Climate Change

The White House announced Wednesday it will add funding and capacity for a wide array of programs in Alaska that address global warming. The federal government is tapping the Denali Commission as the lead agency to address the relocation of coastal communities across the state.
But the particulars of that announcement were still being sorted out ahead of the president’s appearance in Kotzebue, where he was expected to make a formal announcement.

At a tribal roundtable in the hub community of about 3,200, Percy Ballot of Buckland noted that the $2 million set aside for voluntary relocation is welcomed but falls far short of the costs.

“We appreciate that, we really do,” Ballot said in response to a question. “It’s going to help us a little bit, but we need more than that. To move (the) Native Village of Kivalina is going to cost a lot more money than that.”

That $2 million, though, is not for physical relocation, but instead for launching a coordinated review of how many among the roughly 30 communities identified in a 2009 report will either move, or fortify existing town sites.

Up until now, the state has overseen community relocation projects, but with no one agency fully in charge of the intricate logistical challenges.

“Funding has certainly been a limiting factor,” said Sally Cox, a planner with the state’s Department of Commerce, Community, and Economic Development, who has been intimately involved in developing relocation strategies since she began working with the Native Village of Newtok almost a decade ago.

So far, six communities identified as imperiled; Newtok, Shishmaref, Unalakleet, Shaktoolik, Kivalina and Koyukuk have received grant funds to develop plans for relocating or protecting in place. But the grant process is complicated, and technical guidance from regional nonprofits and state agencies has been essential for tribes deciding how to proceed.

Cox expects that in adapting and consolidating procedures that are presently spread across multiple entities the Denali Commission will improve upon existing abilities to respond.

“It could potentially make the process go much more smoothly, and streamline funding rules and regulations,” said Cox.

For those inside the Denali Commission, the White House’s announcement is significant news.

“I think it’s a huge step forward for the administration to identify a federal agency as lead to take on this huge undertaking,” said Joel Neimeyer, co-chair of the commission, which was set up almost two decades ago to better funnel federal resources into Alaska programs.

The commission does not have the staff to begin systematically working with the dozens of communities recognized as imperiled, but that is part of what the $2 million announced by the president is set aside for — staff and a review process.

“What we’re looking at are vulnerable communities that face environmental threats from flooding, erosion and permafrost degradation,” said Neimeyer.

It’s a welcome development for those who say the status quo has not been working. Selecting an entity to take charge of such multifaceted relocation reviews has been a repeated recommendation to the state and federal governments by groups like Kawerak, which represents several Bering Strait communities actively facing threats from climate change.

“We need to coordinate on a state, federal and local level,” said Kawerak President Melanie Bahnke. “There is no one lead agency that is tasked with identifying protective measures that need to be put in place.”

The Denali Commission has been an excellent partner in the past, Bahnke said, having financed projects within all 15 communities in the region. Part of the commission’s design for evaluating mitigation and relocation needs is the template established by the Health Facilities Program, which dramatically expanded clinic facilities across rural Alaska over the course of the last 15 years.

While there has been high-level attention cast towards the climate threats to coastal communities in the past, the acknowledgments brought this week are new.

“I do think the focus, the level at which the attention is now being commanded from the president of the United State, that is what’s new,” Bahnke said.

At the heart of the president’s announcement is recognition from the administration that Alaska’s coastal communities are in immediate danger. The Denali Commission news comes along with a catalog of funding resources for relocation projects, developing a set of principals for relocation and streamlining the process for tribes making official disaster declarations through FEMA.

Taken all together, many see the president’s visit as launching an organized federal response to years of scattered reports of environmental change in Alaska.

“Communities all over Alaska have been sending out a signal that they are experiencing really extreme and profound change,” said Mike Brubaker with the Alaska Native Tribal Health Consortium’s Center for Climate and Health. Brubaker’s Local Environmental Observer Network, which has produced an app for residents to self-report environmental irregularities, is included in the White House’s list of supported Alaska projects.

Although there is not yet a funding source for actual relocation or mitigation measures, Neimeyer with the Denali Commission said that involvement from the president’s recently created Arctic Executive Steering Committee could bring cabinet-level involvement into planning efforts. And with it, cabinet-level funds.

A celebration took place in Kotzebue as final preparations are made for President Obama’s visit Wednessday. And with the spotlight on the Northwest Arctic hub — for the first visit by an American president above the Arctic Circle — local leaders have drafted a letter outlining their vision for the Arctic’s future.

Putting to rest clean-up efforts and last-minute preparations, Kotzebue residents gathered at the community school for a potluck Tuesday night — sharing food, song, and culture with the dozens of visitors from the president’s advance team and relatives who came to see the historic visit firsthand.

A round of Native Youth Olympics games and music from the Midnight Sun Drummers and Dancers were the backdrop as locals gathered to talk about what they hope the president takes away from his trip. For elder Enoch “Attamuk” Shiedt, it’s changes in the land he’s seen first hand.

Shiedt has worked for years as a subsistence coordinator. He recalls his grandpa telling him when he was just nine years old that the warming trend will eventually hurt his people.

“And now it’s here,” Shiedt said. “It’s not only global warming — it’s the erosion that’s the worst thing up this way. We’re losing some of our villages.”

Linda Hadley — originally from Deering but now teaching kindergarten in Kotzebue — sees it more as a historical moment.

“I believe it’s a momentous occasion,” she said. “It allows the president to see what a community the size of ours in the Arctic is about.” She said that having someone of his caliber come and visit “provides our community a voice in the national conversation.”

But outside the school halls and across town, the region’s part of that conversation was taking shape in the form of a letter to the president, outlining local priorities from climate change to energy.

Northwest Arctic Borough Mayor Reggie Joule was the first signature on the letter that includes tribes, Alaska Native corporations, local governments, health care providers, and more. On climate change, the letter points squarely to Kivalina — the community of about 400 on a barrier island along the Chukchi Sea coast.

“There are immediate needs for sure,” said Joule about the situation in Kivalina. “The community does need to get to safety. But more than that, the community needs to relocate.” Joule says this is not a time to be shy. “It’s a time for education — for Alaskans and for the people of the United States.”

Bearing the brunt of a changing climate, the shorefast ice that once protected the community from turbulent weather now forms later in the year, leaving the area open to storms, flooding, and erosion. In just ten years, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers says the village will be uninhabitable.

While details are still few, the White House has announced a plan to put the Denali Commission — an independent federal agency working in Alaska since 1998 — in charge of a new mitigation and relocation effort for communities across Alaska. It’s a partnership Tim Schuerch with Manilaq said is a good fit.

Schuerch said the Denali Commission has been a great partner in developing most of the village clinics in the region.

“We do have a lot of confidence in the efficiency and effectiveness what it comes to the Denali Commission, in terms of assisting us with our infrastructure needs, including those that are needed to respond to climate change,” he said.

The letter covers a lot of ground — outlining the need to develop a deep-draft port above the Arctic Circle and advocating sharing federal revenue from offshore oil drilling with local residents. In many ways, it’s an academic breakdown of what northwest Alaska leaders say they’ll need for the future.

But Wayne Westlake, the president and CEO of NANA Regional Corporation, said it’ll take more than just a letter for Kotzebue’s voice to be heard. Westlake said he hopes the president gets the “feeling” of the region.

“There’s something here that is important not only to our country but to the health of the people of the region,” he said. “And that’s what I’m hoping for — that he’ll get that feeling that you can’t describe. He’ll tell his grandkids about it.”

President Obama begins his last day in Alaska with a morning in Dillingham. He’ll land in Kotzebue around 5 p.m. and should be flying back to Anchorage — and eventually Washington, D.C. — by 9 p.m.

As president Barack Obama plans to shift his focus to Western Alaska by midweek, residents of Kotzebue — the northwest Arctic hub of about 4,000 people — are making final preparations for the president’s historic visit above the Arctic Circle.

Everyone from fishermen to local leaders are getting ready for the president’s visit — and have their own hopes for what he takes away.

On Monday, all of Kotzebue was put the finishing touches on cleanup efforts and last-minute planning for President Obama’s visit. More than 10 derelict houses had been knocked down as part of a community-wide cleanup that saw rusty cars, broken-down snowmachines, and more hauled away. But on Monday afternoon, Nelson Griest Junior was untangling his salmon net.

“From the last storm, it was pretty high — the water came up and washed my net out, and that’s where I’m at,” he said.

Nelson said he had a good summer netting chum salmon in Kotzebue’s small commercial fishery. He was working out of Kotzebue’s North Tent City — a city-built campground along a sliver of beach, offering fish racks and campsites for rent from May through September. It’s how Nelson’s spent his springs and summers since he can remember.

“It’s where I was born,” he said. “Lived down here over 15 years. My parents used to come here ever since the 70’s. Every summer, they pretty much came down here. Springtime, they’d go out hunting ugurk and seal.”

This summer, his camp in the tent city fell into the water — and it wasn’t the first time.

“It’s eroding,” he said. “It got my fish rack down here — dropped it down, fell one time. We put it back up. It’s really eroding down the coast, and every time the sand or rocks go down, there’s always ice in the bottom, on the tundra. So there is lots that’s melting, and I’m happy the president is coming. I’m excited.”

Nelson isn’t the only one talking about climate change in the lead-up to Obama’s visit.

“It’s such an honor for him to come to our village — to see first-hand our concerns as a native community here,” said Nicole Stoops, the executive director of the Kotzebue IRA. She said the concerns go beyond impacts to seal hunting and salmon fishing — it’s a connection to the land that goes back generations.

“It’s not such a simple thing to move a community as there are a lot of cultural ties to where they are now,” she said. “Just to understand the cultural ties the people have to the land, as well as finding something that would be logical and reasonable for the community members to feel comfortable on a move to relocate somewhere.”

Some of Kotzebue’s erosion issues — mainly along Shore Avenue, also known as Front Street — have been dealt with, at least for now, according to city manager Derek Martin. After 50 years of half-measures, Martin said it was a tremendous effort to finally get it right.

“The permanent fix to this erosion problem along Shore Avenue [was] to install a series of sheet pile bulkheads along 75 percent of Shore Avenue there,” he said. “That provided the necessary infrastructure to prevent further erosion and to protect the roadway. But this was a fix that worked for this community as part of our erosion problem, as part of our climate change problem here in Kotzebue.”

It’s a solution Martin said he hopes to showcase during the president’s visit — one that demonstrates the resilience of rural communities. It’s the kind of resilience Kotzebue Mayor Maija Lukin had to call on when her appendix burst this weekend.

What started off with nausea on Saturday turned into an emergency medevac to Anchorage and the quick removal of a dangerously inflamed appendix. Mayor Lukin was out of the hospital by Sunday, but she was only able to book a flight back home Monday night. It’s just one of the challenges about living in rural Alaska she puts up with to continue with her family’s traditions.

“I know the time that he’s here is very short, and we’re showing him the best of everything we have. But it’s a very hard life that people don’t quite understand,” she said. “We choose to live in Kotzebue because it’s a beautiful place — it’s above the Arctic Circle. It’s a place where you can raise your children to hunt, fish, live off the land, and do what we were taught from our parents and grandparents.”

But while many prepare to press the president on climate change, many in Kotzebue just as quickly bring up the elephant in the room — or, in this case, the oil rig in the sea. Shell Oil is pursuing exploratory drilling in the Chukchi Sea this summer and staging ships, tugs, crews, and more in Kotzebue.

Some residents say they’re opposed to the drilling outright. Others say they’re more open to the idea. But on the eve of Obama’s visit focused on climate change, many in Kotzebue are quick to point out the incongruity: The president they’re eager to welcome and talk openly with about their needs when it comes to climate change … is the same president who authorized Shell’s Arctic drilling.

For Nelson — still tending his fishnets — it’s straightforward.

“It’s not a good place to drill, I guess,” he said. “Because in fall time, when the ice is coming and the waves are getting bigger — I’m not sure about the cleanup. I think it’s going to be pretty hard in the Arctic.”

Oil and erosion, subsistence and climate change solutions — all topics on the minds of Kotzebue residents on the eve of the president’s visit to the Alaska Arctic.

As President Barack Obama continues to visit sites in Alaska during a trip focused on climate change and Arctic policy, reactions are to his speech at the close of the GLACIER conference Monday are still forming. However, a consistent opinion from energy and environmental advocates alike is dissatisfaction.

Nobody seems totally happy with the president’s speech on climate change: too vague, too bleak, goes too far, doesn’t go far enough. Advocates and adversaries of the administration say they just wanted something else.

“Alaska was the backdrop,” said Sen. Lisa Murkowski during a phone interview Tuesday. “His comments were directed to a national, and truly an international, audience.”

Murkowski is critical of the president’s agenda in Alaska for focusing so heavily on climate change, instead of what she believes are more salient local concerns over economic and energy issues.

Regarding the president’s remarks on climate change, Murkowski thinks it isn’t fair to clamor for a green energy future without offering a roadmap to get there.

“How do we get there Mr. President? How do we make this transition?” Murkowski asked. “There has to be a transition plan, and the transition plan cannot be that we price Alaskans out of our economic lifestyle and opportunity here.”

Unsurprisingly, that emphasis on not sacrificing development opportunities is echoed by the energy industry.

Kara Moriarty is president of the Alaska Oil and Gas Association and cites figures from the government’s Energy Information Administration that 80 percent of the nation’s energy will come from fossil fuels for the foreseeable future.

“We are going to continue to rely on oil and gas for the next several decades,” said Moriarty, “and that oil and gas should come from Alaska.”

Like Murkowski, Moriarty thinks Alaska and the nation need to change their relationship with fossil fuels but doesn’t see an immediately viable alternative solution. “Renewables are important,” Moriarty said, “but solar panels and wind turbines–they require a lot of minerals to make those materials.”

For others, though, a lack of particulars in the president’s speech was frustrating for different reasons.

Speaking from Washington, D.C., Cassady Sharp of Greenpeace said environmental advocates are used accustomed to Obama’s convincing words on climate change, matched with frustratingly little follow-through.

“When you match that rhetoric up with the actual actions he’s taking, one: they’re not enough. And then,” Sharp added, “they’re completely undermined when he approves something like Shell’s Arctic drilling plan.”

During the GLACIER conference, members of the administration offered an explanation that Royal Dutch Shell’s Arctic offshore drilling in the Chukchi was approved under President Bush, and this administration has raised standards for permitting and preparedness on it.

But Sharp doesn’t buy it: Obama hasn’t been shy about scrapping programs he disagrees with from past administrations, and yet this one made it all the way to approval.

Even self-professed Obama fans say that when it comes to climate, they haven’t seen the president deliver yet.

“President Obama has done more than any other president before to address the issue of climate change,” said Rick Steiner, a marine conservation biologist based in Anchorage. “The only problem is: it isn’t enough.”

Steiner concedes that the president admitted basically the same thing in his speech, repeating refrains about officials not acting fast or comprehensively enough.

Steiner believes that the Paris climate talks in December need to be where the administration lays out a credible, legally binding plan for curbing emissions by 75 percent in the decades ahead.

But it is a tall order coming to Alaska to pitch measures aimed at slowing climate change. Steiner sees a paradox in how the state has hitched its economic wagon to the same hydrocarbons nibbling away at the shorelines and glaciers. That’s the very reason he sees Alaska as a good place for the administration and state to start scrapping the status quo.

Melanie Bahnke’s opinion of the speech and presidential visit are a bit different. Bahnke is president of the regional non-profit Kawerak in the Bering Strait Region. She was part of the president’s hour-long roundtable with Alaska Native leaders and explained the administration’s work with Alaska Natives and tribal partners has been unprecedented measured against past American presidents. While Obama’s climate speech might not have suited every party’s agenda, Bahnke said, the fact that it’s bringing in actual voices from the communities so often invoked in Alaska’s climate debates means it’s a more holistic approach than what is typically offered.

“He understands that there’s a need to do both: we need to curb and mitigate climate change, but, on the other hand, there are these small coastal villages that are in imminent danger and require urgency and response,” Bahnke said.

Bahnke was part of a small group that met with members of the president’s staff a day after the GLACIER conference to discuss concrete actions that the executive branch can take in the next 15 months before a new administration comes into office.

President Obama wants to beef up America’s fleet of icebreaking ships.

He made the announcement Tuesday before stepping on a non-icebreaking tour boat to see the glaciers of Kenai Fjords National Park.

Obama proposed to speed up construction of a heavy icebreaker by two years. He wants the new ship to be polar-ready by the year 2020, rather than 2022.

Obama also said he plans on working with Congress to expand the nation’s fleet of icebreakers.

The U.S. Coast Guard has two icebreakers in working condition, and just one of those two vessels is a heavy icebreaker — the Polar Star. By comparison, Russia has a fleet of about 40. Canada, Finland and Sweden each have six icebreakers or more.

The Congressional delegations of Alaska and Washington state have long called for more ice breakers. In an email, Sen. Lisa Murkowski’s office said Obama’s announcement is less a plan than an acknowledgment that the needs must be addressed. In an email, Murkowski spokesperson Matthew Felling said the senator “awaits seeing the priorities espoused today reflected in dollars in the President’s budget next year.”

One of the Coast Guard’s two working icebreakers is currently at 87.5 degrees north latitude. It’s a few days away from the North Pole on a science mission.

Chief scientist David Kadko with Florida International University says the polar ice has been thinner than anticipated. That’s allowed the Healy to burn less fuel breaking through the ice, and it’s made the work of the 51 scientists on board smoother. German and Canadian icebreakers are also cruising the Arctic for science this summer.

“It’s quite historic: three icebreakers from three different countries working together, and collaboratively,” Kadko said.

The three ships are working to get a baseline of conditions throughout the Arctic Ocean. They want that snapshot of the Arctic chemistry before the expected increase in shipping and resource extraction brings more pollution to the top of the world.

Climate change is the main theme of the president’s highly publicized three-day tour of Alaska. The president has not taken any questions from the media, and he is not expected to do so while he’s here.

The White House press office said Tuesday that Obama will increase ongoing efforts to chart navigation routes through the Aleutians and Bering Sea and more closely monitor sea level and sea ice in the Chukchi and Beaufort Seas.

Renewable energy and port development were the focus of the final session of the U.S. Arctic Research Commission’s two-day meeting in downtown Nome.

Lorraine Cordova, project manager for the Alaska Deep Draft Arctic Port Study, offered port updates to the crowd and research suggestions to the commission. She commended Nome’s Port Director Joy Baker and City Manager Josie Bahnke for their efforts in promoting Nome as the site of Alaska’s deep-draft port.

Although Port Clarence was in the running, its lack of infrastructure and Nome’s active sponsorship of the Alaska Deep Draft Arctic Port Study helped single out the city. The debate on whether Nome will commit to dredging as deep as the port will require is ongoing.

Kody Stitz from the U.S. Coast Guard also updated the commission on matters relating to Arctic shipping. Since 2010, the Coast Guard has conducted a Port Access Route Study in the Bering Sea. The study will determine the need for routing measures through the region. Currently, there are no speed restrictions, north and southbound lanes, or areas to be avoided from Unimak Pass in the Aleutians up through the Bering Strait.

Aside from a lack of routing measures, the Bering Sea’s nautical charts are outdated, presenting serious safety risks to vessels of all kinds.

“A really good example is the Fennica,” Stitz said. “The Fennica, just a couple of months ago coming out of Dutch Harbor, struck something and in the aftermath of that NOAA went out, did a survey, and we ended up finding an uncharted rock.”

The Coast Guard is working alongside NOAA to chart the Bering Sea and expects to have that work completed by the end of the year. Stitz said along with implementing routing measures, up-to-date nautical charts will encourage safe shipping through the route.

“One of the goals with putting down a route,” Stitz explained, “is that NOAA can now look at a couple thousand square miles of the route area and really give us a really accurate assessment.” Knowing just what lies on the seafloor will incentivize staying within the route’s boundaries.

“The shippers have a really strong incentive and the insurance carriers have a really strong incentive to say, ‘You know what if you’re going from A to B you’re going to follow this route to the maximum extent possible.’”

Stitz expects it will take at least year for the study’s findings to go through the Coast Guard, the State Department, and additional military branches for approval before finally approaching the International Maritime Organization. The complete process will take at least two to three years, Stitz said.