Alaska declines to move Kuskokwim villages into its larger Merbok tier

The villages Alaska itself added to its Typhoon Merbok damage list will stay on the smaller side of a $38.5 million federal recovery grant, under a revised plan the state has put out for public comment.

The grant is split by federal rule. At least 80 percent has to go to the three regions the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development designated as most impacted after the 2022 storm, covering the Bering Strait and Lower Yukon coast. No more than 20 percent, about $6.2 million, can go to the three regions the state added on its own, including the Lower Kuskokwim delta and the Pribilofs.

Tribal advocates asked the state to move some Lower Kuskokwim villages across that line. The Alaska Institute for Justice, an Anchorage legal group working with tribes in the region, wrote last year of "communities in the Lower Kuskokwim Area that suffered devastating impacts to housing infrastructure from this storm." The state said then it would use this year's outreach to evaluate the request and, "if able to justify," ask HUD to change the designations.

The revised plan is the state's answer, and it's no. The outreach "provided insufficient data to support a request," the amendment says. The state's own survey found the gap real: 75 percent of communities in the HUD-designated regions reported high-severity damage, against 29 percent of those in the state-added regions. There is political support for moving the line, the state acknowledges, but "reported storm intensity and level of damage from Typhoon Merbok was significantly greater in the HUD-identified MID areas." HUD allows such a request. Alaska isn't making one.

One line in the budget stands out against that $6.2 million. Administration and planning together take $7.7 million, more than the entire amount that can be spent in the state-added villages.

The grant also sends nothing to rebuild infrastructure, despite $63 million in unmet infrastructure need, most of the plan's total. The state points to a separate pot: FEMA and the state approved nearly $109 million in 2024 to rebuild damaged infrastructure and public buildings. But nearly four years after the storm, only about 15 percent of FEMA's rebuild money had actually been paid out, Alaska News has reported. The plan calls its own estimate of remaining need a likely underestimate.

The plan makes one more change: the state will now pick which communities get invited to apply for mitigation money, rather than taking open applications, citing limited funds. The pot stays at about $5 million, but the state expects to make more, smaller awards.

Comment is open through Oct. 9. The only hearing is a Zoom webinar Sept. 24, hosted by the consulting firm that wrote the plan under an $800,000 state contract.