Residents of a coastal village in Alaska being threatened by rising sea levels and thawing permafrost voted Tuesday on whether they should relocate to a new area.
Shishmaref, Alaska, is home to 650 people, mostly members of the Inupiat Inuit tribe. The city clerk said the results will be announced Wednesday, and if the vote is in favor of leaving, the town's new location will be decided at a later town meeting. It's estimated it would cost $180 million for the village to move. Shishmaref is built on a barrier island north of the Bering Strait, and once was protected by sea ice, which is now melting and putting the village in danger; sea walls and barricades aren't doing much to keep the waves at bay, The Guardian reports.
In 2015, Arctic youth ambassador Esau Sinnok, a native of Shishmaref, wrote that over the past 35 years, the village has lost 2,500 to 3,000 feet of land to coastal erosion. He also said that in the last 15 years, his family has had to move to 13 different houses, moving from one end of the island to the other, in order to avoid the rising water. In addition to Shishmaref, the U.S. Government Accountability Office found 30 other villages are facing "imminent threats" from flooding and coastal erosion.
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