Shoalwater Bay Tribal Nation Uses GIS to Map and Communicate Relocation Strategy for Funding

Severe coastal erosion has left the Shoalwater Bay Tribal Nation with few options. The loss of up to 130 ft. of land a year is threatening dwellings and lives, and interventions such as the building of berms are having little to no effect. Mass relocation is the only real long-term solution, and the use of geographic information system (GIS) technology is proving central to the effort to access funding and technical support. The Shoalwater Bay, descendants of the Chinook, Lower Chehalis, and Quinault, are a small coastal Tribe. Their reservation, a little over a square mile, is located in Tokeland (which is itself named after a former chief of the Tribe) in Washington state. The reservation has existed since 1866, when an original 355-acre area of land was set aside by Presidential Order for “miscellaneous Indian purposes”. However, from the start, there have been concerns. “Since 1881, the Department of Ecology and other organizations have monitored and recorded the rate of erosion at Cape Shoalwater,” said Quintin Swanson, planning director and chairman-elect for the Tribe. “Up to 1999, we had lost 2.1 miles of land.” No single factor has been identified as the cause of the erosion problem. Possibilities include a jetty at the mouth of the Columbia River and offshore dredging of Willapa Bay, causing sediment migration to the area to be disrupted. Climate change may also be a factor; Swanson notes that with increased carbon emissions, the rate of sea level rise is increasing exponentially.  It is estimated that with 2 ft. of sea level rise—the amount the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration projects to happen by the end of this century—Tokeland will be entirely underwater.

On three occasions, the State of Washington has intervened, working with the US Army Corps of Engineers to erect berms. The first, in 2012, washed away fairly quickly. Three have been built in total, and although research into the best rock type to use to counter the area’s unique wave patterns has resulted in the latest lasting longer, a protect-in-place approach is regarded as being “like putting a Band-Aid on a shotgun blast,” according to Swanson. The most obvious solution is to migrate the Tribe to higher ground, but it has been calculated that more than $400 million is needed to achieve this. Using funding primarily from gaming machine leasing, around 5,000 acres of land have been acquired. Geographical and geological studies by Red Plains Professional consultancy enabled identification of the upland sites. Whereas many present dwellings are only 12 ft. above sea level, the new locations—at 300–400 ft. elevation—offer appreciably greater solid ground. However, the insecurity of gaming machine leasing as a funding source means that further land purchases have been halted until more dependable financial support can be established.

The Tribe has been engaged with Red Plains Professional since 2008, and GIS has been at the forefront of their efforts to communicate Shoalwater Bay’s dire predicament—both internally and to others. “GIS enables us to put things into a digestible format and help people understand,” said Swanson. “Throwing numbers and statistics at people is usually not perceived well. Red Plains Professional has been instrumental in helping to convey the message.”
 

The consultancy specializes in land-use development planning and provides competency in design and GIS services. That enabled them to bring together different file formats into a common application, which according to Ken Picard, assistant planning director and GIS specialist at Red Plains Professional, adds a “functional, live element which is constantly updatable, whether for internal use or for presentations.” Additionally, Picard and the Tribe have developed stories with ArcGIS StoryMaps to better communicate their message.  “These [stories created with ArcGIS StoryMaps] reinforce that you can present charts, tables, and data to people and talk your head off, but you gain a better understanding if you use the swipe tool and a map and can say, ‘This is where the water is and this is where it’s not,’” said Picard. “You can really drive the point home visually.”
 

Starting in 2012, there was an initial land-use plan for the relocation, but that plan has now been superseded with a new strategy.  While the upland development planning was evolving, Red Plains worked with the Tribe to design and develop a tsunami emergency access road and building starting in 2014 with the structure being completed in the summer of 2017.  In 2018, based on the new land purchases, Red Plains Professional and the Tribe started to re-envision the upland land development and the phases in which it would happen. 

“Some of the earlier project phases involved tearing the tops off mountains and incredible amounts of infill,” said Picard. “Within the Tribe, we’ve used GIS to show how, with the land acquisitions, newer ideas make better sense. Converting Civil 3D into ArcGIS and putting the information into presentations enabled people to see what’s available and decide on options such as housing densities and layouts.” Throughout the process, GIS has been critical to the evolution. Picard continued, “Because we could readily show what worked better and required less effort, people learned not to maintain too much ownership of older thinking.”

The Tribe now has access to a comprehensive online database, with information and datasets stretching back to 2008 on land purchases, various projects, elements of the upland relocation plan, and how these have evolved over time. The data comes from numerous sources, with emphasis, shares Picard, on gaining the most bang for the buck while providing common baselines for all stakeholders. Starting offshore, bathymetric data is used to understand the coastal area and to gauge how water patterns and underwater channels might impact efforts to retain beaches. Other information is gathered from contractors and consultants, and a lot of the basemap data has come from aerial surveys conducted by private companies. The Tribe is keen to utilize drones to collect topography and elevation data, and while their Natural Resources Department has achieved Part 107 certification, so far none of the drones they operate have lidar or real-time kinematic (RTK) capabilities. This is something that the Tribe seeks to change.

Much of the location information has been created using a combination of GPS and ArcGIS Field Maps, with the final data assembled in ArcGIS Pro. On-site crews have been collecting data on culverts and other drainage features, along with other information critical for the site plans. The geotechnical reports are designed in AutoCAD and then converted into ArcGIS-compatible files. This facilitates better analyses of slope stability and site planning.  Additionally, Red Plains Professional is working with the Shoalwater Bay Tribe on how to gain more current lidar information. All of this data is designed to develop the optimal site plan for the proposed developments, where it is safest—and best—to build properties and roadways, for instance.

The Tribe has, so far, amassed around 10 percent of the funding they need to relocate, and the number of sources tapped thus far reinforces the complexity of the task facing grant writer Cynthia Toop. Money to either sustain the planning effort or directly support pending building work has come from USDOT’s Rebuilding American Infrastructure with Sustainability and Equity (RAISE) and Thriving Communities programs, the Economic Development Administration, the Indian Department of Energy, the Federal Emergency Management Agency’s Building Resilient Infrastructure and Communities program, Washington State’s Department of Commerce, and Congress. Maps are vital to the funding effort. “I tend to use as many as I can to communicate our story to the granting agencies,” said Toop. “They do make a difference. For instance, our first RAISE application was unsuccessful, but the use of maps and live-time pictures meant we were successful the second time round.” GIS, she shares, has been instrumental in the effort to gain new money from elsewhere, and will be a necessary component of future development work. “The use of imagery and GIS has been the single most important factor in driving various agencies’ participation in what we’re doing,” Toop continued. “We recently had over 40 people come to the Tribe from different agencies to view all of the presentations and the work being done, to tour the lands and see the whole ball of wax to that point. An event like that helps understanding and reduces conflict. The build-up to it involved agency-by-agency presentations, but now they’re all talking to each other and working together to address this monumental project as a team.”
 

All of this must be done in an environment where openness is not always prized. “Grant funding pits people against each other when competing for resources,” said Swanson. “That’s the elephant in the room. It makes people reluctant to share more openly.” That has made learning from other Tribes who have relocated more difficult, although there are exceptions. As an example, he points to the plan for Taholah, an unincorporated village within the nearby Quinault Indian Reservation. “That contains a healthy amount of GIS information and shows how you can retain data sovereignty but also share and help those in similar circumstances,” Swanson continued. The Shoalwater Bay’s willingness to be open has seen it present at numerous events, including those hosted by the Bureau Indian Affairs’ Branch of Tribal Climate Resilience, and the National Transportation in Indian Country Conference. GIS has helped put the Shoalwater Bay Tribe—a small, remote nation—on the map and given them a voice, Swanson emphasized. Others would seem to agree, as at a federal level, there is interest in making their efforts a model for other Tribes’ future efforts.