Deported Ethiopian migrants tell of suffering in Saudi Arabia detention

Tens of thousands of Ethiopian migrants are being deported from Saudi Arabia. They tell of being detained for months in miserable conditions. At home, they face an uncertain future.

Ethiopians deported from Saudi Arabia arrive in Addis Abeba

Abdela Mohammed spent 13 "unbearable" months languishing in an overcrowded Saudi detention center before being repatriated back to Ethiopia in May.

He was locked in a cell with about 200 others, he said. The detainees slept on the bare floor and were barely fed enough to survive.

"There wasn't enough food," Abdela said of his time in the Shmeisi Detention Center, east of Jeddah. "We only ate breakfast and the rice we were given wasn't even enough for a single mouthful."

The detainees were also denied medical care, the 31-year-old said. 

"When we knocked on the doors to tell them someone was sick, they called us 'dogs' and told us to 'let them die'," Abdela recalled in an telephone interview from his hometown in Ethiopia's southern region, where he has been living with his family since his return.

Ignored by Ethiopia

He and other detainees called Ethiopia's embassy from prison, he recounted, but they "didn't help us." 

"One day an embassy employee, who witnessed us being beaten up by the police [in detention], said to us: 'Let them beat you'."

No one visited us when we told them that someone was sick. When we informed them about the death of an old man, they refused to take his corpse and bury it."

Abdela despaired of making it out of the cell alive: "I thought I would never get out and be a human being again."

DW has tried to contact Ethiopia's embassy in Saudi Arabia for a comment but has so far been unsuccessful. 

Popular destination for migrants

Solomon Belete spent even longer in detention. He doesn't want to talk about his 22 months locked up, other to say that it was "suffocating".

But the 33-year-old is happy to describe the dreams that sent him to Saudi Arabia in the first place: to build a family home for himself and his parents and save money to start a business back in Ethiopia.

A trained physical education teacher, he had spent several years looking for job at home after graduating from university.

Saudi Arabia relies heavily on foreign workers

So when a friend living in Saudi Arabia told him it would be easy to get a driving job in the Gulf state, Solomon jumped at the chance.

“He told me: ‛You'll live in comfort driving rich people's car. You are well educated. It won't be difficult for you to get the driver's license'," Solomon recalls.

But Solomon was detained at the airport upon arrival and thrown straight into a deportation center. 

Deportation agreement

Solomon and Abdela are two of at least 38,000 Ethiopians who have been deported from Saudi Arabia since March 30, 2022 when an agreement between the governments of the two countries came into effect. 

More than 100,000 Ethiopian migrants currently detained in the oil-rich nation will be returned home under the agreement. 

Saudi Arabia is a popular destination for Ethiopian migrants — with an estimated 750,000 of them residing in the Middle East country, according to the International Organization for Migration (IOM). 

Of these, some 450,000 have probably migrated through "irregular means" and will need help to return home, the IOM said in a recent statement. 

Languishing in detention 

In the past few years, Saudi Arabia has carried out regular sweeps of undocumented workers, holding those arrested in large deportation centers.

Human rights organizations have been denouncing the conditions of these centers for years. 

Detainees are "chained together in pairs, forced to use the floor of their cells as a toilet, and confined 24 hours a day in unbearably overcrowded cells," according to a 2020 Amnesty International investigation into the ill-treatment of Ethiopian detainees in the Middle East country. 

"Pregnant women, babies and small children are held in these same appalling conditions," the investigation found.  

In interviews conducted in 2020, detainees told Human Rights Watch that at a center in Riyadh, some 350 men shared two to five toilets and had no access to soap and showers. 

Detainees also talked of being assaulted and beaten by guards, "especially when they asked for medical attention or complained about the conditions," the rights organization reported.

Perilous journey getting there

Before his last journey, Abdela Mohammed had twice worked in Saudi Arabia to earn money to support his family. 

That's why he decided to make the trip for a third time in 2018 — paying smugglers 10,000 riyals (€2,500 or $2,700) to take him from the coastal town of Bosaso in Somalia across the Bab-el-Mandeb strait to Yemen and then on to Saudi Arabia.

But perhaps a portent of the tribulations to come, this third time proved to be a nightmare. Four people died on the boat to Yemen from the heat, Abdela said. 

Then at the border to Saudi Arabia, the caravan of Ethiopian migrants came under fire from guards.

When he eventually made it over the border, he picked up odd jobs, working as a goat herder, a day laborer and a bulldozer operator. 

But he said, to the Saudis he was just a drudge: "They called me a dog and a donkey. I was insulted while working."

Then he was arrested laboring on a mango and avocado farm.

Little of promise at home

Ethiopia's government has put out a donor call for $11 million to help provide those returning with food, temporary accommodation, medical assistance and counseling services. 

After more than a year locked behind bars, Abdela landed in Ethiopia with just the clothes on his back. 

He was given bus fare to pay his way home to Alaba, a small town in a rural area of southern Ethiopia.

He has no plans to return to Saudi Arabia again, except perhaps to pray, said Abdela, a Muslim.  

As for returnee Solomon Belete, he is one of those who urgently needs help.

He has come back to Ethiopia a broken man with a chronic health problem that started during his long detention.

"My body is trembling. I can't keep my balance. I never sleep well," he said.

Hundreds wait in line for registration after their arrival in Ethiopia from Saudi Arabia

Edited by: Kate Hairsine

Harvard: Descendant can sue over 'horrific' slave photos

A court in the US State of Connecticut ruled a woman can sue the Ivy League university for emotional distress over photos she says depict her enslaved ancestors. They were photographed in 1850 for a racist study.

After an initial setback in a lower court, Massachusetts' Supreme Judicial Court

 has cleared Tamara Lanier to sue Harvard

A woman in the United States who says she's descended from slaves portrayed in widely-published, historical photos owned by Harvard can sue the university for emotional distress, the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court ruled on Thursday.

Tamara Lanier says she is the great-great-great-granddaughter of Renty Taylor, who along with his daughter Delia was forced to be photographed for an 1850 study by a professor trying to prove the inferiority of Black people.

Lanier demanded the photos and unspecified damages from Harvard, saying the school had exploited the daguerreotype for profit.

Thursday's ruling overturns a lower court judgment that dismissed Lanier's 2019 complaint.

Supreme Judicial Court Justice Scott Kafker wrote that Harvard had "cavalierly" dismissed Lanier's claims of an ancestral link and disregarded her requests for information about how it was using the images, including when the school used Renty's image on a book cover.

In his judgment, he said Harvard had a "horrific, historic role" in creating the images, and it had a duty to respond.

Kafker said Harvard's conduct meant a jury could reasonably determine it recklessly caused Lanier to suffer emotional distress through its "extreme and outrageous conduct."

Who will keep the photos?

He, however, agreed with the lower court that the Ivy League university does not need to hand over the photos to Lanier, concluding the photos are the property of the photographer who took them and not the subject themselves.

"A descendant of someone whose likeness is reproduced in a daguerreotype would not therefore inherit any property right to that daguerreotype.''

They were taken as part of a study by Harvard Professor Louis Agassiz. His theories on racial difference were used to support slavery in the US.

The images are considered some of the earliest photos of enslaved people in the US, with every inch of their bodies captured in daguerreotype. They also had every body part, including their buttocks and genitals, measured.

How does Harvard use the photos?

Harvard spokeswoman Rachael Dane said the original daguerreotypes were in archival storage, not on display, nor have they been lent out to other museums for more than 15 years because of their fragility.

"Harvard has and will continue to grapple with its historic connection to slavery and views this inquiry as part of its core academic mission,'' she said in a statement.

"Harvard is not the rightful owner of these photos and should not profit from them,'' Lanier's attorney, Josh Koskoff said in a statement.

"As Tamara Lanier and her family have said for years, it is time for Harvard to let Renty and Delia come home.''

lo/rt (AP, Reuters)

A farm feeding chickens with marijuana instead of antibiotics is fetching higher prices from consumers seeking organic poultry, researchers say


Matthew Loh
Thu, June 23, 2022

A worker prepares chicken meat at Khlong Toei market in Bangkok.

Adisorn Chabsungnoen/SOPA Images/LightRocket via Getty Images

A farm in Thailand has started feeding its chickens with cannabis instead of antibiotics.

Researchers from Chiang Mai University say the experiment is showing positive signs.

The chickens are fetching double the usual price from consumers looking for organic poultry.

A farm growing medical marijuana in northern Thailand has been feeding its free-range chickens with cannabis instead of antibiotics, and researchers said the experiment has yielded promising results.

Researchers from Chiang Mai University's Department of Animal and Aquatic Sciences said fewer than 10% of the 1,000 chickens at the farm in Lampang have died since they introduced pot to the chickens' diet in January 2021.

While the study's findings are still under review and only cover one year's worth of research, Chompunut Lumsangkul, an assistant professor who led the study, told Insider that the cannabis feed appears to be working. The mortality rate for the chickens at the farm has been the same as in regular seasons when there isn't a severe outbreak of any bird-killing disease, she said.


Scroll back up to restore default view.

The birds' special food is produced by adding crushed cannabis to their feed and water, said Lumsangkul. No antibiotics and medicines are fed to or used on the chickens during this time.

Besides healthy chickens, the experiment has also allowed the farm to sell its birds for higher prices to consumers seeking organic poultry.

The birds are fetching double the regular price, at about $1.50 per pound, mostly because buyers want organic chickens that haven't been administered antibiotics, Lumsangkul said. She also claimed that the chickens' meat — which they call "GanjaChicken" — is more tender and tastes better than regular chickens.

"Consumers in Thailand have been paying attention to this because demand is increasing for chickens and many farmers have to use antibiotics. So some customers want to find a safer product," the assistant professor said.

The farm in Lampang primarily grows cannabis as one of its major products but also raises chickens.CHOMPUNUT LUMSANGKUL

As part of the experiment, Lumsangkul said her research team would sometimes give the chickens bolstered levels of tetrahydrocannabinol (THC) — the substance in marijuana that gives users a high — that went past the legal limits for humans in Thailand.

Earlier this month, the Thai government legalized the sale of cannabis products but limited the amount of THC in the items one can consume to 0.2%. By comparison, the chickens at the farm would sometimes get up to 0.4%, Chompunut said.

"I can't say the cannabis doesn't let the chickens get high, but they exhibit normal behavior," she said.

The farm has over 1,000 chickens that have been feed with cannabis since January last year.

CHOMPUNUT LUMSANGKUL

Lumsangkul noted that it's not immediately clear what the full benefits of feeding chickens cannabis are, nor is it known why the cannabis is keeping the birds healthy in the first place. However, she said it's likely that marijuana has bioactive compounds, or substances that promote metabolic activity and better health conditions, which are boosting the birds' immune systems.

The study has only been a "screening test" so far and the researchers have yet to test if the cannabis feed helps to protect the chickens against bird flu or other severe diseases, said Lumsangkul.

As for whether people can get high from eating cannabis-fed chickens, Lumsangkul said there's "no way" this could happen. The THC is fully metabolized in the chicken's body before slaughter, so its form is completely changed by the time it gets to the table, she said.

Drought hits Italy's hydroelectric plants

Fri, June 24, 2022, 

Hydroelectric power in Italy has plunged this year thanks to a drought that has also sparked water restrictions and fears for agriculture, industry sources said Friday.

Hydropower facilities, mostly located in the mountains in the country's north, provide almost one fifth of Italy's energy demands.

But the lack of rain is causing problems, at a time when Rome is desperately trying to wean itself off its dependence on Russian gas due to the war in Ukraine.

"From January to May 2022, hydro production fell by about 40 percent compared to the corresponding period in 2021," a spokesman for Utilitalia, a federation of water companies, told AFP.

"Hydro production has been steadily decreasing since July 2021," he said, blaming "the severe shortage of water even at high levels".

An industry source told AFP that while the situation was constantly changing, estimates for the first six months of 2022 suggest nationwide hydroelectric generation will be almost half the equivalent period of 2021.

One small plant near Piacenza, southeast of Milan, was shut indefinitely on June 21 due to low levels on the River Po that feeds it, the Enel energy company said.

"Considering the current drought situation, other hydro plants are not operating at full capacity," a spokesman added, without giving further details.

The Po River is Italy's largest reservoir of fresh water. Much of it used by farmers, but is suffering its worst drought for 70 years.

Italy's largest agricultural association, Coldiretti, said the drought is putting over 30 percent of national agricultural production and half of livestock farming in the Po Valley at risk.

In the northwest region of Piedmont, water is being rationed in more than 200 municipalities, according to the ANSA news agency.

The Maggiore and Garda lakes are both far lower than usual for this time of year, while further south, the level of the River Tiber that runs through Rome has also dropped.

bur-ar/ams/pvh

BOTTOM TRAWLERS; DESTROYERS OF OCEANS

 

Three dead after fresh Ecuador protest clashes, despite govt concession

 

Police in Ecuador's capital fired tear gas on Thursday to disperse Indigenous protesters who tried to storm congress, as the country's crippling cost-of-living demonstrations left another three dead, according to a rights group.

35 RETUERS PHOTOS 

OF ECUADOR PROTESTS

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UN says Al Jazeera journalist killed by Israeli fire

AFP , Friday 24 Jun 2022

The United Nations said Friday that its findings showed that the shot that killed Al Jazeera TV journalist Shireen Abu Akleh on May 11 was fired by Israeli occupation forces.

File Photo: Al-Jazeera s late veteran TV journalist Shireen Abu Aqleh (Akleh), shows her reporting for the Qatar-based news channel from Jerusalem on May 22, 2021. AFP

The Palestinian journalist, who was wearing a vest marked "Press" and a helmet, was killed on May 11 while covering an Israeli army operation in Jenin camp in the northern West Bank.

"We find that the shots that killed Abu Akleh came from Israeli security forces," UN Human Rights Office spokeswoman Ravina Shamdasani told reporters in Geneva.

"It is deeply disturbing that Israeli authorities have not conducted a criminal investigation.

"We at the UN Human Rights Office have concluded our independent monitoring into the incident.

"The shots that killed Abu Akleh and injured her colleague Ali Sammoudi came from Israeli occupation forces and not from indiscriminate firing by armed Palestinians, as initially claimed by Israeli authorities" she said.

Reporter reacting (R) as an unidentified man tries to lift the body of the channel's veteran journalist Shireen Abu Aqleh (Akleh) from the ground after she was fatally wounded by gunfire in Jenin in the occupied West Bank, on May 11, 2022. AFP

She added that the information came from the Israeli military and the Palestinian attorney general.

"We have found no information suggesting that there was activity by armed Palestinians in the immediate vicinity of the journalists," Shamdasani said.

Colleagues and friends react as the corpse of veteran Al-Jazeera journalist Shireen Abu Akleh is brought to the offices of the news channel in the West Bank city of Ramallah. on May 11, 2022. AFP

In line with its human rights monitoring methodology, the UN rights office inspected photo, video and audio material, visited the scene, consulted experts, reviewed official communications and interviewed witnesses.

The findings showed that seven journalists arrived at the western entrance of the Jenin refugee camp soon after 6:00 am.

At around 6:30 am, as four of the journalists turned into a particular street, "several single, seemingly well-aimed bullets were fired towards them from the direction of the Israeli occupation forces.

"One single bullet injured Ali Sammoudi in the shoulder; another single bullet hit Abu Akleh in the head and killed her instantly."

Israeli occupation police confront mourners as they carry the casket of slain Al Jazeera veteran journalist Shireen Abu Akleh during her funeral in east Jerusalem, Friday, May 13, 2022. AP

UN human rights chief Michelle Bachelet has urged Israel to open a criminal investigation into Abu Akleh's killing and into all other killings by Israeli occupation forces in the West Bank and in the context of law enforcement operations in Gaza.

SEE

LA REVUE GAUCHE - Left Comment: Search results for Shireen Abu Akleh 

Thousands of migrants storm border fence in Spain's Melilla

AFP , Friday 24 Jun 2022

Around 2,000 migrants tried to storm the border separating Spain's Melilla enclave from Morocco on Friday, the first such attempted mass crossing into the territory since the two nations mended diplomatic ties in March.

Migrants climb the fences separating the Spanish enclave of Melilla from Morocco in Melilla, Spain, Friday, June 24, 2022. AP

Melilla and Ceuta, Spain's other tiny North African enclave, have the European Union's only land borders with Africa, making them a magnet for migrants.

Some 2,000 migrants made their way to the border at dawn and over 500 managed to enter the border control area after cutting a fence with shears, the Spanish government's local delegation said in a statement.

Of these 130 sub-Saharan African migrants, "all of them men and apparently adults", managed to enter Melilla, it added.

Morocco deployed a "large" amount of forces to try to repel the assault on the border, which "cooperated actively" with Spain's security forces, the delegation said earlier in a separate statement.

Images on Spanish media showed exhausted migrants laying on the sidewalk in Melilla, some with bloodied hands and torn clothes.

On Thursday night migrants and security forces "clashed" on the Moroccan side of the border, Omar Naji of Moroccan rights group AMDH told AFP.

Morocco's Hassani Hospital in Nador near Melilla confirmed that "several" police officers and migrants were admitted for treatment.

'New stage'

In March this year, Spain ended a year-long diplomatic crisis by backing Morocco's autonomy plan for Western Sahara going back on its decades-long stance of neutrality.

Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez then visited Rabat, and the two governments hailed a "new stage" in relations.

The row began when Madrid allowed Brahim Ghali, leader of Western Sahara's pro-independence Polisario Front, to be treated for Covid-19 in a Spanish hospital in April 2021.

A month later, some 10,000 migrants surged across the Moroccan border into Spain's Ceuta enclave as border guards looked the other way, in what was widely seen as a punitive gesture by Rabat.

Rabat calls for Western Sahara to have an autonomous status under Moroccan sovereignty but the Polisario wants an UN-supervised referendum on self-determination as agreed in a 1991 ceasefire agreement.

In the days just before Morocco and Spain patched up their ties, there were several attempted mass crossings of migrants into Melilla, including one involving 2,500 people, the largest such attempt on record. Nearly 500 made it across

'Means of pressure'

Patching up a relationship with Morocco, the departure point for many migrants has meant a drop in arrivals, notably in Spain's Atlantic Canary Islands.

The number of migrants who reached the Canary Islands in April was 70 percent lower than in February, government figures show.

Sanchez earlier this month warned that "Spain will not tolerate any use of the tragedy of illegal immigration as a means of pressure."

Spain will seek to have "irregular migration" listed as one of the security threats on NATO's southern flank when the alliance gathers for a summit in Madrid on June 29-30.

Over the years, thousands of migrants have attempted to cross the 12-kilometre (7.5-mile) border between Melilla and Morocco, or Ceuta's eight-kilometre border, by climbing the fences, swimming along the coast or hiding in vehicles.

The two territories are protected by fences fortified with barbed wire, video cameras and watchtowers.

The attempts include violent clashes between those crossing and the agents charged to stop them.

Migrants sometimes use hooks and sticks to try to climb the border fence, and throw stones at police.

Claimed by Morocco, the two cities have long been a flashpoint in diplomatic relations between Rabat and Madrid, which insists both are integral parts of Spain.

Wildfire threatens unspoiled Georgia island rich in history
By RUSS BYNUM

June 22, 2022

1 of 4

Smoke rises from the burned landscape at the north end of St. Catherine's Island on Wednesday, June 22, 2022. Four fires were sparked on the island by lightning strikes on June 11. (Richard Burkhart/Savannah Morning News via AP)

ST. CATHERINES ISLAND, Ga. (AP) — Wildfires sparked by lightning have scorched hundreds of acres on this unspoiled island off the Georgia coast, where crews are battling to protect plantation ruins, the remnants of a 16th century Spanish mission and archaeological sites that have yielded human artifacts thousands of years old.

St. Catherines Island has long been prized as an ecological and historic coastal treasure. Giant sea turtles nest on its beaches and ring-tailed lemurs, brought to the island decades ago, live in its dense forest. Slave quarters made from oyster-shell tabby survive on the island, about 40 miles (65 kilometers) south of Savannah, as does the home of a signer of the Declaration of Independence.

Protected for decades under ownership of a private foundation, St. Catherines Island has seen roughly 15% of its land area burn since a lightning storm sparked fires June 11. Severe drought left the island tinder-dry, allowing flames to rapidly spread. Columns of black smoke have been visible from the mainland, and raging flames reaching the treetops have at times burned near the beach.

“We have an untouched history, so we go above and beyond to try to protect that,” Michael Halderson, the island’s manager and only fulltime resident, told reporters Wednesday during a boat tour of the island’s perimeter, where smoldering fire formed thick smoke among blackened trees.

The island fires are among more than 30,000 that have burned roughly 4,600 square miles nationwide during one of the worst starts the U.S. has seen to its wildfire season.

Halderson and his small staff of seven worked nonstop for days trying to contain the flames until they realized four separate fires were burning across the island’s 6,700 acres (2,700 hectares).

Help arrived last week from the Georgia Forestry Commission, which mobilized about 15 wildland firefighters with bulldozers for plowing fire breaks as well as planes and a helicopter equipped to dump water on the flames. Another 25 fire team members were expected to arrive Thursday.

Crews haven’t attacked the fires with trench-digging plows as aggressively as they normally would, given the island’s history as a trove of historical treasures.

Over the decades, archaeologists have located the site where Catholic missionaries from Spain established a church and settlement on the island in the 1570s. Others have found evidence of humans living here 4,500 years ago. In total, the island has yielded well over 1 million artifacts.

Concerned that heavy plows could destroy undiscovered buried treasures, firefighters in some areas have taken a slower approach using bulldozers to scrape just a few inches (centimeters) from the ground — enough to clear grasses and vegetation so they won’t fuel the spread of approaching fire.

Areas of the island considered more sensitive are being doused with water from the air, said Byron Haire, a spokesman for the forestry commission team.

“We want to get this fire stopped, but we just have to slow down,” Haire said, adding that crews are trying “to keep a light hand on the land vs. the heavy hand of a machine that digs up a lot of dirt.”

Haire estimated the fires so far have burned up to 1,000 acres (405 hectares). Low humidity and unpredictable winds have made fighting the blazes more difficult.

Still, crews have managed to keep the flames out of the island’s compound that includes lodging for visiting researchers and a radio tower that’s vital for communications. Also protected in that area is the former home of Button Gwinnett, a signer of the Declaration of Independence who bought the island in 1766 and lived there until he died in 1777 after being mortally wounded in a duel.

Flames crept close to the tabby plantation ruins on the island’s south end until a helicopter snuffed them with water dumped from a giant bucket, Halderson said. He said fire burned through the Spanish mission site, where planted palm trees outline the footprint of the church that stood there centuries ago, but appeared to do little damage.

As for the island’s wildlife, both Halderson and Haire noted that animals typically are adept at avoiding fire. In some areas scorched when the fire first started, new plants have already begun to sprout.

Still, Halderson said doesn’t expect the fires to be extinguished any time soon.

“This will continue until we get significant rain,” Halderson said. “It could take weeks. It could be months.”

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Nevada Supreme Court ruling shakes up groundwater rights

By GABE STERN

June 22, 2022

RENO, Nev. (AP) — A Nevada Supreme Court ruling on Thursday has set new precedent for how the state can manage groundwater in areas with severe drought.

In a 4-3 ruling issued Thursday to settle a water dispute in Diamond Valley, a rural Eureka County farm area, the court said groundwater management plans established in areas that are losing groundwater supply quickly can deviate from the longstanding senior water rights doctrine.

Nevada’s top water official, the state engineer, has authority to regulate water in the Diamond Valley area of Eureka County under a groundwater management plan approved by local farmers and water users even if the plan deviates from existing state water law, the state high court said.

In reversing a decision by a Eureka County District Court judge, the justices ruled that in some cases, water-use plans can deviate from longstanding “priority doctrine,” which gives premium rights to senior water users who’ve owned their land the longest.

The West is experiencing a more than 20-year megadrought. Scientists say the region has become much warmer and drier in recent decades and that climate change will continue to make weather more extreme, wildfires more frequent and destructive, and water supplies less reliable.

In the agricultural Diamond Valley, severe drought and decades of water overuse have led to battles over a groundwater supply depleted because it is unable to recharge naturally.

As a result, it has been designated a Critical Management Area, the only area in the state carrying such a designation.

Because the goal of the groundwater management plan is to erase the area’s “critical” status, the court said the state engineer can take action in ways that deviate from the “priority doctrine,” the court said.

The deviations are allowed only if the plan has been approved by both the engineer and a majority of water-users within the critically designated area, the court said. It called the management plan approved in Diamond Valley a community-based solution to long-term water shortages in the valley.

“We recognize that our opinion will significantly affect water management in Nevada,” Justice James Hardesty wrote for the majority. The court ruling was first reported by the Nevada Independent.

“We are of the belief, however, that — given the arid nature of this State — it is particularly important that we effectuate the plain meaning of a statute that encourages the sustainable use of water,” Hardesty wrote.

Kyle Roerink, executive director of the Great Basin Water Network, said the ruling underscored ongoing tension over water use in the West, where doctrines long have separated junior and senior holders of water rights.

“This ruling puts a magnifying glass on that tension,” Roerink said.

It comes as farmers in many parts of the state are refiguring which and how many crops they can grow amid drought and rising costs due to inflation.

“We’re risking a lot more when we go and put in a seed in the ground than we were last year,” said Eric Hull, general manager of Winnemucca Farms, a Humboldt County operation that he called the largest irrigated farm in the state. “And in a tougher environment with a lot less water,” he added

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Stern is a corps member for the Associated Press/Report for America Statehouse News Initiative. Report for America is a nonprofit national service program that places journalists in local newsrooms to report on undercovered issues. Follow Stern on Twitter.