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.

Hidden behind the fences of Stanford’s Jasper Ridge Biological Preserve, Searsville Dam creates a stagnant reservoir where algae and non-native species thrive while steelhead and other threatened species are trapped downstream.

Matt Stoecker spent his childhood tromping around in the creeks of the San Franciquito watershed where he grew up, hunting for frogs, fishing and exploring.

One day in the mid-90s, he found himself below the 65-foot-tall Searsville Dam on the Corte Madera Creek when he experienced a seminal moment: He saw a 30-inch steelhead jump out of the water and smash itself against the dam.

He had never seen a fish that size in the creek, and he was struck at the power and futility he witnessed.

Stoecker soon began volunteering with the San Francisquito Watershed Council, then started a steelhead task force and has been working to remove small dams and other fish barriers in the watershed ever since.

But all along, he said, “Searsville Dam was the biggest limiting factor.”

The dam, which is owned by Stanford University, was recently pushed into the spotlight because of a major sedimentation problem in the reservoir, a large-scale study of the dam, a federal investigation into possible violations of the Endangered Species Act and a lawsuit against Stanford.

While university officials argue that dismantling the dam could jeopardize the reservoir’s riparian ecosystems and threaten downstream communities, Stoecker and other environmentalists say it’s been blocking fish passage for too long and it’s time for the dam to come down.

“It’s an antiquated, environmentally harmful reservoir that’s at the end of its useful life,” Stoecker said. 

Searsville Dam and Reservoir sit amid the oak stands and serpentine grasslands of the Jasper Ridge Biological Preserve, a 1,189-acre outdoor laboratory used by Stanford University for research and education. The reservoir, which was created by the damming of Corte Madera Creek in 1892, was acquired by Stanford in 1919. Today it serves to store non-potable water for landscape irrigation at the school.

San Francisquito Creek contains one of the last wild steelhead runs in the South San Francisco Bay, but Searsville Dam directly blocks their annual migration upstream to approximately 20 miles of former spawning and rearing habitat.

But over the years, the reservoir has filled with an estimated 1.5 million cubic yards of silts, gravels and woody debris that have cost it more than 90 percent of its original capacity. Some experts estimate that the reservoir could fill entirely within a decade. Along with loss of the reservoir, sedimentation behind the dam threatens surrounding communities with possible flooding.

The sedimentation issue helped prompt Stanford to form a 12-person steering committee in 2011 to study its options. The study is examining such things as Stanford’s long-term water needs, fish passage, flood risks, the costs of dredging and the impact on university research programs.

According to Stanford, expert consultants are studying a number of options, including dredging, allowing the reservoir to continue to fill and transition to a marsh, modifying the dam and removing the dam altogether.

“From my perspective, the overall goal is to figure out what is the best, most responsible way to manage this watershed,” said Chris Field, faculty director of Jasper Ridge and professor of biology and of environmental Earth system science, who co-chairs the steering committee. “It’s a lot to learn and, at least for me, it’s important that we do a really good, thorough job … My feeling is that these issues are ones that have taken decades to build up, and we want to make sure any course of action we recommend is thought through deeply and also recognizes all the stakeholders.”

Complicating the issue is the role the reservoir plays in the preserve.

The reservoir, Field said, is home to beautiful open water and wetland habitats used by a large number of nesting and migratory birds. It sustains habitats for diverse plants and animals, including bats, salamanders and fish. It has also served the university as a living classroom for many years.

Despite that, Field said, the university “doesn’t have a preset goal of preserving the lake.”

Stanford anticipates completing the initial set of studies and recommendations in 2014. Its president and provost will ultimately decide how to act on them.

Stoecker, who is now a biologist, had been pushing for a deeper look at Searsville Dam long before the school initiated its study.

In 1999 he helped start a steelhead task force for the San Francisquito Watershed Council, which identified Searsville as the biggest barrier to migrating steelhead in the watershed, a primary source of non-native species and a principle contributor to the degradation of habitat. In 2001, along with Stanford and others, he helped form the Searsville Dam Working Group. It got the California Department of Water Resources to offer to fund an analysis of options for the dam — an offer Stanford declined.

“Since then, every time we tried to bring up finding a Searsville solution that worked for everyone, folks from Stanford didn’t want to talk about it,” Stoecker said.

In 2008, Stoecker formed Beyond Searsville Dam in partnership with American Rivers to push for a serious consideration of dam removal.

Searsville Dam was built by the Spring Valley Water Company to supply drinking water to residents of the San Francisco Peninsula, but it never did. Instead, Stoecker said, for more than a century it has impeded fish passage to historic habitat, dewatered downstream creeks and blocked the transport of gravels, woody debris and sediment that is vital to a healthy river system and the San Francisco Bay. The reservoir flooded and buried a valley where several streams once merged among wetlands and riparian forests, and has created an artificial habitat for non-native and invasive species.

Native rainbow trout (descendants of sea-run steelhead) persist in creeks upstream of Searsville, but are at risk of being wiped out due to inbreeding caused by the impassable dam and lack of returning steelhead to maintain genetic diversity.

“Each year as it fills in more and more, it becomes less useful, more problematic and more expensive to fix,” Stoecker said, adding that Searsville provides a small amount of water to the university, which has plenty of options for water storage that do not imperil wildlife.

“There are definitely better and less harmful ways of getting water and eliminating the need for this dam,” he said. “Based on other projects that have happened or are under way, and on studies from our nation’s top scientists, dam removal and low-impact water supply upgrades are preferable in terms of benefit to the ecosystem, surrounding communities and Stanford.”

Steve Rothert, California director of American Rivers, who also grew up upstream of the dam, said Stanford has “time and again missed opportunities to take initiative and take a leadership role in this.

“I think Stanford has a phenomenal opportunity to create another broad set of studies that would be associated with the changes that would take place with removal of the dam and recovery of the natural ecosystem,” he said.

 Rothert said he is encouraged by Stanford’s current study, and thinks the committee consists of capable and committed people. But, he said, the fate of the reservoir is ultimately up to university officials, not steering committee members, and the university has appeared reluctant to open up the process.

 For Rothert, the study would ideally lead to a project that provides fish with unhindered access to the upper basin, the safe transport of sediment and wood and water downstream, and provides Stanford with the opportunity “to regain a principled posture on this issue that is consistent with its image as a leader in science.”

In January, the National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS) announced it is investigating whether Stanford is violating the Endangered Species Act (ESA) through its operation of Searsville Dam. Steelhead in this watershed are considered “threatened,” and as such, have been protected since 1997 under the ESA. (A “take” is an action that kills, harms or harasses a threatened or endangered species.)

Following that news, two environmental groups — Our Children’s Earth Foundation and the Ecological Rights Foundation — filed a suit against the university alleging it is violating the ESA for harming steelhead trout.

Stanford officials have expressed confidence that the school has not violated the act.

“The university believes that it is in full compliance with the Endangered Species Act and all local, state and federal laws in its operations of Searsville Dam and Reservoir,” states a FAQ put together by Stanford.

But Stoecker and Rothert, along with their legal team, disagree.

“There are clear impacts on the fish from blocked passage to dewatered habitat that we think constitute a violation of the ESA,” Rothert said. “We think the situation definitely warrants an investigation.”

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 Productions in conjunction with the Colorado-based filmmaking team Felt Soul Media.

The 210 foot Glines Canyon Dam in Olympic National Park has illegally blocked spawning habitat for an extraordinary chinook salmon run since 1927. Photo by Ben Knight/DamNation

In September of 2011, machines began chipping away at the Elwha Dam in Washington’s lush Olympic Peninsula, kicking off the largest dam-removal project in United States history.

The dam has since been completely removed from the section of the Elwha River it had occupied since 1913. Another dam upstream, the Glines Canyon Dam, located in Olympic National Park, is partially dismantled and expected to be a thing of the past by early next summer, freeing the river for the first time in 100 years.

The landmark project is the culmination of a costly, multi-year river-recovery effort put together by the Lower Elwha Klallam Tribe and a coalition of state and federal entities. The idea is to reconnect a severed river, one in which the hundreds of thousands of adult salmon that used to spawn each year have dwindled to a few thousand.

But while it represents an impressive set of partnerships and a noble cause, it is also a grand experiment. Dam removal of this scale has never been done in the U.S. And with a staggering 24 million cubic yards of sediment being released into the river, there were some doubts about the project’s success.

So far, though, it’s been a promising story of recovery.

Within weeks of the Elwha coming down, fish were observed moving beyond the site of the former dam. Recolonizing adult coho salmon and wild winter steelhead reached well beyond within seven months. And in August, adult chinook salmon were seen in the park — the first observed salmon to naturally migrate into the watershed.

“So far it’s been good,” George Pess, a scientist with NOAA’s Northwest Fisheries Science Center who has been working on the Elwha for years, said this fall. “I think things have worked out pretty well. The fish have responded favorably.”

Biologists this winter have been keeping a close eye on the coho and chum salmon expected to migrate upstream to spawn during the fish window of November and December. Although turbidity is high in the river — due in part to increased rainfall — up to 5,000 coho and chum could make their way upstream, according to the Park Service.

Meanwhile, the high stream-flow and heavy turbidity have been transporting a great deal of sediment down the river, which is causing dramatic changes as it fills in pools, creates new beaches and reshapes the river.

Recovery isn’t limited to the river channel. Biologists have been replanting a forest of new vegetation along the banks of the river and at the sites of the two reservoirs that once sat above the dams. And the transportation of nutrients that salmon bring to an ecosystem has begun.

As the Elwha Dam was removed its reservoir receded, revealing beautifully preserved old growth cedar stumps and sites of cultural signifigance to the Lower Elwha Klallam Tribe. Photo by Ben Knight/DamNation

Another noteworthy piece of the project, said Barb Maynes, a public affairs officer for Olympic National Park, is cultural recovery. In August, members of the Lower Elwha Klallam Tribe gathered at their people’s sacred creation site — long buried by the waters of one of the reservoirs — for the first time in 100 years. 

“It’s been a really exciting year since dam removal started,” Maynes said.
Dylan Tomine, a Patagonia fly-fishing ambassador, author and Wild Steelhead Coalition trustee, noted that the Elwha provides an excellent opportunity to test post-dam river recovery because it’s in pristine habitat.

“I think it’s really just an incredibly interesting laboratory to see how nature responds to this kind of thing,” Tomine said.

Right now, Tomine said, the Elwha’s not the prettiest place in the world. The water is loaded with sediment and what once were reservoirs are now dry lakebeds.

“But it’s been very encouraging,” he added. “To be able to see the river carving its own path again, without sounding too sappy, it’s a pretty moving thing.”
The only fly in the ointment for Tomine is the presence of a hatchery on the river; he would rather see fish returning naturally. But overall, he says it holds a great deal of promise, demonstrating what can happen if people are committed enough to a cause.

“The fact that we seem to be in an age of actually removing dams is pretty amazing,” Tomine said.

Workers are removing the Glines Canyon Dam gradually to allow the river to flush out sediment over time. Downward notching is on hold until January for the winter fish window.

Before the dams were built — the Elwha in 1913, and the Glines Canyon in 1927 — an estimated 400,000 adult salmon swam up the Elwha River each year to spawn, including monster Chinook that weighed up to 100 pounds. Steelhead and trout populations were also robust.

Annual salmon populations have dwindled to just a few thousand, but the Park Service is hoping their numbers return to historic proportions in the coming decades.

Tomine is optimistic.

“I think we’re going to see the project being completed and the river returning to its natural state. It’s really an example of people working together and really sticking to it,” he said.

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 Productions in conjunction with the Colorado-based filmmaking team Felt Soul Media.

Photo by Thomas O’Keefe of American Whitewater

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.

Executive Producer of DamNation and Patagonia founder, Yvon Chouinard, has long been an advocate of dam busting and protecting free flowing rivers. Photo by Tim Davis.

Despite their imposing numbers and size, most people never give dams a second thought.

Patagonia founder and owner Yvon Chouinard is not one of those people.

When he sees dams, he sees broken waterways, an antiquated way of thinking and a means of generating energy that is far from green. He also sees the potential to mend the damage by taking down dams.

 “I’m a fisherman, and I want to see fish come back to these rivers,” Chouinard said. “I want to establish that when you put in a dam or when you dig an open-pit mine or scrape down a mountain, that you have to restore it. There’s a public trust there and you have to restore it.”

Chouinard, along with his son-in-law, fisherman and biologist Matt Stoecker, are at the forefront of a growing movement to decommission dams in America. The best way to do that, they figure, is by raising public awareness and support. And they believe the public will only support dam removal if they understand the complexities.

That’s the idea behind DamNation, a feature documentary produced by Patagonia and Stoecker Ecological in conjunction with the Colorado-based filmmaking team Felt Soul Media.

The film, which will be released in spring 2013, explores successful dam-removals, looks at dams that are subject of current removal fights and shines a light on others eyed for future dismantling. It paints the history of dam building in America, and chronicles the evolution of dam-busters from the radical monkey-wrenchers of yore to the tie-wearing coalition-builders of today. It focuses on some of the pivotal figures on either side of the dam issue.

Shooting began last summer, with filmmakers Ben Knight, Travis Rummel and Stoecker gathering footage from Maine to California.

Matt Stoecker, DamNation’s co-producer and underwater cinematographer, takes a break above water while filming below the Elwha Dam before its removal. Photo by Ben Knight

Though Chouinard and Stoecker aren’t shy about their position on taking down dams, DamNation seeks to explore the issue fairly. The filmmakers interview the farmers who rely on dams to irrigate their fields, Native people whose cultures’ depend on the salmon that dams have destroyed, and legislators who view dam opponents as environmental extremists. They speak with scientists, dam employees and others.

 “Our goal is to let the audience make up their own minds by giving them all sides of the issue,” Rummel said. “I don’t think it’s a black and white issue where it’s take out every dam.”

Despite their usefulness, dams have hugely impacted the rivers they were built in, and many have outlasted their purpose.

“I think the public is unaware of this,” said Chouinard. “I don’t think they realize that there’s a lifespan for these things.”

Chouinard has been working for two decades to take out dams, and he has discovered a pattern. Efforts typically begin with a small grassroots group that faces a steep uphill battle. Opponents are powerful, red tape is plentiful and many who are involved are resistant to change. If the group does manage to make it through the bureaucratic and permitting thickets and gain funding, support and success, it’s only through years of really hard work.

“But then the dam comes down and the river begins to almost instantaneously heal,” Chouinard said. “And then there’s not one person who says, ‘gee that was a mistake.’”

The impetus for DamNation came from the desire to mainstream dam removal by showing the many benefits that result. Stoecker, who worked to successfully remove his first dam 10 years ago, noted that while dam-busting used to be a fringe idea, it’s now one routinely considered by governments and dam owners, as well as environmentalists.

“Now we’ve got less harmful alternatives,” said Stoecker. “There’s been a total shift in thinking.”

A good example of this new mindset, he said, can be found on the Elwha River in Washington, where a coalition of Native tribes, environmental groups and government officials worked together to take out the biggest dams in U.S history — the Elwha and Glines Canyon dams in and near Olympic National Park (a project featured in the film).

“There are wild steelhead and salmon returning to the river above the Elwha Dam site before the project’s even done,” Stoecker said.

Chouinard hopes DamNation will open people’s eyes.

“I just hope it gets around to a lot of people and changes their way of thinking about dams,” he said. “I’d like to see a few more dams come down in my lifetime.”

By Katie Klingsporn

Katie Klingsporn is a writer and editor of the Telluride Daily Planet in southwestern Colorado. Look for more of her posts highlighting both the development of “DamNation” and the issues surrounding the complex topic of dam removal in America.

Based on research from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, over the last 20 years, the warming impact of annual large dam methane emissions is equivalent to 7.5 billion tonnes of carbon dioxide. By comparison:

• Global CO2 emissions from fossil fuel burning (2004): 26.6 billion tonnes (2)
• US CO2 emissions from fossil fuel burning (2005): 6 billion tonnes (3)
• EU-15 emissions from fossil fuel burning (2003): 3.3 billion tonnes (4)
• Global CO2 emissions from coal (2003): 9.6 billion tonnes (5)
• US CO2 emissions from coal (2005): 2.1 billion tonnes (3)
• US CO2 emissions from road transport (2005): 1.7 billion tonnes (3)
• Global CO2 emissions from aviation (2002): 0.5 billion tonnes (6)

A recent study by ecologists and economists found that high tech fish passage technologies at hydropower dams are ineffective and that dam removal represents the effective solution for both issues.The ideal way to increase or restore fish passage is to allow the natural flow and shape of the stream or river channel to remain or resume—through removal of dams and other obstructions, and by ensuring water flows that reflect natural patterns.