Nov. Members' Meeting & Guest Presenter

For our November 11 Chapter meeting we will view the film Second Chance: A Community Unites to Save the Teton River. This video is an 18-minute documentary short film exploring the 1976 catastrophic collapse of the Teton Dam and the remarkable 50-year recovery of the Teton River in eastern Idaho.

Presented by American Rivers and Fish Camp, the film highlights the resilience of the last major free-flowing river in the region and the collaborative conservation efforts to protect its unique ecosystem and Yellowstone cutthroat trout fishery.

We will also hear from Will Whelan, who has written extensively about the Snake River, who will talk about the basics of the Teton Dam collapse and what it meant to the Bureau of Reclamation. In addition to the "what happened" part of the story, there were significant implications for NEPA, the Carter “hit list” of water projects in 1977, and the standards for economic analysis.

Will served for many years as the Idaho Director for government affairs with The Nature Conservancy and later as the executive director for the Idaho Coalition of Land Trusts. Prior to this service he was a Deputy Attorney General for the state of Idaho in the 1980s and early 1990s where he focused on litigation to protect and perpetuate the Idaho salmon and steelhead runs.