Many people believe that access to clean drinking water is the single-most-important environmental and social issue facing the world. Two films in the Brattleboro Film Festival touch on the topic and how multinational corporations have and continue to simultaneously pollute and profit from water.
Hot Water, a film by Lizabeth Rogers, explores the legacy of uranium mining and the nuclear industry in the United States.
The genesis of the movie occurred when Rogers was working on a story about Native American sacred sites in South Dakota.
During an interview with a biologist, she learned that there are more than 1,000 abandoned uranium mines in the area. The toxic mix of radioactive materials left behind at those mining sites is open to the elements, and their runoff is contaminating the water supply. Yet people are drinking the water.