The Nigel Moore Award for Youth Programming was awarded by Youth Jury members Anna Hetherington, Jacob Saltzberg, and Steven Hawkins, to Travis Rummel, Ben Knight, and Matt Stoecker’s film DamNation. In response, the filmmakers wrote: “It means a lot to us that DamNation appealed to a younger audience. We sincerely hope that Nigel would have loved our film—from what we’ve read about him, he might have appreciated the last words in DamNation by Edward Abbey: "Sentiment without action is the ruin of the soul.”
Dear DOXA, and the best Nigel Moore Award youth jury of all time—
We’re insanely honored and grateful for the award, and sorry about all the bad words and illegal stuff in our film. [maybe don’t tell your parents you gave us the award] We’re super bummed out that we couldn’t be there to high five the jury, but we ran out of money for plane tickets because we make documentary films, and we’re not positive Ben is allowed in Canada anymore. It means a lot to us that DamNation appealed to a younger audience, given the fact that their generation will be growing up with a more critical eye when it comes to obsolete dams doing more harm than good to our watersheds. We sincerely hope that Nigel would have loved our film—from what we’ve read about him, he might have appreciated the last words in DamNation by Edward Abbey: "Sentiment without action is the ruin of the soul.”
Sincerely,
Ben, Travis, Matt and the whole DamNation crew
Here are all the incredible awards DamNation has received to date:
Kevin Yancy of the Bureau of Reclamation, among a wall of aging gauges inside the Glines Canyon Dam powerhouse.
B-corporations, or benefit corporations, operate on a for-profit basis that also considers society and the environment as essential parts of their corporate mandates, measured by shareholders right along with the financials.
One such entity, Patagonia, is a manufacturer of high-end outdoor apparel and the official outfitter of Portland, Oregon. Presumably an offshoot of its own endangered-fish-saving World Trout Initiative, Patagonia produced DamNation, a quick, smart documentary about the havoc one country can create in its native fish populations by building 75,000 dams over an 80- or 90-year span.
Inaccurately billed as "green energy," hydropower deprives shorelines and riparian zones of the vital silt washed downriver, while preventing salmon from reaching spawning zones and flooding low-lying wilderness areas.
Another unfortunate-for-salmon irony is that hydropower often produces such surpluses of electricity that nearby wind farms are rendered redundant. The film includes a public meeting in which Jim Yost, a Boss Hogg–looking member of the Northwest Power and Conservation Council who opposes wind farms, keeps saying "beanie babies" over and over while discussing how wind power is just a "fad."
Co-director and narrator Ben Knight interviews activists, officials, social jammers, and scientists, approaching the subject not with outrage, but with humor and optimism. Touching on energy, hatchery operations, Western expansionism, and native cultures,DamNation covers a lot of territory with a short runtime.
While many enviro-docs basically lower the audience into a dark well of hopelessness and then roll the credits, DamNation concludes with a triumphant fusillade of explosions, as communities across the country decommission and demolish environmentally destructive dams.
Patagonia is famous for its high-end outdoor gear, selling its 3-in-1 River Salt Jacket for $549 and a Special Edition Diamond Quilt Snap-T Pullover for $199. In the coming weeks, the luxe retailer will begin stocking a very different item on its shelves: DVDs of "DamNation," Patagonia's self-financed and award-winning environmental documentary.
Long admired as one of the most socially accountable companies in America, Patagonia in recent years has become more of an outspoken advocate for environmental and corporate responsibility, letting shoppers openly inspect its supply and manufacturing chain and even encouraging potential customers to stop buying its products and recycle, repair and reuse the clothes they already possess.
"DamNation," the first film the company has produced, takes Patagonia's activism to a higher level, and its release will be linked to a petition urging the federal government to tear down what Patagonia calls "deadbeat dams."
The movie opens in limited release theatrically May 9 in New York and Portland, Ore., debuting in Los Angeles on May 16. "DamNation" will be screened for free in and for sale at most of Patagonia's 30 retail outlets on June 5, where the DVD will be listed at $24.99 (or $29.99 for a Blu-ray version). A day later, "DamNation" will become available on the streaming site Vimeo for $9.99.
Patagonia is supporting the documentary's release with an extensive social media campaign that hopes to take advantage of the company's fervent (if not well-heeled) fans, hosting scores of word-of-mouth screenings for organizations such as the Arkansas Canoe Club, Los Padres ForestWatch and Hells Canyon Preservation Council.
"We're not going to be getting any money back on this," said Patagonia's 75-year-old founder, Yvon Chouinard, whose privately held company bankrolled the film's approximate $500,000 budget and more expensive marketing push. "It's just propaganda."
"DamNation," which suggests that the more than 80,000 American dams do far more ecological harm than good, is hardly a conservationist diatribe. Directed by Ben Knight and Travis Rummel, the thoroughly researched documentary has won top awards at the South by Southwest Film Conference and Festival and the Environmental Film Festival in Washington, D.C. Early reviews have been enthusiastic.
Made over the course of three years, "DamNation" argues contrary to popular belief that hydroelectric power isn't environmentally clean or efficient, that reservoirs formed by dams release vast amounts of harmful methane (owing to decomposing organic material underwater) and that costly fish ladders and hatcheries scarcely mitigate the damage dams cause to spawning wild salmon. Dams ostensibly built to boost recreational opportunities, furthermore, don't necessarily permit the same, as the filmmakers find out when they kayak up to one dam's navigable locks and are assumed to be domestic terrorists.
The movie's on-screen partisans, who include former Secretary of the Interior Bruce Babbitt, recommend that the most responsible action is to tear down several large dams and let nature and the subsequently unstopped rivers follow their natural courses. "DamNation" chronicles how quickly Chinook salmon return after the sizable Elwha Dam in Washington is demolished.
Those who want to preserve dams say they play a critical role in flood control, maintain the water supply and benefit shipping and recreation. Supporters furthermore argue that dams not only generate necessary and relatively clean energy but also provide work for people who would become unemployed if the dams were removed.
Chouinard said he became focused on the downside of dams when Patagonia tried to reverse the ecological demise of the Ventura River, not far from the company's Southern California headquarters. Chouinard in the late 1990s used Patagonia's name and money in newspaper ads to advocate for the removal of the Edwards Dam on Maine's Kennebec River; it was torn down in 1999, and the native ecosystem gradually has been restored.
"That's the reason I'm in business," said Chouinard, an avid fly fisherman who recently returned from a fishing trip to British Columbia. "I couldn't care less about making more money or making more clothes. I want to use business to inspire solutions to the environmental crisis."
He said he was inspired to make the movie out of frustration with the political process. "You can write letters to your elected officials all day long but they don't even read them," Chouinard said.
At the 2011 Wild & Scenic Film Festival in Nevada City, Calif., Chouinard started talking with Matt Stoecker, an environmental activist committed to freeing rivers. "We were talking about the need to show the destruction caused by dams and the amazing things that happen when you remove a dam — including seeing a salmon jump up a river where a dam used to be," Stoecker said. Just like coal-fired power plants, Stoecker said, dams were an idea eclipsed by progress. "It was time to phase them out."
Chouinard and Stoecker's timing was propitious, as three large dams were about to be razed, which had the potential of turning an inherently uncinematic topic — large cement structures that simply sit there — into a visual story. But Chouinard and Stoecker, who served as one of the film's producers and directed its underwater photography, struggled to find a willing documentarian.
Knight, who with Rummel had made smaller films about fishing, had two immediate concerns: He saw no way to make the issue compelling, and he worried about becoming a Patagonia shill.
"Our first instinct was no, and we told them so," Knight said. "It was just too daunting, and it just seemed too difficult to humanize a story about dams. And it's not every day that a clothing company comes out to say it wants to make a documentary."
As they kept considering the topic, though, Knight and Rummel were drawn to the idea of following a dam's destruction, and using that event as the film's organizing principle. "We thought, at least there's a beginning and an end," said Knight, who narrates "DamNation."
They were promised editorial independence from Chouinard but then had to figure out a way to film the dams.
"We honestly had to do a lot of sneaking around," Knight said. "Dams are really unwelcoming places."
He said that even without Patagonia looking over his shoulder, he was mortified when he and Rummel showed up in their kayaks wearing matching hoodies made by the company — "We bought them," Knight said, "as they didn't send us free clothing once" — which made it look like they were promoting the clothing. "But it's not a branded movie by any stretch," Knight said.
Chouinard said "DamNation" ultimately builds on what almost every child was taught by his or her parent. "If you make a mess, you clean it up. You don't just walk away from it," he said. The time has come, he said, to tear down, rather than build, more dams.
"I hope this film leads to a revolution," Chouinard said. "A revolution about how we think about our water, and how we think about our rivers."
It’s been a month since DamNation made its world premiere at SXSW in Austin, Texas. First and foremost, we would like to thank all of the people who’ve come out to see our film. Your support is greatly appreciated. Moving forward, we have a bunch of news and some important action alerts to share, so let's get to it.
America’s Most Endangered Rivers 2014
When, as a young man, DamNation co-producer Matt Stoecker witnessed migrating steelhead jump at, and bounce off, Stanford University’s Searsville Dam on San Francisquito Creek, he recognized the destructive power a single dam can have on an entire watershed and beyond. Matt is now a fish biologist, who has since spearheaded the removal of more than a dozen such barriers to migration and is actively involved in efforts to dismantle several others. When he and Patagonia founder/owner Yvon Chouinard, a long-time “dam buster” who for years has supported groups working to tear down dams, decided to capture such efforts and their healing effects on film, and share them with the world, they teamed up with Felt Soul Media’s Ben Knight and Travis Rummel, and DamNation was born.
Today, American Rivers announced their annual list of America's 10 Most Endangered Rivers and we’re happy to see San Francisquito Creek and Searsville Dam coming in at number five. San Francisquito Creek is the only nominee with a problem dam to be recognized by American Rivers this year. Making the list of most endangered rivers certainly isn’t a cause for celebration, but it’s a big deal in the river community and should bring national and local attention to the efforts that are underway to remove Searsville Dam.
[Above: Searsville Dam on San Francisquito Creek, California. Stanford releases no flows downstream for fish and wildlife and the stagnant creek dries out and becomes lethal to the threatened steelhead that are blocked at the base of the concrete wall. Photo: Matt Stoecker]
Unfortunately, it remains unclear whether Stanford University will remove their unneeded Searsville Dam and upgrade to a more reliable, sustainable and safer water system. The university is studying alternatives, including dam removal, and has promised to make a decision by the end of the year. Numerous examples throughout the country have proven that when a dam is removed, migratory fish quickly reestablish themselves above the barrier, often within weeks. Invasive species populations from the reservoirs are significantly reduced and water quality and habitat improve. Communities are made safer and the liability risk for dam owners is eliminated.
Aerial view of Searsville Dam and reservoir. Photo: Matt Stoecker
A pair of wild steelhead spawn below the impassable Searsville Dam in 2013. Multiple adult steelhead and their eggs died as upstream diversions and lack of access to perennial streams above the dam contributed to trapping these federally threatened fish in a dewatered creek. Watch a video of these two fish spawning. Photo: Doug Rundle
Streams merge in the headwaters of San Francisquito Creek where open space preserves have protected much of the watershed and provide ideal habitat conditions for steelhead and other native species to return to if only Stanford University would let them. Photo: Matt Stoecker
Running through downtown Palo Alto and Menlo Park, San Francisquito Creek harbors one of the last wild steelhead runs in the San Francisco Bay. However, Stanford's Searsville Dam blocks them from reaching critical year round streams, leaving the next generation to wonder who is responsible for the deaths of threatened steelhead in the creek. Photo: Mike Lanza
As a business member of the Beyond Searsvile Dam coalition, who is leading the charge, we urge Stanford to show leadership as environmental stewards and choose an alternative that will remove Searsville Dam, restoring this ecologically significant creek while protecting local residents from flooding and safety concerns.
A redesigned version of DamNationFilm.com was launched recently, and with it comes a full list of upcoming screenings. Newport, Rhode Island; Missoula, Montana; Portland, Oregon and Carbondale, Colorado will round out our film festival screenings in April. Looking ahead, the film will have its theatrical release on May 9 in New York at the IFC Center, followed by a release on May 16 in Los Angeles at the Laemmle NoHo 7. The theatrical release is coupled with a nine-city tour of one-night film premieres in select markets in April and May, and a nationwide screening event at all U.S. Patagonia retail stores on June 5.
DamNation is proud to be partnering with Vimeo On Demand to bring our film to your computer, laptop, tablet and smartphone. Preorders are being accepted now for DamNation’s digital release on June 6, 2014. And if you like DamNation, you’ll want to check out the Patagonia Collection at Vimeo On Demand. Curated by Patagonia and Vimeo, this collection of online films showcases Earth’s elegance, strength and fragility.
Visit Vimeo on Demand to see the Patagonia Collection and preorder your digital copy of DamNation.
Two Film Festivals, Two Awards for DamNation
We’re thrilled to announce that DamNation won the SXSW Film 2014 Audience Award in the Documentary Spotlight category, and the Documentary Award for Environmental Advocacy (and a $10,000 cash prize), at the 2014 Environmental Film Festival in Washington, D.C. The filmmakers express their gratitude to festivalgoers for the positive reception, celebrating the news as a sign that the urgent issue of dam removal is resonating and will continue to build momentum as the film tours across the country.
“Premiering DamNation at SXSW was a dream come true for Travis and I, and a dream come true for the film,” said co-director Ben Knight. “I honestly can't even wrap my head around the fact that we won the audience award yet, it feels very surreal. I could feel an energy build during the film at our screenings in Austin; our audiences were just amazing.”
“After pouring ourselves into DamNation, it is incredible to see the film resonate so deeply with our audiences,” said co-director Travis Rummel. “We’re so appreciative to Patagonia for trusting us with the creative freedom needed to bring this critical story to life.”
“The health of our rivers impacts all of us, and we have too many degraded rivers with unnecessary and obsolete dams,” said co-producer Matt Stoecker. “It’s so encouraging to see audiences connect with our film and help us build momentum to free our rivers.”
Yvon Chouinard and DamNation filmmakers on the SXSW red carpet. Photo: Nate Ptacek
Waiting in line for the world premiere at SXSW. Photo: Kasey Kersnowski
Patagonia employees Ron Hunter and Brooks Scott tabled outside the Vimeo Theater at SXSW. Photo: Nate Ptacek
Q&A session at SXSW with Nancy Schafer (moderator), Yvon Chouinard (Patagonia), Joy Howard (Patagonia), Travis Rummel (DamNation) and Jeremy Boxer (Vimeo). Photo: Nate Ptacek
Window detail and a peek inside Patagonia Austin. Photo: Jared Tennant
Party at Patagonia Austin after the world premiere screening. Photo: Jared Tennant
DamNation filmmakers and the Patagonia Austin staff. Thanks to the entire store staff for their effort and hospitality. Photo: Nate Ptacek
We had a packed house at the Environmental Film Festival in the Nation's Capital, productive meetings with top policymakers and government officials about our Crack Down on Deadbeat Dams petition, and we won the Environmental Advocacy Award. Washington D.C. was good to us. Photo: Ben Knight
March 15, 2014, New York, NY – DamNationhas won the SXSW Film 2014 Audience Award in the Documentary Spotlight category, the festival announced today, following the film’s world premiere at SXSW on March 10.
The filmmakers expressed their gratitude to festivalgoers for the positive reception, celebrating the news as a sign that the urgent issue of dam removal is resonating and will continue to build momentum as the film tours across the country.
DamNation is a film odyssey across America that explores the sea change in our national attitude from pride in big dams as engineering wonders to the growing awareness that our own future is bound to the life and health of our rivers. The film is produced by Patagonia in association with Stoecker Ecological & Felt Soul Media.
“Premiering DamNation at SXSW was a dream come true for Travis and I, and a dream come true for the film,” said Co-Director Ben Knight. “I honestly can't even wrap my head around the fact that we won the audience award yet, it feels very surreal. I could feel an energy build during the film at our screenings in Austin, our audiences were just amazing.”
“After pouring ourselves into DamNation, it is incredible to see the film resonate so deeply with our audiences,” said Co-Director Travis Rummel. “We’re so appreciative to Patagonia for trusting us with the creative freedom needed to bring this critical story to life.”
“The health of our rivers impacts all of us, and we have too many degraded rivers with unnecessary and obsolete dams,” said Ecologist and Producer Matt Stoecker. “I’m thrilled to see audiences connect with our film and help us build momentum to free our rivers.”
The film will open in theatrical release on May 9 in New York at the IFC Center, followed by a release on May 16 in Los Angeles at the Laemmle NoHo 7. The theatrical release is coupled with a nine-city tour of one-night film premieres in select markets in April and May, and a nationwide screening event at all U.S. Patagonia retail stores on June 5.
DamNation will also play for one week in Portland, Oregon on April 17 upon its premiere as the opening night film of the Portland EcoFilm Festival.Additionally, the film will receive the Environmental Advocacy Award at the DC Environmental Film Festival on March 30.
The film will be available for pre-buy on the DamNation website through Vimeo On Demand in March, and will be released on Vimeo, along with iTunes and a number of other digital platforms in June, after the theatrical release. To view or embed the trailer on Vimeo, visit: vimeo.com/49700244
About the Film
DamNation is a film odyssey across America that explores the sea change in our national attitude from pride in big dams as engineering wonders to the growing awareness that our own future is bound to the life and health of our rivers. Dam removal has moved beyond the fictional Monkey Wrench Gang to go mainstream. Where obsolete dams come down, rivers bound back to life, giving salmon and other wild fish the right of return to primeval spawning grounds, after decades without access. DamNation’s majestic cinematography and unexpected discoveries move through rivers and landscapes altered by dams, but also through a metamorphosis in values, from conquest of the natural world to knowing ourselves as part of nature.
DamNation, 87 min, U.S., 2014. Directed by Ben Knight and Travis Rummel. Produced by Matt Stoecker and Travis Rummel. Editor: Ben Knight. Director of Photography: Ben Knight. Director of Underwater Photography: Matt Stoecker. Associate Producer: Beda Calhoun. Executive Producer: Yvon Chouinard. Featuring: David James Duncan, David Montgomery, Elmer Crow, Rebecca Miles Jim Waddell, Floyd Dominy, Katie Lee, Lee Spencer and Mikal Jakubal.
10, 9, 8… the DamNation premiere countdown has begun! After three years of planning, researching, shooting and editing, the film is finally complete. And we’re thrilled to announce the world premiere ofDamNation will be at South by Southwest (SXSW) in Austin, Texas on Monday, March 10, 2014.
It has been a huge team effort. To all of you who have been helping and following our progress, thank you for your patience, support and energy throughout the process. We are humbled by the continued interest and excitement around DamNation.
Making this film has been one of the most challenging and rewarding experiences of our lives. To premiere DamNation at SXSW is an absolute dream come true. Our goal, since day one, has been to reach a broad audience with the film and we are confident that the size, location and diversity of events at SXSW will launch DamNationon an incredible journey.
For Everyone in Austin and Those Attending SXSW
Come to the premiere! We would love to see you there. The premiere screening on March 10 will be followed by a Q&A with Executive Producer Yvon Chouinard, Co-Directors Ben Knight and Travis Rummel, and Producer Matt Stoecker. There will be additional screenings on March 11, 13 and 14 in Austin. Details are on the SXSW Film page. Follow us on Facebook or Twitter for updates.
For Everyone Else Who Would Like to See the Film
Premiering the film is just the first step. DamNation will be screening at film festivals nationally and internationally throughout 2014. Sign on to our e-mail list to receive updates.
An Elwha River chinook comes to rest below the now removed Elwha Dam on Washington’s Olympic Peninsula (fall 2011). Photo by Ben Knight
Beyond film festivals, DamNation is set for U.S. theatrical release in New York and select markets in April/May, coupled with a nine-city U.S. tour of regional film premieres, and we are partnering with non-profit groups across the country to host screenings of the film in a town near you. The U.S. tour will be coming to Seattle, Portland (OR), San Francisco, Santa Barbara, Santa Monica, Denver, Washington DC, New York City and Portland (ME). Please join us at one of the tour stops – the whole film crew and some of the starring characters will be there, along with local non-profit groups who are working on river restoration projects in your area.
If you would like the film to come to your town, ask your local river restoration or recreation group, club, church or school to e-mail us. We are making it easy to show DamNation locally and will provide critical tools to help make your event a success. Non-profit and educational screenings begin May 1, 2014; our goal is to have over 500 screenings in 2014.
The film will be available for pre-buy on the DamNation website through Vimeo On Demand in March, and will be released on Vimeo, along with iTunes and a number of other digital platforms in June. As the distribution of DamNation evolves we will keep you posted. Stay tuned to DamNationFilm.com, Facebook and Twitter for the latest news, action alerts and updates.
We’re ready to blow this film up and we can’t wait for the premiere. As the explosives expert says before blasting an old dam, “Fire in the hole!”
A little over a year ago, a 125-foot-tall dam stood in Washington’s White Salmon River, a concrete plug with a serene reservoir at its back and a trickle of river spilling out downstream.
But it’s hard to tell that today.
The Condit Hydroelectric Dam, which was built in the early 1900s to harness the energy of the White Salmon for local industry, was blasted into the history books in October 2011 with 700 pounds of carefully placed dynamite.
The explosion, part of a phased project orchestrated by dam operator Pacificorp as an alternative to building costly fish passages, released the White Salmon River in a torrent of muddy water, debris and sediment, draining Northwestern Lake in less than two hours and freeing the river for the first time in almost a century.
Since that time, demolition crews have completed the removal of some 35,000 cubic yards of concrete, as well as logjams and other debris in the river.
And when public-access restrictions were lifted in early November, a group of boaters, river activists, biologists, rafting guides and kayakers converged for a historic float.
About 30 people — including individuals who had followed the dam-removal project since day one — piled into two rafts and 13 kayaks to float a section of river that had been reborn. The boaters paddled about five miles of class II and III rapids that wound through what used to be the reservoir and dam site.
“It was beyond fun,” said Tom O’Keefe of American Whitewater, a longtime proponent of the dam removal who helped organize the float. “This is a day that I’ve been waiting for for over a decade.”
Though it came together as kind of a spontaneous outing, what commenced was a jubilant and sincere celebration of a river’s revival.
Washington’s White Salmon river was officially opened to boaters this month after the removal of the Condit Dam, and spawning salmon have already been spotted upstream for the first time in a century. Photos by Ben Knight/DamNation
“We realized it was going to be the first official float down the river and it quickly turned into this great celebration,” said Amy Kober of American Rivers. “It was an incredibly meaningful experience to be there together, to float through the old dam site.”
The river was running clear — a huge contrast to the sediment-laden waters of a year ago — and on this characteristically drizzly fall day, it carried the boaters through deep canyons and past basalt outcroppings. Salmon passed the boats on their way up river; herons and ducks were spotted near the banks.
And compared to a year ago, when the water was chocolate-milk muddy and the landscape raw-looking from the release, signs of revitalization were everywhere.
“It was gorgeous,” Kober said. “You think back a year ago to when the blast happened, when all that sediment was let loose. Just a year later, the salmon are spawning in the lower river. It’s incredible how resilient the river and the salmon are. It’s a new river, and it’s still evolving so much.”
The Condit Hydroelectric Project was located a little more than three miles upstream from the confluence of the White Salmon and Columbia rivers. The section of the river above the reservoir, which is home to fantastic sections of whitewater, has long been popular with boaters. But it had an anticlimactic ending, Kober said.
“You would have this amazing run and then the takeout was at the reservoir. You would kind of emerge into this big flat water,” she said. “Now you can paddle it for miles and miles toward the Columbia.”
But freeing up a recreational use was only one reason advocates pushed for the dam to come down. They were also driven by a desire to see fish habitats and river ecology restored.
“It’s not just the recreational experience, it’s that whole experience of connecting with that river and everything that makes a healthy ecosystem,” O’Keefe said.
The group paddled through the former reservoir site, looking high above them to see the bathtub ring that once was a lake’s edge. They passed pillow basalts and waterfalls spilling into the river, before they came to where the dam once stood.
“You can hardly tell where the dam was, they did such a good job of cleaning it up,” O’Keefe said.
Passing the dam site, they pulled off onto a gravel bank to celebrate.
“We all sort of took in the moment, passed a bottle of champagne around. There were lots of hugs and cheering,” O’Keefe said. “I was thinking, all those years working on this project, that it’s not the Endangered Species Act, Federal Power Act … the economics, it wasn’t any of those things that ultimately made this happen. It was the people who cared about this river. It was that passion and excitement that made this happen. Seeing that was pretty fulfilling.”
Ben Knight, a filmmaker with Felt Soul Media who was there to document the event for Patagonia’s documentary project, DamNation, said people these days have become almost desensitized to seeing wild places developed or manipulated.
“But it’s incredibly rare to see things go back to the way they were before,” he said. “So seeing something returned back to its natural state is an awfully powerful thing to witness.” After the champagne toast, the group continued downstream, where they were able to run the new version of Steelhead Falls. The dam had previously diverted water around it, but now the class IV rapid was bouncy, dynamic and powerful – just what you would expect from a free-flowing river.
By Katie Klingsporn
About the Author Katie Klingsporn is a writer and editor of the Telluride Daily Planet in southwestern Colorado. Look for more of her posts highlighting issues featured in DamNation, a documentary film being produced by Patagonia and Stoecker Ecological in conjunction with the Colorado-based filmmaking team Felt Soul Media.
The Susitna is a huge glacial river that drains the indomitable Alaska Range. Denali looms on the horizon. One of America’s last great, wild, undammed rivers, it is home to large numbers of king, sockeye, pink, coho and chum salmon, which push through its heavy currents to spawn in its clear-water tributaries. The “Su” sees the fourth largest king salmon run in Alaska, producing hundreds of thousands of them each year.
Not only would a 42 mile reservoir have dire impacts to the 5 species of salmon and prime caribou and moose habitat on the Susitna River. It would flood 20,000 acres of pristine forest. Photo by Travis Rummel
The state of Alaska wants to build a 735-foot-high dam on the Susitna to generate electricity. It would be the nation’s second tallest. It’s not the first time the Su has been looked to as a potential source of hydropower. Studies done in the 1950s and ‘80s both explored the feasibility of damming the river. Both agreed that it didn’t make financial sense.
Today is no exception. There are no private investors currently interested in partnering with the state to build the dam. This says a lot about the economics of the project, which would cost an estimated $5.19 billion dollars – more than $7,000 per Alaskan and more than the state’s annual budget. The dam would have an estimated capacity of 300 megawatts of electricity (the Grand Coulee Dam can generate 7,000).
Old growth forests and the confluence of Kosina Creek and the Susitna River would be submerged under the proposed reservoir. Photo by Matt Stoecker
The dam would neither bring down the cost of customer’s electricity, nor help with Alaska’s critical heating needs. Its environmental impacts would be far worse than those of using natural gas, which exists in abundance and is currently used to power turbines and heat homes. Tidal, wind and geothermal power offer possible future substitutes.
Just above the proposed Susitna-Watana dam site, the clear, fast moving Deadman creek meets the main stem of the Susitna River. Photo by Travis Rummel
Wanting to float the 42 miles of river that might one day be destroyed by the dam’s reservoir, we traveled to Alaska to visit the dam site and document what would be submerged and buried under glacial sediment. The Susitna flows through Alaska-sized country—as cliché as it sounds. Nothing is small.
The lower river is accessible by jet boat, and the upper river is crossed just once by the Denali Highway. It is the remote in-between zone where the dam would be built. This was the target of our trip.
Every day of our float trip through the proposed reservoir zone we encountered hundreds of caribou. Photo by Travis Rummel
We floated five days from the McLaren River confluence to the mouth of Devil’s Canyon, where the normally broad river squeezes through a bedrock gorge to produce some of the largest and most challenging whitewater in North America. Covering more than a hundred river miles by boat, we saw groups of caribou, sometimes hundreds of them, around almost every bend. There were signs of wolves and bears along the banks, but not a single person; that is outside of the daily storm of helicopters hovering overhead that had been employed to study the proposed dam.
Upstream from Devil’s Canyon and the proposed dam site, we explored crystal-clear tributaries with world-class grayling fisheries, 200-foot waterfalls and river-side cliffs with falcons. We found hundreds more caribou along the extensive floodplain and thickly forested riparian zone. One huge gravel bar within the dam site’s proposed reservoir appeared to be a caribou proving ground. Half a dozen huge males jousted, their massive antlers colliding, while a hundred females circled and watched the display.
Another stout Susitna king salmon powers up one of the many clear spawning tributaries. Photo by Matt Stoecker
At one of our campsites near the mouth of Kosina Creek, we sipped whiskey while watching group after group of caribou come down the opposite river bank, swim the frigid 1/2 mile-wide-river and land on both sides of us under a fading pink and purple sky. We’d read studies and heard reports of tenacious chinook salmon spawning in this beautiful tributary after powering through Devil’s Canyon – undoubtedly one of the hardest salmon migrations in North America.
Trying to tame the mighty Susitna seems foolish, particularly since the river is entombed in ice much of the year. That any “scientist” being paid to study the proposed dam would call this place a “biological desert,” as we’d heard, or any government proposing to destroy it in the name of “green energy,” seems too ridiculous to fathom. But this is what’s said and what’s planned.
A pod of pink salmon emerge from the Susitna’s silty currents and hug the bank as they continue upstream. Photo by Matt Stoecker
The state of Alaska has authorized expenditures of $165 million to push the project through the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission’s expedited permitting process. As farcical as it might sound, the project is very real.
“It’s like finding out that your best friend has been diagnosed with terminal cancer,” said Mike Wood, who lives on the bank of the river with his wife.
By Matt Stoecker and Travis Rummel
Just a few miles upstream of the proposed dam site, this entire scene would be drowned under a stagnant reservoir. Photo by Matt Stoecker
Check out this footage from one of the first whitewater descents of Devil’s Canyon:
In July of 2011, Felt Soul Media filmmakers, Ben Knight and Travis Rummel, packed camera gear, computers and a few changes of clothing into a borrowed Sportsmobile van, braced themselves for a whole lot of time together and hit the road.
It was the beginning of a 9,000-mile journey across the U.S. and beyond to research, chronicle and wrap their heads around a growing movement to tear down obsolete dams.
Co-director Travis Rummel in the field during the filming of DamNation.
Over the next year and a half, Knight and Rummel — often joined by biologist, river advocate and cameraman Matt Stoecker — traveled from Maine to California to document some of the issues surrounding America’s 80,000 dams. They interviewed a spitfire folk-singing nonagenarian who has been railing against the Glen Canyon Dam for more than 50 years, joined a group of boaters on a historic trip down a Washington river that was free-flowing for the first time in nearly a century and witnessed the removals of the 100-year-old Elwha and Glines Canyon dams on Washington’s Olympic Peninsula – the biggest dams to fall in U.S. history. They talked to biologists and writers, monkey wrenchers, politicians, archeologists and fishermen. They met a man who spends his days holding vigil over endangered steelhead, and another who had lost his job because the dam he had worked at for years shut down. They launched a failed kayaking mission down the dammed lower Snake River, filmed underwater scenes in cold rivers, hid in the woods a few times and learned that it’s illegal to film at many U.S. dams. And they shared in the hope of the lower Elwha Klallam tribe that the salmon that once thrived in that river’s pre-dammed waters will now return.
Since both started out knowing relatively little about dams, it was, as Knight puts it, “one hell of a crash course.”
The material they gathered with Stoecker — 51 interviews and 10 terabytes of footage — is now being shaped into a feature-length documentary called DamNation. Knight has been holed up in his tiny editing office in Telluride, Colorado, for the better part of the year, stitching together a compelling and beautifully shot story about how the time has come for America to rethink its dams.
Matt Stoecker, co-producer, getting a camera into position the day before explosives blasted a hole into the Condit Dam in Washington.
The documentary is being created in partnership with producers Patagonia and Stoecker Ecological, who pitched the movie to Felt Soul Media in late 2010. Initially, Rummel and Knight — who built their grassroots film company on the success of a handful of films about fly-fishing and watersheds — were reluctant. Dam issues are incredibly complex, and can, Knight says, be pretty dull. But once they dug into the subject, they realized that many of the dams that shaped this country also wiped out salmon, destroyed towns, altered rivers and, in many instances, long ago outlived their usefulness.
“It’s been transformative for us as filmmakers to understand how much our environment has been impacted by dams,” Rummel said.
Both admit that the scope and complexity of the issue makes this the biggest challenge they’ve ever taken on. To open people’s minds to the idea of dam removal, they are telling the story through the lives, historic events and rivers that have been shaped by the building of dams.
“I don’t want anyone to feel like they’ve been force-fed information, or worse … an opinion,” Knight said. “I want to get it right.”
“We’re not advocating taking out every dam,” Rummel added. “We’re advocating thinking about dams in a different way.”
DamNation editor Ben Knight at his office in Telluride, CO.
Knight has spent many nights hunched in front of his computer screens editing into the wee hours, fueled by Red Bull and cookies from the bakery down the alley. He jokes that his new office chair has a bedpan built in, and Patagonia has hired a registered nurse to check on his IV and feeding tube from time to time. But really, he says, he’s trying to tell an accurate story. It’s too important not to.
“Just knowing that we’re making an incredibly important film for a group of people and a company that we deeply respect is personally the biggest honor I could imagine,” Knight said. “If people see DamNation and feel inspired to ask questions about the impacts of dams in their backyards, I think we’ve done our job.”
The film is more than half way there — Felt Soul is hoping to have it finished by early fall.
Until then, Knight will be living at his editing desk. And both he and Rummel are happy that van life is over, for now.
By Katie Klingsporn
About the Author Katie Klingsporn is a writer and editor of the Telluride Daily Planet in southwestern Colorado. Look for more of her posts highlighting issues featured in “DamNation” a documentary being produced by Patagonia and Stoecker Ecological in conjunction with the Colorado-based filmmaking team Felt Soul Media.
The one and only Katie Lee, outside her home in Jerome, Arizona after her interview for DamNation this fall. Photo by Ben Knight
Folk-singer, desert goddess, rabble-rouser and all-out spitfire Katie Lee has been raging against Glen Canyon Dam and its reservoir, Lake Powell, for more than 50 years.
And she’s not slowing down.
Lee, who is featured in “DamNation,” a documentary film produced by Patagonia and Stoecker Ecological in conjunction with Felt Soul Media, has penned protest songs and authored books about Glen Canyon, the dam and the Southwest over the years. Just now wrapping up her latest project, “Dandy Crossing,” she tells the story of the handful of people who once lived at Hite, a river crossing that was drowned by Lake Powell, and what happened to them after they were forced from their homes.
Lee, who is in her 90s, also serves on the advisory board of the Glen Canyon Institute, an environmental group that advocates the draining of Lake Powell and the restoration of the Colorado River. She still performs and speaks for educational and non-profit organizations, as well.
“I haven’t quit, I’m still moaning and groaning about it,” she said recently from her home in Jerome, Arizona. “What else am I going to do? I know who I am, I know what I’m supposed to do and I do it. And until I drop, that’s what I’ll do.”
It was nearly 60 years ago when Lee first floated into the red-rock labyrinth of Glen Canyon, but her memory of that place hasn’t faded a bit. She recalls a desert Eden of soaring Wingate walls, ancient ruins, maidenhair fern, canyon wrens and little arches everywhere.
“It took me by the throat and it’s had me ever since,” Lee said. “There’s no way to describe it, it was just absolutely heaven. I mean, it was another world.”
Lee, then a petite starlet and luminous folk-singer, who entertained raft trips with songs, fell headlong for Glen Canyon. Over the next couple years, she rafted and floated the Colorado and San Juan rivers dozens of times, exploring and naming the mazelike system of side-canyons, swimming in the canyon’s pools, running the rapids and becoming one of the most enduring characters of Colorado River lore.
It was nearly 60 years ago when Katie Lee first explored the red rock labyrinth of Glen Canyon. Now 93, her memory of that place, which was drowned by the construction of Glen Canyon Dam, hasn’t faded a bit. Photo courtesy of the Katie Lee Collection
She and her friends mostly ignored early rumblings that a dam was coming, she said, because it seemed too implausible, too stupid to happen. And despite their fervent, forceful protests later on, construction commenced in 1956. The 710-foot-high concrete arch dam was completed in 1963, 15 miles upstream of Lee’s Ferry. In what has become a well-told narrative, the dam, which was built to create hydroelectricity, store water and provide flow regulation, then inundated one of the most breathtaking canyon systems in the country, leaving Lee both deeply broken-hearted and spitting mad.
In the six decades since, Lee has emerged as one of the most colorful, vocal and sharp-tongued advocates for preservation of wild places in the Southwest. She is outrageous, mischievous, feisty, graceful, fearless and determined. Not afraid to call a shithead a shithead, sing an incendiary protest song or ride her bicycle naked through town, she calls Lake Powell “Rez Foul,” and has openly insulted U.S. Bureau of Reclamation (USBR) officials. And she’s not shy about her dreams for the future of Glen Canyon Dam.
“I would like the dam to blow up completely all in one fell swoop, clean out the grand canyon, get rid of all that crap that’s in there now and be a river again,” said Lee.
The dam has drastically changed the Colorado River watershed by decreasing sediment loads, threatening native fish, taming a wild river and drowning a world of grottoes, spires, canyons and cliffs under the second largest manmade reservoir in the United States. Lake Powell, which sits beneath breathtaking red-rock walls, has a storage capacity of 27 million acre-feet and stretches 186 miles when it is full.
The Glen Canyon Institute, which was founded in 1996, has for years worked to restore Glen Canyon. Its scientific studies of the dam’s impacts helped win a lawsuit forcing the Bureau of Reclamation to re-evaluate how dam operations affect endangered species.
But right now, there are no plans to decommission the dam and drain the reservoir. And that’s good news to many people. The hugely popular recreation area draws roughly 3 million boaters, water-skiers, campers and fishermen to its shores each year, according to the USBR.
To Lee, the dam is an ugly reminder of one of America’s biggest mistakes. And though it may not happen in her lifetime, she is confident that if people don’t get rid of it, Mother Nature will, with time.
With recent large-scale dam-removal projects unfolding in places like the Northwest, Lee says the awareness is starting to grow about the harm that can be caused by dams. But her advice for people goes beyond dams: Protect what you love, or you may lose it.
“You better get off your butts and get out and protect what you love, because if you don’t make a noise, people won’t know what’s there, and if you make too much noise you’ll ruin it too,” she said. “I was so lucky to see [Glen Canyon], just so fortunate. That’s a gift that I will never be able to repay.
By Katie Klingsporn
About the Author Katie Klingsporn is a writer and editor of the Telluride Daily Planet in southwestern Colorado. Look for more of her posts highlighting issues featured in “DamNation” a documentary being produced by Patagonia and Stoecker Ecological in conjunction with the Colorado-based filmmaking team Felt Soul Media.