EXTREME CONDITIONS

In Valdez, Alaska, there's a $12 million barley terminal that has never held a grain of barley. In fact, the entire barley crop of Alaska would barely fill one freight car. But when the terminal was built in the early 1980s, no one complained. The state, with a population of fewer than five hundred thousand, was awash in money from a torrent of oil that began spewing from the North Slope in 1978. As Pulitzer Prize-winning author John Strohmeyer recounts, this incredible influx of oil money created unprecedented opportunity for the state. It also set in motion a wave of crisis and exploitation…