"The five Great Lakes. They pour through the heart of North America and the lives of 35 million lucky people who have plenty to drink in a thirsty world. In that journey, lies the story of the last great supply of fresh water on earth." So goes the trailer for "Waterlife," an ambitious new film from documentary filmmaker Kevin McMahon about the Great Lakes - both their endless beauty, and the paramount danger they face of being polluted beyond repair. We spoke with Kevin about the urgent challenges facing the world's largest supply (20%) of fresh water, and how his film is helping to sound the alarm.

Kevin McMahon

Traverse City Film Festival: Particularly in Michigan, possessing the longest fresh water coastline in the world, we have never known anything but abundance when it comes to our water supply. Intellectually, we can acknowledge global issues like drought and a crisis shortage of clean water, but in practice, it's impossible for us to fully appreciate that reality. Before even getting into the issue of pollution and how to address that, how do you first help audiences who treat the Great Lakes as a backyard birthright to understand the magnitude of the resource they have?

Kevin McMahon: That was my first motivation in making "Waterlife" - getting people to appreciate the lakes. I've lived on the Great Lakes all my life. I grew up on the Niagara Falls and now live in Toronto. I'm sure people in Traverse City and smaller communities appreciate the lakes and their beauty. But people who live in the big cities – Chicago, Detroit, etc. - are often more oblivious to it. To them, the lake is just this massive blue/gray thing behind the highway.

I tried to give a sense of the enormity of the lakes in the film. We start on the northern shore of Lake Superior and follow the water all the way out to the Atlantic. Along the way, we capture all of the various kinds of structures and buildings and lives the water intersects with. I also wanted to capture the beauty of the lakes to the greatest extent possible. There is a lot of footage of the landscapes around the lakes, one notably on Sleeping Bear, and we shot in a lot of smaller communities like Leland. We tried to show the lakes from every possible angle, so we have all kinds of underwater, aeriel, slow-motion shots. There is an amazing amount of footage of the beauty of the lakes in the film.

Still from "Waterlife"

TCFF: Many people seem to have an inherent belief that our water supply is indestructible - that there's nothing we can do that could possibly jeopardize something on the scale of the Great Lakes. But your film argues that that's a far cry from the truth. In fact, some scientists are now saying the lakes are on the verge of ecological collapse. What are the challenges facing our water supply, and how did you try and capture those and make them comprehensible in the film?

KM: Well it's now at the point where the changes are tangible, because the water level is dropping on many lakes. On Lake Superior it's remarkable - everyone notices it. People who boat on the shoreline especially notice it, because they have to drive carefully now to avoid shallow spots and rocks where before they could go whizzing through.

The challenges to the lakes are two-fold: it's stuff we're putting into the water, and it's invasive species. In the first case, there are toxins from industry and poisons going in, or that have gone in historically, to the water supply. Thirty years ago, factories just dumped whatever they wanted into the lakes. As a result, there are now some 40 hot spots the government has identified as being grossly polluted. Look down by Chicago and Gary – the shoreline is obliterated there. And yet, dioxins and poisons continue to be dumped in every day.

Still from "Waterlife"

Sewage is also an issue. Almost every municipality on the lakes has an antiquated sewage system, and is consequently dumping sewage into the water. Typically what happens is that when it rains, the system overflows and sewage goes into the lakes. One of the worst examples is Bay City on Saginaw Bay – they get washes of muck into the bay there that are so toxic, if you walk into the water when it's present, you will literally get boils on your leg. We show that in the film. Pharmaceuticals also play a role in this. People don't know this, but you can go out and drop a pail anywhere in Lake Michigan - anywhere - and test it, and the results will come back positive for Prozac. The sewers haven't been built to filter these pharmaceuticals out, so they're going into our water supply.

With invasive species, because of the shipping coming into the lakes from Europe, they're bringing in critters not indigenous to the Great Lakes. There are no predators for them, so they flourish. Commercial fishery has essentially been wiped out on the lakes because of invasive species like lamprey and zebra mussels. That's why Leland is now a tourist town, instead of the fishing town it used to be.

TCFF: As we've already seen in many other examples, until an environmental crisis reaches the point where it has a profound, direct impact on us personally, many people simply aren't motivated enough to care or change the status quo. How do you combat audience passivity on this topic? What are the consequences of apathy if the situation in the Great Lakes continues unaddressed?

KM: One noticeable economic impact is that commercial fishery is now gone in the state, which contributes to the unemployment rate and economic woes. But the most pressing issue, what this all comes down to, is that all of us are being poisoned by the lakes. That's the bottom line. For example, some of the chemicals coming into the water right now mimic estrogen, so the birth rate is going down for males, up for females. There's one community we show near an industrial zone where they have two girls born for every boy, and a phenomenal rate of miscarriages. That's a worst-case scenario, but we're all getting these chemicals in our bodies. If you're a female, you will pass it down to your children. They will then get more and more exposure, pass it on to their children, and the cycle builds. These chemicals mess with our genetics - they increase our rates for cancer, for disease, for defects.

Still from "Waterlife"

Many people think that with the Great Lakes, there's so much water that everything's diluted, but that's not the case. These chemicals have half-lives of hundreds of years. They aren't breaking down, they're not going away. Most don't bind with water and aren't soluble – they drop into the sediment and lie there. So the mud is poisoned at the bottom of the lakes, the water levels are dropping, and then when a storm or a big ship goes through, it stirs up the bottom and the chemicals get resuspended into the water. They then get into our food supply, or up to the surface and are evaporated and then rained on us…it doesn't stop.

TCFF: For all the reasons you just mentioned, it will be easy for people to feel outraged when watching "Waterlife." But it will be just as easy for them to then walk out of the theater, and go about their lives unchanged. At that point, your important message film essentially becomes another piece of entertainment. As a filmmaker, do you feel you've done your duty by acting the part of messenger and spreading the word about this issue? Or do you feel any additional responsibilities to inspire the audience to get involved or for you to be a change agent on this issue?

KM: My answer to that is somewhat complex. I'm first and foremost a filmmaker. My job is to try and connect with each individual audience member and make a change in the way they see the world. Most of my films deal with things you already know, but I try and make you see them in a new way. So my first job is to make sure that when people come out of this film and see the lakes, they look at them differently.

Still from "Waterlife"

My second job is to get the film into a community of people for whom it can be useful. Environmental groups have been using the film, and we are showing it at colleges and in small communities. If someone is moved to action, they can easily pursue that through our website and connect to an environmental group that is doing something in their area. It's important to create a way people can act, so they don't feel helpless.

TCFF: Gord Downie of the Tragically Hip narrates “Waterlife,” and your soundtrack features some well-known indie bands, including Sufjan Stevens, Sigur Ros, Sam Roberts, Robbie Robertson and Brian Eno. You also talk on your website about your struggles in the editing room and trying to make a film that's palatable for audiences. Can you talk about your choices in editing and in the artists you worked with in terms of making the project appealing to mainstream audiences, while at the same time not diluting your message?

KM: We used pop music firstly because so many environmental films use these doom & gloom kinds of scores, and it's just so depressing. Actually, it's funny you mention this because I've been making documentaries for 25 years, and one of the people I've learned from is Michael Moore. Something he's shown all of us documentary filmmakers is that by giving a pop veneer to our films, it can make them more appealing to the public and to young people. It's hard to do because pop music is expensive, but in our case, we cut footage of the film to the music and sent the clips to the artists, and all of them gave us a break because they believed in our message. There is also humor in the film, something Michael does well, and us trying to have some fun, so that it's not all unremittingly heavy. We do that with the hope that it will appeal to a broader audience, which so far has been the case. Wherever it's played we've had good reception, and young people getting pissed off, which is exactly what you want. [laughs]

Still from "Waterlife"

TCFF: What has the reaction been like to "Waterlife" on the festival/art house circuit? Is there anything you're looking forward to in particular at the Traverse City Film Festival?

KM: We don't have a distributor in the United States yet, so we've been working with theaters directly, mostly smaller screenings. Traverse City is really the first big American screening we'll have. I'll be very curious to see how it goes over there. Because Michigan is the Great Lakes State and parts of the film were filmed in your region, I would hope it would click with people there.

In general, the response has been amazing. People have loved the film and been grateful to us for making it. There have been many films about the Great Lakes, but never one that tried to take on what was happening in the way this one does. It seems to be filling a vacuum, and people have responded strongly. Our mission is to tell the story of what's happening in these lakes, and get it into the hands of people who need to see it. As long as that's happening, we're happy.

"Waterlife" is playing Wednesday, July 29 at noon at Lars Hockstad Auditorium and 6:00 p.m. at Milliken Auditorium, and Thursday, July 30 at 6:00 p.m. at the State Theatre. For ticket information, click here.