A jumble of shipping containers hold all that remains of the demolished public school in Newtok, Alaska, where on a recent visit, a few stray dogs and a lone ermine prowled among the ruins.

Late in 2024, the final residents of this sinking village near the Bering Sea left behind the waterlogged tundra of their former home, part of a fraught, federally funded effort to resettle communities threatened by climate change.

Nearly 300 people from Newtok have moved 9 miles across the Ninglick River to a new village known as Mertarvik, but much of the infrastructure there is already failing. Residents lack running water, use 5-gallon buckets as toilets, and must contend with intermittent electricity and deteriorating homes that expose them to the region’s fierce weather.

Newtok’s relocation was supposed to provide a model for dozens of Alaskan communities that will need to move in the coming decades. Instead, those who’ve worked on the effort say that what happened in Newtok demonstrates the federal government’s failure to oversee the complex project and understand communities’ unique cultural needs. It also highlights how ill-prepared the United States is to respond to the way climate change is making some places uninhabitable, according to an investigation by The Washington Post, ProPublica, and KYUK Public Media in Bethel, Alaska.