Of the road and the land

Dave grew up knowing the rhythms of this corner of southern Oregon — the irrigated fields, the volcanic buttes, and the canals that thread across the Basin from the Oregon–California line. In 1991 he founded David Hamel Inc. — Dave Hamel Trucking — a private interstate carrier out of Klamath Falls, built on a simple premise: the harvest needs to move.

For more than three decades, his trucks have been the connective tissue between grower and market — carrying the Basin’s hay, grain, and other farm freight from the fields of the Klamath Project down to the processing centers and markets of California’s Central Valley. It is steady, unglamorous, essential work, done the way he does everything: carefully, and on time.

• 1991 Year he founded David Hamel Inc.
• 30+ Years moving the Basin’s harvest to market
• Klamath → Valley From Project fields to California’s Central Valley

A seat at the table

But the road is only half the story. The other half runs through water. As Director for the District’s Fourth Division — elected by his fellow patrons — and now as Vice-President of the Board, Dave has had a seat at the table during some of the most consequential water fights in the American West.

His voice carries beyond the District, too — and has for years. Dave serves as K.I.D.’s elected representative to the Klamath Water Users Association (KWUA) — the basin-wide alliance of irrigation districts and water users — and as an at-large director on its board. He has been part of that basin-wide work for years, putting him at the table not only for K.I.D.’s own farms but for the whole Klamath Project community.

When the federal government cut off Klamath Project irrigation water in 2021, leaving fields unplanted and livelihoods in jeopardy, Dave was not a bystander — he was a voice for the families who felt it first. And in 2023, serving as K.I.D. President, he led the Board’s unanimous decision to carry the District’s case to the U.S. Supreme Court, asking the Court to protect water rights that the State of Oregon had already adjudicated to the Basin’s farmers and ranchers.

He spoke plainly about what was at stake: a farming community built on self-reliance, asking only that a promise made — a water right confirmed, a contract honored — be kept. It is the same conviction that runs through everything he does.

Bringing the basin together

Some of Dave’s most important work doesn’t happen in a courtroom at all. He has a gift for bringing people together — connecting growers and communities across the Upper Klamath Basin, through the farms and canals of the Klamath Reclamation Project, and reaching downstream to build relationships with the District’s downriver neighbors.

In a basin where water has too often set people against one another, Dave keeps looking for the common ground — the shared stake everyone here has in a healthy, working Klamath that serves the whole watershed, top to bottom.

Still showing up

Dave’s leadership is not the kind that seeks the spotlight. It is the kind that shows up — at board meetings, in hearing rooms, and at the end of a dirt road where a problem needs solving. Through the most turbulent water years the Basin has seen in a generation, he has kept serving: as a director, as President, and now as Vice-President.

In 2024, the District thanked Dave for arranging a flyover of the Klamath Reclamation Project — a quiet act of stewardship that says a lot about him. He didn’t need to be asked. He saw a way to help his community see, from the air, exactly what they were fighting for, and he made it happen.