A rich all-formats package looks at a previously fertile basin in California and Oregon where water has slowed to a virtual trickle, pitting farmers and tribes against each other while facing a daunting future.
AP Portland, Oregon, reporter Gillian Flaccus has long followed a simmering issue in the Klamath River Basin, a swath of rural agricultural land in Northern California and southern Oregon that is ground zero for the fight over an increasingly precious resource in the American West: water.
Amid extreme drought in the region, the U.S. government has stopped irrigation to hundreds of farmers for the first time in history, while Native American tribes along the 257-mile Klamath River are watching fish species hover closer to extinction. Farmers face ruin and tribes that have lived in the area for thousands of years worry their culture will vanish. The situation is attracting anti-government activists trying to politicize a water crisis experts say could be a preview of what communities around the globe could face due to climate change.
The Klamath River winds runs along Highway 96 near Happy Camp, Calif., June 7, 2001. Competition over the water in the Klamath Basin has always been intense, but this summer there is not enough water for the needs of farmers, Native American tribes and wildlife refuges.
AP Photo / Nathan Howard
Flaccus has developed deep sources with area farmers as well as tribal members and recently spent nearly a week in the remote area with freelance photographer Nathan Howard documenting an issue that would have been unthinkable just a few years ago. Collaborating with New York photo editor and digital storyteller Alyssa Goodman, they produced a sweeping, striking all-formats package that showed the pain on both sides as people begin to realize the water may not be coming back.
Flaccus and Howard traveled the length of the basin and spent time in the homes of farmers and walked the ancestral land of tribes, humanizing an issue that still seems abstract to many people far away from the drought-stricken West. “The system is crashing,” Frankie Myers, vice chairman of the Yurok Tribe, which is monitoring a massive fish kill on the river, told Flaccus. “It’s heartbreaking.”
Flaccus also shot video and Howard used drone footage to give viewers a bird’s-eye look at the river and the people who have lived alongside it, never imagining it would stop yielding what they needed most. Flaccus worked with colleagues in graphics to produce a map to augment the visuals, while Goodman produced the presentation, weaving the text, photos, video and graphics into a powerful package.
Ben DuVal stands in a field of triticale, a hybrid of wheat and rye, one of the few crops his family was able to plant this year due to the shortage of water for irrrigation, in Tulelake, Calif., June 9, 2021. DuVal’s family has farmed the land near the California-Oregon border for three generations, and this summer for the first time ever, he and hundreds of others who rely on irrigation from a depleted, federally managed lake aren't getting any water from it at all.
AP Photo / Nathan Howard
A tractor tills dried dirt on land that was unplanted this year due to the shortage of irrigation water, in Tulelake, Calif., June 9, 2021.
AP Photo / Nathan Howard
Erika DuVal moves an irrigation pipe through a field of triticale, one of the few crops her family was able to plant this year due to the water shortage, in Tulelake, Calif., June 9, 2021.
AP Photo / Nathan Howard
Paul Simmons, executive director of the Klamath Water Users Association — a nonprofit representing the water needs of farmers — talks about the history of the Klamath Project, in Klamath Falls, Ore., June 9, 2021.
AP Photo / Nathan Howard
A dead chinook salmon floats in a fish trap on the lower Klamath River in Weitchpec, Calif., June 8, 2021. A historic drought and low water levels on the Klamath River are threatening the existence of fish species along the 257-mile long river.
AP Photo / Nathan Howard
Gilbert Myers, a fisheries technician for the Yurok tribe, takes a water temperature reading at a chinook salmon trap in the lower Klamath River in Weitchpec, Calif., June 8, 2021. Native American tribes along the 257-mile-long river are watching helplessly as vital fish species hover closer to extinction because of lower water levels brought on by historic drought.
AP Photo / Nathan Howard
Hunter Maltz, a fisheries technician for the Yurok tribe, pushes a jet boat into the low water of the Klamath River at the confluence of the Klamath River and Blue Creek near Klamath, Calif., in Humboldt County, March 5, 2020.
AP Photo / Gillian Flaccus
A small stream runs through the dried, cracked earth of a former wetland near Tulelake, Calif., June 9, 2021. The area was drained in an effort to prevent an outbreak of avian botulism, which occurs when water levels become too low.
AP Photo / Nathan Howard
Danny Nielsen sits in a tent, June 9, 2021, in Klamath Falls, Ore., on property he purchased next to the head gates of the Klamath River. Nielsen, who owns 43 acres in the Klamath Project, is among those who have threatened to forcibly open the head gates of the Upper Klamath Lake if the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation does not release water for downstream users.
AP Photo / Nathan Howard
Danny Nielsen walks through a tent, June 9, 2021, in Klamath Falls, Ore., on property he purchased next to the head gates of the Klamath River. The tent is a rallying point erected by a small group of farmers protesting the lack of water allocation to irrigation.
AP Photo / Nathan Howard
The DuVal family eats dinner together in their farmhouse Tulelake, Calif., June 9, 2021. Ben DuVal’s family has farmed the land near the California-Oregon border for three generations, but he worries the region’s continued water shortage will prevent him from passing on their farming way of life to his kids.
AP Photo / Nathan Howard
Ben DuVal stands in a field of triticale, a hybrid or wheat and rye, one of the few crops his family was able to plant this year due to the water shortage, in Tulelake, Calif., June 9, 2021.
AP Photo / Nathan Howard
Jamie Holt, lead fisheries technician for the Yurok Tribe, counts dead chinook salmon pulled from a trap in the lower Klamath River in Weitchpec, Calif., June 8, 2021.
AP Photo / Nathan Howard
Jamie Holt, lead fisheries technician for the Yurok Tribe, right, and fellow technician Gilbert Myers count dead chinook salmon pulled from a trap in the lower Klamath River in Weitchpec, Calif., June 8, 2021. “When I first started this job 23 years ago, extinction was never a part of the conversation,” she said of the salmon. “If we have another year like we're seeing now, extinction is what we’re talking about.”
AP Photo / Nathan Howard
Alex Gonyaw, senior fish biologist for the Klamath Tribes, examines juvenile suckerfish at the tribe’s fish and wildlife facility in Chiloquin, Ore., June 10, 2021. Toxic algae blooms in the Upper Klamath Lake threaten the habitat for the endangered species which is central to the Klamath Tribes’ culture and creation stories, and were for millennia a critical food source in a harsh landscape.
AP Photo / Nathan Howard
Toxic algae floats in a sample of Upper Klamath Lake water near Klamath Falls, Ore., June 10, 2021. The algae blooming in the lake threatens the vital habitat for the endangered suckerfish.
AP Photo / Nathan Howard
Yurok tribal members lead a redwood canoe tour on the lower Klamath River in Klamath, Calif., June 8, 2021. As the salmon of the Klamath have dwindled the Yurok tribe has turned to alternative revenue sources like ecotourism and canoe tours in an effort to support their people.
AP Photo / Nathan Howard
The resulting piece was among AP’s top five most-viewed stories for Friday. Deputy Managing Editor Amanda Barrett said: “Such a powerful story amid the heat and fire calamities happening at the same time. The voices of the different constituencies and their perspectives are interwoven with amazing visuals. I could have looked at them all day.”
For immersive journalism that explores the human consequences of drought in the U.S. West, Flaccus, Howard and Goodman receive this week’s Best of the States award.
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