Mark Thomas TV - Supersized Earth TV - America: The Story of the US TV - Ken Burns TV - Bernard DeVoto - Arundhati Roy - Stephen Ambrose - Adam Curtis TV - Kwame Nkrumah - The Mekon River with Sue Perkins TV - Night Moves 2013 - H2O: The Molecule that Made Us TV - Seconds from Disaster TV -
Yusufeli Dam: Ilisu dam was a dam that was going to be built in Turkey by Balfour Beaty amongst others, and they were going to get £200,000,0000 of taxpayers’ money, via the Export Credit Guarantee Department … It would displace up to 78,000 Kurds … Mark Thomas Comedy Product s6e4: Yusufeli Dam, Channel 4 2002
We find out about another dam that is to built by a British company using our money … Amec, the construction company, are after £68,000,000 to help build the Yusufeli Dam in Turkey in the north-east. And that dam will destroy the natural environment there … They will be made homeless … ibid.
The Hoover Dam … Two hundred and twenty metres tall and a staggering three hundred and seventy metres wide. Supersized Earth III: Food, Fire & Water, BBC 2012
The Hoover Dam ... building the biggest concrete structure on Earth ... Almost six million tons of concrete have to be poured. That’s enough to lay a metre-wide pavement around the world ... Frank Hurry-Up Crowe lives up to his name. The Hoover Dam is completed on September 30th 1935, two years ahead of schedule. Frank receives a bonus worth over $4 million in today’s money. America: The Story of the US e9: Bust, History 2010
Four years after Muir’s death, work on the dam he had opposed with all his strength began. Ken Burns, The National Parks: Leave It As It Is 1903-1915, PBS 2009
Proposed dams in Sequoia, Glacier and Yellowstone were stopped. And in the Grand Canyon all of Cameron’s projects were stopped too. Ken Burns, The National Parks: Going Home 1920-1926
Pressure for more dams only intensified. Ken Burns, The National Parks: Poets and Kindred Spirits 1946-1963
Shall We Let Them Ruin Our National Parks? Do you want these wild splendours kept intact for your kids to see? Then watch out for the Army Engineers and the Bureau of Reclamation – because right where the scenery is, that’s where they want to build dams. Bernard DeVoto article
In California there are huge problems because of dams. I’m against big dams, per se, because I think that they are economically unfeasible. They’re ecologically unsustainable. And they’re hugely undemocratic. Arundhati Roy
Dams have harmed our wildlife and made rivers less useful for recreation. Stephen Ambrose
35 years ago one man set out to turn this country into a modern industrial utopia – he was Kwame Nkrumah, the first leader of a newly independent black African state. His aim was to transform Ghana into a society shaped and driven by the power of science. At the heart of Kwame Nkrumah’s plan was a giant dam that would produce vast quantities of cheap electricity. Enough power to build a modern industrial state in the heart of Africa within a generation. But what Nkrumah did not foresee was that with the dam would come other more dangerous forms of power which he could not control – political and economic forces that would tear apart his vision of using science and technology to create a model for the new Africa. Adam Curtis, Pandora’s Box V: Black Power, BBC 1992
Power meant electricity and the source was to be the Giant Volta River that flowed through the eastern heart of the country. Ever since the 1920s the British had planned to build a dam there ... In the early ’50s Britain was desperate for a cheap source of aluminium. And Nkrumah joined with the British to resuscitate the scheme. The British authorities saw the power from the dam simply as a means to boost the empire’s supply of aluminium. But for Nkrumah it was much more. He saw it as the key to fulfilling his country’s destiny. ibid.
The Dam was now a hostage in the vicious confrontations of the Cold War. A year before, the Congo had been torn apart by a brutal civil war. America and the Soviet Union backed opposite sides. The policy of the new Kennedy administration was to fight the spread of communism in Africa. In 1960 Brezhnev, the President of the Soviet Union, had visited Ghana. It frightened America’s leaders. They were determined that Nkrumah, despite his brand of African socialism, would be their man. Nkrumah though wanted to keep Ghana and Africa out of the Cold War. ibid.
In 1946 American engineers along with their wives and families began to arrive at a dusty airstrip in Helmand in southern Afghanistan. They worked for the biggest construction company in the world … to build a giant planned new world, a complex of dams, canals, roads and even a new model city. The king’s aim was to harness the power of the giant Helmand river. Adam Curtis, Bitter Lake, BBC 2015
By the mid-1950s the American engineers had built the giant dams that were going to create what they called a new wonderland for vegetation and power in Helmand. ibid.
President Eisenhower and President Kennedy were genuinely interested in this project because they saw behind the cold figures and the rigid calculations that the Volta River Project was not only an economically viable project, but also an opportunity for the United States of America to make a peaceful capital investment in a developing country. You see before you in all its majesty, science and power the Akosombo Dam, which has tamed the violent waters of the Volta. Kwame Nkrumah
There are ten more dams planned for Laos alone and 140 either commissioned or under construction for the Mekon and its tributaries. The Mekong River with Sue Perkins III, BBC 2014
God knows that dam wants to come down. There is a serious tonnage pushing up against her walls. Everything in the world is telling her to give up and let go. Night Moves 2013 starring Jesse Eisenberg & Dakota Fanning & Petre Sarsgaard & Alia Shawkat & Logan Miller & Kai Lennox & Katherine Waterston & Barry del Sherman et al, director Kelly Reichardt, Harmon
Today, two-thirds of the world’s major rivers no longer have a connection to the sea … The way we are controlling water has changed the planet. H2O: The Molecule that Made Us II, PBS 2020
Italy, July 19th 1985: There are two of these tailings dams in the Stava Valley, one built above the other … Without warning the dam bursts. Seconds from Disaster s1e11: Flood at Stava Dam
Racing at 55 mph the mudslide … continues on its path of destruction … entire streets and forests are wiped out … The catastrophe lasts 3.5 minutes but it leaves 3 miles of chaos in its wake. ibid.
Of the 281 missing, only 13 people are pulled out alive. ibid.
Not one but two dams have burst … The contents of the upper dam pour into the lower dam. ibid.
1963, Italy: An alpine landslide … For thousands who live in the shadow of Europe’s tallest dam, unaware of the unfolding spectacle, it’s already too late. Investigators uncover an astonishing plan to control an unstable mountainside. Seconds from Disaster s5e3: Mountain Tsunami
Chunks of Monte Toc slip towards the reservoir … A 70-metre high wall of water swamps Longarone and sweeps on down the valley flattening buildings, killing hundreds … It managed to kill more than 2000 people. ibid.