Our Toxic Waterways: Flushing Away Our Future?
(from Eating Liberally)
Big River Trailer from Wicked Delicate Films on Vimeo.
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Frustrated swimming pool owners in thousands of backyards across this country have posted a sign that pleads "We don't swim in your toilet, so please don't pee in our pool!"
The message is crude but clear. Nobody wants to wallow in somebody else's waste--or our own, for that matter. So why do we treat our seas like sewers? Why do we contaminate our streams, rivers, lakes and oceans with a horrible hodgepodge of chemicals, pesticides, pharmaceuticals, plastic debris and waste?
Evidently, the world's waterways are a giant toilet into which we can dump anything and everything, and then simply flush it all "away." As if river currents and rolling waves will pull our pollution into some giant cosmic garbage disposal.
Industrial agriculture's synthetic fertilizers have given us lush green lawns and amber waves of grain. But the run-off from all those yards and farms seeps into our water table and feeds the "red tides", those toxic algae blooms that cause massive die-offs of aquatic plants and animals.
Ian Cheney and Curt Ellis, the filmmakers who fondly documented their brief stint as Iowa corn farmers in King Corn, explore agribiz's downstream downside in Big River. In this thirty-minute sequel, Cheney and Ellis revisit their Iowa acre and trace its toxic trail all the way to the Gulf of Mexico.
The film will make its Manhattan debut on March 15th at the Brecht Forum, followed by a panel discussion with Cheney, Ellis, King Corn director Aaron Woolf, Hudson Valley farmer and MacArthur genius Cheryl Rogowski, and Steve Rosenberg of Scenic Hudson.
The screening is a benefit for the Food Systems Network NYC, a non-profit organization whose members (myself included) are dedicated to bringing fresh, wholesome foods to all New Yorkers and supporting our region's farmers, both urban and rural.
