Celebration, film showings honor Headwaters Award winners

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A pair of leaders who played pivotal roles in restoring two great Northwest rivers have received prestigious Headwaters Awards from the NW Energy Coalition.

Former American Rivers northwest regional director Katherine Ransel and Seattle Audubon Society executive director Shawn Cantrell were honored at an April 24 celebration at Seattle’s Northwest Film Forum. Some 50 clean energy supporters attended the festive event, which was co-sponsored by the Save Our wild Salmon coalition.

Ransel and Cantrell were instrumental in campaigns – highlighted in a pair of films shown at the event — that have set free the Elwha and White Salmon rivers in Washington. One movie, The Art of Dam Removal, celebrates the activism that led to removal of the Condit Dam on the White Salmon. The other was a clip from the forthcoming Return of the River, which documents the largest dam-removal project in U.S. history: the Elwha dam.

The NW Energy Coalition board annually confers one or more Headwaters Awards to members of the Coalition family who have gone above and beyond in furthering clean and affordable energy. Winners receive a plaque and a vile of water collected from the Columbia River’s headwaters in British Columbia.