Before It's Too Late

By Brian Barth

Kivalina is falling into the ocean. Located 85 miles north of the Arctic Circle in northwest Alaska, in a region accessible only by air or boat, the tribal community of approximately 400 Iñupiat is situated on a low-lying spit of land that juts into the Chukchi Sea. According to a report issued by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, the village lost 27 of its 54 acres between 1952 and 2003 as a result of coastal erosion.

The heaviest storms come in autumn, historically a time when the water was starting to freeze. But now when the wind howls it sends waves crashing ashore, rather than just blowing snow across the ice floes, and the melting permafrost along the shoreline is increasingly susceptible to the water's fury.

There is a clear need to relocate to higher ground, but a firm plan has yet to materialize after decades of discussions with state and federal authorities. Cost estimates for moving the village range up to $1 million per person, owing largely to the logistical challenges of building in roadless tundra. The cost estimates also include a significant upgrade from the existing infrastructure, as Kivalina households lack sewerage and running water. (Human waste disposal involves hauling a honey bucket to the landfill. Showers are available at the local laundromat.)

Newtok, Alaska, in spring, as viewed from its water tower in May 2007. Boardwalks squish into the muck in the tiny village, which erosion has turned into an island. Charles Mason, The New York Times.

Stanley Hawley, the local tribal administrator and a Kivalina city council member, says it's not a question of whether to move, "it's just a matter of where to move to." The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers has carried out feasibility studies on several prospective sites, but no clear consensus has emerged on a relocation site. One that was initially favored by the community was ruled out by the Corps because of its melting permafrost and the engineering constraints that would impose.

In the meantime, an evacuation road is being planned as a stopgap measure to avert disaster. A new school for the community will be built at the end of the evacuation road (the result of a recent court case that alleged inequities in the funding process for rural public schools in Alaska), giving rise to the idea of relocating the village there as well.

But some of the villagers see it as an inappropriate site, noting that it's eight miles inland and surrounded by marshy land. The Iñupiat are heavily reliant on hunting bowhead whales, seals, and other sea life.

The difficulty in reaching consensus on a new village site has "given the impression to outside entities that the village people can't make up their mind and they would rather stay here, which is not the case," says Hawley. "But it's caused one big snarl in the planning process."

Kivalina, seen here in June 2010, lost half of its land area between 1952 and 2003.

Imminent threat

Warmer temperatures increase the threat to Alaska's coastal communities. The state's annual average temperature has risen 3. 4°F over the past 50 years. The observed increase shown here compares the average temperature of 1993–2007 with a 1960s–1970s baseline, an increase of over 2°. The brackets on the thermometers represent the likely range of model projections, though lower or higher outcomes are possible. Source: CMIP2-A.

That's not the only snarl in the relocation planning process — and Kivalina is far from being alone in this regard. The corps identified 178 vulnerable Alaskan communities in its 2009 Baseline Erosion Assessment. The average annual temperature in Alaska has increased by 3.4 degrees Fahrenheit over the last half century, roughly twice the increase seen across the rest of the U.S. And the average winter temperature in the state has heated up by 6.3 degrees during the same period, creating a more immediate threat to coastal communities than elsewhere in the country.

A 2009 U.S. Government Accountability Office report identified 31 "imminently threatened" communities, of which 12 have voiced the intent to relocate. However, lack of funding, and the inherent challenge of navigating the dozens of local, state, and federal agencies implicated in establishing a new community from scratch, have kept the pace of relocation efforts at a slow slog.

Four of the 31 communities, including Kivalina, are considered a top priority, but only Newtok — a village of almost 400 Yup'ik located about 500 miles west of Anchorage, as the Cessna flies — has made significant progress toward relocation. The Newtok Traditional Council initiated a relocation planning process in 1994, selecting a site nine miles to the southeast of the current village on Nelson Island. The site — known as Mertarvik, which translates as "getting water from the spring" — was obtained through a land swap with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service in 2003, which required an act of Congress to execute.

Since then the Ninglick River has been eating into Newtok at an alarming rate: an average of 72 feet per year, ranging up to 300 feet in a single stormy season. "Right now the closest home is about 182 feet from the river," says Sally Cox, a planner with the State of Alaska Division of Community and Regional Affairs, who is the point person within the state government directing relocation efforts. "We could lose those homes next winter ... So we are trying to come up with a strategy this summer to move them further into the community away from the riverbank so that they will be safe."

Despite such imminent and grave threats, Cox insists that the first principle of climate changerelated relocation, at least when it comes to tribal villages, is for the community to initiate and lead the process — the role of outsiders, whether from the government or NGOs, should be to provide technical and, ideally, financial assistance. "The State of Alaska feels very strongly that local governments have to make those types of decisions themselves," she says.

At the village's request, Cox helped to organize the Newtok Planning Group in 2006, which consists of representatives from more than two dozen regional, state, and federal stakeholders, to push the relocation process forward. To date, a barge landing, quarry, access road, well, and the foundation for an evacuation center, which will eventually become the village's new school, have been built at Mertarvik. Six homes were also built in 2011 and 2012, but occupying them is not as simple as just moving in: there is no school, no health care facilities, no airstrip, no post office, or any other form of community services.

Cox describes it as a chicken-and-egg conundrum. "Agencies are very reluctant about investing in a place where there is no population, or sometimes their regulations prohibit them from doing so," she says. "So it's been this vicious cycle of how do we get the funding to invest in the site so that we can get enough support there to allow people to move over."

Such structural impediments may be the most telling revelation for planners working on future relocation projects elsewhere as sea-level rise progresses — " putting those policy changes in place takes a very long time," warns Cox — but the strategy at Mertarvik is to keep building homes and infrastructure so at least the community has somewhere to go when the time comes to flee.

Money continues to trickle in. A $3.1 million hazard mitigation grant from the Federal Emergency Management Agency will cover costs to move 12 new homes from Newtok to Mertarvik, which is expected to occur in the summer of 2017 once the required environmental review is complete. That's much cheaper than building 12 homes in such a remote setting, but it also means that residents will be moving along with the homes. The houses currently house 41 people, 27 of them children.

And that, says Cox, should kick the relocation into high gear: "Establishing a pioneer population will then trigger other agencies to start doing things. The local school district will have to start thinking about constructing a school there. It will get the FAA into the game of planning for a full-blown airport. And the post office and all of those kinds of things that make up an established community will come along." A further $900,000 grant toward establishing community services is pending from HUD's Indian Community Development Block Grant Imminent Threat Program.

At the same time, the Cold Climate Housing Research Center, a Fairbanks-based nonprofit, has developed a housing model designed specifically for remote communities facing rapid environmental change, which the Newtok Village Council is keen to adopt at Mertarvik. The design includes a foundation that acts almost as a set of skis, allowing for easy transport across ice.

The original plan was to build a prototype in the existing village last summer (training locals in the construction technique in the process), and then drag it across the frozen river to Mertarvik once more infrastructure was in place. Then the village's barge landing washed away, making it impossible to deliver construction supplies, so the home will now be built at the new village site this summer, adding to the housing stock and fueling the sentiment that full relocation may be possible in the near future.

"One of the really important things that is going to come out of the Newtok process is that other communities will be able to see a model, a way forward," says Cox. "Piecemealing funding sources together is not ideal, but it can be done."

Cultural consciousness

In the early stages of relocation planning in Alaska, tribes were often asked whether they would consider moving to an existing town or city where there was already infrastructure in place. But an overwhelmingly negative reaction to the notion quickly weeded out that approach—villagers often leave temporarily to work or attend college in other parts of Alaska, but most eventually return. The median age in Newtok is 21; half of the population is age 19 or younger. "People stay there," says Cox. "The community is very dedicated to remaining a tribal entity."

Planning a village from scratch is a rare occurrence in the 21st century, and doing so with a community that only recently transitioned from a seminomadic lifestyle adds many layers of complexity. "A lot of these tribes were not tied to one physical location until after Western contact," says Mitzi Barker, faicp, director of planning and construction at the Rural Alaska Community Action Program, who has provided technical advice to a number of native villages that are considering relocation. "Post offices and schools were established in the middle of the last century after the U.S. purchased Alaska. Before that, people flexed between fish camps and hunting camps and lived in earthen shelters."

The conceptual layout for Mertarvik attempts to integrate that cultural consciousness within a contemporary approach to land-use planning, albeit in very basic ways. It includes typical planning elements such as a rectilinear street grid, though the village center is depicted in an elliptical shape based on the community's input. An airport overlay has been established to insure no antennas or other tall structures are erected in the flight path, and a modern landfill and wastewater treatment plant are envisioned just outside of town. But the plan also sets aside a significant swath of tundra for wild berry harvesting, and a stretch of the waterfront is designated for fishing camps.

Victoria Herrmann, U.S. director of the Arctic Institute, an international think tank focused on social, economic, and environmental issues particular to northerly latitudes, sees the cultural element as New housing is critical if Newtok will be able to make the move to Mertarvik; much of the existing housing stock is in poor repair. This demonstration house is being built using structural insulated panels and has a moveable foundation for transport across the ice. Central to relocation planning. In partnership with National Geographic and the National Trust for Historic Preservation, she's working on a book that will document relocation efforts throughout the U.S., from coastal Alaska to Isle de Jean Charles in Louisiana (see sidebar) to Tangier Island in the Chesapeake Bay and American territories in the Caribbean and Pacific. An experience during her fieldwork in American Samoa helped to reframe her study of relocation to one of "dislocation," a perspective that places greater emphasis on what's being lost in the process.

"Someone who works for the Samoan Affairs Office said to me it's as if they are going to have to move from being an ocean people to a mountain people," says Herrmann. "They're not just talking about how to move the houses, but of a change in their identity."

Herrmann urges planners to consider cultural loss and its impacts in the relocation planning process, especially in the context of traditional cultures. Sea-level rise is slowly becoming a reality in all coastal communities, but it's very different for someone growing up in an isolated native village to confront such changes compared to someone in, say, Manhattan or Miami. "If you've spent your life as a cosmopolitan citizen your social networks are likely to expand throughout the country, if not the globe, but on these barrier islands in Alaska where the culture is so closely tied to the landscape climate change can really affect the social safety networks that the community relies on. The challenge is, how do you imbue that in a new built environment?"

New housing is critical if Newtok will be able to make the move to Mertarvik; much of the existing housing stock is in poor repair. This demonstration house is being built using structural insulated panels and has a moveable foundation for transport across the ice. Courtesy CCHRC.

Federal help

Questions on how best to preserve intangible community assets like culture through the relocation process beg for further research, though making an earnest effort at participatory planning is certainly a good start. In the meantime, the legal, fiscal, and logistical dimensions of relocation are slowly being worked out.

Following President Obama's visit to Alaska last summer, a series of directives have been in set in motion at the federal level to lubricate the relocation process. Most notable was assigning the Denali Commission, an existing agency that coordinates the delivery of federal services in Alaska, with the job of streamlining the efforts of all government entities involved in relocation planning into a single coherent process.

President Barack Obama observes traditional salmon preserving with fishermen in Dillingham on the shore of the Nushagak River in September 2015. Dillingham is one of the Alaskan communities identified as "imminently threatened" by flooding and erosion. Reuters/Jonathan Ernst.

"We are the WD-40," says Joel Neimeyer, cochair of the Denali Commission. "Our job is not to put glue into the situation, but to grease it and get things going. A lot of agencies are very keen on helping, but are limited by their authorities, so they can only work in different silos . . . So there was no one agency coming forward that could really touch everything. Well, we are it."

The Denali Commission has $7.1 million available this year through its newly formed Environmentally Threatened Community Initiative to embark on its newfound mission. The first funds were disbursed this spring to Newtok for the purpose of hiring a project management firm to assist them in coordinating the relocation process. And more federal money looks to be in the pipeline: $5 million in the FY17 energy and water appropriation is earmarked for environmentally threatened communities and $400 million in the Department of the Interior's FY17 budget is earmarked for "vulnerable Alaskan communities, including for relocation expenses," though this sum is to be spread over 10 years. Both budget items await congressional approval.

"The White House has said very clearly that the Denali Commission is not the implementing agency," says Neimeyer. "They said other federal agencies will have the resources for implementation — your job is to coordinate all of us so that we are doing it in a cost-effective manner, with solutions that the community supports, that the state supports, that the regional players support so we can then move forward smartly." If such efforts play out as intended, it will represent a shift from a model in which funding and assistance are generally provided to vulnerable communities only after a disaster has struck to one focused on preventing disasters. Acceptance of the new realities of climate change, and the perceived increase of natural disasters that are at least partially attributed to it, has no doubt sparked this new paradigm.

"This phenomenon is not going to give you a Hurricane Katrina, you're not going to have that sort of headline" says Barker. "[The erosion] is very incremental. But there will be the loss of a community, the irreparable loss of a culture. The people will scatter."

The president's current funding pledge is just a fraction of what it will take to move the 12 communities that have expressed that desire so far, but the top-down change in attitude is a welcome sign for folks like Colleen Swan, who was the relocation coordinator for Kivalina's tribal government until the funding for a position was cut nearly two years ago. "Our people are very resilient," she says. "If they feel threatened during a fall storm they get over it as soon as the storm is over. But it's become a question up in the air. Are we going to flood this time? Are we going to have to evacuate? You live with that every day. It's very stressful for the people. I'm sure that they would love to sleep at night without having to worry about anything."

Brian J. Barth is a Toronto-based freelance writer with a background in environmental planning.

Newtok's Vanishing Coastline

The Ninglick River has been eating into Newtok at an average of 72 feet per year, ranging up to 300 feet in a single stormy season. A 1996 dump site and barge landing are already under water; Newtok could lose its school by 2027 if projections prove accurate.

Historic shorelines are digitized from USGS topographic maps, aerial photos, and GPS data. Projected shorelines are from statistically derived averages and have not been calculated based on actual Ninglick River data. Therefore, conservative erosion rate values were used for these projections.

The Sometimes Island

Newtok before (left) and after (right) a major flood on September 22, 2005. The floodwaters completely encircled the village, effectively making it an island for several days. Some houses were only connected to the village via temporarily floating boardwalks.

Sources: ASCG Incorporated, USGS Topographic Maps, Google Earth, GPS graphic by Wendy Wahman.

Resources

U. S. Climate Resilience Toolkit: http://toolkit.climate.gov. (Search "Kivalina" for specifics on that community.)

Sea Level Rise and Coastal Flood Frequency Viewer: coast.noaa.gov/slr.

Alaska's Planning and Land Management, Newtok Planning Group: tinyurl.com/jpd7n9j.

America's First Climate Refugees: The Guardian goes indepth about Newtok: tinyurl.com/luc27n9

Oceanographer John Englander talked about the "wicked problem" of sea-level rise at APA's 2016 National Planning Conference: www.planning.org/blog/blogpost/9100678

America's Eroding Edges, a project of the National Trust for Historical Places and the Arctic Institute, looks at American communities facing climate change: tinyurl.com/zkyfwuf