Quinault tribal village on Washington coast will relocate due to flooding

The small village of Taholah was built more than a century ago on the Quinault Indian Reservation, where the ocean meets the Quinault River on the northern Washington coast. The village has been flooded more and more often over the years due to a changing climate. It’s far from the only community to be affected by rising oceans and temperature changes, but it’s one of the first to actually move because of it. The Tribal Council made the decision in 2017 and has been working ever since to ensure the smoothest transition possible for the 800 people who live there. The first residents are expected to be moved into their new homes in the fall. Mark Trahant, editor-at-large at ICT, wrote a three-part story about this move. He joins us to share the details about Taholah and how its story reflects a larger story about climate change adaptation.

Note: The following transcript was created by a computer and edited by a volunteer.

Dave Miller: This is Think Out Loud on OPB, I’m Dave Miller. The small village of Taholah on the Quinault Indian Reservation sits where the Quinault River meets the Pacific on the Northern Washington coast. It was built more than a century ago. It’s not going to survive another 100 years. Rising sea levels and huge storm surges have led to frequent flooding in recent years. Taholah is not the only community to be affected by climate change, but it could be one of the first in the country to actually move because of it. The Tribal Council made the decision in 2017 to move the town to higher ground. That work is now underway. Mark Trahant is the editor at large for ICT. He recently wrote a three-part story about this move and he joins us now to talk about it. Mark, welcome to the show.

Mark Trahant: Thank you so much. I’m glad to be here.

Miller: It’s great to have you on. Can you give us a sense for the extent of the flooding at Taholah?

Trahant: The village itself is located in lowlands and you can see – it’s not just storm surge, but even King tides – how that regular flooding just takes it higher and higher every year. And even the houses that didn’t get flooded out permanently, are now in a position where you have black mold and other problems that make it really tough for people who live there.

Miller: How frequent is this, whether you’re talking about a severe storm or just a king tide, a really large tide?

Trahant: You’re basically talking about significant flooding, right now every year or two. But it’s continuing to increase both in duration and impact.

Miller: So what options did the Quinault Indian Nation have besides moving to higher ground?

Trahant: Well, and this is a great point, because right now we’re at a point at a time when so much of our discussion about climate change looks at mitigation: driving EV’s, reducing impact in that way. But in many communities, the conversation has moved beyond that to adaptation. And in a community like Taholah, you really only have two choices: You can build higher seawalls, or you can move the village. After, they did do a higher sea wall, [but] that’s not been effective. Now they’re at the point of really long term planning for what the next community ought to look like. They’ve got the streets all down, they’ve got the infrastructure built and they’re just starting now to put in the houses.

Miller: I want to play some tape from one of the people that you talked to for your reporting. I mentioned this is print, but also three different video stories. We’re gonna hear Fawn Sharp, a former president of the Quinault Indian Nation, also a former president of the National Congress of American Indians.

Fawn Sharp [recording]: We are at this place in time where the world is on a trajectory that can’t go any further. It’s not sustainable. And so we’re starting to witness everything collapse around us. We’re seeing ecosystems collapse, we’re seeing political systems collapse. And as everything around us collapses, those things that we stand on, to be true, to be timeless, we are rising.

Miller: I was interested to learn that among some of the tribal leaders that you talked to, they see moving the village not as a break from tribal traditions from the past, but as a part of it. What did you hear?

Trahant: When you think about that, I mean, they describe themselves as a fishing people, and in fishing times, they would move around to where the fish were, same with hunting. And this is a slower version of that, where they’re moving a village to be more protected but still accessing the traditional natural food that they rely on.

Miller: Still, not everybody in the village is on board with this move. What kind of pushback have you heard about?

Trahant: The big one is … imagine if you paid off your house and then the thought of having, one, to move, but two, then to come up with another mortgage or other financial burden when this is really not your fault, that the world around you is changing, you’re not. And so it’s a burden on people, one that they’re really having to think through – especially an elder, who may have a house that [has] a net value [of] $50,000 when the house they’re gonna move into is $300,000. Who pays for that difference and how fast?

Miller: Are there any obvious answers to those questions right now?

Trahant: No, but the amazing thing to me is that the Quinault Nation is so far ahead of other communities, you mentioned in the country, [but] it’s really globally. There are so many places around the country and the world that have to make this kind of choice coming up, and the planning has just not started. And a good example of that, there’s a report by the National Resources Defense Council and they looked at flooding from FEMA maps. In those regions where there is significant regular recurring flooding, they still haven’t even changed the zoning laws. So after a flood, people can build and have the same impact as before.

One of the things that has to happen, both globally and locally, is to have communities take a look at what’s sustainable in terms of water and flooding, and how to change zoning laws and other rules to accommodate for that.

Miller: You gave us the short version of this. But I’d like to hear a little bit more. What has the Nation already done in terms of this move?

Trahant: They’ve been planning this for some time and they wanted to be very strategic about it, and to think through. I think as a metaphor, they picked the most important thing was their elders and their youth. So the very first construction of a new facility in the new village on higher ground is an elders and youth center. And it’s connected so that the elders and youth can have daycare, basically, can have interchanges through the day, or shared lunches or that sort of thing. The next wave will be elders housing, where they’ll move some people up and try to accommodate that.

I think it’s worth mentioning at this point that the price tag, they have several grants, over $100 million worth, but the price tag is going to be closer to $450 million. So it’s gonna be extraordinarily expensive. And that’s one of the things that caught our attention as we drove up the coast, is you look at all of these communities that are not doing this kind of planning at this point and how expensive are their moves gonna be, in addition to the ones we’re seeing now.

Miller: So they’ve gotten grants so far for something like $100 million but the price tag could be four or five times that?

Trahant: Exactly.

Miller: Where might the rest of that money come from?

Trahant: Well, that’s one of the things we’re working on now. I think the federal government certainly will be a big part of it. State government might have to be a part of it. Foundations might be a part of it. It’s gonna be a combination of things. Insurance companies could be a part of it, really, because they have a stake in this as well. The financing is something that’s yet to be worked out though.

Miller: As enormous as it is and as many question marks as there are, in terms of how even this one move is going to be funded, can you put this in the bigger perspective? I mean, what are the estimates for the overall scale of the cost of climate change, just when it comes to housing or residences?

Trahant: Yeah, the economists actually ran the numbers on this, and they said it’s one in 10 houses, globally, and they put a price tag on it of … I’m trying to think off the top of my head … I think it’s $1.7 trillion.

Miller: An astounding number that is so big as to be the kind of number that’s hard to even know what to do with that. But that’s, I guess, another way to talk about climate change – so enormous [that] sometimes it’s hard to even know where to begin as a species.

Trahant: In the NRDC report, one of the things they’ve already found, and this is with the FEMA data, is that most of the houses that they’re now talking about people relocating from, have been flooded multiple times. So it’s almost a combination of planning and exasperation.

Miller: So what is the possible timeline for this one village? I mean, how long before this whole village might be above flood level and in a new place?

Trahant: I think a lot depends on the planning process. Our goal in reporting this story is to not just do this once, but we’ve committed to going back every year for the next five years. So at least through that period, we’ll get a longer horizon. It’s not going to be a fast process unless there’s a disaster. And this is true across the board. There are two ways to do this kind of move. One is to be thoughtful and deliberate, the other is to try to do it after a crisis. And I think the leaders at Quinault are hoping to do this without a crisis.

Miller: And is that intergenerational center, which you described earlier, for the youngest and the oldest members of the community, already up and running?

Trahant: It is and it’s also now the emergency center, so that if there is a tsunami or other significant tidal event, they can meet there and use it to coordinate rescue operations. And they’ve got that as part of their planning.

Miller: I want to listen to one more clip from somebody you talked to. This is Bryan Newland, the assistant secretary for Indian Affairs at the Interior Department, the US Department of Interior.

Bryan Newland [recording]: We provided funding to Quinault as one of three communities that are going to serve as pilot projects on community-driven relocation. I was really impressed by the foresight in their planning. Not only are they taking the lead here in the United States, they are really serving as leaders in this effort for the world.

Miller: Mark, how might the Quinault Nation’s work here be a model?

Trahant: Well, I have to correct myself pretty quick, first, before I start. In listening to Bryan, I realized that the $100 million figure that I cited earlier is all three tribes, not just Quinault. Theirs is about $25 million so far, that they’ve raised out of the $500 million. So it’s even more daunting in that sense.

I think, in the big picture, it’s starting to have a conversation. When you look across the board, so many communities are afraid to say, “what does this mean and how are we going to adapt to it?” And it could be as little as seawalls. But it really can also boil down to what kind of physical changes are going to happen in the land, whether it’s wildfires, whether it’s other activities that just make it impossible to live where we think we’ve always lived.

Miller: I’m curious about governance. I mean, did the fact that this is a relatively small sovereign nation, Indigenous Nation, make it easier, in terms of the decision to come together and say, “we are going to move,” as opposed to, say, a spread out community on the coast of Florida, that maybe is across a couple of different jurisdictions or counties? I’m just curious if there are important lessons in the form of government that we’re talking about, and the level of sovereignty.

Trahant: I think that definitely plays into it because it is a sovereign island that can make this decision on its own, although it’s gonna need to be partners with a lot of other governments to make it happen. So it’s not as simple in that sense. So many communities are divided that there’s just not a way to have a conversation across boundaries, and I think that’s gonna be a very important thing as we go forward, is how we get to that point where we can talk about some of the solutions in a way that makes sense for everybody. And not everybody is always gonna agree as you’re seeing right here from this small village.

Miller: Mark Trahant, thanks very much. I look forward to your future reporting on this move. Thank you.

Trahant: You bet.

Miller: Mark Trahant is editor-at-large at ICT.  He joined us to talk about the Quinault Indian Reservation, which is working to move its flood threatened village of Taholah in Northern Washington to higher ground.

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