On the road: How one reporter covered the drought story up close

Photo by Dreamstime

Ann Belser of the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette trekked across the country to give readers an in-depth look at the drought. In one week in August, she logged 3,455 miles driving for 50 hours to produce four “Portrait of the Drought” stories.

“It’s so rare to have an opportunity to do that,” she says. “A drought is slow and almost like a being in a pot of boiling water – you don’t realize it’s getting hotter and hotter.”

Ann says she noted the drought early when her grass stopped growing. “I thought, ‘If I don’t have to mow the lawn, farmers are screwed,’” she says. Heading home from a family trip to Kansas in July, she also noticed the corn in many places was shorter than it should have been, she says.

Ann used U.S. Drought Monitor information to pinpoint where she wanted to go, she says. She also contacted the Secretary of Agriculture agencies in states most impacted by the drought. When the Arkansas agency said the farmers’ corn crops hadn’t been affected because of their irrigation systems, but the state of the rice crop was unknown, she added the state to her journey.

She also ventured aboard a barge to see how low water levels made travel difficult along the Mississippi River. In Iowa, she writes the low corn crops affected ancillary businesses as farmers culled their herds early.

But her trip to Oklahoma offered an in-depth look at the drought’s impact on residents – and city budgets. She writes:

“Wildfires are but one of the many dramatic impacts of the drought: Newspapers in the area have warned of a coming storm of crickets, because beetles that eat their eggs were wiped out by the heat.

In some areas of the state, building foundations and roadways are crumbling because the land supporting them has dried out.

And then there are the water main breaks: The ground in Stillwater is mostly red clay, and without moisture, that clay has started to shrink and then settle as it dries.”

A big part of Ann’s pitch was making the trip low budget by staying with family and friends to avoid hotel stays. (She did have to stay one night at a hotel in Oklahoma, she says.) The rental car and gas brought expenses to about $1,000, she says.