Arid Lands: "A Landscape of Irony and Controversy"

Arid Lands:  "A Landscape of Irony and Controversy"

Arid Lands, by Grant Aaker & Josh Wallaert, is a captivating and provocative film, which chronicles the cultural and geographical transformation of the people and land of eastern Washington’s Columbia Basin.  Excellently crafted, the film remarkably maintains objectivity and balance without voice-over narrative or reflexive intrusion.  Instead, testimonies from 27 interview participants intelligently and thoughtfully weave the story of a “landscape of irony and controversy.”

The documentary opens with a history lesson on America’s ‘progressive’ conquering of the Columbia River.  First the Rock Island Dam was constructed in 1933.  Ten years later, construction began on the Hanford Nuclear Reservation as part of the Manhattan Project, and home to the first plutonium production reactor in the world.  Plutonium enriched at Hanford was used in the very first nuclear bomb, and in Fat Man, the bomb detonated over Nagasaki, Japan, which effectively ended World War 2.  Enrichment continued and expanded until the end of the Cold War.  

Today, the Hanford site represents two-thirds of the nation's high-level radioactive waste by volume.  Poor containment and cleanup procedures have resulted in large-scale contamination of surrounding ecosystems.  Subsequently, Hanford is now the most contaminated nuclear site in the United States and is the focus of the nation's largest environmental cleanup.  In recent years, the federal government has spent about $2 billion annually on the Hanford project.

Population in the area has boomed.  Starting with the influx of the 50,000 workers at Hanford, and increasing as the cleanup funds continued to pour in.  Simultaneously, others migrating to the region around Hanford took advantage of the irrigation potential provided by the hydro-electric dams, and the desert scrub of southeastern Washington soon became an agricultural paradise; much to the chagrin of local small farmers, who suddenly found themselves in competition for water resources.  Most of the modern residents seem nonplussed concerning the dangers of radioactive contamination.  They are primarily concerned with the ultimate fate of the region when the cleanup cash stops coming in, and are attempting to turn the area into a tourist attraction.

Concerning the site itself, it was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1992, and its first reactor was designated a National Historic Landmark by the National Park Service in 2008.  Due to the contamination, and its classification as an historic place, the acreage surrounding the site has been virtually free of further human development/alteration, and the landscape has reverted back to its pre-contact state.  This has rendered the area invaluable for the study of the geology, flora, and fauna by scientific interests.

Arid Lands spotlights a region embroiled in paradox.   While the Department of Energy continues its environmental cleanup efforts, agricultural and real estate development are forever altering the landscape.  Water rights continue to be disputed.  Migrating salmon are forced to re-route past giant hydroelectric dams, and everyone from Native confederations to modern fishermen is pressing for their rights.

From the perspective of visual anthropology, I am impressed by the filmmakers’ ability to present a variety of perspectives in an unbiased, balanced manner.  Rather than inject their personal ideology, take sides, or obviously attack or blame one interview subject over another, they manage to present all of the subjects as sensitive, intelligent, sincere individuals with stories that need to be heard.  Seen through the eyes of everyone from sport fisherman to displaced Native Americans, this approach makes the viewer realize that there are no simple answers to this situation.  The audience is left with a myriad of questions about the immediate situation in Hanford.  When will the cleanup money run out, and what will happen to the area when it does?  What are the long term effects of the contamination on the ecosystem?  Is tourism the answer for Hanford in the future?

In addition, I found myself contemplating larger cultural and anthropological issues after viewing this film.  How do we balance ecology and technology?  What are the true human costs of America’s focus on land development and large scale agriculture?  How much of a role did irrigation originally play in the development of civilization in general?  What are the rights of the original Native inhabitants of the area, now and in the future?


I won’t even pretend to be unbiased here. This film is amazing.  Frankly, I would recommend that it become part of the required public school curriculum at the high school level. Everyone older than that, in my opinion, should watch it as soon as possible.

RM