The Water Remembers
Amy Bowers Cordalis
Little Brown & Co., $30
In September 2002, an estimated 34,000 to 78,000 adult Chinook salmon died in the Klamath River within the Yurok Reservation in Northern California. The U.S. government had diverted river water to farms during a drought. The resulting low levels and warm temperature of the water, coupled with the flow of toxic blue-green algae that bloomed in the reservoirs behind the river’s four dams, created the perfect conditions for “ich,” a parasitic gill rot disease, to spread and suffocate the fish. It was one of the largest fish kills recorded in U.S. history.
The ecological disaster catalyzed an Indigenous-led movement to remove the