Tag Archives: Colorado River

Amusing Monday: Fascinating videos score high in E360 contest

Last month, “Yale Environment 360” announced the winners of a video contest with a focus on environmental themes. I found the videos fascinating and very well done, although they may not fit my normal definition of “amusing.” I think you’ll enjoy them.

Click on image to view “A Red Dirt Town," the second-place winner in the Yale Environment 360 contest.
Click on image to view “A Red Dirt Town,” second-place winner in the Yale Environment 360 contest.

“Yale Environment 360,” or “E360” for short, is a thoughtful online publication published by the Yale School of Forestry and Environmental studies. It is filled with reports and opinions on many environmental issues.

Clicking the image on this page will take you to the second-place winner in the contest, titled “A Red Dirt Town: An Enduring Legacy Of Toxic Pollution in Southern Waters.” Producer Spenser Gabin tells how the community of Anniston, Alabama, has been forced to cope with a legacy of PCB pollution from a Monsanto plant located upstream.

Gabin focuses on two main characters, Frank Chitwood, the Coosa Riverkeeper, who is attempting to get the rivers and lakes posted with warnings, and David Baker, a community activist who was one of the first to begin cleanup at the Monsanto site. Baker’s brother, who played in a PCB-contaminated area as a child, died at age 16 from cancer of the brain and lungs.

“A Red Dirt Town” was actually my favorite of the three.

The winning video in the contest is “Badru’s Story: Inside Africa’s Impenetrable Forest,” an account of Badru Mugerwa, who manages a network of cameras to document the loss of biodiversity and effects of climate change on Uganda’s Bwindi Impenetrable National Park. The film was produced by Benjamin Drummond and Sara Joy Steele.

The third-place winner is “Peak to Peak: An Intimate Look at
The Bighorn Sheep of the Rockies.” Produced by Jeremy Roberts, the video captures images of Rocky Mountain bighorn sheep and their playful lambs, while biologist Jack Hogg talks about their behavior and describes how climate change may affect their future.

The contest rules prevent the entrants from showing their videos anywhere but on “E360” for at least 60 days, So I’m not able to embed the videos at this time.

Contest judges included “E360” editor Roger Cohn, “New Yorker” writer and “E360” contributor Elizabeth Kolbert, and documentary filmmaker Thomas Lennon.

Another fascinating video produced for “E360” is “The Colorado River: Running Near Empty,” which takes award-winning photographer Pete McBride back to his home area in Colorado. From there, he follows the Colorado River until it runs dry short of its historic delta in the Sea of Cortez.

Remember the “Raise the River or Move the Ocean” blog from earlier this year? It featured Robert Redford and Will Ferrell feigning a debate about the future of the Colorado River. I still get a laugh from those videos, which manage to help educate us about the issue.

Related websites:

Raise the River Facebook page

Save the Colorado

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Amusing Monday: Raise the river or move the ocean?

A feigned controversy involving Robert Redford and Will Ferrell is bringing some light-hearted attention to a serious effort to restore the Colorado River delta.

In a series of videos released last week, Redford reaches out for public help to restore the delta where the Colorado River once flowed into the Gulf of California. The new campaign, called “Raise the River,” is based on buying up old water rights and putting the water into the river.

“So please,” Redford says, “will you join me at ‘raisetheriver.org’ and find out how you can get involved?”

William Ferrell doesn’t buy idea, and he mocks Redford’s approach:

“We got ol’ Sundance ridin’ around, trying to raise the Colorado River and restore its flow,” Farrell says. “I say, ‘Do we really need more river?’ I mean, hell, we got plenty of ocean. Let’s move it… The way to fix this thing is to send money, so myself and some other scientists can begin the process of moving a small portion of the ocean back toward the wet part of the river.”

As you can see from the video on this page, Redford maintains his serious posture throughout the back-and-forth banter, while Farrell seemingly tries to provoke him.

I believe these videos fully qualify as an “Amusing Monday” post, but I can’t avoid touching on the more complete story, which goes beyond fun and games. As Jill Tidman, executive director of the Redford Center, stated in a news release:

“We saw this idea of a fictitious debate between Mr. Redford and Mr. Ferrell as a novel way to generate greater awareness of the very serious issues facing the Colorado River. Bringing a sense of humor to the effort opens the door for a much greater audience and offers everyone a chance to be part of winning this campaign—and this is one we are going to win.”

The media campaign, developed by the ad firm Butler, Shine, Stern & Partners of Sausalito, Calif., will roll out new videos with Redford and Ferrell through April. A related event is planned for television on March 22 — World Water Day — when “The History of Water” premieres on PIVOT TV. That’s channel 197 on Dish and 267 on Direct TV. PIVOT is not listed for the local cable outlets in Kitsap County.

Campaign supporters are excited about an event starting on March 23, when the United States and Mexico will release about 105,000 acre-feet of water into the Colorado River below the Morelos Dam on the U.S. Mexican border. An initial high flow for several days will be followed by a lower flow for nearly eight weeks.

Francisco Zamora Arroyo, director of the Colorado River Delta Legacy Program at Sonoran Institute, stated in a news release:

“The pulse flow is a vital part of our ongoing restoration efforts. We know that relatively small amounts of water can make a big difference in the health of the delta region.”

In a brochure, “Raise the River” (PDF 1.4 mb), organizers report that this flow, which is less than 1 percent of the river’s annual average flow, will begin to restore the wetland forests and marshes of the delta.

The goal is to raise $10 million to restore 2,300 acres by 2017. To restore an acre of delta, it takes about 8 acre-feet of water flowing in the river, according to the brochure, and it costs about $450 to buy an acre-foot from the holders of existing water rights. By conserving water, residents, farmers and other water users can maintain their activities while contributing to the restoration of this unique ecosystem.

Other sources of information:

Raise the River Facebook page

Save the Colorado

I’m just beginning to learn about this exciting project. Others with personal connections to the Colorado River should feel free to share their thoughts below.

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Amusing Monday: Happy birthday, Hoover Dam

It was 75 years ago this coming Thursday that Franklin D. Roosevelt dedicated Hoover Dam, the tallest dam in the world at that time.

In recognition of what has been viewed as an incredible engineering feat on the mighty Colorado River, I have extracted from the National Archives a 27-minute film that catches a bit of the drama surrounding Hoover Dam all these decades. The film is amusing while also educational. Setting aside today’s environmental controversy, one can’t help but marvel at the accomplishment. Here’s how the film begins:

“This is the story of Hoover Dam, one of America’s seven modern civil-engineering wonders.

“Build a dam in the wilderness and the world will build a path to it. For many centuries this was a lonely canyon, unseen and untouched by man, scorched by a desert sun, scolded by an angry river slashing its way to the mother sea.

“Now it lies peaceful and silent except for the gentle hum of a hydroelectric power plant, the bubbling up of water as it leaves mighty turbines, the cheerful sounds of America and the world on the move to see this pioneer multipurpose reclamation project man built in Black Canyon.”

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