THE CALIFORNIA DELTA
A visual anthropology of California water politics
This is an ongoing gallery for my doctoral dissertation on the community politics of large-scale water transfers in the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta. In March 2025, I published an op-ed with The New York Times about the Delta’s relative obscurity for many Californians despite its incredible importance to the state water supply. For decades, the Delta […]
View Story
Where is the water going?
Small farmers struggle as ag titans wheel water for profit. For The Center for Collaborative Investigative Journalism, 2021.
The story, another collaboration with Lois Henry of SJV Water and the CCIJ, follows farmers in Kings County trying to make sense of water that feels like it’s disappearing in plain sight. Wells are failing, pumping is getting deeper and more expensive, and land is being fallowed, yet no one can point to a clear […]
View Story
The Central California Town That Keeps Sinking
For the New York Times + CCIJ. 2021
A 2021 investigative collaboration with Lois Henry of SJV Water on the causes of tremendous ground subsidence in California’s south valley. We spent time in the prison town of Corcoran, where the land is steadily collapsing under the weight of decades of groundwater extraction. The reporting tracks how intensive agricultural pumping—especially during drought years when […]
View Story
GROW OR DIE
For BuzzFeed News. October 2016
In Central California, the lawn is in a state of existential crisis. For years, vibrant greenery landscaped most neighborhoods, even in the height of summer when temperatures reach 115 degrees. Between 2012-2015, a devastating drought assaulted the San Joaquin Valley, and the reluctant region was forced to change their lawn habits. But the greater question […]
View Story