In 2022, I filmed a documentary called “The Pameacha Problem,” documenting the movement to halt the Middletown government’s plan to remove the Pameacha pond dam, and subsequently the body of water itself. In the documentary, my fellow filmmakers and I focused on the group’s leader, Mary-Ellen Sutton, and her attempts to garner community support to advocate for Pameacha Pond. To us, this seemingly innocent body of water seemed like the victim of a governmental attack on the natural environment in order to build more urban for-profit structures. However, throughout production we realized that this was not the case. For example, many of the environmental scientists we talked to were not for the pond and refused to be on camera because of the nature of man made ponds. Because this documentary was for a semester-long class, we ultimately had to end production in order to have a completed film by the end of the year. In 2023, the Middletown government told the community that the Pameacha Pond would stay.