THERE ONCE WAS A TIME when heavy snow in the Sierra Nevada meant California could rest assured. There would be enough water stored in the slowly melting snowpack to last through another summer, another fire season, another harvest. 

In recent years, as temperatures have risen, Mother Nature’s storage system is failing. Snow turns to rain sooner and melts earlier. Flood waters pour past loaded reservoirs, leaving dry season dryer with no backup in the mountains.

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Ruth Dusseault is an investigative reporter and multimedia journalist focused on environment and energy. Her position is supported by the California local news fellowship, a statewide initiative spearheaded by UC Berkeley aimed at supporting local news platforms. While a student at UC Berkeley’s Graduate School of Journalism (c’23), Ruth developed stories about the social and environmental circumstances of contaminated watersheds around the Great Lakes, Mississippi River and Florida’s Lake Okeechobee. Her thesis explored rights of nature laws in small rural communities. She is a former assistant professor and artist in residence at Georgia Tech’s School of Architecture, and uses photography, film and digital storytelling to report on the engineered systems that undergird modern life.