STORM SAFE

SHAKTOOLIK - "So far we've been lucky," Helen Jackson recently told KNOM-AM. She and her husband Edgar are among the 250 predominantly Inuit residents (www.alaskapublic.org/2019/12/11/shaktoolik-reinforces-protective-berm-but-it-may-not-be-enough-to-keep-storms-at-bay) of Shaktoolik some 415 air miles northwest of Anchorage in Western Alaska.

The village's 66 homes sit on a narrow gravel-and-sand spit bounded by the Tagoomenik River on one side and Norton Sound, an inlet of the Bering Sea, on the other. "You don't know when it's coming, without execution" Helen continued, speaking about the powerful storms that usually in the fall and winter that roar in from the sea. "They come, come and go!"

And when they come (www.knom.org/wp/blog/2020/06/18/new-berm-for-shaktoolik-several-other-projects-to-be-developed-with-hud-funds), they hit Shaktoolik hard. Very hard. Helen and her husband Edgar, the Mayor of the village, recall bad storms when they were growing up in the 1950's and 1960's, but these days, they say, they're considerably stronger. Like the storm (www.knom.org/wp/blog/2020/06/18/new-berm-for-shaktoolik-several-other-projects-to-be-developed-with-hud-funds) that came early and ferociously in August 2019 and eroded "a good portion" of the berm built in 2014 to better protect the village from being overwhelmed by the sea.

The storms, obviously, put lives and property at risk.; Ditto for the village's water supply - the Tagoomenik River. Had the saltwater from the sea flooded the village and run-off into the river, residents would have lost their only source of potable water other than a three-month reserve the community maintains.

In 2009 the village was considered so vulnerable that a U.S. Government Accountability Office (www.gao.gov/products/GAO-09-551) identified Shaktoolik as one of five Alaska villages that should relocate to higher, safer ground "as soon as possible." One of the - five Newtok - is relocating. Not so Shaktoolik. Its residents have decided to stay put.

Which is why repairing the berm and raising its height is such a priority. It is, simply put, a life-or-death issue. And also why the village was pleased to hear from HUD in June, 2020 that it was one of 111 Federally recognized Tribes and Native Villages nationwide - including 25 in Alaska - that, had won Indian Community Development Block Grants that. said HUD Northwest Regional Administrator Jeff McMorris, will allow them to "produce or preserve more than 240 units of housing, complete much-needed infrastructure upgrades and help protect their communities."

Combined with a $1 million coastal resilience grant it was recently award by the National Fish and Wildlife Foundation (www.adn.com/alaska-news/rural-alaska/2019/11/18/shaktoolik-berm-is-among-us-coastal-protection-projects-sharing-29-million-federal-grant), the $800,000 in HUD funds will enable the village will, says HUD's grant summary, raise the 5,900 linear foot berm five feet using 43,255 cubic yards of local granular fill, driftwood and native grass. The taller berm, says the Army Corps of Engineers, will withstand a 50-year flood.

"So far we've lucky," Helen Jackson said. May the construction now underway of her home village's new berm go well and completed quickly and Shaktoolik's lucky streaks remain unbroken.

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