The Emmy-nominated PBS documentary series “Human Footprint” examines how people have transformed the planet.
An upcoming episode entitled “Dammed If You Do” focuses on the Colorado River and highlights research by U.S. Geological Survey scientists with the Grand Canyon Research and Monitoring Center.
It also features footage by Flagstaff river-guide-turned-filmmaker Harlan Taney. He and writer Paige Buono spoke with KNAU’s Adrian Skabelund about the episode, which premiers at 6 p.m. Friday night at the Orpheum Theater Flagstaff.
Following the premier, Taney and Buono will take part in a panel discussion moderated by Carol Yoncho of Arizona PBS.
They'll speak alongside Flagstaff scientists Matt Kaplinski and Lindsay Hansen, and Aída Navarro with the Raise the River coalition, who all feature in the episode.
The episode will play on Arizona PBS on July 23 at 8 p.m.
What follows is the conversation with Buono and Taney.
Buono: Human Footprint is a sort of travel show. It's like Anthony Bourdain meets a science show. The host, Shane Campbell-Staton, is an evolutionary biologist.
When we were thinking about those topics for season two, water felt like a really obvious one.
Part of what makes the Colorado River such an illustrative example is that it's delivering water to a desert. So, sort of our dependence upon it is just so much more obvious when we've transformed deserts to oases and oases to deserts.
So I think, you know, we kind of cover the gamut. We start in Italy, and then we go to Las Vegas and we learn about water management there. And the water police that they actually have in place.
We spend time with researchers in the canyon. We spend time in the Imperial Valley with farmers, with activists working in the Salton Sea around human health impacts of the air quality there as a result of Colorado River management infrastructure, and then in the delta.
Skabelund: Tying film into that science, it feels specifically notable right now to be making that connection, and finding a way to communicate some of that [science] in this current moment.
I don't know, does that resonate for you?
Taney: Yeah. Where I got started working as a guide in the Grand Canyon when I was 17 – my first paid trip ever – was doing a Hualapai cultural monitoring trip for Grand Canyon Monitoring and Research [Center].
So the way that my relationship was built with the Colorado River and the Grand Canyon, and being kind of young and fresh and malleable, if you will, I'd got to see the science. And see it from that side, not the commercial side. And so that's always kind of held this really fascinating place in my heart.
I was so excited to do something that actually brought this work and the science that these guys are doing and dedicating their lives to, kind of to the bigger screen, and hopefully get out to a bigger audience.
Skabelund: What do you both hope the main takeaway for viewers is from this episode in particular?
Taney: To me, my outlook on it is just getting to bring these people like Matt Kaplinski and Lindsay Hansen and USGS and Grand Canyon Monitoring and Research Center – that I have spent a lot of years of my life with – [to] be put out there into the world. And to have some of their work reflected back on something like public television.
Buono: I think for me – and I think this is true across a lot of the Human Footprint episodes – is these issues are incredibly complex, you know?
The episode does not come away with some sort of Pollyanna: ‘All we need to do is…’ And I would never trade the position with water managers.
I think we've trapped ourselves in a system that is so hard to move. But I hope that the episode continues to kind of push and challenge our imaginations in terms of how we think about the future and pushes us not to just keep steamrolling because we have been, or building because we can, and reassessing the values that we're managing toward and the voices who get to be involved in that process.
Skabelund: What does it feel like to have this episode and your work premiere at The Orpheum in Flagstaff?
Taney: It feels amazing. Yeah, it feels very timely to be having this right now with everything that is looming over science and our public lands and the Park Service.
Buono: Yeah, I would just say when we started talking about what it would mean to do a premiere in Flagstaff – I think Harlan especially is so connected to this community and to what it cares about – and I think it felt like, ‘Man, we just want this to feel like a celebration of the hard work that we know people are doing and that is under threat. And it's a stressful, exhausting time.’ And I think we just wanted it to feel like a rallying cry. And I was gonna say a hug, which sounds real cheesy, but I guess a little bit of that.
Skabelund: Well, Paige, Harlan, thank you so much for giving me some of your time today.
Taney: Yeah, Thank you.
Buano: Thanks so much.
