Government inaction, river washing away Alaskan town's future

By Tomas Alex Tizon
Los Angeles Times

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NEWTOK, Alaska — The boys hunt for mastodon bones on the tundra as the women and girls gather salmonberries from their secret spots in the hills. The men keep busy with various manly things, fishing and fixing roofs and hauling water from the community well.

It's another sunny afternoon in Newtok, an Eskimo village of 340 on Alaska's west coast, and there isn't the slightest hint that life is approaching a cataclysmic change.

In as few as 10 years, the village will be swallowed by a torrent of water from the Ninglick River, and an ancient way of life will be erased.

"It's like a razor blade down there, just chopping away at the beach," says Phil Kusayak, the school custodian. "Pretty soon, it'll all be water."

For thousands of years, ice shelves and permafrost along Alaska's coast acted as shields against storms and tidal forces, but rising temperatures have melted much of these natural barriers, leaving Newtok's shoreline vulnerable to a relentless barrage of waves.

The Ninglick River, a wide, slate-colored waterway that connects Baird Inlet with the Bering Sea, has eaten away 3,320 feet of beach in the past 50 years and is moving toward Newtok at a rate of 110 feet a year. The town dump was washed away, and the barge landing, critical for receiving supplies, has begun to crumble.

Villages across Alaska have been affected by the warming trend. Temperatures in polar regions have risen about 2 degrees a decade in the past 30 years. This has exacerbated the naturally occurring erosion that plagues more than 180 of Alaska's coastal and riverine villages.

According to a report released 10 months ago by the General Accounting Office, now the Government Accountability Office (GAO), about 24 villages are threatened and four are in "imminent danger," none more so than Newtok, where the erosion rate is fastest.

Meet the reluctant leader
 
But Newtok residents aren't panicking, because they have a plan: to move the village, buildings and all, across the river, nine miles away on the north end of Nelson Island.

Villagers obtained the site for their new home in a land swap with the federal government in April. The town, which proposed the swap, got 11,000 acres on Nelson in exchange for giving up the village plus 12,000 adjacent acres, all of which will become part of a wildlife refuge that is mostly tundra and marsh.

The move would be unprecedented — if it happens.

Tribal leaders, who commissioned an engineering study this year, said the move could cost $50 million to $100 million. Estimates from the GAO indicate the number could reach as $400 million. Nobody knows where the money will come from.

After Newtok, there would be Kivalina, Koyukuk, Shishmaref and 20 others. The cost to relocate, or barricade, all the villages threatened by erosion would be unimaginable.

Officials acknowledge the urgency of the situation, but the cost and complexity of relocating a village have proved daunting. It would require the coordination of several state and federal agencies, and no agency or politician has dared to take the lead. By default, the Newtok people have been left to save themselves.

Right now, their relocation fund stands at zero.

Stanley Tom knows better than anyone what is at stake.

Tom, 44, is the village grocer. He is short and bespectacled, with a wispy black mustache and eyes that, of late, have been twitchy. The village has placed the burden of the relocation on his shoulders. Ask villagers about the move, and they will respond with some version of "Ask Stanley."

He is a Yupik Eskimo, born and raised in the community on the outer fringe of the Yukon-Kuskokwim Delta. He is a two-time college dropout, but one of only a few in town with any education past high school, and, most important, the only one who remotely understands the language of bureaucrats.

In a village that depends on government funding for its most basic services, Tom is the lifeline to the outside world. He has initiated much of the planning for the move.

"I'm it," Tom says. "There's no one else here who can do it."

Endless move

If the village can't be relocated, the only viable alternative, government officials say, would be to move the residents to an existing community, such as Bethel, population 5,700, about 100 miles east. Village leaders say such a move would mean the end of the Newtok people as a distinct tribe.

The Newtoks, whose ancestors called themselves Qaluyaarmiut, or "dip net people," have occupied the region for at least 2,000 years. Like all traditional Yupik Eskimos, they were nomadic until the 20th century. The town of Newtok became permanent 55 years ago.

The plan, in theory, calls for relocating those buildings that would be more economical to move than to rebuild, such as the school, built in 2001; the new medical clinic, finished just this year; the coin laundry; and the town's two electrical generators and their outbuildings. Why new facilities were built even though the Ninglick was fast approaching is a testament to poor planning and, in some ways, to a collective denial that the village was doomed.

In addition to those buildings, villagers would like to move their homes. But only houses built on pilings would be considered; many of the older homes may be too fragile to uproot.

Large buildings would likely be broken into sections and transported either by barge during the summer or on giant sleds pushed or pulled by tractors across the frozen Ninglick during the winter. The move could take place over months or years, as money becomes available.

Andrea Elconin, project manager for the Army Corps of Engineers in Anchorage, says everyone is waiting for Congress to "tag one agency to take the lead" in dealing with the problem of threatened Native villages. Without a guiding agency, she and others say, projects such as Newtok's could drift for years.

Meanwhile, Stanley Tom spends much of his time talking on the phone and corresponding by e-mail. "I guess I'm the lead agency," he says.