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Center for Environmentally Threatened Communities
We support communities to address environmental threats and achieve their vision for a safe, healthy, and sustainable future.
Newsletter Issue 36, June 2020
Five Things You Should Know
- Thawing permafrost is damaging ice cellars, a traditional method for storing subsistence foods such as whale, walrus, seal, and caribou.
- Alaska Tribes and Tribal organizations, including 20 environmentally threatened communities, received $6.1 million from the Bureau of Indian Affairs Tribal Resilience Program.
- Five environmentally threatened communities in Alaska received a total of $4 million in Indian Community Development Block Grants for projects to advance protection-in-place, managed retreat, and relocation.
- The City of Golovin was awarded $223,171 to create a comprehensive master plan to protect community infrastructure from erosion and flooding.
- The Alaska Mapping Executive Committee released a 10-year Strategic Plan for mapping Alaska’s expansive coastal zone.
In Northern Alaska, Thawing Ice Can Result in Losing a Year’s Supply of Food
According to Gordon Brower (pictured above), a whaling captain in Utqiagvik, Alaska, warming temperatures have caused damage to traditional ice cellars, where he stores harvested whale meat. Credit: Gordon Brower.
Gordon Brower is a whaling captain in Utqiagvik, the northernmost community in Alaska. Every spring and fall, Gordon’s crew hunts for bowhead whales, which Alaska Native people have been hunting for thousands of years. Harvesting whale is essential for the community’s food security and livelihoods. When a whale is harvested, meat is divided among the crew and shared with the entire community. Whale meat is stored in ice cellars, which are a natural form of refrigeration constructed within the permafrost.
In Utqiagvik, ice cellars are flooding and collapsing due to warming temperatures. According to Gordon, some ice cellars are caving in and most are suffering from temperature fluctuations that are causing the meat to go bad. “By July, the cellars are warm enough to cause blood to pool”, Gordon said. He and others have resorted to pulling meat out of the cellars and putting it in walk-in freezers “solely to save it.” While putting whale meat in modern freezers saves the meat, it does not preserve the traditional flavor that comes from storing meat in ice cellars. Ice cellars are critical infrastructure for communities such as Utqiagvik. Thawing ice cellars threatens traditional food supplies and puts communities at risk of foodborne illness, food spoilage, and even injury from structural failure. In order to adapt, some communities have partnered with researchers to explore using thermosiphons in order to keep ice cellars cold and intact.
Recent Events
The Bureau of Indian Affairs Awarded $6.1 Million to Alaska Tribes and Tribal Organizations to Build Resilience
The Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA) Tribal Resilience Program (TRP) has awarded $6.1 million to 40 Alaska Native Tribes and Organizations for projects to build resilience to harmful environmental trends. Alaska received 39% of the total awards nationwide. Twenty environmentally threatened communities were awarded funding to hire local coordinators, conduct site-specific risk assessments, conduct community planning, and design mitigation solutions. Below are a few examples of the impact this recent funding will have in Alaska.
A BIA Tribal Resilience award to the Native Village of Shaktoolik will continue to fund Sophia Katchatag's position as a local Community Resilience Coordinator. Credit: Sophia Katchatag.
- The Native Village of Shishmaref will develop an adaptation plan to preserve the community’s access to clean water. A reservoir collects rain in the summer and snow in the winter. However, declining sea ice is reducing the quantity of water available to the community because less snow is blown into the reservoir.
- The Native Village of Shaktoolik will use funding to continue employing a Community Resilience Coordinator to lead the community’s planning to address erosion and flooding. Click here to read a profile on Sophia Katchatag, Shaktoolik’s Coordinator.
- The Akiak Native Community will plan for a managed retreat from the Kuskokwim River due to aggressive erosion.
Five Environmentally Threatened Communities Received $4 Million from the Indian Community Development Block Grant to Advance Protection-in-Place, Managed Retreat, and Relocation Solutions
The U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) has awarded $4 million through the Indian Community Development Block Grant (ICDBG) to five environmentally threatened communities in Alaska – Akiak, Napakiak, Shaktoolik, Kotlik, and Newtok – to advance projects related to protection-in-place, managed retreat, and relocation. In total, $21.3 million was awarded to 28 Alaska Native communities that will be used to improve housing and infrastructure, living environments, and economic opportunities for residents across the state. The awards are part of $120 million in ICDBG funds awarded to Federally recognized Tribes across the country.
There are 21 homes in Kotlik, Alaska that are imminently threatened by erosion and must be relocated to a new, safe site. The $793,734 in ICDBG funding will enable the community to advance the construction of a new subdivision site where threatened homes, including the home pictured above, can be relocated. Credit: ANTHC.
The Village of Kotlik was awarded a $793,734 ICDBG grant to advance the construction of a new subdivision site where 21 homes imminently threatened by erosion will be relocated. For years, Kotlik has struggled to access funding to construct a new site – the ICDBG award is the first construction funding awarded to the community for this purpose. “We were all so excited to hear about this award and are excited to go forth with protecting our homes. It is the result of so much hard work that wouldn’t have been possible without our partners,” said Pauline Okitkun, Village of Kotlik Tribal Administrator. This project will construct an electric distribution system and a boardwalk to access the new site. In order to complete the construction of the site and to relocate homes there, approximately $3.2 million is still needed. All community entities in Kotlik plan to continue to pursue nationally competitive funding opportunities to meet this need.
Golovin, Alaska Receives $223,171 for Migration Master Planning
Aerial view of Golovin, Alaska. All infrastructure in the area outlined in red is threatened by flooding. The community intends to migrate to higher ground adjacent to the current site. Credit: ANTHC.
The City of Golovin was awarded a $223,171 State of Alaska Community Development Block Grant (CDBG) for migration master planning. The community will create a comprehensive master plan to guide the migration of infrastructure to an area of elevated land adjacent to the current site.
10-Year Alaska Coastal Mapping Strategic Plan
Alaska, with 66,000 miles of shoreline, has the longest coastline in the nation. In order to make informed decisions to safeguard coastal resources, accurate and up-to-date coastal mapping data is essential. The Alaska Mapping Executive Committee (AMEC), along with partners, has developed 10-year Strategic Plan for mapping Alaska’s expansive coastal zone. The plan defines major goals to guide near-term action, including acquiring priority coastal mapping datasets.
Upcoming Events
2020 National Tribal & Indigenous Climate Conference
All Tribal members in the United States are invited to attend the first National Tribal & Indigenous Climate Conference hosted by the Institute of Tribal Environmental Professionals (ITEP) with support from the Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA) Tribal Resilience Program.
- August 31 – September 4, 2020
- St. Paul, Minnesota
- Register here.
Resources
National Science Foundation Arctic Lightning Talks
The National Science Foundation (NSF) Navigating the New Arctic (NNA) program supports research projects at the “convergence of the natural, social, and built environment addressing challenges posed by a rapidly changing Arctic”. NSF has released a series of short Lightning Talks that introduce viewers to currently funded projects. Topics include coastal erosion dynamics, food systems, the Yup’ik language, and many others.
COVID-19 Tribal Resource Center
The National Indian Health Board (NIHB) has created a Tribal Resource Center to support Tribes in responding to COVID-19. The site includes information on how to protect communities from COVID-19, Tribal response strategies, and how to request financial and technical assistance.
News Roundup
Intern Uses Drone Images to Map Coastal Permafrost and Erosion: A research project at the University of Alaska Fairbanks is using aerial images to study the characteristics of permafrost and coastal erosion processes on Alaska’s North Slope coast.
About the Center for Environmentally Threatened Communities
The goal of the Center for Environmentally Threatened Communities (CETC) is to support rural Alaskan communities experiencing infrastructure impacts associated with flooding, erosion, and permafrost degradation. The team does this primarily through grant writing, technical assistance, and project coordination.
ETC@anthc.org | (907) 729-4521 | www.anthc.org/cetc | 4500 Diplomacy Drive, Suite 561, Anchorage, AK 99508
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