'Venice of Northwest Alaska' sinking because of climate change

Alex DeMarban in Alaska Dispatch: The permafrost has sunk so much in one Northwest Alaska village that bridges are shifting, outdoor stairways hang over the ground and sagging water pipes are prone to break and freeze. Those are a few of the ways climate change is affecting life in the Inupiat village of Selawik, according to the Alaska Native Tribal Health Consortium's Center for Climate and Health.

"You essentially have the Venice of Northwest Alaska, where the whole community is gradually sinking and people are struggling with how they'll possibly fix all this," said Michael Brubaker, with the Alaska Native Tribal Health Consortium. Brubaker runs the center, which is studying the effects of climate change on facilities and people in Northwest Alaska. The consortium plans to turn its attention next to Bristol Bay villages in Southwest Alaska.

The effects of a changing climate are widespread in Selawik, some 70 miles southeast of Kotzebue. The village has 180 homes and it seems each has suffered one problem or another related to unstable tundra, said Carrie Skin, the city bookkeeper. Windows are cracking. Doors are jamming. Ceilings are breaking loose from joists.

Stand a distance from her house and you'll notice it's not level. One side "lops toward the Selawik River," which is five feet away and coming closer as it erodes, she said. Skin signed up with the tribal housing department to have her house leveled, but that won't happen any time soon. The list for leveling work is long and tribal funds are limited. "You have to be very lucky to be the chosen one," she said.

Selawik isn't alone in its efforts to grapple with climate change. In numerous trips to five Northwest Alaska communities over the last year and a half, Brubaker reports finding warmer temperatures are changing life in the Arctic, and often not for the better...

Selawik Flats, Selawik National Wildlife Refuge, shot by the US Fish and Wildlife Service