The scratchy voice of President Franklin D. Roosevelt resonates as grainy black-and-white photos of the Hoover Dam fill the screen.
“This is an engineering victory of the first order – another great achievement of American resourcefulness, American skill and determination,” FDR said, dedicating “the greatest dam in the world” on a September afternoon in 1935.
So began America’s river-choking love affair with dams and an era that saw tens of thousands federal dams erected across the country. And so begins DamNation, the engaging documentary that urges a critical look at outdated dams that are throttling rivers, decimating emblematic salmon and doing more damage than good.
When the revered environmentalist and founder of Patagonia, Yvon Chouinard, and his river-restoration biologist pal Matt Stoecker first approached Colorado filmmakers Ben Knight and Travis Rummel about making a dam-removal movie, the duo balked.
Their Red Gold environmental documentary won awards for its critical look at the proposed Pebble Mine at the headwaters of southwest Alaska’s salmon-rich Kvichak and Nushagak rivers in Bristol Bay.
“But we didn’t know anything about dams,” Rummel said.