The Takeaway: Learn how the Native Village of Shaktoolik protected itself against the effects of major storms and erosion with a cobble berm.
Overview
Alaska is a particularly difficult region in which to introduce nature-based solutions, so the Native Village of Shaktoolik needed to be flexible about which nature-based solution worked best for them. Genevieve Rock, the development coordinator for Shaktoolik, discusses the impacts from devastating Typhoon Merbok on her community, the ways they were protected by a cobble berm, and the future implications for one of the most at-risk communities in the country.
Lessons Learned
- The cobble berm is a feasible nature-based solution for Alaska. While cobble berms incur costs and require maintenance, the berm built in Shaktoolik did its job and protected the community. Despite concerns from community members about the berm's ability to keep them safe before the storm, Typhoon Merbok showed that it was worth the time and money spent on its construction.
- Know how to activate plans. An important part of any type of planning—emergency or otherwise—is to ensure its usefulness and practicality. While Shaktoolik created a Small Community Emergency Response Plan, it was never successfully implemented. Making sure the plan is well thought out and that the person needed to initiate the process understands their role is crucial.
- Planning without action doesn’t mean much. Having well thought out plans, and studies to back them up, can be incredibly useful in current and future community operations. Still, they should always be intended to help inform real action. This type of work takes quite a bit of time and money, and it can become almost worthless without progress toward implementation. When communities like Shaktoolik are in such immediate need of assistance, real effort must be made to ensure these plans are actionable and avoid other communities feeling “all planned out.” With over 10 studies and five plans completed in the last three decades, it is understandable that the community is frustrated with its limited progress toward risk reduction.
The Process
The Native Village of Shaktoolik, Alaska, an Iñupiat community of around 260 people, is located on a gravel-and-sand spit between the Tagoomenik River and Norton Sound, and was the first and southernmost Malemiut settlement on Norton Sound (established as early as 1839). It was originally located six miles up the Shaktoolik River, until the 1930s, when they moved to the mouth of the river while the community was still migratory. Locals refer to this location as the “Old Site,” which is two miles up the coast from its current settlement. Because the Old Site had many immediate coastal risks, the community moved to its current site in the 1970s. This move was far more feasible at the time because western infrastructure was not yet a concern for relocation costs and labor. Despite relocating multiple times already, the community has been at the forefront of the most environmentally threatened communities in the country, from increased erosion rates, sea level rise, and larger storms, among other factors. It relies heavily on the subsistence opportunities that come with its location, including ocean, river, and land access. The village is completely disconnected from the rest of Alaska by land, and a plane or boat is required to reach the nearest major town, Nome. This inaccessibility can have major community impacts, particularly with healthcare and other emergency services.
Several reports and plans ahead of berm construction highlighted the need for some coastal protection measures to safeguard against flooding and erosion impacts. A risk assessment performed in 2020 suggested that estimating erosion rates is quite difficult for the community, particularly because erosion is driven by episodic storm events and shorter-term data availability. With what is available, the history of Shaktoolik erosion and accretion has meant the spit has been relatively stable, but climate change will, and has already, increase the risk for Shaktoolik. Various materials for emergency planning, including evacuation and emergency shelters, highlight the natural hazard impacts the community is most concerned with and the financial cost of living with current and future climate impacts. However, no document fully accounts for the emotional toll the risk and uncertainty places on village residents.
A 2013 storm so powerful that it brought beachwood right up against homes in the community spurred the initial action to build a berm to protect the community against storm surge and erosion. A five-foot berm was constructed using Norton Sound Economic Development Corporation (NSEDC) grant funding, supplemented with local equipment and labor. This forward-thinking leadership allowed the community to better prepare for future storms by being proactive, with a relatively low-cost and nature-based measure that relied on local talent, labor, and materials.
A period of calmer years followed, during which time maintenance of the berm was not needed. The next major storm, however, hit in early fall 2019, damaging portions of the berm that required an additional round of funding to repair. Through a National Fish and Wildlife Foundation’s (NFWF) National Coastal Resilience Fund (NCRF) award, a U.S. Housing and Urban Development (HUD) Indian Community Development Block Grant, and a HUD Imminent Threat Grant in 2019 and 2020, the community was able to rebuild and shore up the berm with additional heavy equipment and materials.
The berm had its largest test in September 2022, when extratropical storm Typhoon Merbok struck the coast of Alaska. While fall storms are not unusual, the result of a warming ocean in the Western Bering Sea and cooler waters in the Eastern Sea fed the storm and led to one that was both very large and earlier than most autumn storms, which meant there was no sea ice to protect the community from surface waves. The near-hurricane-force winds and waves reaching 50 feet offshore caused many communities to experience near-record high water levels. Much of western Alaska, from Bristol Bay to just beyond the Bering Strait, was impacted, with some homes being swept away in other communities. This time of year is very important for communities that rely on subsistence hunting, fishing, and plant harvest. This added complications to the infrastructure damages that occurred by damaging boats used for fishing or redirecting time to repairs rather than preparing for winter. And freezers lost power for over 24 hours, ruining all that was stored throughout the summer.
A community member has described the fear that Shaktoolik residents experienced ahead of and following Typhoon Merbok. Some community members and leaders considered taking their families by boat inland, fearing the whole village would be lost. This incited even more fear for the remaining community members who would have been left behind. All community members eventually decided to stay, and many used the emergency shelter, which was the local school building, more than residents had ever seen before.
Typhoon Merbok completely washed away the protective cobble berm, but the berm did its job. Before this storm, some community members were skeptical about its usefulness and the cost. While the berm was eroded, it never breached. The storm's wave energy was dissipated through erosion of the berm rather than rushing into homes. Some logs washed up into the community, but all homes were protected. The community survived with minimal damage, but the only access road where the spit meets land would not have lasted had the storm continued even another 12 hours. Such a blowout would leave Shaktoolik an island with limited mainland access, possibly threatening their water supply if salt water overtopped into the river.
Because the berm was washed away, concerns from Shaktoolik community members and leadership centered around building it back as soon as possible. The possibility of other storms before winter was still a real concern, but accessing funds is not always easy or fast. The community used the remaining funds from a previous grant to partially restore the structure with several weeks of around-the-clock work, but not to its original size.
Next Steps
The community has frequently communicated with FEMA regarding funding to contract Bristol Engineering to rebuild the berm. When the promised disaster funding from FEMA arrived, it came with a very tight deadline for spending the money. There are very few months that construction is possible because there is no snow or ice, and supplies and equipment are generally delivered only once per year by barge, making meeting that tight deadline even more difficult.
The community has relocated before, and there was talk of doing so again even before Typhoon Merbok. Unlike funding for the berm, accessing money for moving the village is quite difficult, especially when the cost is significantly higher than shoreline protection measures and is not covered by most federal relief programs, which focus on rebuilding rather than relocation. Because Shaktoolik has far more infrastructure than it did before its previous relocation (i.e., plumbing and fuel), the process is not simple, and this move would likely require relocating farther inland rather than to another portion of the coast as it had before. The most recent estimate for the move totals around $290 million—over $1 million per resident. As a start toward relocation, Shaktoolik has recently been awarded nearly $2 million to fund planning for an evacuation road through the Federal Highway Administration's PROTECT Discretionary Grant Program Award for future storm emergencies and access to a future relocation site. Genevieve says that adjusting their language from “relocation” to “site expansion” has assisted in gaining interest from potential funding sources, but barriers still exist.
There are also cultural implications associated with relocation. Easy access to the coast is especially important for a community that relies heavily on subsistence from coastal ecosystems and the connections between the people there and the environment. Most Shaktoolik residents agree that relocation is inevitable, but Typhoon Merbok demonstrated just how soon that might be. While some Alaskan Native communities have created slower timelines by opening land for reconstruction inland to avoid federally funded wholesale moves, the risk to the community is today, and the infrastructure is still centralized on the exposed spit, leaving the community nowhere immediately nearby to move that is safe. Overall, there is no clear answer, and hard decisions will need to be made. Financial assistance is severely lacking for the community and many others like it, and time is running out. Ultimately, the “right” thing to do might just end up being whatever gets funded first.