A village washed to sea?

• Author: Braem, Nicole M.
• Position: Shishmaref, Alaska

Business owners and residents of Shishmaref, a small village just north of Nome, live in constant par that their homes will be washed to sea, their livelihoods taken by the tides, and their fuel lines and airports declared inoperable due to flooding and erosion. They have been promised some relief. But is it enough? And will it come in time to make a difference ?

Businesses have enough to worry about without the constant threat that Mother Nature will wash their buildings and inventory out to sea. But that's a real fear in Shishmaref, an Inupiat village of 536, which is located north of Nome at the tip of the Seward Peninsula. It's a fear for residents as well.

The village is built on a Sarichef Island, a barrier island just more than a mile long, and roughly a quarter mile wide. Erosion has been a problem for decades. In an average year, strong waves driven by northwestern winds consume about three feet of the island's northern shoreline. It's especially problematic each fall.

Last October, a severe storm eroded the shoreline on the north side of the island in chunks up to 30 feet wide. In one case, 14 homes perched on the edge on a high bluff, which had been undercut by the storm by as much as 16 feet. To prevent the homes from washing into the sea, residents worked feverishly below the homes to bolster the bluff with sandbags.

"If we get another storm like last year we will be in bad shape," said Walter Nayokpuk, owner of the Nayokpuk store and a board member of the Shishmaref Native Corporation. "If we get another storm like last year, it's not just property that will be in danger; it will be life and property."

Nayokpuk has been building the business since 1960. He estimates the business is now worth $800,000. The store supplies about half of the village's yearly fuel needs - 80,000 gallons of stove oil and gas. It also supplies groceries, clothes, tools, and other items. The last storm washed away 20 feet of beach in front of the Nayokpuk fuel tanks, leaving 40 feet of lower ground between them and the ocean.

"The slowness and unsureness of it is not a good environment for any business," said Percy Nayokpuk, Walter's nephew and president of the Shishmaref Native Corporation. "We have a 16-bed facility upstairs that we're holding off on finishing until we know for sure what's going to happen in this town."

Additional fuel needs are supplied by the Shishmaref Native Store, owned by Alaska Native Industry Cooperative Association (ANICA)...