A couple miles inland from the Bering Sea coast, the banks of the Kugkaktlik River creep closer and closer to the Kuskokwim Delta community of Kipnuk.
"We're losing, like, 10 to 28 feet of river bank each year as a result of permafrost thaw and increased frequency and severity of extreme weather events and recurring flooding," said Rayna Paul, environmental director for the Native Village of Kipnuk.
In recent years, Paul has helped to spearhead multiple projects aimed at addressing the imminent threat of riverbank erosion.
"I'm not a grant writer, but I'm doing my best," Paul said.
On May 2, Paul learned that $20 million in approved funding from the United States Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) for riverbank stabilization had been terminated, part of wide-ranging cuts to the agency spurred by the Trump administration.
"It's just so draining when you hear something that you worked hard for to help your community, it was just not something I would have expected. I don't know how you explain it," Paul said.
The funding, through the EPA’s Community Change Grant Program, would have gone to construct a rock retaining wall, known as a riprap revetment, along a crumbling section of riverbank, roughly 1,800 feet long. It’s adjacent to critical infrastructure.
"Without the project, infrastructure like the fuel header, the fuel tank farm, the community windmills, the public boardwalks, corporation store, some residential homes may be at risk, and other buildings," Paul said.
Paul said that Kipnuk’s tribe has opted for a mixed strategy of moving some threatened infrastructure and protecting other infrastructure, rather than plan for relocation as some communities on the Yukon-Kuskokwim Delta facing threats of severe erosion have done.
The rock retaining wall would have been the first step in this strategy. But in March, when Paul logged onto the federal funding portal to check on the status of the $20 million grant, she found the funds had been frozen. Paul said she wrote to Alaska’s congressional delegation in search of answers. She even visited their Anchorage offices in person, but was only able to meet with staffers to voice her concerns.
In the final days of April, Paul said that the funds suddenly became available. She was able to draw down roughly half a million dollars to purchase a bulldozer needed for the project. But just days later, the email arrived: the funding had been terminated.
"Having it frozen, suspended, and then unfreezed for a short while, and now terminated and then suspended again, just, I don't know," Paul said.
"We want action"
Time is running out to protect critical infrastructure in Kipnuk, but the scope of the problem has long been understood. The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers proposed the same rock retaining wall strategy in a 2009 assessment. In the years since, numerous assessments, studies, and reports have come to similar conclusions.
Sheryl Musgrove directs the climate justice program under the Alaska Institute for Justice. The nonprofit partnered with Kipnuk’s tribe to secure the EPA grant funding.
"When we started working with Kipnuk, we got a very strong message that, ‘We do not want more assessments. We want action,’" Musgrove said. "The EPA Community Change Grant was an opportunity to finally take action."
The EPA program was set to bring more than $150 million to a wide-ranging variety of projects across the state. The agency was unable to confirm whether all of these funds had been cancelled, but multiple Alaska projects also reported receiving the May 2 email.
In Kotzebue, the EPA cancelled nearly $20 million approved for a tribal wind power project, while another $20 million for a project that would have removed toxic materials from homes in Tyonek also vanished on May 2, according to a project manager.
In response to an email asking why the funds for Kipnuk had been cancelled, an EPA spokesperson said that the agency had reviewed its grants in a manner that it would with any change in administration. But the spokesperson also cited the Biden administration’s “radical agenda of wasteful DEI programs.”
Far away from political battles being waged in Washington, D.C., the people of Kipnuk are left wondering how to pay for a project that was set to begin construction soon, and whether there is time to spare before more drastic measures become necessary.
"Without this project, it is likely that the community will have no option but to engage in a community-wide relocation sometime in the near future," Paul said.
Paul said that the tribe has filed a formal letter of dispute with the EPA. Now, she said that all they can do is prepare for a potential legal battle ahead.
