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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Alaska
Alaska’s voter roll transfer: Republicans bash hearing questioning if lieutenant governor broke the law
JUNEAU, Alaska (KTUU) – A legislative hearing into the legality of Alaska’s voter roll transfer to the federal government ended in partisan accusations Monday, with one Republican calling it a “set-up” and others saying it was unnecessary, while Democrats defended it as needed oversight.
“Andrew (Gray) and the committee has a bias. I mean, that much is obvious from watching it,” Rep. Kevin McCabe, R-Big Lake, told Alaska’s News Source walking out of the hearing before it gaveled out. “Most of the testimony was slanted against the state and against the federal government.”
The House State Affairs and Judiciary committees met jointly Monday to hear testimony about whether Dahlstrom violated the law when she transferred the entirety of Alaska’s voter rolls to the federal government.
Rep. Steve St. Clair, R-Wasilla, agreed with his Big Lake counterpart that the hearing was unnecessary.
“I think we’re speculating on what the intent of the DOJ is and I believe we need to wait and see,” he said.
Rep. Andrew Gray, D-Anchorage and chair of the House Judiciary Committee, pushed back when told of his Republican colleagues’ reaction.
“I think that I went above and beyond to try to include everybody,” Gray said as he left the meeting. “If people are saying that if the Obama administration had asked for the unredacted voter rolls from Alaska, that all these Republicans around here would have just been like, ‘oh, take it all. Take all of our information.’
“That is not true. That is absolutely not true,” Gray added.
Rep. Ted Eischeid, D-Anchorage, backed his House majority colleague, questioning whether Republicans would have preferred if the topic not be addressed at all.
“The minority folks on the committee had a chance to ask questions,” he said. “I think this is a meeting we needed to have. Alaskans have asked for it. I think there’s still a lot of unanswered questions. So shedding light on the state’s actions, that’s bias?”
Dahlstrom did not attend the hearing. Gray said she was invited multiple times but cited scheduling conflicts. The lieutenant governor oversees the Alaska Division of Elections under state law.
In her most recent public statement — published Feb. 25 on her gubernatorial campaign website, not through her official office — Dahlstrom defended the voter roll transfer, saying the agreement with the DOJ was “lawful, limited” and that Alaska retains full authority over its voter rolls.
“The DOJ cannot remove a single voter from our rolls,” she wrote. “Its role is limited to identifying potential issues, such as duplicate registrations or individuals who may have moved or passed away.”
Representatives from the state’s Department of Law and Division of Elections both testified in defense of Dahlstrom’s decision. Rachel Witty, the Department of Law’s director of legal services, told the committee the state viewed the DOJ’s purview.
“The DOJ’s enforcement authority is quite broad,” Witty said. “And so, we interpreted their request as being used to evaluate and enforce HAVA compliance.”
HAVA — the Help America Vote Act — is a federal law that sets election administration standards for states.
Lawmakers also heard from an assortment of outside witnesses who largely questioned the legality of Dahlstrom’s actions, including former Lt. Gov. Loren Leman, who served under Republican Gov. Frank Murkowski, and former Attorney General Bruce Botelho, who served under Democratic Gov. Tony Knowles.
The Documents: A Months-Long Timeline
As part of the hearing, the committee released months’ worth of documents between the Department of Justice — led by Attorney General Pam Bondi — and Dahlstrom’s office, detailing the effort to transfer Alaska’s voter rolls over to Washington.
The DOJ first asked Dahlstrom to release the voter rolls in July of last year, citing the 1993 National Voter Registration Act, which requires states to allow federal inspection of “official lists of eligible voters.”
Dahlstrom agreed to release the records in August, providing a list of voters designated as “inactive” and “non-citizens,” along with their voting records and the statewide voter registration list — but it did not include what the DOJ wanted.
“As the Attorney General requested, the electronic copy of the statewide [voter registration list] must contain all fields,” reads an email sent 10 days after Dahlstrom agreed to release the data, “including the registrant’s full name, date of birth, residential address, his or her state driver’s license number or the last four digits of the registrant’s social security number.”
Dahlstrom agreed to provide the full details months later, in December, citing a state statute that permits sharing confidential information with a federal agency if it uses “the information only for governmental purposes authorized under law.” Those purposes, she wrote in the email, are to “test, analyze and assess the State’s compliance with federal laws.”
“I attach some significance to the fact that it took the State … nearly four months to respond to the Department of Justice’s demand,” former AG Botelho told the committee.
That same day, Dahlstrom, Alaska Division of Elections Director Carol Beecher and DOJ Assistant Attorney General Harmeet Dhillon signed a memorandum of understanding governing how the data could be accessed, used, and protected.
Dahlstrom’s office publicly announced the transfer nine days after the MOU was signed — nearly six months after the DOJ first made its request.
“Alaska is committed to the integrity of our elections and to complying with applicable law,” Dahlstrom said in the December statement. “Upon receiving the DOJ’s request, the Division of Elections, in consultation with the Department of Law, provided the voter registration list in accordance with federal requirements and state authority, while ensuring appropriate safeguards for sensitive information.”
A 10-page legal analysis from legislative counsel Andrew Dunmire, requested by House Majority Whip Rep. Zack Fields, D-Anchorage, concluded that the DOJ’s demand defied legal bounds.
“The DOJ’s request for state voter data is unprecedented,” Dunmire’s analysis states, adding that the legal justification the DOJ used to demand access to the data has never been applied this way before.
“Multiple states refused DOJ’s request, which has resulted in litigation that is now working its way through federal courts across the country,” he adds.
The Senate holds an identical hearing Wednesday, when its State Affairs and Judiciary committees take up the same questions.
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JOINT BASE ELMENDORF-RICHARDSON, Alaska – Alaska Air National Guard personnel conducted a rescue mission Saturday, Feb. 21, after receiving a request for assistance from the Alaska State Troopers through the Alaska Rescue Coordination Center.
The mission was initiated to recover an injured snowmachiner in the Cooper Landing area, approximately 60 air miles south of Joint Base Elmendorf-Richardson. The Alaska Air National Guard accepted the mission, located the individual, and transported them to Providence Alaska Medical Center in Anchorage for further medical care.
The mission marked the first search and rescue operation conducted by the 210th Rescue Squadron using the HH-60W Jolly Green II, the Air Force’s newest combat rescue helicopter, which is replacing the older HH-60G Pave Hawk. Guardian Angels assigned to the 212th Rescue Squadron were also aboard the aircraft and assisted in the recovery of the injured individual.
Good Samaritans, who were on the ground at the accident site, deployed a signal flare, that helped the helicopter crew visually locate the injured individual in the heavily wooded area.
Due to the mountainous terrain, dense tree cover, and deep snow in the area, the helicopter was unable to land near the patient. The aircrew conducted a hoist insertion and extraction of the Guardian Angels and the injured snowmachiner. The patient was extracted using a rescue strop and hoisted into the aircraft.
The Alaska Air National Guard routinely conducts search and rescue operations across the state in support of civil authorities, providing life-saving assistance in some of the most remote and challenging environments in the world.
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