Permafrost Collapse, Coastal Erosion, Infrastructure Failure Coming For Alaska; No $ To Pay For It

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Homer is lucky compared with some villages on Alaska’s western coast that are falling into the ocean. Those villages have asked for hundreds of millions of dollars to be relocated inland. “I’m up against other places that are losing their infrastructure or have severe problems due to flooding,” says Rick Abboud, Homer’s city planner. Last year, Abboud asked the state for $300,000 to pay for a plan to cope with a growing stormwater problem. He didn’t get it.

Across Alaska, in towns built on permafrost, rising temperatures are causing the ground to sink, damaging buildings and roads. In towns built on the coast, less sea ice means greater exposure to storms and floods. Drier conditions have led to more forest fires. Extreme weather killed or injured as many Alaskans in 2015 as in the previous 10 years combined. “Environmental change is not a theoretical in Alaska,” says Rick Thoman, the state’s climate sciences and services manager for the National Weather Service. “It’s happening, and it’s accelerating.”

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Alaska was once at the vanguard of states trying to deal with global warming. In 2007, then-Governor Sarah Palin established a climate change subcabinet to study the effects of warmer weather and find policies to cope with them. Over three years, the legislature provided about $26 million in funding. But Palin’s successor, Republican Sean Parnell, disbanded the group in 2011. That year, Alaska withdrew from a federal program that provides funds for coastal management because of concern the program might restrict offshore oil extraction. Since then, lower oil prices, combined with dwindling production, have left the state with a budget crisis that’s among the worst in the U.S. Just when climate change is having real impact, Alaska has less and less capacity to deal with it.

The state program that funds infrastructure and erosion management has had its budget cut 60 percent over three years. The Alaska Department of Environmental Conservation has lost one-third of its funding since 2014. The person listed on Governor Bill Walker’s website as his cabinet member responsible for Arctic policy, a term that gets used interchangeably with climate policy, left for Washington last summer to take a second job running the state’s federal relations office. “We’ve been doing a lot of thinking, a lot of planning,” says Lieutenant Governor Byron Mallott, who now leads climate policy. “We’ve had a lot of meetings.” Asked what is the most significant climate achievement since he took office two years ago, Mallott cites engaging “fully” with the federal government. Alaska remains the only state eligible for federal funding through the coastal protection program that doesn’t receive the money, because it hasn’t submitted a plan that addresses the issue.

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https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-03-09/alaska-s-big-problem-with-warmer-winters?cmpid=socialflow-twitter-business&utm_content=business&utm_campaign=socialflow-organic&utm_source=twitter&utm_medium=social