On the Texas coast, Jim Blackburn slips into his kayak the way some people step into a sanctuary.
Water folds around the hull. Birds settle back into the marsh. The shoreline opens — beautiful, fragile and increasingly tied to the future of Texas’ economy as much as its ecology. In “Calming the Waters,” a new documentary directed by Texas filmmaker Jeffrey Mills, that quiet entry point becomes both a literal scene and a metaphor: a veteran environmental lawyer returning, again and again, to the place that has guided his life’s work.
At its core, “Calming the Waters” tells two interwoven stories: the evolution of environmentalism in the United States, including the uniquely high-stakes story of the Texas coast, and the evolution of Blackburn himself, whose career has unfolded alongside the rise of environmental law, from its earliest battles to today’s more complex terrain…
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