THE COLORADO PROBLEM: THE RIVER IN THE RED

The Colorado River is the foundation of the American Southwest. But the confluence of a once-in-a-millennium drought, a hundred-year-old mistake, and a generations-old conflict have put the river-–and the civilization built atop it––in crisis, and at a crossroads. As the southwest continues to grow, and the river continues to shrink, time is running out to solve the problem of the Colorado.

Traveling from the Colorado high-mountain headwaters to the California Imperial Valley farmland, “The Colorado Problem” examines how we got here and what options there are—if any—to figure out where we’re going. The documentary includes more than a dozen interviews featuring water experts, farmers, historians, and stakeholders. Locally, it features former Aspen Public Radio reporter Luke Runyon, now Colorado River Basin reporter; Hannah Holm, director of the Hutchins Water Center at Colorado Mesa University; and Steve Acquafresca, a Grand Junction-based farmer.

This is the first production filmed in the Mountain West for Wendover Productions, an Aspen-based content-creation production company that distributes on YouTube, CuriosityStream, and Nebula. Though director Sam Denby has previously traveled to far-away locales such as Majuro and St. Helena for documentaries, this time his team dug deep into a more personal, and close-to-home, issue.