I dont recall anyone making a big deal out of it, but this is the freaking Arctic! she told me. NFHWY00162 .

; the vehicles are used by villagers to get around the island. A slide-show presentation, given by a Teck representative named Rachel Wallis, focussed on Tecks past approach to mine closures and reclamation, the process by which the environmental effects of a closed mine are minimized. endstream endobj 744 0 obj <. There is no means to leave the island on foot or by vehicle during a storm, and transport by boat or plane in storm conditions would be dangerous. The water was coming to the school. In the face of this increased threat, Kivalina needs a safe and reliable means of evacuation. It costs too much.) A water-stained notice on the wall displayed the liquor ordinance, and the bingo players drank sodas and energy drinks. Houses tend to be transferred to family members rather than purchased through the real-estate market. Building housing is an expensive and laborious process in the remote Arctic, and no single federal agency is responsible for relocating communities facing environmental threats.

Electrification arrived in 1971. This poses a contamination threat to fisheries during storms, particularly in the Kivalina lagoon east of the city. Midway through, we passed over a cluster of red and white storage buildings by the sea. Alaska Department of Transportation and Public Facilities, Kivalina Evacuation and School Site Access Road, Northwest Arctic Borough Title 9 Conditional Use Permit, ALASKA DEPARTMENT of TRANSPORTATION & PUBLIC FACILITIES. 327 and a Memorandum of Understanding dated November 3, 2017, and But for communities like Shishmaref, Shaktoolik, or Golovin that are sitting on ground as flat as this table with no protection around themis that the safest place for those people? she continued. Several all-terrain vehicles and a pickup truck were waiting in a spitting rain.

WebAlaska DOT&PFs Kivalina Evacuation and School Site Access project keeps the community safe in the face of weather emergencies, while allowing its residents to remain on their native soil. The corporation was formed after the passage of the Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act, in 1971, which ceded some forty million acres of land in Alaska to Native-owned corporations (in exchange for their relinquishing claims over the rest) and offered Native Alaskans a stake in the sale of oil and mineral leases on their land.

Few of these questions received direct answers, although they were logged into a laptop by a woman sitting at a folding table. IRA is the acronym for the Indian Reorganization Act, which, in 1936, recognized the governing bodies of Alaska Natives. The new site is a desolate and rocky place, but, at an elevation of a hundred and twenty-five feet, it is a safe distance from Kivalinas receding beach and eroding riverbanks. 2. Engineering Manager, ADOT&PF Swan broke apart a Dr Pepper box and laid the meat on it before returning to our conversation, and the teen-ager went back outside.

Hawley teared up as she described babies in the village who had been born with severe congenital anomalies. Seven years later, Kivalinas move is still mostly in the future, even though the island continues to lose ground. 2010). She showed a before-and-after photograph of the reclamation of a lead, silver, and zinc mine in British Columbia. One villager expressed worry about a crack that had already appeared in the new road.

All rights reserved. The second picture had the vivid green grass of a Microsoft Windows screen saver. Material Source Location Alternatives: Four general areas known to contain potentially viable sources of various project materials were evaluated Rising seas and coastal erosion are eating away at the barrier island on which the Alaska Native Village of Kivalina rests. forward for further evaluation (detailed in Section 3 of the Final EA).

Starting in November, when the school opened, everything would need to be transported here, eight miles from the airport: the students, the food for their lunches, heating oil to keep the building warm, water. that could provide for evacuation road construction as well as other infrastructure or general material needs. The village does not have a conventional tax base. Discussion turned to allegations by the villagers that the mine was discharging its wastewater too early in spring, before the ice on the river had fully melted, and that the increased flow of water was breaking up the ice and curtailing their ice-fishing season. There was a small, bright-colored playground in front of the school, and two yellow school buses, brought from Anchorage by barge, were parked nearby. By the nineteen-nineties, as the population grew, discussions about relocation in Kivalina focussed more on overcrowded homes and a lack of water and sewer systems. Fed. The grant amount requested was $100,065442, . Then the mine representatives packed up their projector and their collapsible screen and their brochures and caught their plane out of town. After evaluation (detailed in Section 3 of the attached Final Environmental Assessment (EA)), the Southern Route and Combined Road Route Alternatives: Three preliminary route options (Northern, Southern, and Combined Route A) were independently proposed by Kivalina and the The debate that morning, which began after a moment of prayer, was about where to put the relocated villages landfill and a new dump site for the makeshift toilets known regionally as honey buckets. WebThe Kivalina Evacuation and School Site Access Road project would provide Kivalina residents a safe and reliable evacuation route in the event of a catastrophic storm or

Tue, Feb 01, 2022. (Jonathan Hutchinson/Alaska Dept.

the project from STA 17+50 to STA 18+00 due to ice impact was noted. Several material source locations within these areas were evaluated for feasibility based on proximity to potential routes, quantity and

The sea ice used to be twelve feet thick, and there was just one lead. Kivalina is on track to get both a new school and an access road two things the community's been asking for for years.

Sea ice that once protected the island from winter storms no longer forms early enough in the fall to prevent rising waters and storm surge from reaching the island's shores. Does anyone know how much Red Dog has put aside for reclamation at this point? Wallis asked. Since Kivalina is limited in size by the encroaching sea and the revetment, housing has become scarce, leading to overcrowding and poor sanitationan immediate threat to health. Why Texass power grid still hasnt been fixed, despite deadly failures. It was so humiliating. Concepts previously studied for their feasibility include construction of an earthen causeway across the lagoon that variously incorporates hydraulic and boat passage options including bridge(s), culvert(s), or both. Swan described the 2004 storm as the impetus for her desire to hold someone responsible for the situation Kivalina finds itself in. In the school gym, under the banners of the Northwest Arctic Borough athletic league (Kivalinas mascot is the qavvik, or wolverine), the villagers, who ranged from toddlers to the very old, sat on bleachers. Kivalina Project Information The Kivalina Evacuation and School Site Access Road project would provide Kivalina residents a safe and reliable evacuation route in the event of a catastrophic storm or ocean surge, allowing evacuees to temporarily mobilize to safe refuge at an assembly site on K-Hill. The weather at K-Hill is harsher than it is by the coast, and, because of the prevailing winds, snowdrifts can reach thirty or forty feet high. WebThe American Association of State Highway and Transportation Officials, or AASHTO, in June recognized the Alaska Department of Transportation and Public Facilities, or DOT&PF, and ASRC with a Quality of Life award for the Kivalina Evacuation and School Site Installation of this structure reduced the size of Kivalina, but bought the community at least a decade to make a relocation decision. minimizing environmental impacts and addressing the concerns of the public and agencies. The need for a concerted effort to mitigate these risks became more evident during an evacuation event in October 2007, when debris-laden storm waves overtopped the barrier island. (800) 478-1110 (in AK) As of last week, it became a nationally award-winning evacuation route. The Alaska Department of Transportation and Public Facilities oversees 237 airports, 9 ferries serving 35 communities along 3,500 marine miles, over 5,600 miles of highway and 839 public facilities throughout the state of Alaska. Adams wore a T-shirt with a husky sporting a mining hat from the Red Dog Mine, where she used to work.

In a wood-panelled room, members of both councils, mostly age sixty and above, sat around a conference table to discuss the next phase of relocation with engineers from an Anchorage-based firm. (Lightning needs warm air to form.) The plans werent ideal, but the mood was one of resignation: the sooner the new landfill was approved, the sooner the village could relocate.

(A spokesperson from the mine said that the wastewater is treated and discharged under strict water permits that comply with the Clean Water Act.). Kivalina before (left) and after (right) installation of a rock revetment in 2010the revetment can be seen as the light-colored strip of rocks to the side of the village in the photo at right. Stove oil replaced driftwood for heat. The road would be designed to accommodate both general purpose and emergency evacuation vehicles over a two-way road with shoulders, multiple turnouts, and safe side slopes that include guard rails or other safety features as required. On the table were bottles of Vitaminwater and mini cans of Pringles, and also tangerines and bananas. Red Dogs days are numbered. Thin ice conditions interrupt sea ice-based hunting. The bingo hall sits across from the villages water tanks. According to oral histories recorded in the late nineteen-sixties and early nineteen-seventies, the region that Kivalina occupies today was known in the nineteenth century as Kivalliiq, and the people who inhabited the area, the Kivalliigmiut, were considered their own nation. The principals trailer was on the ocean side, and it was hanging over the edge. Two years later, the village built an emergency erosion-control barrier, but a storm later destroyed it, with water coming within six feet of the electricity plants oil tanks. A house floated up a river in Nome, and a sixty-two-pound mammoth femur was unearthed near Elim. A view of Kivalina from a planeand the tundra in late October, covered in snow. A sign posted outside her office reads IN A TELECONFERENCE MEETING ALL DAY, NOT IGNORING YOU, MILLIE.. It all started through a collaboration between Social Emotional Learning (SEL) coordinators from Kapa`a Middle School and the Resilience Project - Kaua`i Planning & Action Alliance. One evening, I walked across the road from the BnG to the villages community center, to visit a sewing class, one of the IRAs social programs designed to teach young people traditional practices, including needlework, fishing, and hunting. quality of material, access constraints, and potential impacts to protected resources (Golder Associates 2013). Some people even want certain kinds of medicines planted there, certain kinds of berries, people might want to open up a campsitetheres a whole range of things that you can do when you close a mine.. I sure would hate to look at that dump site and smell it when Im picking berries, a council member said. On Wednesday, the Senate Finance committee slashed more than $40 million in state dollars from the capital budget. in past studies.

2023 Cond Nast. This site is also identified by the Northwest Arctic Borough School District, and approved by the community, as a preferred new location for the community school. Its population is split between two villages that are nine miles apart, neither of which is fully functional. Patchy sea ice also makes winter travel and hunting difficult and dangerous. Through its Department of Community and Regional Affairs, the State of Alaska currently assists the community with a relocation coordinator to further interagency efforts to finalize this or another relocation solution.

WebKivalina Consensus Building Project: Results of Door-to-Door Survey 4 conducted in homes, a few interviews were conducted on the streets, in the school and by telephone. The company gave away an Amazon tablet, a Bose speaker, and vouchers for stove oil and gasoline. One afternoon, I set off to visit Janet Mitchell at her house, a wooden building in the center of the village. In January 2012, the village of Kivalina voted to seek permission to build a new school seven miles inland, on a hill called Kisimigiiqtuq, which appears to have stable soils and greater safety from ocean storms. Township 27 N, Range 26 W, of the Kateel River Meridian. The landscape was golden and strewn with ponds and occasional tracks where Hondas had passed through. After evaluation, four potential sources It was a brilliantly sunny day, with clear skies and temperatures in the mid-forties.

The total project budget is $63.1 million, with $50.5

Getting materials here is onerous and expensive; sourcing them is another challenge. The government, in mandating the attendance of the regions children, began a project of forced settlement in a place that was seen as precarious from the outset. Everything that swims in the ocean is feeling the impact..

endstream endobj startxref The island, which stretches five and a half miles, is only seven hundred feet wide in most places, and maxes out in altitude at ten feet above sea level. (The mine spokesperson has since explained that the loader does have dust covers, and that the truck driver was unable to brake in time.). Instead of flush toilets, most homes use honey buckets. Were our own tribal community.

The results of the survey are provided below under the topics of the questions. When people start talking about climate change, it really scares me, laments Russel Adams, Sr., a lifelong resident of Kivalina. Poor living conditions are a contributing factor to juvenile delinquency. Alaska Department of Transportation & Public Facilities officials accepted the award on June 7, 2022. Another family rolled past on A.T.V.s. 0 A majority of people in Kivalina are on public assistance, and many residents supplement income earned from part-time or seasonal labor with food they acquire through hunting, fishing, and harvesting.

The meeting concluded with a hurried raffle. Until the community can move inland, residents live with the worry that the right storm at the right moment could wipe out everything.

I n Kivalina, I stayed at an after-school club, which, in the absence of a hotel or a guesthouse, has a spare room for visitors. We were running outside because we didnt know any better, she said.

Those mountains in the back are white, Dolly said, looking at the De Long range in the distance. %%EOF (Before the bridge was built, people had to travel upriver by boat to hunt in the interior.). Kivalina has piped water only at its school, its health clinic, and the communal laundromat and bathhouse called the washeteria. She explained that the black gravel road on which we had stopped to chat was built on the villages former cemetery; as the island lost width through the years, a new cemetery opened near the airstrip. (Fairbanks, Alaska) Residents of Kivalina, Alaska have a new evacuation route in case they need to leave their island home during a winter storm.

PLEASE NOTE: Adobe Acrobat PDF files require a free viewer available directly from Adobe. I heard residents blame the mines haul road for interrupting the migration of the Western Arctic caribou herd, and its ships for altering the paths of belugas and bowheads.

Fact sheet (PDF 1.9M) Executive Summary (PDF 1.8M) Some impacts of climate change, such as the long-term outlook for the areas permafrost, are still unknown. An airstrip, completed in 1960, connected Kivalina by air to the rest of Alaska and beyond. Kivalina is a barrier island off the westernmost coast and residents96 percent of which are Inupiatare feeling the impact of climate change. In October 2007, debris-laden storm waves overtopped the island. One afternoon, Janet Mitchell asked if I wanted to see the new school site with her youngest brother, Replogle (Reppi) Swan, Sr., who is a whaling captain, the fire chief, and the president of Kivalinas search-and-rescue team. When Mitchell was eight or nine, her grandmother chose her to come live with her and her husband, just as today Mitchells grandson Aaron lives with Mitchell. Kateel River Meridian. We believe that to move would be the wiser if not the safer plan.. are being, or have been, carried out by DOT&PF pursuant to 23 U.S.C. Thats when they would pull out the maktak and distribute it to the whole village. The filmmaker, Gina Abatemarco, explores how climate and regional stakeholders. Later that afternoon, I was having coffee with Carl Swan, the bingo caller, when Aaron came to the door holding the caribous heart and some ribs, a gift from his first hunting trip. Mitchell is one of many village residents who cite as a turning point October, 2004, when forty feet of shoreline eroded during a single storm. Kivalina is a barrier island off the westernmost coast and residents96 percent of which are Inupiatare feeling the impact of climate change.

Kivalina had made it through one more storm. Several beach protection measures have been tested over the past decade, but all have failed.

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Relocation might ease overcrowding, and the arrival of running water in rural Alaskan homes has been correlated with reductions in respiratory, skin, and gastrointestinal infections, but Kivalina has other problems, too. the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA). People started relaxing when that road was built, because now they have an escape plan, she said. The plan includes installing high-visibility sidewalks and creating separate 743 0 obj <> endobj To correspond by text telephone (TDD) (907) 451-2363. In the next photo, the dots had disappeared, and Swan suggested that they might have been Little People. There were other changes, too. Mitchell still remembers the day in 2005 when, at the height of summer, the temperature, which typically averaged in the mid-fifties at that time, topped ninety degrees. Accordingly, Kivalina has turned to a locally approved approach of facilitating a safe, reliable, and direct means of community evacuation to an acceptable mainland location on K-Hill. The passengers got off, the boxes of goods were passed down, then the pilot climbed back into his seat, turned his propellers on, and flew away. The table below describes traditional subsistence seasons.2. The mines assurances that the drinking water is clean have not eased fears that something is affecting the villagers health. On Friday, Janet Mitchell, a village elder and a field reporter for Kivalinas volunteer team of first responders, drove out to the beach on her four-wheeler with her phone. Project No. Still, Millie Hawley told me that the road and the promise of relocation had improved morale.