In Alaskan Village Of Kivalina, Sea Wall Can't Hold, But Relocation Plan Nowhere In Sight

KIVALINA, Alaska - Beneath a moonlit Arctic sky, Joe Swan Jr. and most of his 12-person crew were taking a cigarette break when a dump truck arrived and emptied another load of black sand at their feet. The backhoe driver, who happened to be Swan's wife, gunned the engine, spewing a diesel haze into the air as she dug into the pile and filled another 2,500-pound sandbag for the sea wall shielding the island from the Chukchi Sea.

The crew has been repairing the $3 million wall almost since the day it was completed in October 2006. They bring more sand. The ocean takes it away. Kivalina is disappearing, the victim of a warming world and a steady natural erosion that probably began long before the Eskimos settled 100 years ago. "You see the white water out there?" Swan said, pointing to some ripples a couple hundred feet offshore. "That's where the beach used to be."

When he was growing up here in the 1970s, the ocean would freeze each fall into a slush the consistency of mashed potatoes. Waves from storms would crash into the ice, not the shore. Lately, the autumn ocean has been a vast, iceless expanse that leaves the beach vulnerable to waves. The island is now a sliver of sand and permafrost less than 600 feet across at its widest point. The Army Corps of Engineers estimates it will be 10 to 15 years before the ground beneath the clump of clapboard houses washes away.

The prospect of Kivalina's disappearance has set off its own storm, jarring a place that, like most of global warming's early victims, has struggled for a long time on the fringes of the planet. Most of the 400 residents - filled with dreams of a new village with running water, better homes, and, perhaps, a chance at a job - want to leave. The big questions: To where? And how? Village leaders have squabbled for years with state and federal officials over relocating, which could cost as much as $250 million. No one has offered to pay.

EDIT

http://www.boston.com/news/nation/articles/2007/12/02/alaska_island_residents_losing_ground_to_global_warming/

that probably began long before the Eskimos settled 100 years ago? Um, why haven't the people moved already, they seem to have had plenty of warning.

Of course according to the story they seem to be waiting for somebody to pay them to move.