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https://news.yahoo.com/biden-adminis...183928022.html

Biden administration commits millions of dollars to relocate Native tribes threatened by climate change

Ben Adler·Senior Editor
Wed, November 30, 2022 at 12:39 PM


The Biden administration announced Wednesday a $135 million commitment to helping to relocate Native American tribes whose homes are threatened by the effects of climate change. Using money from the 2021 bipartisan infrastructure law, the voluntary community-driven relocation program, led by the Department of the Interior, will assist 11 tribes with adapting to climate change — or, when necessary, moving their communities altogether.

“As all of you know, there are tribal communities that are at risk of being washed away, washed away by superstorms, rising sea levels and wildfires raging,” President Biden said at the White House on Wednesday, speaking at his administration’s first Tribal Nations Summit, with which the announcement was timed to coincide. “It’s devastating.”

Biden said the funds will be used “to move, in some cases, their entire communities back to safer ground.”
President Biden speaks at the Tribal Nations Summit.
President Biden speaks Wednesday at the Tribal Nations Summit at the Department of the Interior. (Patrick Semansky/AP)

Three coastal tribes that already are contending with flooding from rising sea levels and stronger storms are receiving grants to relocate. In Alaska, the Newtok Village and the Native Village of Napakiak, along with the Quinault Indian Nation in Washington state, are each receiving $25 million to help move their homes and businesses to higher ground.

Newtok Village, on the Ninglick River, is suffering from 70 feet per year of coastal erosion due to stronger storms and thawing permafrost. Erosion studies have found no cost-effective remedy. The new site of the village will be 9 miles away.

Napakiak is on the banks of the Kuskokwim River, which flows into the Bering Sea. It is losing 25 to 50 feet of land each year to erosion, and much of its critical infrastructure will be destroyed by the end of this decade. The village has already developed relocation plans but hasn’t been able to implement them due to a lack of funds.

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