Feed It to the Ocean: The Federal Approach to Decommissioning in Alaska Native Climate Adaptation Projects

This Note calls on the Council on Environmental Quality (CEQ) to issue guidance clarifying that concurrent decommissioning is an in-scope “connected action” under the National Environmental Policy Act for relocation, managed retreat, and protect-in-place projects aimed at replacing infrastructure in environmentally threatened Alaska Native communities. In 2018, the Denali Commission completed the Final Environmental Impact Statement for Alaska’s first community-driven village relocation of the millennium, facilitating construction of essential infrastructure at Mertarvik, the relocation site for the village of Newtok. However, the Denali Commission chose to exclude a full-scale decommissioning plan for Newtok’s existing infrastructure. Today, more than seventy-three Alaska Native villages face unprecedented severe threats from flooding, erosion, permafrost degradation, and the combined effects of each. The Denali Commission’s segmented approach to decommissioning exposed critical gaps in interagency coordination, tribal consultation, and funding priorities. It set a dangerous precedent for similar at-risk communities facing toxic pollution of water and subsistence resources. As tribal organizations and federal agencies work to protect these communities from environmental threats and historic inequities, CEQ guidance on decommissioning is more pressing now than ever.