Warming trend imperils an ancient way of life
Alaska village in moving crisis
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 other things, fishing and fixing roofs and hauling water from the community well.
It's another sunny afternoon in this 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 entire village will be swallowed up 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, eyeing the waves in the near distance. ''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, which has eaten away 3,320 feet of beach in the past 50 years, is accelerating toward Newtok at a rate of 110 feet a year. The town dump was washed away, and now the barge landing, critical for receiving supplies, has begun to crumble.
Villages all across Alaska have been affected by the warming trend. Temperatures in polar regions have risen about 2 degrees per decade over 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, about two dozen villages are threatened, and four are in ''imminent danger," and none more so than Newtok, where the erosion rate is faster than anywhere else.
But Newtok residents aren't panicking, because they have a plan: to move the entire village, buildings and all, to a spot across the river, 9 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 their village plus 12,000 adjacent acres, all of which will become part of a wildlife refuge that is already 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 be as high 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 entire 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 this 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 with a sigh. ''There's no one else here who can do it."
Senator Ted Stevens of Alaska convened a hearing in Anchorage this summer so village leaders could plead for assistance from local, state, and federal officials, but there was no resolution.
''Of course we're concerned. We don't want these villages to be washed away," says Stevens aide Courtney Schikora. ''But it's not something we have a solution for right now."
If the village can't be relocated for economic or other reasons, the only viable alternative, government officials say, would be to move the residents (but no buildings) 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.
From the air, the village looks like a cluster of barnacles clinging to the edge of an immense green plain. On the ground, Newtok is a motley collection of about 70 small wood-frame houses built along several hundred feet of boardwalks that roll and bend with the terrain.
The Newtoks, whose ancestors called themselves Qaluyaarmiut, or ''dip net people," have occupied this region for at least 2,000 years. The people here know about moving. Like all traditional Yupik Eskimos, the Newtoks were nomadic until the 20th century. 