Erosion threatens Alaskan villages

Siku Circumpolar News Service

A warming climate is bringing expensive and dangerous erosion and floods to Alaskan villages, representatives of several communities recently told federal officials in Anchorage, Alaska.

“As the calming hand of the ice on the Arctic Ocean grows more fragile, so does our coastline,” Barrow Mayor Edith Vorderstrasse told members of a U.S. Senate Appropriations Committee. “We are at a crossroads. Is it practical to stand and fight our mother ocean or do we surrender and move?”

Fixing the problems by expanding seawalls or relocating entire towns could cost hundreds of millions of dollars for the 213 Alaskan villages at risk. Of these, 184 face flooding and erosion problems, with very serious problems in about 20.

For residents of Shishmaref, a coastal village of 600 with severe erosion problems, abandoning their ancestral homeland with its traditional food supply “would have a devastating impact on how we exist and who we are,” said Luci Eningowuk, chairman of the Shishmaref Erosion and Relocation Coalition. Residents have already moved 18 homes and two buildings. Two years ago they voted to move the entire community inland but have not yet secured the money to relocate.

In the Inupiat village of Point Hope, flooding problems will likely force 725 people to move, or build a road as an escape route.