Native AK Village Of Newtok Left Sinking Ancestral Home And Moved 9 Miles To New Site; It's Sinking And Melting Too
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Newtok’s relocation was supposed to provide a model for dozens of Alaskan communities that will need to move in the coming decades. Instead, those who’ve worked on the effort say what happened in Newtok demonstrates the federal government’s failure to oversee the complex project and understand communities’ unique cultural needs. And it highlights how ill-prepared the United States is to respond to the way climate change is making some places uninhabitable, according to an investigation by The Washington Post, ProPublica and KYUK radio in Bethel, Alaska.
Dozens of grants from at least seven federal agencies have helped pay for the relocation, which began in 2019 and is expected to cost more than $150 million. But while the federal government supplied taxpayer dollars, it left most of the responsibility for the move to the tiny Newtok Village Council. The federally recognized tribal government lacked the expertise to manage the project and has faced high turnover and internal political conflict, according to tribal records and interviews with more than 70 residents as well as dozens of current and former members of the seven-person village council.
Federal auditors have warned for years that climate relocation projects need a lead agency to coordinate assistance and reduce the burden on local communities. The Biden administration tried to address those concerns by creating an interagency task force led by the Federal Emergency Management Agency and the Interior Department. The task force’s report in December also called for more coordination and guidance across the federal government as well as long-term funding for relocations.
But the Trump administration has removed the report from FEMA’s website and, as part of its withdrawal of climate funding, frozen millions in federal aid that was supposed to pay for housing construction in Mertarvik this summer. The administration did not respond to a request for comment. “We’re physically seeing the impacts of a changing climate on these communities,” said Don Antrobus, a climate adaptation consultant for the Alaska Native Tribal Health Consortium. “And the fact that we don’t have a government framework for dealing with these issues is not just an Alaska problem, it’s a national problem.”
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https://www.washingtonpost.com/climate-environment/2025/05/29/newtok-alaska-climate-relocation/
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