For at least a decade, the Quinault nation tried to escape the rise of the Pacific. Time is running out

TAHOLAH, Wash. (AP) — Still water lies beneath the home Sonny Curley shares with his parents and three children on the Quinault Reservation, just steps from the Pacific Ocean on Washington’s Olympic Peninsula. The back deck is rotting and black mold stains the interior walls, leaving the 46-year-old fisherman feeling exhausted if he spends too much time at home.

“You can tell your body isn’t feeling well; it’s a fight,” said Curley, standing in the family’s kitchen. “You’re using your energy to fight something that shouldn’t be there.”

These are the effects of an ocean that has come closer and closer since Curley’s parents bought their home about 15 years ago in Taholah, the tribe’s largest village, where the Quinault River flows into the Pacific. He estimates the ocean was about 30 feet away at that time. Now waves sometimes reach a 15-foot seawall, and the family has been forced to evacuate three times in the past four years as Curley’s 84-year-old mother battles advancing dementia.

“It’s scary,” said Hannah Curley, Sonny’s sister, who lives three blocks away and did not have to evacuate. “On nights when it’s really stormy, I’ll check on them a few times during the night, and then I’ll put cameras out too, so we can see if it’s getting really bad.”

Faced with rising sea levels and increasing flooding, the Quinault Indian Nation has spent at least a decade working to relocate hundreds of residents and civic buildings in Taholah to higher ground. There is also the threat of an earthquake and tsunami from a major offshore fault line. But this relocation depends on money, and a patchwork of federal and state subsidies fell far short of the estimated more than $400 million needed.

“Where do we go if the house reaches a state where it is not habitable?” Sonny Curley wondered. “Where will my parents go and where will my children go?”

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EDITOR’S NOTE: This is part of a series on how indigenous tribes and communities are dealing with and combating climate change.

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In the US, tribes suffer some of the more severe impacts of human-caused climate change but typically have fewer resources to respond. Along the coast, where federal report predicted that seas will rise 0.25 to 0.3 meters (10 to 12 inches) by 2050, the tribes have taken important steps toward relocation. These include the Shoalwater Bay Indian Tribe, just 90 miles south of Quinault, and the village of Newtok on Alaska’s west coast.

“When you move people to marginal lands and marginalize them in society, you add to that climate change… they are vulnerable to climate,” said Michael Spencer, who researches and teaches about social work and public health among Indigenous people. . people at the University of Washington.

The Quinault, historically known as skilled fishermen and hunters who traveled the waters for trade, ceded millions of acres to the U.S. government more than 150 years ago in exchange for a reservation of about 200,000 acres on the coast. The tribe was promised peace and a permanent home, tribal leadership said. But now a key section is under threat.

Taholah is close to the ocean and rests on estuarine soils and landfills that are more easily infiltrated by salt water. With average tidal ranges of 9 feet, sea level rise that is expected to accelerate in the coming years will have a significant impact, said John Callahan, a NOAA climate scientist.

Quinault made flood-related disaster declarations 26 times between 1957 and 2022, and they have become more frequent. About a quarter have occurred since 2016, despite the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers raising the seawall by about 4 feet in 2014.

The floods left some homes infested with mold and destroyed several outbuildings. The worst is likely to come: Taholah is expected to see a sea level rise of 1 to 2.6 feet by the year 2100, according to a 2018 report. Washington Coastal Resilience Project report.

“We saw the ocean pass over the berm and even hit and even climb onto the roofs of the houses. In my 50-something years, I have never seen anything like this,” said Quinault President Guy Capoeman.

The tribe of more than 3,000 members has an economy fueled by the timber industry, its seafood store and a beach resort and casino. About a quarter of the population lives below the poverty line, according to Census data.

The tribe published a relocation plan in 2017, and designed 59 residential lots with sidewalks, street signs and fire hydrants on a site about a half-mile away and 40 feet above sea level. Around 300 housing units are planned. They have already moved their Generations building, which includes programs for seniors, Head Start and day care.

The new village is planned as a climate-resilient space, with a farm to provide food if it is cut off during a disaster and solar and biomass energy.

But progress has been slow. More than half of the $25 million awarded by the Department of the Interior – most of it planned for building the first homes – was held back for a long process of submitting planning and design documents.

“I think when you get the funds, you think, ‘Let’s get started. We have the money, we are ready to do this. Let’s move forward,” said Alyssa Johnston, developer of the relocation project. “But after a few months in this position, you learn that there is a lot more to getting the financing than that.”

They got $12 million through Washington state’s Climate Pledge Act, but most of it will go toward relocating another Quinault village, Queets, which also faces flooding issues. A small amount has been set aside to study the decline of salmon due to melting glaciers and rising river temperatures. The tribe relies on fish for everything from food to jobs to cultural traditions.

In 2020, Quinault took out an $8 million loan for the Generations building and continued to seek additional financing. But last year the tribe was rejected from two major federal grants.

Tribal leaders say no one will be forced to move and some residents don’t want to do so.

From his small home perched 18 feet off the ground, James DeLaCruz Sr. has watched the landscape change over the past 30 years. He once planned to build a beach seating area outside his door, but it is no longer wide enough.

Still, DeLaCruz, 75, calls the ocean her “happy place,” finding comfort in the sound of the waves. He even likes storms.

“Any day the earth could split there; a big wave. If this is our calling, this is our calling. So I don’t worry about that,” he said. “I have lived near the sea for 75 years. I’m still here.”

And he worries about the cost. The same goes for the Curley family, with the parents afraid of starting over with a new mortgage long after they retire. They would be doing this without Sonny’s help; declining salmon numbers have drastically reduced his income and he recently had to stop contributing to payments.

But Sonny and Hannah know it’s time to go.

“It’s kind of a love-hate relationship that we all have in this area because we are a people of the water, of the ocean, of the river,” Hannah Curley said.

“But on the other hand, the ocean has a mind of its own and you can’t change things.”

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