Poisoned Waters
A lot of films relating Bad News about the environment have come out in recent years. In some ways, Frontline’s Poisoned Waters is the most unnerving. What makes Poisoned Waters so disturbing is that so much of what is wrong with our water supply is unseen, which makes it a difficult cause to rally around. When a polluted river catches fire, it’s easy to recognize the problem.
The old paradigm of industry dumping waste into the water does not fully explain the extent of the problem. Focusing on two bodies of water, the Chesapeake Bay and Puget Sound, Poisoned Waters points to three main sources of contaminants in addition to industrial waste: factory farming, endocrine disruptors released from household chemicals, and storm water runoff. These dangers are so integrated into our way of life that dealing with them becomes exceedingly difficult.
Poisoned Waters is a two hour episode of Frontline (the entire documentary is available to view online here). The first hour focuses on the Chesapeake Bay where the crab catch is down 50% from 25 years ago and the oyster yield is down from 2 million bushels a year to 100,000. Due to too much fertilizers and other pollutants, 40% of the bay, during the summer, is dead zones. The second hour focuses on Puget Sound where the killer whale population is dying off due to pcbs, despite that fact that PCBs were outlawed years ago.
In telling the story of these two bodies of water, Poisoned Waters also gives a brief history of the Environmental Protection Agency, Earth Day, and the Clean Water Act. Because pollution was so visible back in the later 60s and 70s, people rallied for more protection against industrial contamination. Much of the progress of these early years was derailed during the Reagan administration, which focused on giving relief from regulation to businesses and making compliance voluntary.
Although the film focuses some attention of industrial businesses that are still finding sources of pcbs at their sites, the majority of the evidence points to the way sources of water pollution are integrated into our everyday lives and are often invisible to people.
Just some examples presented in the documentary:
- As the factory model increased efficiency at chicken farms, prices dropped and per capita consumption of chicken tripled, resulting in 1.5 billion pounds of chicken manure each year.
- Household chemicals wash down the drain, soak into our lawns, or run into streams. These chemicals act as endocrine disruptors, resulting in intersex fish and six-legged frogs. One of the biggest problems is that new chemicals are appearing is household products faster than treatment plants can be updated.
- Storm water runoff brings as much oil to Puget Sound every two years as was released by the Exxon Valdez spill.
At the end of Poisoned Waters, Jay Mamming, Director, Washington Department of Ecology sums up the point of the film:
The ’70s were a lot about, “We’re the good guys. We’re the environmentalists. We’re going to go after the polluters.” And it’s not really about that any more. It’s about the way we all live. And unfortunately, we are all polluters. I am. You are. All of us are.
Film Criticism, Media Librarianship, Movies, Notable Videos | Tom | July 31, 2009
[...] It’s still early in the nomination process, and I still have a lot of films to watch, but it’s difficult for me to believe that We Shall Remain will not be at the top of my list (As of now, it’s in a first place tie with Poisoned Waters). [...]