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Watering the West: Film 1 – It All Starts Here
June 23, 2022 @ 7:00 pm
Dates
June 23 at 7:00 PM – Watering the West: It All Starts Here
June 30 at 7:00 PM – Watering the West: Wanna buy a Farm
July 7 at 7:00 PM – Watering the West: Across the Divide
Film One – It All Starts Here
156 rivers begin in Colorado. “The Mother of All Rivers” supplies 17 states and parts of Mexico with life-giving water. Our water begins in the Rockies, flows down rivers, pools in reservoirs, and has been bought, sold, fished, boated, measured and fought over since pioneers and engineers built the first diversions and ditches in the 1800s. Flow through history and down the Cache la Poudre River from Northern Colorado to the Mexican Land Grant where Ben Eaton learned how to bring water from the river to grow crops and cities in The Great American Desert.
TRILOGY DESCRIPTION – Watering the West: A Water Western Film Trilogy enlightens audiences about water issues in the American West: past, present, and future, including where the water comes from, where it goes and how it gets there, the unique nature of western water law and its origins, and how growing populations and a changing climate will impact a diverse group of water users that rely on the rivers that deliver the mountain snow melt that makes the American West habitable. Through personal stories from city planners, farmers and ranchers, recreators and ecologists, beer brewers and the oil and gas industry, we will explore trans mountain and local diversions; storage projects and farms; water court and water auctions, a Day in the Life of a Ditch Rider; backcountry Wild and Scene River explorations; and the listening sessions, council meetings and forums where opinions divide neighbors, towns, and industry leaders. Watering the West will also introduce us to the people and programs that aim for listening, connection, and cooperation, to those who seek to replace divisiveness with collaboration as the American West moves into a future of increasingly scarce water supplies. From past to present and with an animation of the 1874 dispute between Union Colony (now Greeley) and Fort Collins farmers that nearly turned violent to the 1986 re-enactment of a water broker purchasing a farm with water rights to secure water for the City of Thornton to an animation which teaches the Doctrine of Prior Appropriation, WATERING the WEST educates, entertains and presents a case for cooperation around one of the most pressing issues of our time.
Genre: Documentary