The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers representatives met to “determine a path forward” with Dare County officials a week after all five of the county’s permits were suspended for dredging deeper and wider channels than allowed.
The Corps Wilmington District on Sept. 18 suspended the permits authorizing work in Oregon and Hatteras inlets because of a third recorded instance of noncompliance.
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Data from the National Dredging Quality Management Program, which monitors operations and efficiency through sensors placed on dredges, between September 2023 and June 2024 “shows that work was unnecessarily conducted by dredging well outside the authorized widths and depths of the navigation channels,” the Corps said.
Related: Corps suspends Dare dredge permits for noncompliance
Dare County Commissioner Steve House, who is chairman of the Oregon Inlet Task Force, Dare County Manager Bobby Outten and the county’s consulting engineers met with Corps representatives in Wilmington Wednesday, according to county officials.
The Oregon Inlet Task Force advises Dare County commissioners, and serves as the liaison between the county and the federal agencies involved in the continual maintenance of Oregon Inlet. The Oregon Inlet Task Force is responsible for overseeing the public-private partnership dredge, the Miss Katie, built and owned by the Greenville-based EJE Dredging Service.
The first two notices were issued April 2023 and August 2023. “The suspension is necessary due to the continued disregard of permit conditions and failure of implementing any corrective actions,” the Corps said in a release last week.
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Corps officials said the meeting was to discuss and define responsibilities, establish a compliance protocol and work toward reauthorizing the five suspended permits.
At the meeting, it was agreed that the Corps will provide data that was previously not available to the county or the contractor so that all parties are working from and can reference the same information, and clarification for some of the ambiguities in the permits.
Dare County staff and engineering consultants are to review the newly available dredging data to ensure compliance by the county’s dredging contractor, according to the county.
“We are committed to ensuring that our contractor’s dredging efforts are in compliance with the county’s permits,” Outten said in a statement. “We very much appreciate the efforts of the Corps of Engineers to resolve this issue. Now that we will all have access to and can work from the same data, this will help ensure the contractor follows all permitting terms.”
Corps officials said that the meeting was productive, and believe that a path forward has been agreed upon that will enable work to resume.
“It was determined that each permit will be addressed and modified sequentially, in an order prioritized by Dare County. Each modified permit will list a specific set of required conditions that must be met to achieve compliance. Conditions will include comprehensive surveys that will illustrate location and volume of material to be dredged,” Corps said.
The Corps must ensure work conducted in navigable waters of the U.S. does not violate section 10 of the Rivers and Harbors Act 1899 or the Clean Water Act.
“Once the County provides us with their priority dredging action and requisite survey data illustrating a dredging requirement, we will be able to reactivate their first permit in a matter of days. The timing of reactivating the remaining permits will depend on Dare County’s ability to demonstrate compliance following the reactivation of their first prioritized permit,” the Corps said.
