Milwaukie's second environmental documentary film festival in the past year is set for Saturday, Jan. 12, once again featuring a film that rallies support for a project in Clackamas County.

Greg Baartz-Bowman and Mark Gamba hope their film "Un-Dam It!" will spur action on the long-standing project to remove Kellogg Dam and restore Kellogg Creek as a passage for salmon.

This film acts as a sequel to their first documentary, "The Lonely Tree," a call to stop Clackamas County from extending a road through the Three Creeks natural area near Clackamas Town Center west of Interstate 205.

Kellogg Creek and the Three Creeks natural area are in the same portion of the Willamette River watershed.

While the Sunnybrook Road extension has since been shelved by the county, the recent shift in power on the board of commissioners has both Gamba and Baartz-Bowman worried it will be revived. The extension was initially proposed as a way to deal with growing traffic in the area.

If you go

When

: 7 p.m. Saturday, Jan. 12; doors open at 6:30 p.m.

Where

: Milwaukie Masonic Lodge,

Admission

: Free

Reservations

: Seating is limited, and reservations are required. Reserve seats by sending an email to

Trailer

: Visit

Other festival films

: "Unexpected Things Come Together on the River," by American Rivers; "Huck," by Andy Maser Films; "Year of the River," by Andy Maser Films; and "Freeing the Calapooia," by Jeremy Monroe

But for now, their focus is on the dam. "Un-Dam it!" tells the history of Kellogg Dam and offers a glimpse of what the creek and surrounding area could be like if it were removed.

Kellogg Dam was built in 1858 to power the Standard Mill, a flour mill owned in part by Joseph Kellogg. The dam was credited with enhancing Milwaukie's reputation as a growing mill town and helped bring people to the area.

"So before people even moved to Milwaukie, the landscape was altered to say 'There's a lake here,'" Baartz-Bowman said. "And I think that's the biggest thing, is that no one got to see Kellogg Creek and what that watershed acted like, because 160 years ago, before anyone really lived here, it was altered."

More than a decade ago, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers began studying the feasibility of removing Kellogg Dam, but when the project seemed unlikely to move forward in 2006 because of funding issues, the corps handed over its findings to Milwaukie.

The city subsequently launched the Kellogg for Coho Initiative, a multimillion-dollar project that calls for removing the dam, re-establishing fish passage and restoring the surrounding habitat. The project stalled due to a strained city budget but now has hope with a potential partnership between the city and a California-based company that helps restore and protect wetlands and helps find the money to do it.

However, the city and that company, Wildlands Inc., are still only in discussions.

Gamba, who was elected to the Milwaukie City Council in November and was officially sworn in this week, hopes the film will keep the pressure on the city to get the project done.

"If no one does anything, nothing's going to change," he said. "So this film is us engaging people and doing something. This is us trying to educate and inform people.'

The 30-minute documentary begins at the headwaters of Kellogg Creek and works its way down to the dam, stepping back in time to look at the history and also moving to the present to show what similar nearby restoration projects -- such as the removal of the dam 10 years ago on Mount Scott Creek in Happy Valley -- have accomplished.

Gamba and Baartz-Bowman say the ultimate goal is to get the dam removed, "but if it takes a film to get citizens talking and saying they want to get this done, then that's our hope," Baartz-Bowman said.

Ideally, Baartz-Bowman wants to see work start on the project in conjunction with the opening of the Portland-Milwaukie Light Rail in 2015 because the line will cross Kellogg Lake and there are other development plans around the lake for light rail, including a pedestrian bridge. However, he recognizes it's more realistic that the dam is gone by 2020 and restoration starts then.

"My hope is that in 15 to 20 years, people are biking and walking across that bridge in the fall and they're watching salmon come home," Baartz-Bowman said.

--Victoria Edwards