Pamlico Sound ferry routes linking the two mainland terminals and Ocracoke Village will remain on its spring schedule of six daily departures until a dredging project planned for the end of this month is complete.
North Carolina Department of Transportation’s Ferry Division officials said Tuesday that the Army Corps of Engineers had scheduled the emergency project because of shoaling in the Bigfoot Slough ferry channel near the village’s Silver Lake Harbor.
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“Our boats are ready, our crews are ready, but the Bigfoot Slough channel is too shallow and narrow to operate our largest ferries safely there right now,” Ferry Division Director Jed Dixon said in a release.
The Corps is responsible for maintaining the channel and has scheduled the emergency dredging project to begin in late May. Weather permitting, the project is expected to take about a week to complete, according to NCDOT.
Once the channel is considered safe, both the Cedar Island-Ocracoke and Swan Quarter-Ocracoke routes will expand from their spring schedules of six daily departures to their summer schedules of eight daily departures.
Officials had initially planned to adopt the expanded summer schedules May 20.
For real-time text or email updates on weather or mechanical delays, sign up for the Ferry Information Notification System at www.ncdot.gov/fins.
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