of my own experience rafting that river and began to have a whole new appreciation of my time there. Watching the filmmakers try to find the passageway for non-motorized vessels through the Grand Coulee Dam, I became angry, listening to their heated interaction with security, telling them that, “This is Federal property. This is their (the federal government) river.”
I found myself smiling at the home movie footage they found of three adventurers on their trip down the Colorado river, through the section that is now underwater from the Glen Canyon Dam. How beautiful those side canyons were, and how sad that we can’t go explore them now.
While the film never admonishes dam building completely, it does make us question the need for certain existing dams in place and the cost we are paying to our natural habitat for changing our environment. For example, they bring into question the role of fish hatcheries, the business of the fish hatcheries and the consequence of these factories. In the film they point out that that when releasing these inbred salmon into rivers with wild salmon, it creates more difficulty for the wild salmon population to survive and also increases genetic dilution of the wild salmon due to inbreeding.
The issue of dams and dam removal is complicated, but one topic that needs to be addressed. Not only did I learn much more about this issue from the documentary, but the Q & A during intermission furthered my awareness of dam removal and river restoration here in Massachusetts, where we alone have 3,000 dams in our tiny New England state. The footage shot and the incredible photos alone are well worth your time. Want to see the film now? Check here to find a screening near you.
Adventure On,
Joslin