An Alaskan Town Is Losing Ground (Kivalina, Newtok: live in, moving, beachfront)

[Cida]

I've heard about these situations elsewhere with rising waters and climate changes, but this is the first I've seen for right here in the United States.



An Alaskan Town Is Losing Ground—and a Way of Life
For low-lying islands like Kivalina, climate change poses an existential threat.
For years, Kivalina has been cited—like the Maldives, in the Indian Ocean, or the island nation of Tuvalu, in the Pacific—as an example of the existential threat posed to low-lying islands by climate change.
Seven years later, Kivalina’s move is still mostly in the future, even though the island continues to lose ground. 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.
https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2...-a-way-of-life

[NomadJustice]

This is quite depressing to hear about and unfortunantly Kivalina isn't the only village experiencing the effects. Newtok village recently grabbed the attention of Vice news for its rapid decline.

[Northrick]

I have not been to Newtok but the residents there made a plan to move to a new site and are carrying out the years long process of moving a whole village over. The new village has been named Mertarvik.


I have been to Kivalina. If it washes into the sea I'm not sure that would be a great loss.

[RDawg]

Originally Posted by Northrick

I have been to Kivalina. If it washes into the sea I'm not sure that would be a great loss.

Not to be ugly about it, but I've heard the same sentiment expressed by every educator who has worked in that village.

[ericsvibe]

This happens all the time and is part of the natural process of the interaction between ocean and land. Where I live in Montana, a million years ago it was part of the inland sea. It still affects us to this day. Many areas don't have access to groundwater due to the salt absorbed by the land when it was ocean bottom. The ground water is super salinized, sometimes as much as double the amount currently in the ocean. If humans were around then, someone would be complaining about the fact that their beachfront property was now worthless because the ocean dried up.