The old post office in Newtok, a tiny graying building, is locked up tight. The electricity has been fully disconnected. Wires have simply been pulled from their fuses, and the United States Postal Service sign has been removed from the leaning building.
For four years, Mertarvik residents have gone without mail delivery. But in early November 2023, the post office in Newtok moved across the Ninglick River to the new village site. Now it’s the 100 or so remaining residents in Newtok who are without a reliable way to receive their mail.
The new post office in Mertarvik, 9 miles upriver from the old one, is in a brand new building.
“Bigger, better, brighter,” said Postmaster Sandra Ayuluk, who recently relocated to Mertarvik from Newtok with her husband and two children.
She’s excited about the move.
“More people show up. At the old post office it was dark, small. When we’d walk, the lights would blink," Ayuluk said.
On any given day Ayuluk can be found in Mertarvik’s new post office, happy to help people with money orders. Some simply come in to check their boxes once a week for a newspaper filled with advertisements: the "Greatlander Bushmailer."
Annie Kassaiuli stopped in to check her box for paperwork she’s been waiting on.
“My son’s name change. Middle and last name,” Kassaiuli said. It’s something she’s wanted to do for a while.
Residents in Newtok are in the process of moving to Mertarvik because the ground underneath them is unstable. The permafrost is melting, the tundra is deteriorating. It’s all eroding into the Ninglick River, and rapidly. It’s been happening for more than three decades.
This relocation has been complicated from the start, and getting a post office in Mertarvik hasn’t been easy.
Della Carl’s was one of the first families to relocate to Mertarvik.
In the fall and early winter, travel between the two communities is both complicated and expensive. The river is unsafe to cross. There’s too much loose, jumbly ice to go by boat, and the river is entirely unpassable by snowmachine because it isn’t frozen solid yet.
For Carl, getting her mail is now less of a hassle and significantly less expensive.
“We would have to try and find someone coming from Newtok through one of the airlines. And if that wasn’t the case, the postmaster would write down however many pounds of mail that I have and the airlines will charge me,” Carl said. “Like potatoes that I get, they’re like 50 pounds so I would have to pay. If it’s $2 a pound, it’s $100 dollars of potatoes I have to ship over. It’s crazy.”
But now people in Newtok have to find ways to get their mail. And it's not just bills, application forms, and potatoes. Newtok’s water plant needs some repairs and the parts have been slow to arrive.
“I ordered parts before the post office closed. I haven’t received my parts for what, a month now?” said plant operator Alexie Kilongak. He wasn’t sure if the part had arrived and was waiting for someone to bring his packages to Newtok from Mertarik.
To avoid this kind of slow down in the future, Newtok Tribal Administrator Philip Carl said that he told Kilongak to order backups. “In case, you know.”
The water plant is also at risk of freezing, so Phillip Carl has ordered a few extra space heaters for the winter. He’s trying to keep track of when those packages will arrive in Mertarvik so he can have someone deliver them across the river to Newtok.
Rural Alaskans have always struggled with the mail, but the situation in Newtok and Mertarvik is extreme. In 2020, most of the residents in Mertarvik weren’t able to vote in Alaska’s primary election because the state said that it didn’t know people were living there and the Alaska Department of Elections failed to mail their ballots.
However, this isn’t supposed to be a permanent situation. By the end of the year, the Newtok Village Council anticipates that only about 100 people will remain in Newtok. This year, 14 new homes were built in Mertarvik, but the new village still needs at least 14 more houses in order for everyone in Newtok to be able to move.
This reporting was funded by a grant from Alaska Center for Excellence in Journalism.
