The state’s Coastal Resources Commission has unanimously adopted a proposed permanent rule to protect the tallest active sand dune on America’s eastern sea board from, among other things, sand mining.
During their quarterly meeting Thursday morning in Ocean Isle Beach, commissioners unanimously approved a permanent rule identifying Jockey’s Ridge as a unique geologic feature area of environmental concern, or AEC, a designation that has received overwhelming public support.
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The rule will once again go before the N.C. Rules Review Commission, which removed the AEC designation in early October 2023 after its members questioned whether the massive dune is a unique geological formation.
The coastal commission, also referred to as the CRC, adopted more than a dozen emergency and temporary rules after the Rules Review Commission returned 30 longstanding rules to the Department of Environmental Quality’s Division of Coastal Management.
Those rules were also removed from the N.C. Administrative Code by state Codifier of Rules Ashley Berger Snyder. Snyder is the daughter of North Carolina Senate Pro Tem Phil Berger, R-Rockingham and Guilford.
She was later named along with the rules commission in a lawsuit brought by the coastal commission and Department of Environmental Quality. That case is still pending in Wake County Superior Court.
Until last fall, when the Rules Review Commission objected to a rule, the agency that submitted the rule had to request the rule be returned to make changes. If an agency did not make that request, the the objectim would be merely noted in the rule and that rule would remain in the Administrative Code.
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But the state budget adopted Oct. 3, 2023 included language that gives the rules commission authority to send rules it objects to back to agencies.
Two days after that budget went into effect, the Rules Review Commission voted in a special called meeting to return 30 of 132 rules the CRC submitted for review.
The CRC adopted 16 emergency rules that went into effect Jan. 3. Those rules expired May 13 when the rules commission objected to them.
Jockey’s Ridge, which is within Jockey’s Ridge State Park in Nags Head, was first designated as a unique geologic feature AEC in 1984. The CRC has, by the administrative rules, regulated development activities in and around the state park’s boundaries since that time.
The proposed permanent rule is largely identical to the original 1984 standards, according to coastal management officials.
The proposed rule mandates that the removal of more than 10 cubic yards of sand per year from Jockey’s Ridge will require a Coastal Area Management Act, or CAMA, permit.
The rule also specifies that any sand that is removed must be placed within the state park and that development within the AEC “shall not alter the movement of sand” unless necessary for road maintenance, accessways, lawns, residential or commercial structures, gardens, parking areas, or allowed by the Jockey’s Ridge State Park Management Plan.
