Atlanta Earth Day Performer to Home Depot: You Can Do It. We Can Help.

“Cows with Guns” country singer Dana Lyons Urges Atlanta-based Company to Cut Ties with Controversial Chilean Dam Plan.

Over 10,000 people are expected at Zoo Atlanta on Saturday, April 19, and that is where country singer and activist Dana Lyons will kick off the Zoo’s “Party for the Planet” by calling on Atlanta’s most famous citizen, Home Depot, to end its relationship with a growing environmental controversy in Chile. Home Depot currently purchases wood products from a company deeply involved in an attempt to dam two rivers in Patagonia—one of the most beautiful natural areas on Earth. The dams would ruin the Baker and Pascua rivers by turning them into a series of artificial lakes that, together with the 1,500-mile long transmission line required, would destroy rare forests unique to Patagonia.

“These dams and their nightmarish transmission lines will do much more than destroy rare forests and bring wildlife close to extinction,” said Lyons, whose satirical song “Cows With Guns” has been a #1 hit in Ireland, England and Australia. “These dams will divide communities, forcing families off their land, ending traditions that generations have passed down, spoiling tourism that is bringing new income to an impoverished region. Home Depot says its values are to help the environment and to build community. Come On Home Depot. You can do it. We can help.”

Controversy over the dams—five total on the Baker and Pascua rivers in an extremely distant southern region of Chile—has been escalating rapidly following a mailing to 50 of the largest US building construction products companies, a blunt New York Times editorial calling for an end to the plans and high-profile news and feature articles in the San Francisco Chronicle and the Boston Globe, among others.

Mr. Lyons will be available for interviews before and after his performance that begins at 10 am and ends at 11 am.

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