BY KAREN BOSSICK
A free showing of “Blue Heart” will be offered at 6 p.m. tonight--Monday, Nov. 12--at the Wood River YMCA in Ketchum.
The film features the fight for Europe’s last wild rivers in the Balkan region, known as “the Blue Heart of Europe.”
Currently, more than 3,000 hydropower dams and diversions have either been proposed or are in the process of being built in this region. They would join the thousand-plus that already exist.
A hydromorphology assessment on Balkan rivers found that 30 percent are pristine and 50 percent are very healthy, making the highest percentages of healthy rivers in Europe.
Patagonia has conducted a campaign asking the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development to stop funding projects that it says will damage the wild rivers.
Ninety-one percent of the proposed dam projects involve small hydropower diversions dams, which Patagonia says will divert water from rivers and even drain stretches of rivers dry.
The Patagonia film is presented by the YMCA and Idaho River United with support from the Roy A. Hunt Foundation