Killing The Colorado

Water: once an abundant necessity is now a scarce and complex commodity. Many efforts have been made to curb excessive water use in the West, but will taking shorter showers and ripping out lawns really make a difference? While recent drought conditions have diminished the once-mighty Colorado River--the source of the vast majority of the West's water, experts are now wondering whether the most severe shortages have been caused not by weather or consumer choices but by short-sighted policies and poor planning. Did we engineer our way into this crisis? Can we engineer our way out?

From Academy Award(R)-winning filmmakers Rob Epstein, Jeffrey Friedman, Barbara Kopple, Alan and Susan Raymond, and Sundance Award-winning director Jesse Moss, KILLING THE COLORADO is a glimpse into the serious manmade water shortage that threatens the very existence of the American West. Presented in association with ProPublica and based on reporter Abrahm Lustgarten's award-winning series of the same name, the film presents the grim reality that 40 million Americans could soon be without enough water and proposes innovative solutions to preserve this precious resource for future generations. KILLING THE COLORADO features compelling insights from senior research scientists, water resource experts, federal government officials, industrial farmers, and state leaders at the forefront of the water crisis, including Gov. John Hickenlooper (CO-D), Sen. Jeff Flake (AZ-R), and Mike Connor, U.S Deputy Secretary of the Interior. (Discovery Networks)