Alaska
Relocation of eroding Alaska Native village seen as a test case for other threatened communities • Alaska Beacon
The Yup’ik village of Newtok, perched precariously on thawing permafrost at the edge of the rapidly eroding Ninglick River, is the first Alaska community to begin a full-scale relocation made necessary by climate change.
Still, the progress of moving to a new village site that is significantly outpacing relocation efforts at other vulnerable Alaska communities, remains agonizingly slow, say those who are in the throes of the transformation.
“There is no blueprint on how to do this relocation,” said Carolyn George, one of those still living in Newtok. “We’re relocating the whole community to a whole different place, and we did not know how to do it. And it’s been taking too long — over 20 years, I think.”
George, who works at the Newtok school, was one of the self-described “Newtok mothers” who made comments at a panel discussion at the recent Arctic Encounter Symposium in Anchorage. The river waters, once at least a mile away, have edged closer and closer, and the village, once sitting high on the landscape, continues to sink as that permafrost thaws, she said.
Plans to move Newtok started to solidify in 2006 with the formation of the local-state-federal Newtok Planning Group, but that followed many years of debate and study that led to the decision to relocate. according to the Alaska Division of Community and Regional Affairs. The new site, about 9 miles away on the south side of the Ninglick River, is called Mertarvik, meaning “getting water from the spring.”
In 2019, the first Mertarvik residents settled into their new homes. As of now, more than half of the residents have moved to Mertarvik.
The latest count is 220 in Mertarvik and 129 still at Newtok, said Christina Waska, the relocation coordinator for the Newtok Village Tribal government.
The goal is to have everyone in Mertarvik by the fall, even if that means some people will be living in temporary housing, like construction work camps.
“Our ultimate goal is to not leave anyone behind,” she said.
With a single local government, a single Tribal government and unified services like mail delivery, Newtok and Mertarvik technically make up a single community. But often it does not feel that way.
George is among those coping with a sense of limbo.
Her five daughters and their father have moved to a new house in Mertarvik, but she remains in Newtok because of her job. That is a hardship, she said. “Being alone, I get anxiety, and I miss my girls, you know. Especially at night,” she said.
And the school where she works, and which is set to be demolished this summer, is in dire shape.
The four classrooms are heated by a small generator. There is no food cooked on-site for the kids. There is no plumbing – a situation that, for now, is being addressed with a “bathroom bus” that shuttles kids to their homes as needed.
Conditions are notably better at Mertarvik, said speakers at the conference.
Lisa Charles, another panel member, described the difficult conditions her family left behind in Newtok. The family was packed into a too-small, two-bedroom house with thawing permafrost below and mold growing inside. It took a toll on their physical well-being, she said.
But once the family settled in at Mertarvik, things improved, she said.
“After moving over to the new village site, we noticed all of our health improved, especially for my daughter that grew up with asthma,” Charles said. “After we moved over to our new home, she grew out of her asthma problem.”
There have been complications, like power outages affecting the school, attributed to demand that outstripped capacity.
Among the challenges is a timing mismatch. Waska and new Tribal administrator Calvin Tom started their jobs only recently, too late for them to place summer barge orders, and as a consequence, no building materials are expected to be barged in 2024 and no new houses will be built this summer in Mertarvik, Waska said.
There is still plenty of work to be done aside from construction, she said. And construction is seen as a process that will continue long after all residents are settled at Mertarvik, she added.
“It’ll never be done. If you look at every village, even Anchorage, Fairbanks, it’s always under construction,” she said.
While Newtok is the first Alaska village to relocate, others will follow.
Even two decades ago, 31 communities were identified as facing imminent threats that would make their locations potentially unlivable in the near future. Of those, nearly half were planning or considering some form of relocation.
Next after Newtok to relocate entirely may be Kivalina, an Inupiat village on the Chukchi Sea coast that is facing numerous climate stressors along with rapid erosion. The community now has a new evacuation road, completed in 2021, that can better enable movement to a new site.
But plans hit a snag after a study by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers revealed that the originally chosen relocation site, called Kiniktuuraq, is also vulnerable to the same climate change stressors that are expected to make Kivalina uninhabitable in the relatively near future.
Napakiak, a Yup’ik village perched on a section of eroding land along the Kuskokwim River that is being quickly eaten away in large chunks, has also made progress. The community is now engaged in a partial relocation, a strategy known as “managed retreat.” Some families have already moved from vulnerable sites to safer ground upland, and there is state money available for a new school to replace the erosion-threatened building.
There is no single source of money to pay for relocation work, even for the Newtok-Mertarvik transformation, the most advanced of the projects.
The Newtok-Mertarvik move has been funded through various allocations over time. Among the recent infusions were $25 million through the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act and another $6.7 million from the Federal Emergency Management Agency. Napakiak received a similar $25 million grant through the infrastructure law and a $2.4 million infusion earlier this year from FEMA.
The combined costs of full and partial relocations for all the villages that need them are expected to be staggering.
Of 144 Alaska Native villages with damages from flooding, erosion, permafrost thaw or some combination of those impacts, costs for protecting infrastructure are expected to mount to $3.45 billion over the next 50 years, according to a 2020 report by the U.S. Bureau of Indian Affairs. An additional $833 million is needed to protect the hub communities of Utqiagvik, Nome, Bethel, Kotzebue, Dillingham and Unalaska, said the 2020 BIA report, which was produced in cooperation with the Denali Commission and other agencies.
The sources for the needed funding remain unclear, and bureaucratic hurdles are delaying progress toward necessary relocations, a recent report from the Alaska Native Tribal Health Consortium said.
There are fundamental obstacles in rural Alaska that make it extremely difficult for Alaska communities to work through the federal system, said Jackie 
She cited an example during the Arctic Encounter Symposium forum. “Every federal agency requires you to have some type of reporting and in most of the cases you have to apply for the federal funding online. If you don’t have stable internet, how do you do that?” she said.
The ANTHC report recommends an overhaul to streamline a process that is a poor fit for remote Alaska villages.
In some ways, the Newtok-Mertarvik residents said, their split community has successfully overcome difficult challenges, making their relocation a possible example for other threatened communities in Alaska and elsewhere in the United States.
But those successes can also be bittersweet.
Relocation is absolutely necessary because the old village site is now an unhealthy place to live, Waska said. Nonetheless, she feels conflicted about abandoning the hometown she loves.
“Newtok is my home. It’s kind of sad. It kind of breaks my heart that Newtok is no longer going to be there,” she said.
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The Alaska Senate plans to vote today on a new draft of a bill that would reduce taxes on the Alaska LNG project. It’s the last day of a special session Gov. Mike Dunleavy called to consider the issue.
Dunleavy and pipeline developer Glenfarne, which owns a 75% stake in the project, say a measure replacing a 2% annual property tax with a much smaller tax on gas throughput is essential to allowing the project to attract investors and court lenders. Dunleavy and Glenfarne applauded the version of the bill that passed the House a week ago.
The Alaska LNG project, estimated by the developer to cost up to $54.5 billion, includes an 807-mile pipeline, a conditioning facility on the North Slope to remove gas impurities such as carbon dioxide, and a liquefaction plant on the shores of Cook Inlet to export the gas to Asia. The project would be split into two phases: first, a shorter in-state pipeline to provide gas to Alaskans, and then the much more expensive — and much more lucrative — export infrastructure.
The Senate’s new draft retains many of the House’s provisions with some important changes.
Perhaps the most significant changes are to the project’s timeline: to be eligible for tax relief, the developer must commit to a final investment decision for the first phase by Jan. 1, 2028, and construction of the in-state pipeline would need to be complete by the end of 2032.
The House’s version required only that construction begin by Jan. 1, 2032.
The faster timeline is an effort to address Southcentral’s looming shortage of natural gas, said Sen. Bert Stedman, a Sitka Republican and a co-chair of the Senate Finance Committee. The Department of Natural Resources’ production forecast envisions demand outstripping Cook Inlet gas production by 2032, requiring producers to dip into storage.
“There’s been a lot of concern out of the Railbelt with the declining volume in Cook Inlet,” Stedman said.
But the more aggressive timeline sparked concerns from minority Republicans on the committee; it increases the risk on an already risky, marginal project, they said.
“That’s very damaging,” said Sen. Mike Cronk, a Tok Republican and the Senate minority leader. “There’s so many factors that we don’t control.”
Putting a “hard construction date” in the bill may be a “poison pill,” Cronk said.
Glenfarne and Gov. Mike Dunleavy did not immediately respond to requests for comment on the new version of the bill.
Stedman suggested future legislatures could revise the date to account for “unforeseen black swan events.”
“We can change these and modify these going forward,” Stedman said. “This is not in the Constitution, so I think there’d be some consideration under good faith trying to get the project constructed.”
The tax rate at the heart of the bill — the so-called alternative volumetric tax on gas flowing through the pipeline from the North Slope to Southcentral Alaska — would be fixed, rather than a weighted average tied to the cost of each component of the project.
The Senate draft sets the tax initially at 6.2 cents per 1,000 cubic feet of gas throughput, starting five years after gas begins to flow through the pipeline. The tax would take effect sooner if throughput reaches 500 million cubic feet per day, which is more than double what Southcentral Alaska uses now.
The tax would rise to 10.6 cents per 1,000 cubic feet once Phase 2 of the project, which includes the liquefied natural gas export facility, is up and running. The tax revenue from that mirrors what the Department of Revenue estimates the weighted tax that passed the House would yield.
The rates would rise between 1% and 3% each year, depending on inflation.
The House backed 30-plus years of tax breaks. Some senators were skeptical of that, so their version doubles the tax rate ten years after exports begin, then doubles them again in 2060.
The new bill retains key conditions for the tax relief included in the House’s version: the developer must commit to building a spur line to Fairbanks and negotiate project labor agreements with unions. It also includes up to $80 million in community impact funding for municipalities: $40 million due shortly after the final investment decision for each project phase.
It also includes House-passed price controls on in-state gas. Utilities would pay no more than $16 per million British thermal units, adjusted for inflation. That’s roughly $16.60 per 1,000 cubic feet, substantially higher than current Southcentral gas rates — about $10 — but likely cheaper than imported gas, according to Southcentral’s gas utility.
Also notable is an omission from the bill. It does not include a measure that had been under discussion that would subject large so-called S corporations and other pass-through entities in the oil and gas business, like LLCs, to the state’s corporate income tax.
Glenfarne, in its only comments so far on the new bill, urged lawmakers not to include that tax in the final version.
“If the Senate passes a bill with the proposed S Corp tax, it will introduce major hurdles for Alaska LNG to secure the right financing to build the project,” the company said in a statement provided by spokesperson Tim Fitzpatrick.
Senators are due to amend the bill and take a final vote later today.
The special session expires at midnight tonight, but Gov. Mike Dunleavy has already signed a proclamation calling another special session to begin Saturday.
Asked whether the new special session represented a contingency plan in an event the bill failed to pass, Dunleavy spokesperson Jeff Turner declined to say.
“We will see what happens,” Turner said.
This is a developing story. Check back for updates.
Alaska’s eight prettiest downtown strips sit in towns as different from each other as the landscapes around them. Skagway draws cruise ship visitors to its Gold Rush history. Sitka pairs Russian Orthodox history with totem-lined trails just beyond downtown. Wrangell is one of the oldest towns in the state. Each downtown is worth spending time in, though Sitka, Ketchikan, and Wrangell are the only ones on this list accessible solely by air or water. In winter, clear dark nights can bring Northern Lights over several of these towns. After a day out, fresh seafood is never far away.
Skagway
Skagway is located in Alaska’s panhandle and is known as the gateway to the Klondike Gold Rush and a major cruise ship destination. For those who love nature and history, visit Klondike Gold Rush National Historical Park and hike part of the 33-mile Chilkoot Trail, the historic route between Dyea, Alaska, and Lake Bennett, British Columbia. Backpackers can stay at designated campsites along the route, with permits required in season. For food, check out Skagway Brewing Company, which offers craft beers and American comfort foods. Another seasonal Skagway option is Salty Siren, whose menu features Alaskan golden king crab, seafood chowder, fish and chips, and pulled-pork sandwiches.
Sitka
Sitka sits on Baranof Island and is known for its rich Tlingit and Russian heritage, gorgeous outdoor scenery, and variety of wildlife. Sitka is only accessible by sea or air and is a popular stop on cruises. The area offers lots of outdoor activities, including fishing, hiking, and kayaking. Tourists like to visit St. Michael’s Russian Orthodox Cathedral, a National Historic Landmark whose original 1844-1848 building was reconstructed after a 1966 fire. For a short walk through Sitka’s layered history, visit Sitka National Historical Park, where visitors can enjoy a scenic coastal trail lined with totem poles. Grab a bite to eat at Beak Restaurant for delicious seafood. Or if you’re craving pizza or wings, visit Mean Queen for some comfort food.
Talkeetna
Talkeetna is a historic place in Alaska’s Matanuska-Susitna Borough, famous as a gateway to Denali, North America’s highest peak, which welcomes tourists and climbers from all over the world. Beginning as an Alaska Railroad headquarters, this historic location has an artistic vibe and a vibrant art scene despite its small population. Locals and visitors enjoy flightseeing, rafting, fishing, and delving into the unique history, including Stubbs, the late honorary cat mayor who held the ceremonial role until his death in 2017. For those hoping to see the Northern Lights, Talkeetna’s dark winter skies can be a good base when skies are clear and aurora activity is strong. Once you’re hungry, grab some friends and visit Homestead Kitchen for some traditional rustic options like burgers and flatbreads. Then grab a craft beer at Denali Brewpub in their rustic setting.
Homer
Found on the Kenai Peninsula, Homer is famous for its gorgeous views of Kachemak Bay, the Homer Spit, and distant volcanoes. Here’s a perfect spot for those hoping to see wildlife and enjoy other outdoor activities, like hiking and fishing. Across the bay, Kachemak Bay State Park is reached by water taxi or air taxi and offers views of the mountains and the ocean. Or head to Bishop’s Beach, which is dog-friendly, and enjoy the soft sand with your four-legged best friend. After experiencing the beautiful scenery of Homer, grab some dinner at the Twisted Goat and dig into some comfort food, including pizza, fish and chips, and burgers. On a nice day, visitors won’t want to miss a local favorite, Water Rudders, which offers a beautiful view from its patio.
Seward
Located about 120 miles south of Anchorage, Seward is a scenic port town at the head of Resurrection Bay. It’s loved for its beautiful views of the mountains, marine wildlife, and glaciers, and it serves as a gateway to Kenai Fjords National Park. Here, visitors can take a hike, join in on ranger-guided tours, kayak, and so much more. For those wanting an aerial view, Seward Helicopter Tours offers flights over glaciers and other beautiful sites. For those looking to camp, Waterfront Park offers RV and tent sites with views you can’t beat. After enjoying sightseeing, grab some seafood or steak at Ray’s Waterfront with a wood-paneled dining room overlooking the marina and mountains. Or get some comfort food at The Highliner Restaurant, where the menu includes crab cakes and fish tacos, just to name a few.
Ketchikan
Ketchikan is located on Revillagigedo Island in Alaska’s Tongass National Forest, known for its rich native culture, totem poles, and salmon fishing. The town is a popular cruise ship destination and is only accessible by boat or plane. Here, visitors can enjoy wildlife viewing, especially in the summer months. For a beautiful site, look into Misty Fjords National Monument and see sheer granite cliffs, towering 3,000-foot rock walls, deep saltwater fjords, and waterfalls within Tongass National Forest. Locals and visitors enjoy spending time at Creek Street, a historic boardwalk built on pilings over the creek, which is now filled with shops, cafes, and galleries. Grab a bite to eat at The Alaska Fish House with beautiful views out the window and live music. Or order crab and seafood at Ketchikan Crab & Go, a seasonal spot at Salmon Landing that caters to the cruise-season crowd.
Valdez
Found in Southcentral Alaska, Valdez is known for its stunning mountain views, water scenery, and being the southern terminus of the Trans-Alaska Pipeline. This former Gold Rush town is a popular destination for fishing, glacier tours, and wildlife viewing, and is accessible via the Richardson Highway from Anchorage and Fairbanks. For shore views of icebergs and the face of Valdez Glacier, head to Glacier View Park at the end of Airport Road. For an easy family-friendly outing near town, try Dock Point Trail, a short coastal loop with ocean and Duck Flats views. In summer, The Potato serves handmade comfort food and beer or wine from its harbor-view location in Valdez. Or get some pizza or fish and chips at The Fat Mermaid. It has a laid-back setting and views of the marina.
Wrangell
Wrangell is found in Southeast Alaska, located on Wrangell Island in the Inside Passage, and is known for its Tlingit culture, variety of wildlife, and access to the Stikine River. This is one of Alaska’s oldest towns and offers plenty of outdoor activities like hiking, glacier exploration, and fishing, and is only accessible by air or the Alaska Marine Highway. Anan Wildlife Observatory is a must-visit to see bears, both black and brown, who call it home. You’ll have to take a boat or a floatplane to get there. Access the Stikine River from Wrangell for more wildlife viewing. For food, try Filipino, Thai, sushi, and other Asian dishes at Michelle’s Taste of Asia, a casual, family-run restaurant. Or grab pizza at Hungry Beaver Pizza and Marine Bar by Wrangell’s Inner Harbor.
These eight towns show a side of Alaska that operates at a different pace from the state’s most visited destinations. The downtowns are small, the history runs deep, and the wildlife has a way of showing up whether you plan for it or not.
Alaska Airlines has given its chief financial officer, Shane Tackett, another responsibility — president.
Tackett will assume his additional role at the SeaTac-based airline on June 29, according to a news release Wednesday.
Tackett will continue leading the organization’s finance, fleet management, investor relations, supply chain, internal audit and information technology functions, according to the release. His new responsibilities as president include oversight of Alaska Airlines’ commercial division.
Tackett previously held positions in labor relations, e-commerce and financial planning at the company, according to his LinkedIn profile.
“I started at Alaska more than 25 years ago, and over that time we’ve built a stronger, more resilient airline with a clear strategy for the future,” Tackett said in a statement.
He said he is excited to lead more of the organization in his new role and deliver to guests, employees and owners.
In a statement, Alaska Airlines CEO Ben Minicucci said Tackett has led the company through challenges and helped it grow over his 25-year tenure.
“Bringing commercial and finance leadership together under Shane will strengthen alignment and accelerate our priorities as we continue advancing our strategy and creating long-term value for our stakeholders, said Minicucci, who also serves as CEO and president of the airline’s parent company, Alaska Air Group.
Tackett’s promotion comes as the airline navigates challenging macroeconomic factors, including rising fuel costs and weakening consumer demand for travel.
Alaska Air Group — which includes Alaska and Hawaiian Airlines, as well as regional carrier Horizon Air and ground support company McGee Air Services — saw its profits drop 70% in 2025 year over year. It continued to face financial woes in 2026.
The company lost $193 million in the first three months of 2026 as it dealt with skyrocketing jet fuel prices due to the war in Iran.
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