Sneak Preview of Last Call at the Oasis Presented by Sierra Club & GVSU

New Documentary About Global Water Crisis Features Erin Brockovich and Michigan Chapter’s Lynn Henning

Grand Rapids – A sneak preview of Last Call at the Oasis, a new film about the global water crisis featuring activist Erin Brockovich and Sierra Club Water Sentinel Lynn Henning, is presented Thursday, April 5, 7-9 pm by Sierra Club’s Michigan Chapter, Grand Valley State University’s School of Communications and GVSU’s Student Environmental Coalition. The free preview of the film, which opens nationally May 5, will be followed by a Q&A with Henning and takes place at GVSU’s Loosemore Auditorium, 401 Fulton St. W, Grand Rapids.

Last Call at the Oasis, which comes from Participant Media (the company behind the ground-breaking documentaries An Inconvenient Truth, Food, Inc. and Waiting for “Superman”), examines the critical issue of our dwindling clean water options through stories highlighting water quantity and quality problems. The documentary illuminates the vital role water plays in our lives, exposes the defects in the current system and shows communities already struggling with its ill-effects. Interviews include activist Erin Brockovich and respected water experts including Peter Gleick, Jay Famiglietti and Robert Glennon.

The film also spotlights Lynn Henning’s Sierra Club work tracking animal factory pollution, which has gained international recognition, earning her the International Goldman Environmental Prize in 2010 and a spread in the November 2011 issue of O Magazine. Henning got involved in the issue in the late 1990s after noticing local waterways being polluted by manure runoff from the 10 animal factories that surround the small farm she and her husband run in Lenawee County. Her research has helped alert federal and state authorities to violations and build cases against big polluters.

“When I was a kid we played in the criks," Lynn told O Magazine. "Today you can't do that. You touch the water, you get sick. We had catfish, we had pike—and these pike were two, two and a half feet long coming up this crik. We had a ball watching these fish and now we just have bloodworms. It's not right. This guy here can run his waste into a stream that someone else has to drink from without knowing it."

This sneak preview of Last Call at the Oasis is the second in a series of joint screenings by Sierra Club’s Michigan Chapter and GVSU celebrating the 45th anniversary of the Michigan Chapter and the 120th of the national Sierra Club, and the 25th anniversary of the Michigan Wilderness Act. It also represents the first-ever collaboration between the nation’s oldest environmental organization and the only Michigan university deemed one of the top 25 "cutting edge" green colleges in the United States by the 2009 Kaplan College Guide.

RSVP required by April 2 for this preview screening. Contact Gail Philbin at gail.philbin@sierraclub.org or 616-805-3063.

For more on Last Call at the Oasis, visit www.participantmedia.com.

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March 20, 2012