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 accounting of where that water is actually going. They instead encounter a fragmented system of groundwater use and policy decisions that quietly move water toward larger operations and distant users. The result is a landscape shaped by uncertainty, and smaller farmers are left to navigate declining access without transparency or meaningful recourse, watching water move through channels they can’t fully see or contest.

Full story (and its thoughtful design) can be seen here.
The Kings River was dammed for the summer, and here, it can be seen dry and empty and surrounded by agricultural crops.
David Avila, 45, of Avila and Sons Farms, LLC, picks fruit from a tree on one of the family's ranches in Hanford, CA.
Hanford farmer, Steve Walker, at one of his businesses. In addition to farming Walker owns an agricultural transportation business and he also provides teams of contract laborers and harvesting machines to other local farmers.
Hanford farmer, Robert Smith, decided to fallow some of his cotton crops this year due to increasing water scarcity. Instead of putting more money into the crops, he has left his land go barren instead of risking even bigger losses.
A cracked, ripened walnut skin at Steve Walker's ranch in Hanford.
David Avila, 75, of Avila and Sons Farms, LLC, at a home that has been in his family for nearly 100 years. The Avila family is from the Azores in Portugal and they have been farming in the Central Valley for many generations.
Every Thursday night in downtown Hanford from May-October, local farmers set up small booths to sell their goods at "Thursday Night Market Place." Here, vendors sell watermelons and pistachios in late September.
Dust floats in the air after a hydraulic walnut harvesting machine shakes a tree for walnut harvesting at Steve Walker Farms in Hanford, California.
Hanford walnut farmer, Doug Verboon, poses for a portrait at his ranch in Hanford, California. Verboon is outspoken about water politics in Kings County and currently serves on the Kings County Board of Supervisors.
The sun sets in Kings County as smoke from forest fires fills the valley sky. On this weekend, the Air Quality Index was "very poor" at 128 AQI, which indicates dangerous and very high levels of air pollution.
Dust is kicked up by a tractor harvesting nuts in Kings County.
Jose Acosta, a worker for Steve Walker Farms, cuts down the limbs from harvested walnut trees at Walker's ranch in Hanford.
An almond harvesting machines shakes almonds trees for harvest at Jeff Gilcrease's farm in Hanford, California.
The Blakeley Canal feeds into a Dudley Ridge lift station in Kern County.
The sun sets in Kings County as smoke from forest fires fills the valley sky. On this weekend, the Air Quality Index was "very poor" at 128 AQI, which indicates dangerous and very high levels of air pollution.
Nicañor Guillen at his home home in Fuller Acres, Kern County. The small unincorporated town in Kern County of mainly farm laborers suffers from severe water contamination and increased scarcity. Nincańor's first wife died of cancer and he is convinced that contamination and high levels of arsenic in the community's water contributed to her illness. While large volumes of water is bought and moved through the county, none of it ends up in poorer communities like Fuller Acres.
Hanford farmer, Robert Smith, his wife Courtney, and their three children, Ryker, 6, Rhett, 4, and Reese, 1. Smith fears that his children won't be able to continue his family's farming tradition because of increasing water scarcity in the Central Valley.
The phrase "God is Watching" is painted on the back of a building occupied by a thrift store in Selma, California. The building is mostly surrounded by rural farmland and a few small businesses.