Stevens pushing for erosion funding

Tue, December 4, 2007
Posted in Alaska News, Top Stories

Following recent meetings in Anchorage about how to tackle erosion caused by climate change, Senator Ted Stevens is pressing the Army Corps of Engineers and the White House Office of Management and Budget to be more open to long-term funding.

Joel Southern, APRN - Washington, DC

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One Comment to “Stevens pushing for erosion funding”

mpb on December 4, 2007 at 10:01 pm

More open mindedness by the Corps is important. But I think it is more important that an agency used to comprehensive environmental analysis be in charge, not the same USACE in charge of the Mississippi River Delta.

Yes, a focus on problem solving is needed, but an integrated focus (biocultural anthropology, human ecology). Engineers as a whole do their work well, but often fall down precisely when it comes to defining the correct problem.

Yes, no one would think of building a levee without an engineer, but why are we doing relocation, reconstruction of communities — in Alaska and Louisiana / Mississippi — without human scientists / human ecologists?

There is a federal agency already tasked with community conservation and development, USDA NRCS Resource Conservation & Development program, which should also be involved. However, it has not had the needed pressure (and budget support) to fully meet its Congressional mandate to assist rural communities (especially non-farming or indigenous communities).

Ultimately, the community is the one stuck trying to coordinate all the agencies and choose among the proffered options on its own (not of course the options that aren’t offered and not ones the community itself had no chance to develop). The Feds and some states provide funding for independent technical expertise hired by communities for hazardous waste cleanup. Something like this should also be available to those of the Unorganized Borough. (maybe restore the old Office of Technology Assessment?)

Sen Stevens is quite right to point out the deficiencies in foresight of the COE. This is why they should not be in charge. I am not sure the Denali Commission has the existing structure and experience to coordinate either, except as they have done (in coordinating funding for some existing infrastructure). The environment and erosion problems pre-date the Denali Commission. Neither the Corps nor the Denali Commission nor the state’s homeland security division has had a history of co-equal rural community involvement.

Discussions of environmental disasters have focussed on short-term technical issues and narrow aspects of social systems, not comprehensively on people nor on issues of human relations. Policy has been planned with a bias towards rosy pictures of success. The missing integrated human systems input is needed to balance such images and to provide accurate information for informed decisions to be made.

I hope Sen Stevens continues to push for the best available thought to apply to environmental change in Alaska (and Hawai’i and Guam and American Samoa and other “small island developing states”) The Corps needs to strengthen itself in its best responsibility for Alaska. But coordinating the strategic and immediate adaptation to environmental change in Alaska is not in its, or our, best skills or interests.