Erosion, Floods Threaten Majority of Alaskan Villages

Jul. 3–Luci Eningowuk said she believes her community of Shishmaref is worth saving by moving it to nearby solid land. Relocating the small village, however, is complex and costly, as much as $180 million.

Stormy waters of the Chukchi Sea, just north of the Bering Strait, have eaten away the earth where some of Shishmaref’s homes used to sit, now those waters threaten additional homes, plus the village’s school and airport runway.

“The situation in Shishmaref needs to be characterized as an emergency,” Eningowuk, chairwoman of the Shishmaref Erosion and Relocation Coalition, told the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers’ Coastal Engineering Research Board in June.

Fall storms over the past 25 years have worn away the coastline bordering Shishmaref, eroding up to 125 feet at one time — a considerable loss for a village located on a barrier reef no wider than a quarter mile and three miles in length. In less than two hours during a storm in October 2002, one of the village’s roads receded into the sea and homes facing a similar fate had to be relocated to the other side of the island.

Shishmaref is not unique among Alaska Native villages.

Three other villages — Kivalina, Koyukuk and Newtok — are in imminent danger from erosion and flooding, and, like Shishmaref, they are preparing to relocate, according to the U.S. General Accounting Office’s December 2003 study of Alaska Native villages affected by flooding and erosion.

With most of Alaska’s 213 villages located on the coast or a riverbank, about 86 percent, or 184 villages, are affected by erosion and flooding, the GAO study said.

Relocating villages in imminent danger and mitigating the impacts of erosion and flooding on others has never been done on the scale of what is now needed in Alaska, said Bruce Sexauer, a senior plan formulator for the corps’ Alaska District.

Sexauer oversees the corps’ Alaska Villages Erosion Technical Assistance program, which is responsible for working with some villages affected by erosion and flooding.

“We are embarking into uncharted territory, and the nation as a whole has not had to deal with relocation of Native villages on such a large magnitude,” he said.

Even though erosion and flooding impacts many communities throughout the United States, the circumstances of impacted villages in Alaska are unique, making it difficult to respond in a conventional manner.

Alaska’s villages are generally small and in remote locations, with subsistence activities serving a primary role in their economies.

The corps requires local governments to share the cost of the projects it carries out in their communities. Many villages, however, are unable to share the cost because they have a limited tax base, and what funds the governments do have are in high demand to meet the sanitation, health and educational needs of their communities, Sexauer said.

“Erosion projects are just a small piece of the puzzle for these communities,” he told the coastal engineering board. “There is a lot of demand for these communities to provide what we consider the bare necessities with very little resources.”

The Fiscal Year 2005 Consolidated Appropriations Act, signed into law late last year, included language enabling the corps to carry out projects related to erosion and flooding in Alaska at the full expense of the federal government.

Sexauer said that so far the corps has not selected any of its projects to be performed according to the new language.

“It’s very new and people are trying to figure how to apply it,” he said.

“I think you have to be judicious in this. For example, if (all the villages) decided they wanted to do this, it would really bear a burden on the communities that most need it. Then, you have to get into who deserves it and who doesn’t deserve it.”

The high cost of construction in Alaska’s rural villages is another factor impeding the corps from responding in a conventional manner to the needs of villages affected by erosion and flooding.

Sexauer said a $1 million project to mitigate erosion along a portion of California’s coast may cost between $4 million and $5 million in Alaska because the materials have to be transported a much greater distance, the construction season is shorter, and there is less equipment and labor available in remote Alaska.

In the case of Shishmaref, the corps has estimated that moving the community of about 600 people will cost between $95 million and $180 million, depending on where it relocates.

“The issue with Shishmaref and a number of communities is that the cost is astronomically high because of where they are at, and the cost of the benefits do not fall into typical monetary benefits,” Sexauer said. “How to you put a dollar value on the passing of your culture from one generation to another?”

The unique circumstances of Alaska Native villages affected by flooding and erosion has prevented the corps for responding to many of the 63 requests made by 60 villages between 1935 and 2004. Some 47 of those requests were made between 1999 and last year, according to Sexauer.

The corps has completed five erosion- and flood-control projects that met the terms of its selection policy for projects and another 11 projects that received special authorization from Congress.

For those requests from villages that don’t result in a project to control erosion or flooding, the corps often refers the villages to other agencies that may be able to provide assistance, including the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Natural Resources Conservation Services, the Federal Aviation Administration and the Bureau of Indian Affairs.

“With issues like this, it is difficult to be able to work in typical governmental models because there are so many players and agencies, and so many rules and policies. I would say it is definitely a challenge to mesh that all together,” Sexauer said.

At this point, there is no lead agency responsible for addressing the problems Alaska’s villages face due to erosion and flooding. In an effort to change that, U.S. Sen. Ted Stevens, R-Alaska, introduced in late January Senate Bill 49 to establish a joint state and federal floodplain and erosion mitigation commission for Alaska. U.S. Sen. Lisa Murkowski, R-Alaska, is co-sponsoring the bill.

The bill has been referred to the Committee on Energy and Natural Resources.

The Shishmaref Erosion and Relocation Coalition supports the effort to make one agency responsible for addressing the needs of villages affected by erosion and flooding. The coalition, however, doubts that the community of Shishmaref will survive the drawn-out process of developing and implementing new legislation and policies, Eningowuk told the coastal engineering board.

The coalition requests the federal government enact legislation that would make the community’s relocation a demonstration project, she said.

“We are unique, and we need to be valued as a national treasure by the people of the United States,” Eningowuk said. “We deserve the attention and help of the American people and the federal government.”

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