Eroding Alaska village to vote on whether to move or stay

ANCHORAGE, Alaska — A tiny island village on Alaska’s storm-battered western coast is entering a new chapter in its decades-long pursuit to move the entire community from its badly eroding shores to safer ground.

The Inupiat Eskimo community of Shishmaref will hold a special election next month asking residents if they should develop a new community at a nearby location on the mainland or stay put with added protections, such expanding a seawall that has never been completed.

Either scenario selected in the Aug. 16 vote would cost millions — money the community of nearly 600 doesn’t have. Regardless of the vote, the impoverished village ultimately will have to search for funding to make the choice a reality.

“Doing nothing is not an option,” Shishmaref Mayor Howard Weyiouanna Sr. said.

But even as government funding becomes increasingly difficult to obtain, erosion continues to eat away at the shoreline, toppling at least two houses as it comes ever closer to other homes. Erosion there and other coastal communities is an escalating problem blamed on climate change that has affected storm patterns in the region. Shishmaref, built on a narrow island just north of the Bering Strait, has been identified as one of Alaska’s most eroded communities and among those that expect to ultimately require relocation.

For some, including Weyiouanna, buying time at the current site 600 miles northwest of Anchorage, would be the least costly option by a long shot.

“It would be millions and millions for the other site,” he said.

ASSOCIATED PRESS FILE PHOTO Nathan Weyiouanna’s abandoned house at the west end of Shishmaref, Alaska, sits on the beach after sliding into the water during a storm in 2005. Like other Alaska villages, the Inupiat Eskimo community of 600 is facing an expensive relocation because...