If the Coastal Resources Commission Science Panel’s draft report to the state last week was a master class in explaining ocean beach erosion processes along the state’s 320-mile Atlantic Coastline, there may have been some state legislators who were wishing they could cut class.
Lawmakers hustled to get a proposed bill lifting a four-decade ban on oceanfront hardened structures moved to the Senate Appropriations Committee days before Science Panel Chair Dr. Laura Moore, a University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill professor in the Department of Earth, Marine and Environmental Sciences, presented the 47-page draft, “Report on the Effects of Hard Structures on Sandy, Open-Ocean Coastlines,” to the commission during its regular meeting Thursday in New Bern.
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Senate Bill 1009, which would lift the ban on hardened structures such as breakwaters, bulkheads, seawalls, jetties, revetments, and terminal groins, was advanced by the Senate Agriculture Committee Wednesday to the Appropriations Committee.
Another, related bill, Senate Bill 1001, also was referred to the same committee. The measure would allow use of state funds for permitting, building, or repairing terminal groins, which are sand-trapping walls built perpendicular to the shore at inlets.
Moore, along with her colleagues on the nine-member Science Panel, is a coastal scientist who has done extensive research on the North Carolina coast. The draft report the panel produced, divided into sections — an introduction to shoreline changes and dynamics, and some erosion management practices; effects of sand-trapping and -blocking structures; case studies of some structures and lessons learned; coastal erosion policies of other states; and finally, some recommendations based on best science and engineering — but offered no easy solutions to address the alarmingly severe erosion along parts of the coast, or ways to protect coastal infrastructure.
The report is intended to provide scientific and technical information for policymakers, regulators and legislators.
“Section two is really the meat of the report, and this is where we talk about the effects of structures that trap sand and structures that harden the shoreline … the purpose, the physical effects, adverse effects, ecological impacts,” said Moore. “We frame all of this largely in terms of trade-offs, because there are benefits and there are costs. And really, it’s all about trade-offs.”
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Pointing to a slide illustration of a section of coast showing sand moving in and out of an area, Moore explained that whether there is accretion or erosion is a result of the way wave processes and shoreline orientation in the offshore seabed are directed at various sections of beach, and whether more sand is moving in or out.
“When I teach this in class, I tell my students, ‘this is just like your checkbook,’” Moore told the commission. “If you are adding more money in than you are spending, then you have a positive balance, and you’re in the black. And if you are taking out more money than you are actually adding to your checking account, you’re going to be in the red. In this case of the shoreline, we’re going to be eroding.”
Moore said it is not the big hurricanes that lead to the dramatic destruction now most evident on Hatteras Island in Dare County, where 32 houses in recent years have collapsed into the ocean in Rodanthe and Buxton.
“I’ll say that storm impacts are probably what tend to come to mind first for those who are thinking about the problems we need to address along the coast,” she said. “However, it is long-term chronic erosion that makes homes and infrastructure vulnerable to storm impacts. Most of our coastline has been naturally eroding over the long term to varying degrees, with some locations having very high natural background erosion rates, such as the northern flank of Cape Hatteras, which eroded at rates greater than 20 feet per year between 1852 and 1946 and for the many centuries preceding that time.”
But, Moore added, oceanfront construction rules are generally based on a 30-year setback, although buildings last longer than 30 years. Another complication is that large storm impacts are reaching farther landward, an impact that will be seen more in the future, she said, and sea levels are expected to be about a foot higher by 2050, compared with 2000. Along with other climate impacts, “mitigating erosion and protecting or trying to reduce risk to infrastructure will unfortunately become more and more challenging,” Moore said.
During the public comment portion of the meeting, Buxton resident Brian Harris, representing the Hatteras Island village’s civic association, asked the commission to support the proposed legislation and “a responsible, modern approach” to erosion control. While calling Buxton’s devastation “not just a failure of nature, but a failure of man,” he urged the commission to seek a bipartisan approach and work with partnerships for innovative solutions.
“Coastal policies drafted 40 years ago were never meant to be a suicide pact for our coast,” Harris said. “Hatteras and Ocracoke are now in state of emergencies, and as North Carolinians, we can all just simply do better.”
But with decades of flashing lights from early users of seawalls and groins, illustrated by New Jersey’s skinny beaches in front of seawalls, coastal scientists have warned that sand barriers and traps rob beaches of sand by creating down drift erosion or blocking sand travel onto the shoreline.
“North Carolina lawmakers have kept this policy in place for generations because these structures don’t work,” said Zach Wallace, Audubon North Carolina Policy Director, in a June 11 prepared statement. “They rob sand from other parts of the beach, making erosion worse and putting habitat and coastal communities at greater risk. It’s like balancing a budget by moving debt onto someone else’s books.”
In its recommendations at the end of the report, the science panel urged careful consideration of the adverse impacts and use of experts before moving forward on any proposed projects, which are nearly always expensive, long-term commitments. Even urgent situations such as the house collapses on Hatteras Island cannot change the realities of a hardened coast.
“The Buxton case study illustrates that groins can temporarily change where erosion occurs, but they do not eliminate the underlying erosional processes,” as one recommendation stated. “Further, attempting to maintain an intended shoreline position requires regular nourishment and hardened structures deteriorate over time and can be damaged during storms, necessitating repeated structural repair and emergency measures.”
