CARTERET AND CRAVEN COUNTIES — In recent years, the North Carolina Coastal Land Trust has worked to conserve land in all corners of eastern North Carolina.

Efforts include work at Site X of the Lost Colony in Bertie County and preserving thousands of acres near Lake Waccamaw in the south. More recently, the organization turned its attention to the central coast with two acquisitions, one using funds from the North Carolina Department of Transportation to purchase land near the Croatan National Forest and another adding acres to the Brice’s Creek preserve.

“The two properties aren’t really related, except that this will be an area of focus for the next 12-36 months,” said Camilla Herlevich of Wilmington, executive director of the Coastal Land Trust. “And we are very excited about this first use of settlement funds.”

Rare Habitat

As soon as news spread about the preferred route for the long-planned U.S. 70 bypass of Havelock through a protected forest that’s habitat for the endangered red-cockaded woodpecker, members of the Croatan Group of the North Carolina Sierra Club began to fight the project. It was an effort that lasted years, said Cassie Gavin, director of government relations for the organization’s North Carolina chapter. The Sierra Club filed a federal lawsuit in 2016.

The Sierra Club reached a $7.3 million settlement earlier this year with NCDOT, and in turn reached out to the Coastal Land Trust to explore possibilities for preservation that would make the most strategic sense.

“The goal is to protect the land and water,” Gavin said, adding that working with the Coastal Land Trust in this regard was a good fit. “Longleaf pine forests used to be all over the Southeast, and now they are a rare habitat. We’re excited about conservation possibilities.”

Adding to the excitement is that news of this first acquisition in the area came just months after the settlement was announced.

“This happened quickly because we’ve been looking at this area for a long time,” Herlevich said. “We just didn’t have the money to purchase it.”

When the property was listed for sale as part of a larger tract with commercial frontage on N.C. 24, the Coastal Land Trust was able to make an offer to the seller, Talton Enterprises.

“One of the great things about having access to these funds is that we can act in the real estate market,” Herlevich said.

Using part of the settlement, and a private grant from Fred and Alice Stanback, the organization purchased a 113-acre tract of longleaf pine forest, pocosin wetlands and about a half mile of frontage along Gales Creek, which empties into Bogue Sound near Newport. The land adds to the organization’s Gales Creek Nature Preserve and abuts a portion of the Croatan National Forest in Carteret County.

“It’s the first time in 26 years that we’ve been able to do this with the national forest,” Herlevich said.

While the area is important for a number of reasons, preservation of scenic ecosystems isn’t always the main goal.

“Another reason to save land is to help carry out certain management regimes,” Herlevich said. “That’s the case here.”

The land is strategically located to make it easier to carry out the necessary prescribed burns to maintain and restore important habitat, said Janice Allen, Coastal Land Trust deputy director in New Bern.

Other provisions of the settlement call for NCDOT to employ a conservation easement, that the department use environmental practices during construction, which is scheduled to begin in early 2019, and that they close the bypass for these burns, when asked by the U.S. Forest Service.

With this addition, the Gales Creek Preserve totals more than 360 acres, and adds to the other thousands of acres the group has protected in the area along Mill Creek, Turnagain Bay and Long Bay, and at Brown’s Island and near Core Creek.

Craven County Preserve Expanded

The Land Trust also recently announced the purchased 37 acres that will be added to its Brice’s Creek Preserve in New Bern, which now totals more than 60 acres.

“This is a little oasis,” Herlevich said. “It could easily have been developed, and the lands all around there are being developed.”

The area offers a haven for wildlife, floodplain protection along the creek for the community, and stands of bottomland hardwood, Allen said.

The group bought the property from Overlook Holdings LLC, the owners and developers of Carolina Colours, a residential community next to the preserve. Funds for the purchase were provided by a grant from the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and donations from the members of the Land Trust.

“It’s not a large piece of land, but it is beautiful,” Herlevich said.

“Right now, there are no plans for the area to be open to the public. Some of what we do is banking land for the future,” she said. “It becomes more valuable over time.”

Looking Ahead

“This will be an important area for our work for the next few years,” Herlevich said of central North Carolina.

With the mandate to preserve habitat and ecosystems about the Croatan National Forest, the organization is compiling a kind of wish list. And as news spread about the funds, landowners are also reaching out to the Land Trust.

“I’m sure we will have more big announcements ahead,” she said.

COLUMBUS COUNTY — Earlier this year, nearly 3,000 acres along the Waccamaw River was protected thanks to the North Carolina Coastal Land Trust and a host of conservation partners in an effort initiated by a $1 million court-ordered hog farm pollution settlement from 2012. In the weeks since, environmentalists have had more reasons to be grateful for the preservation work.

“A month after completing the Waccamaw purchase, Hurricane Florence ravaged the coast, and our preserve was under water,” said Camilla Herlevich, executive director of the Coastal Land Trust. “We know that preserving, reclaiming and restoring our natural wetlands can’t prevent the damages of catastrophic storms like Florence and Michael, but it certainly can lessen the impacts — by spreading rising floodwaters out over larger areas, and by slowing down and filtering floodwaters as they move downstream.”

And that’s what’s happened. The land that was undeveloped had a better ability to mitigate the damages from the storm, said Cara Schildtknecht, the Waccamaw Riverkeeper.

“I was able to visit the northern Waccamaw recently,” she said. “The river levels are getting back to normal and the water chemistry is getting back to normal.”

Easing potential storm damage wasn’t the first reason that the area was protected. Perhaps higher on the list, when it isn’t hurricane season, are the many endemic species, unique habitats and critical wetlands of the Waccamaw. It all began with the settlement of a Clean Water Act violation brought by the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Eastern District of North Carolina against Freedman Farms and Columbus County hog farmer Barry Freedman, accused of dumping 324,000 gallons of untreated hog waste into a tributary of the Waccamaw in 2007. He pleaded guilty to negligent violation of the law and was ordered to pay the $1 million.

“That was the catalyst. And instead of using that money outright, we leveraged it by working for other grants,” Herlevich said. “You’re in a much better position for many of these grants if you have matching funds.” Project WOW, for Waters of Waccamaw, was years in the making but the end result, completed with the help of a dozen other organizations, has a much larger impact in terms of land saved, she said.

“Since 2013, we utilized the $1 million court award to secure more than $5 million in matching grants,” she said. The thousands of acres include blackwater bottomland hardwood forests, cypress swamps, and 7 miles of Waccamaw River frontage.

“The area has a rare water chemistry and many of the plants and animals that flourish in the Waccamaw are found nowhere else on Earth,” she said. “It’s a treasure chest of natural wonders.”

“What we’re excited about is that it covers so much of the area around the river,” Schildtknecht said.

Although the Waccamaw, which runs about 140 miles across southeastern North Carolina and eastern South Carolina, is considered a clean river, there is a persistent worry about the effect that development can have on water quality. This conservation effort should help, she said, and draw more attention to the river.

“I think in North Carolina, the river doesn’t get a lot of attention. But it is such a beautiful, wild, blackwater river,” she said.

Part of what makes this ecosystem unique is the limestone that underlays the basin. The alkalinity is one reason there’s such a high level of species diversity and endemism. The Waccamaw Basin supports six endemic fishes including the Waccamaw silverside and the ironcolor shiner, several rare mollusks and is a system with 62 documented fish species. Rare plant species include the greenfly orchid, Plymouth gentian and swamp forest beaksedge.

The 3,000 acres is the third of three acquisitions in the area, Herlevich said. The Land Trust also closed on 670 acres in October 2014 and 670 acres in May 2016. The Coastal Land Trust purchased the property managed by Campbell Global, a global investment manager focused on timberland based in Oregon, with offices in Wilmington.

“We were able to work with them in terms of what would be better for conservation and what tracts worked better for their goals,” Herlevich said.

She added that another success of Project WOW is that it joins lands to other conserved properties. These 3,000 acres are located directly across the river from the Columbus County and Juniper Creek Game Lands, which encompass more than 28,000 acres. It also connects to 17,000 acres of The Nature Conservancy’s Green Swamp Preserve, resulting in one of the largest conservation corridors in the state.

“By linking there’s a much bigger protected corridor,” she said. “Bigger is better in terms of habitat, especially for larger animals.” Although smaller tracts of protected land have their place, conservation theory shows that larger animals need more acres to thrive and larger tracts result in less interference with people, she said.

The Coastal Land Trust transferred about a thousand acres of the property to the North Carolina Wildlife Resources Commission as an addition to Columbus County Game Lands for public game lands, which will be managed through timber thinning, prescribed fire, and restoration of distinctive remnant forest types to benefit wildlife such as white-tailed deer, wild turkey, wood stork and Swainson’s warbler, according to Brian McRae, land and water access section chief for the commission.

The Coastal Land Trust will retain the remaining 2,000 acres for management as a nature preserve. Herlevich said the organization hopes to restore and preserve stands of Atlantic white cedar and is leasing the property to a hunt club, which will help it maintain and monitor the property.

The Coastal Land Trust secured grants from a total of 12 different funders including the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service’s North American Wetlands Conservation Act program, National Fish and Wildlife Foundation, North Carolina Clean Water Management Trust Fund, North Carolina Wildlife Resources Commission, Fred and Alice Stanback, the state’s Environmental Enhancement Grant Program, Open Space Institute, Enviva Forest Conservation Fund, The Conservation Alliance and the Merck Family Fund.

Considering recent hurricanes, Herlevich said the organization plans to continue to conserve this critical area.

“We’d like to protect much more land along the Waccamaw — for wildlife, flood control, and clean water.”

SHALLOTTE — Right now, the relationship between Shallotte and the Shallotte River is a little distant. A deep bend in the waterway swings toward the town hall and administrative buildings, but the view isn’t easily appreciated, unless you drive or walk to a few nearby industrial sites.

For several years, the town’s leadership has been working to make the most of that space, as other communities in southeastern North Carolina have done with their riverfronts.

Shallotte officials envision an environmentally sustainable, pedestrian-friendly mix of retail and restaurants with a riverwalk that could be a gathering place and activity center.

The town’s 400,000-square-foot Riverfront Revitalization Project concept originated in 2008. Since then, there’s been progress in bringing this ambitious $88 million project to fruition. Among its components are a waterfront park, a retail center, a boardwalk that could one day connect the area to nearby Mulberry Park and roadwork to straighten Shallotte Avenue. Plans also call for relocating an ABC store.

“All of these efforts are interrelated,” said Mayor Walt Eccard.

Eccard and others involved with the project held a meeting June 26 to update residents on the progress. He’s optimistic that visible progress will be made at the riverfront during the next two years.

“We don’t want to change the character of Shallotte,” said Larry Harrelson, a town alderman, but officials do want to capitalize on what’s seen as an underutilized resource in a community that’s booming. According to the town, the area is growing by more than 3 percent each year. Shallotte’s population increased 166 percent from 2000 to 2010.

Riverfront Review

In Shallotte’s 2008 Vision Plan, town leaders wanted to put a renewed focus on the Shallotte River and create a vibrant riverfront destination. Since 2010, the town has been buying waterfront property and has spent about $5 million, Eccard said. The town has purchased a significant portion of land along Wall and Cheers, parallel streets that extend to the river from U.S. 17 Business.

In 2014, the town partnered with the University of North Carolina School of Government’s Development Finance Initiative to attract private investors interested in such projects. A town steering committee worked with the initiative to complete an in-depth market analysis, seek public engagement and conduct site planning and a financial feasibility analysis, Eccard said.

There have been some stumbling blocks, though.

Shallotte originally partnered with Traditional Neighborhood Development Partners of Durham to develop the retail, multi-family, office and hospitality components with the agreement that TND Partners would pay for and install about $7 million worth of water and sewer infrastructure up front. The plan was that the town would reimburse the developer after the build with new tax revenues, Eccard said at the meeting. An agreement with Brunswick County will allow Shallotte to keep a majority of the tax revenue from the Riverfront Project to assist with its infrastructure costs. When that plan fell through, Eccard said the town turned to grants and loans to bridge the gap.

Although somewhat successful with grants from the North Carolina Division of Coastal Management and the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Rural Development program, town officials were unable to raise the full amount and ended the partnership with TND Partners, he said.

What’s Ahead

At the meeting, Eccard announced a new development firm, Durham-based New South Ventures, had come on board. The company’s Michael Lemanski said he would like to create a space for restaurants, shops and coffee shops along a pedestrian corridor with parking behind the retail buildings. Lemanski has worked on similar public-private projects, including one in Fayetteville with apartments, a baseball stadium and hotel.

“We’re excited about this opportunity and we see this as a partnership with Shallotte,” Lemanski said.

Allison Engebretson, with Wilmington-based Paramount Engineering, also discussed her vision for the waterfront park.

“The river in Shallotte is worth celebrating and we think the riverwalk will pull people to the river,” she said.

A boardwalk is planned to extend over the wetlands for at least a quarter mile, with the possibility of an extension to connect to nearby Mulberry Park, another project of Engebretson’s. The 10-acre, $1.6 million park opened in 2016 with an amphitheater, event lawns, playground, walking trails and community garden. Eccard said the town would like to add a splash pad and kayak launch at the park.

At the waterfront park, the slope to the river is a 7-foot drop that Engebretson said could be converted to a create a step-down into a central space. A boat/kayak launch could be set to one side, where the current isn’t as strong, she said, and the existing buildings could be repurposed, perhaps as studios for artists. An area near the water that isn’t buildable could be fitted with a pergola and benches or swings.

There were also questions from attendees about adding a fishing platform and potentially dredging the river to make it more navigable. Permitting for dredging could be a challenge, Eccard said, because of the Shallotte River’s environmental status as an estuary.

Another tricky feature of the project is the plan to straighten or realign Shallotte Avenue, so that it intersects opposite Wall Street at Business 17. Eccard said the proposed new alignment would create a better entry point for the riverfront development. The plan would require moving the Shallotte ABC Board’s office and store, now at the corner of Shallotte Avenue and Main Street. The approval and planning process is in the works.

Eccard said construction could begin on some aspects of the plan later this year, or in early 2019.

Learn More

• Shallotte Riverfront Revitalization Project
• UNC Development Finance Initiative: Riverfront Town Center Project

Even before North Carolina was a state, it was a land shaped by women. Native American tribes that lived here, such as the Tuscarora, Algonquian and Catawba, credited women as an indispensable part of creation, culture and the earth and its processes, according to the North Carolina Museum of History.

In the ensuing centuries and decades, that’s still the case. Too often, though, these contributions are overlooked. As Women’s History Month comes to a close, here are just a few of the ladies who have played a role in our rich history.

Katharine Wright Haskell

This Wright may not be as well-known as her brothers, Orville and Wilbur, but she helped them get their famous North Carolina endeavor literally off the ground, according to the National Air and Space Museum. She was the only Wright sibling to get a college degree, eventually becoming a high school teacher.

She was a sounding board as they faced the challenges and helped maintain their businesses while they experimented in Kitty Hawk. She nursed Orville back to health when he was seriously injured, and eventually traveled to Europe with her brothers. While there, she entertained dignitaries, learned to speak fluent French, and became something of an international celebrity.

Susan Dimock

Although she never practiced medicine in her home state, Dimock accomplished much in her short life and was the first female member of the North Carolina Medical Society, according to the North Carolina History Project. She was born in 1847 in Washington and as a teenager, she was apprenticed by Dr. S.S. Satchwell, a rural doctor and neighbor who took her on his routes throughout the eastern North Carolina countryside.

She then studied at the New England Hospital for Women and Children in Boston and was denied entrance to Harvard because she was a woman. She eventually graduated from the medical program at the University of Zurich and moved back to Boston where she became a specialist in surgery, as well as obstetrics and gynecology. At 28 years old, she died in a shipwreck while traveling back to Europe.

Molly Horniblow

North Carolina history buffs likely know about Harriet Jacobs, a woman born into slavery who went on to write an autobiography. Jacobs’ grandmother, Molly Horniblow, played a significant role sheltering her — and traveled her own path from enslaved person to free woman.

A self-guided walking tour in Edenton takes visitors to the Chowan County Courthouse where Horniblow was granted her independence and the site that was Horniblow’s house. Jacobs hid in a small attic above a storeroom for six years and 11 months until her escape to the North in 1842.

Anna McNeill Whistler

Although she is best known for sitting in thoughtful repose, Whistler was really a globe-traveling wife and mother. She was born in downtown Wilmington and eventually married a West Point-trained engineer and became a stepmother to his three children and had two sons of her own. She supported and encouraged her husband, including traveling with him for four years to Russia, and she did the same to encourage her son, James, in his artwork.

During the Civil War, she sailed from North Carolina to join him in London. She posed for his famous “Arrangement in Grey and Black No. 1,” which hangs at the Musée d’Orsay in Paris. A copy can be found in Thalian Hall in Wilmington.

Janet Schaw

Although she was born in Scotland, Schaw made a lasting impact on history, and North Carolina, when she visited the area in 1775. She was 35 or 40 when her party first set sail for the West Indies. In this country, she visited Brunswick, and then Schawfield, her elder brother’s plantation located on the northwestern branch of the Cape Fear River, a few miles above Wilmington.

She was a loyal subject of King George III and did not approve of what was happening in the colony during the early stages of the American Revolution. Her diary, published as “Journal of a Lady of Quality,” painted vivid, if unflattering, portraits of local patriots and is still a useful depiction of Colonial life for modern historians.

Caterina Jarboro

This Wilmington-born singer was first African-American woman to perform opera in the United States. She attended school locally before moving to Brooklyn at the age of 16 after her parents passed away. In the 1920s, she performed on Broadway and then traveled to Europe to continue her education in music.

Her operatic debut was “Aida” at the Puccini Theater in Milan in 1930. She went on to perform in Chicago and New York, but worked primarily in Europe. In February, the University of North Carolina Wilmington held a two-day symposium honoring Jarboro’s contribution to music.

Mary Bayard Morgan Wootten

This New Bern-born photographer accomplished many firsts in her life. The divorced single mother started taking photos in 1904 with a borrowed camera as a way to earn a living for her family, said Kim Sawyer, executive director of the Roanoke Island Festival Park in Manteo. “She was a modern woman.”

The pioneer in pictorialism is thought to be one of the first women to take an aerial photograph, which was done in a Wright Brothers plane in 1914, and designed the first Pepsi-Cola trademark for her neighbor. Thirty-four of her photographs, an exhibit called Light and Air: The Photography of Bayard Wooten, appear at the park through May 31.

Elizabeth Herbert Smith Taylor

Born in Scotland Neck in 1888, Taylor attended college in Greensboro and was trained as a nurse in Philadelphia. She went on to become a nurse during World War I with the Maguire Unit of the Army Nurse Corps. Taylor kept a diary that began with her cross-Atlantic trip to France and included witty and concise summaries of her daily activities.

It still provides a valuable look at the work, and play, of soldiers and support personnel. Patients and difficult working conditions play a role in the diary, but a primary focus is Taylor’s love of dancing. She continued work as a nurse in Pennsylvania, Texas and Guatemala before her marriage in 1928.

When visiting the state’s coastal counties, beaches and scenic views are usually the focus. But there is also an underlying history at these tourist destinations. Many of these sites play a role in the events that have shaped black culture. This American history — from slavery to civil rights — is mirrored along the coast. As Black History Month draws to a close, here are a few places where we can better understand the difficulties and celebrate the successes of African-Americans in North Carolina.

Dismal Swamp

Archaeologists are still learning details about how hundreds, or even thousands, of slaves escaped to and lived in this inhospitable mix of mud, insects and vegetation. But they do know that this swamp was part of what’s known as the Maritime Underground Railroad that existed in the 1800s until the Civil War. A slave born in Camden County around 1786 wrote about his experiences working on cargo vessels in and around these waterways — and how he eventually obtained his freedom and saved enough money to buy his wife and children — in his “Narrative of the Life of Moses Grandy; Late a Slave in the United States of America.”

Chowan County Courthouse

Harriet Jacobs, who was born into slavery but eventually escaped and wrote one of the first narratives from the perspective of a female slave in the South, is a significant historic presence in this coastal town on the Albemarle Sound. Visitors can learn more about her time in Edenton though a walking tour. It’s self-guided much of the year, but in February, docent-led tours are available Tuesday through Saturday to more fully explore her history, said Natalie Harrison, program coordinator for the Historic Edenton Historic Site. There are 13 stops, including the building that was built in the 1760s, where Jacobs’ grandmother, Molly Horniblow, was granted her freedom. Horniblow played a significant role in sheltering Jacobs and her children.

The Roanoke Island Freedmen’s Colony

This site was occupied by Union forces in 1862. With the Emancipation Proclamation the next year, the slaves were given a new start and a taste of freedom. During the following years, the colony continued to grow despite what was at the time an isolated location west of Nags Head. By 1864, records show that it had become a thriving African-American community with 561 houses built on the island and a population of almost 4,000. Many of the residents fought for the Union during the Civil War. Afterward, though, the population dwindled as residents left to begin new lives elsewhere, according to information from the Fort Raleigh Historic Site.

The Isaac J. Smith House

This property at 607 Johnson St. in New Bern was built in 1922 as the home of Smith, a realtor, finance broker and one of the area’s wealthiest African-Americans. He also served in the North Carolina House of Representatives in 1898. The site is one of the homes, churches and businesses on the African-American Heritage Tour in New Bern, which was a popular town for both slaves and freed blacks during Colonial times and over the years grew into a community with a sizable black population of skilled craftsmen and sailors. Close to the Smith house, for example, is the former Rhone Hotel at 512 Queen St., a business owned and operated by African-Americans, and home to Charlotte Rhone, the first black registered nurse in the state.

Hammocks Beach State Park

Bear Island, which is now a part of this coastal park near Swansboro, was a favorite place of Dr. William Sharpe, a New York physician, during the early 20^th century. John Hurst, an African-American guide, often accompanied him and eventually became his friend. While Sharpe wanted to leave the property to his guide, Hurst convinced him to leave it to the North Carolina Teachers Association, an organization of African-American teachers, who eventually donated the island to the state with the intention of creating a park for minorities. It opened for all following the Civil Rights Act of 1964.

Ocean City

Beach communities that catered to African-Americans can be found dotted along the North Carolina coast. This historic section of North Topsail Beach is one of them. Established in 1949, it’s thought to be one of the first owned by African-Americans. It was envisioned and developed by Wade H. Chestnut Sr., an African-American, and white Wilmington attorney Edgar L. Yow. Recently, several street signs were dedicated at the site to preserve its historical significance.

Airlie Gardens

Minnie Evans, who was born in Pender County, worked for years as the gatekeeper at this public garden near Wrightsville Beach. She gained fame, though, through her work as a visionary artist. Although she had no formal training, it’s said that she began to paint in 1939 when she had a prophetic dream. And her work is described as dreamlike and fantastical. She often painted at Airlie, using whatever materials were handy, and was inspired by the natural beauty. Her work was eventually shown in New York’s Whitney Museum and the North Carolina Museum of Art. Now the gardens are home to the Bottle Chapel, designed by Virginia Wright-Frierson, as a commemoration of her art.

Bellamy Mansion Museum

Not many historic sites fully explore African-American traditions, but this 1860-era site at 503 Market St. in Wilmington was constructed largely by both free and enslaved black artisans. Gareth Evans, executive director, also said they’ve made an effort to restore the slave quarters in the northeast corner of the property, to show the day-to-day lives of the Bellamy house servants, including a cook, a nursemaid and a butler. The Museum and the City of Wilmington also collaborated on A Guide to Wilmington’s African-American Heritage that lists 37 historic, religious, educational, social and cultural sites.

1898 Memorial Park

“There are many sites here that represent the coup, the successful coup, of 1898,” said Islah Speller, founder of the Burnett-Eaton Museum Foundation in Wilmington. Those events were intended to threaten the black community. In the process, dozens were killed or wounded and much of the city’s black leadership was banished. The effects were also felt on several black-owned businesses. Speller offers walking tours of these sites by appointment, as well as those that focus on other aspects of African-American history in and around Wilmington. This memorial at 1081 N. Third St. was designed by Atlanta sculptor Ayokunle Odeleye and dedicated in 2008.

Freeman Park

What’s now a popular spot on Pleasure Island near Snow’s Cut was once known as Seabreeze or Freeman’s Beach. It has a long history, but from the 1920s to the ’60s it was a well-known beach resort for African-Americans, with hotels, restaurants and an amusement park with Ferris wheel. The music clubs, or jump joints, drew so many popular and well-known performers that the resort earned the nickname “Bop City.”

Navassa

The Gullah Geechee Cultural Heritage Corridor, extends through South Carolina and Georgia but it’s northernmost sites are along the sea islands and coastal areas of North Carolina. The culture is distinguished by the creole language spoken by the Gullah and Geechee people and the many lingering influences of their African heritage. Navassa, which was one home to five rice plantations, in one of the North Carolina communities has strong ties to the culture. Efforts are underway to preserve this past and create a Gullah Geechee resource center there.

Learn More

• Explore African-American History and Culture

WRIGHTSVILLE BEACH — Last week, the latest piece of a historic ensemble fell — or more appropriately, was delicately placed via heavy machinery — onto a new site in Wrightsville Beach. The Ewing-Bordeaux Cottage, one of the few such remaining island properties, will be a part of the town’s history museum.

At 9 a.m. Thursday, Jan. 11, house movers lifted the cottage built in 1924 from its spot at 405 N. Lumina Ave. and transported it through the streets of town to West Salisbury Street, beside the Wrightsville Beach Museum of History, the Visitor’s Center, and the southeast office of the North Carolina Coastal Federation in what’s known as the Historic Square.

“Preserving buildings from the past gives historical context to a locale,” said Madeline Flagler, executive director of the museum, adding that communities benefit from a mix of old and new that create a built-landscape narrative unique to a particular place. “Wrightsville Beach fights hard to keep this beach and this town true to its history and its community feel.”

The current museum resides in the 1909 Myers Cottage and together with this “new” addition, the site will have something to say about Wrightsville Beach. “Though built 100 years ago, they are remembered as a part of our ‘beach experience’ straight through the 1980s,” Flagler said. “These are the porches we sat on during the hot summer days and cool summer nights. We don’t look at them and think Corolla, Bald Head, Topsail, or Hatteras.”

The Myers Cottage will continue to serve as primarily a house museum, she said. Visitors can get a feel for what beach life was like in the past. The Bordeaux Cottage will have more open space for exhibits, talks and programming.

“One room will evolve from our Waterman Hall of Fame and celebrate and explore local water professions and sports,” Flagler said. “We will tell the stories of fishermen, sailors, surfers and divers who have made this community what it is today.”

Visitors can expect multimedia features and an immersive experience. In another room, look for a space for hands-on and experiential learning.

“In traditional museums, living history means dressing in period clothing and demonstrating heritage arts. At the Bordeaux Cottage, we will bring living history into the present by having current professionals and artisans demonstrating their skills and knowledge: a boatbuilder fitting planks over the ribs of a boat, a fisherman weaving a shrimp or fish net, or a shaper making a surfboard,” Flagler said.

The cottage came to the museum through Debbie and Chris Strickland, who purchased and donated the home, she said.

“We had a history with the cottage, so we immediately knew this was one we would like to save. So, we did not actually select it, but circumstances worked out,” Flagler said.

Joshua Cole, programs director for the museum, said the Bordeaux cottage is historically significant in several ways.

“It’s significant because it survived the fire of ‘34,” he said. The blaze destroyed 125 other buildings, but spared this cottage thanks to a small sand dune and a shift in the wind. The house also made it through decades of hurricanes.

And Betty Bordeaux, who passed away in 2010, is another reason the cottage still exists. The Wilmington native lived in the home most recently and was an avid proponent of preserving the spirit and structures of Wrightsville Beach, Cole said.

“This is a difficult place for preservation,” he said. Wrightsville Beach considers a property to have historic value if it is 50 years old, a much shorter timeframe than downtown Wilmington, for example. “This is a glorified sand bar,” and, as such, it is subject to a lot of environmental and exterior damage.

“We also face huge economic pressures,” Cole said, adding that homes like the Bordeaux Cottage occupy a strange space for preservationists. “They are either priceless or worthless.” They can be priceless to the right person because of their historical connection, or they can be worthless, depending on their location and condition.

Museum officials learned that the cottage would be coming to them in late January 2017. In the following months, Flagler said there were meetings and permits required to work out the details of the move. One of the stipulations was the process couldn’t happen during tourist season, she said.

The local Lackey Builders company and the Pennsylvania-based Wolfe House & Building Movers worked on the project recently. Right now, the house is perched high in the air, but will be lowered to pilings about 9 feet above ground in the coming weeks, with the help of J.L. Batts Pile Driving & Crane Service in Hampstead.

The Bordeaux cottage occupies the last spot in the town’s Historic Square, and in these cottages and homes, visitors can see a progression of building on Wrightsville Beach, Cole said. From the 1909 and the 1924 cottages of the museum, to the 1940s wartime aesthetic of the Visitor’s Center, with a smaller porch and a central kitchen.

“You can see how new ventilation and technology come into play,” he said. The Coastal Federation office is in what’s known as the Palmgren-O’Quinn house built in 1946. “It represents the first of the permanent houses on the beach,” Cole said. “This is what starts to bring these buildings to the modern era.”

These designs represent distinct architectural features. “These local cottages were built by local builders with designs made on a paper napkin or sketched on a piece of plywood, or by local architects,” Flagler said. “Those of us who love this place want to be able to look around and have the landscape tell us where we are — Wrightsville Beach.”

Learn More

• Wrightsville Beach Museum of History

WRIGHTSVILLE BEACH – To passersby, it might look like a few simple squares of pavement, but the new and improved cutouts at one town parking lot are reducing stormwater runoff and improving local water quality.

This project that started in November is the latest effort by the North Carolina Coastal Federation, along with the town of Wrightsville Beach and the Hanover Seaside Club, to remove pollutants that would otherwise flow directly into Banks Channel, a popular and heavily used recreation spot.

The work at a town’s public parking lot adjacent to Oceanic Restaurant was the first of a two-phase project funded by a grant from the Clean Water Management Trust Fund to redirect runoff from existing street and parking lot pavement and drains. The second phase is scheduled this winter at the Hanover Seaside Club, just a fraction of a mile away.

“This area is heavily used for swimming, boating, surfing, fishing,” said Tracy Skrabal, coastal scientist and southeast regional manager for the federation. “And it’s also heavily used for traffic and business. Bacteria and sediments are being dumped into the very waters we play in. There’s an economic value to disconnect that process.”

For many of these water-quality projects, the goal is to showcase innovative approaches to educate and encourage these municipalities and agencies, such as the North Carolina Department of Transportation, to design their projects from the outset in a way that saves money and better protects our waters.

“In this particular case, we can demonstrate that there are cost-effective ways to do this,” Skrabal said. Not every project is a new one, but communities and developments can also consider retrofitting paved areas in a way that is both practical and efficient.

During the first phase, workers cut out sections of the existing pavement around the drains and installed pervious pavement around them. Engineers can calculate the runoff that happens in a particular parking area during a typical storm, she said. Using these calculations, they can determine exactly how large a pervious section needs to be to so the water can be filtered before it reaches the waterways.

“Because parking lots are graded, the water flows into these sections,” Skrabal said. “One hundred percent of the rainfall can hit these pervious areas. That stormwater is carrying all the bad stuff that would be large enough to reach the drain and go into the channel.”

The project also includes monitoring, to make sure the outcome is as expected. So far, evidence says these pervious pavement efforts work, said Mike Mallin, a researcher professor at the Center for Marine Science at the University of North Carolina Wilmington. The Aquatic Ecology Laboratory there assesses the components of marine, estuarine and freshwater ecosystems and studies water quality. First, they measure what and how much sediment and bacteria drain into waterways from certain locations, he said, and then return to see if the measures are making a difference.

“When it rains, an excess load of fecal microbes enters the water,” Mallin said. “We have to close waters for swimming alerts. It’s bad for the public and the public perception of our waterways.”

Using these sections of pervious pavement can divert the water into the ground, rather than the drain.

“Wrightsville is a barrier island, and we can use the sand in a positive way,” Mallin said. “This directs runoff from parking lots and roadways to settle down into the soil. It’s highly effective.”

Timothy Owens, town manager for Wrightsville Beach, said that it is always bad news when an area must be closed for swimming and recreation because of runoff. He has seen the benefits of partnering with the federation on such projects.

“We talked about some of the worst offenders in those terms,” Owens said. “They’ve been good neighbors for us in helping us achieve better water quality. I think these are good project for any community to do.”

This is the third large-scale project in a series designed to improve the water quality around Wrightsville Beach. Earlier this year, an infiltration project was installed at the Blockade Runner Beach Resort that redirects much of the polluted runoff from the resort and adjacent roads into the ground through an engineered infiltration system. That project disconnected two stormwater outfall pipes that drained from the 2-acre resort site into Banks Channel.

The stormwater was then redirected into a series of pipes underneath the sound-side lawn of the resort. A 2,100-gallon cistern was also installed to collect rainwater to use for irrigation, reducing the resort’s municipal water use by around 25 percent. There was also a retrofit at a 0.26-acre lot on Lynnwood Drive in the Glen Meade subdivision in Wilmington, which collects about 20 acres of the neighborhood in Hewletts Creek.

Skrabal said she’s appreciative of the Clean Water Management Trust Fund for supporting these efforts to clean up these waterways that are used by so many residents and visitors. This project is part of a $193,000 grant from the fund for a two-phase stormwater project.

“This pervious pavement replacement is Phase 1, which costs approximately $35,000 for design and construction,” she said.

The second, larger phase includes the work at Hanover Seaside Club. The budget also pays for administration and oversight, and for monitoring of the Hanover Seaside Club. The next phase is tentatively planned for February and March, depending on the permitting process.

WILMINGTON – The Arctic Sunrise, a Greenpeace ship, passed through here this week as a part of an East Coast tour meant to raise awareness about offshore oil drilling and seismic testing.

More than 600 people took advantage of free tours of the ship Saturday and the crew hosted a variety of other events. The tour that started in New York and will end in Puerto Rico is also meant to offer scientists assistance in researching our coastal habitats.

“We wanted to try to stop in places on the East Coast that are hubs in their area,” said Cassady Craighill, media officer for Greenpeace USA. Wilmington was one of those, a place where there is already a lot of environmental awareness, and an access point for learning more about mid-Atlantic ecosystems.

One team from California-based Scripps Institution of Oceanography deployed acoustic monitoring equipment to study how marine life, especially little-known beaked whales, react to ocean noise. Also, a team of three from the Undersea Vehicles Program at the University of North Carolina Wilmington’s Center for Marine Science are taking a remotely operated vehicle this week to explore the Snowy Grouper Wreck Marine Protected Area off the coast of Hatteras Island.

The Whale Acoustics Laboratory at Scripps first placed equipment on the sea floor off the Hatteras coast in 2012. But Bruce Thayre, a computer resource specialist, added sensors that will help researchers recreate three-dimensional movement patterns of marine animals. Beaked whales are of special interest. Not much is known about this widespread families of cetaceans.

“They can be difficult to research because they dive deep,” Thayre said. But this type of equipment is an ideal way to learn more about them, he said, because it passively sits on the bottom of the ocean and can collect data when these whales are close. “This is vital research for this species.”

The equipment works much the same way that our ears can determine from which direction sound is coming, he said. Using multiple sensors on the equipment can create a more complete picture of how these whales, and other animals, move.

They’ll also be measuring levels of natural and man-made underwater noise to establish a baseline for year-round marine mammal presence and dive behavior, said Josh Jones, who is also working on the project with Scripps. “We can look at how they behave under normal conditions and how that changes when there’s added ocean noise,” he said. This could be important in learning more about how seismic blasting may affect marine mammals if the Atlantic Ocean opens for oil and gas development.

Researching underwater habitats is also the goal of the Undersea Vehicles Program, which is a part of the oceanographic operations support division at the Center for Marine Science. Their remotely operated vehicles, or ROVs, can be deployed quickly and can generate geo-referenced high-definition video and photography, said Jason White, an operations field manager. In this case, the ROV is exploring the Snowy Grouper Wreck Marine Protected Area and, with the help of an archeologist, may be able to identify the shipwreck.

“We hope to get some good footage of this area, that’s about 400 feet down,” White said.

As for Greenpeace, the focus of this East Coast tour is “Protecting our Coasts, Climate and Communities.” The ship was in Wilmington, docked at Pier 33 downtown, from Oct. 26 through Monday. Among the events planned was an onboard environmental film screening, a “kayak-tivism” workshop, and a “Sweat it Out to Get the Oil Out,” event with a DJ and fitness trainer.

Greenpeace’s Mary Sweeters and Nakisa Glover helped organize the events to draw a wide variety of people and get them interested in ocean issues. The tour also includes stops in Norfolk, Virginia, and Miami, before it plans to deliver supplies to rural communities in Puerto Rico effected by Hurricane Maria.

After that, the Arctic Sunrise will prepare for a trip to Antarctica, Craighill said. “This is an icebreaker,” she said. “The only one in the fleet.” The rounded hull is meant to slam down on ice in its path, but that same design can make traveling in rougher seas uncomfortable.

The Greenpeace ship has a rich history. The Russian government seized the ship and the 30 activists and journalists onboard in 2013, when Greenpeace protested Arctic oil drilling by the Russian company Gazprom, she said. The Arctic Sunrise was the first ship to circumnavigate James Ross Island in the Antarctic. It’s also worked to stop Japanese whaling fleets, chased private vessels fishing illegally, navigated both the Congo and the Amazon and performed independent assessment of the BP Deepwater Horizon oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico, according to the organization.

“It’s been a part of a lot of the iconic Greenpeace work,” Craighill said.

The organization has two other ships in the fleet. The Rainbow Warrior was made especially for Greenpeace and is considered one of the most environmentally friendly ships made. The Esperanza is the largest vessel in the fleet.

Doing tours such as this one is a way for people to get a more hands-on understanding of what Greenpeace is doing, Craighill said. “It’s always great to see the reaction from people. We’re now getting multiple generations of families who come to see the ship.”

Learn More

• Greenpeace’s Ships

WILMINGTON – Although ostensibly about offshore drilling, two speakers at a public forum held here Tuesday presented different views of the ocean itself.

For Jean-Michel Cousteau, environmentalist and son of legendary explorer Jacques Cousteau, the ocean is something that connects all humans. And for John Hofmeister, former president of Shell Oil Co. and founder of Citizens for Affordable Energy, the ocean is a natural resource that should be mapped to better understand where – and how many – oil deposits are underneath.

“To Drill or Not To Drill?” was the inaugural event hosted by The Public Square, a collaborative civic effort to educate locals about important issues. An estimated 950 people filled the lower level of the Wilson Center at Cape Fear Community College to hear the speakers who used their lifetimes of experience to discuss offshore drilling.

“Every time you drink water, you drink the ocean,” Cousteau said. “It is a part of all of us.”

Cousteau is the founder of the Ocean Futures Society, a nonprofit conservation and education organization that is meant to give a voice to the ocean. In his presentation, he said that there is still much we don’t know about the ocean.

“We’ve made a lot of mistakes, and we are just starting to understand the consequences of those mistakes,” he said, mentioning the effects of human activity on plants, animals and the climate. “We have to be sure to do everything we can to stop using the world’s oceans as a universal sewer.”

Citing the intense energy demands of the U.S. and the rest of the world, Hofmeister said that society shouldn’t remain unaware of what oil deposits are under the sea, including off North Carolina’s coast.

“We owe it to ourselves to explore what’s there, to better understand this resource,” Hofmeister said.

For decades, offshore drilling has been off-limits on the East Coast, largely because of environmental concerns and infamous oil industry accidents like 1989’s Exxon Valdez and at the Deepwater Horizon in 2010. Earlier this year, though, the Trump administration moved to expand offshore oil and gas drilling.

Those who support such efforts point to benefits such as greater energy independence for the country and more jobs for the coastal communities.

Gov. Roy Cooper has already stated his opposition to offshore drilling for North Carolina. And while some coastal county boards, such as Carteret and Brunswick, have passed resolutions in favor of offshore energy exploration, many coastal communities oppose it because of potential negative effects on tourism and fishing, which are vital to the coastal economy.

Both speakers at the forum discussed the Deepwater Horizon disaster, which resulted in almost 5 million barrels of oil being released into the Gulf of Mexico. Cousteau said he has seen the effects on marine life, such as dolphins. Hofmeister criticized the use of dispersants, which he said made the situation worse. While there are risks associated with the extraction of oil, he said, the lessons learned should be used to develop better practices in the industry.

“Every single aspect of our modern lives relies on energy. We need more, not less,” Hofmeister said. “We have to know what’s there. We, as a society, can’t remain ignorant. We have to pursue every possible source. In the future, it will remain critical to the economic well-being of society.”

Hofmeister acknowledged that the exploration of offshore oil resources would likely take at least a decade. The search will also be a costly endeavor. Shell Oil Co., for example, spent $7 billion on an exploratory well in the Arctic, and later abandoned the project. Cousteau argued that a better use of that money would be investing in sustainable and renewable energy sources, such as wind, solar and possibly harnessing the power of ocean currents.

“There is a point when there will be no more oil left,” Cousteau said. “What happens then?”

Hofmeister disputed the notion that there have been adequate advances in renewable energy to meet the world’s energy demands.

“Time is of the essence,” he said. “We need to think in terms of time and need, for the immediate term, near term and long term.”

Both speakers addressed the risks associated with seismic exploration, which is used to determine the best locations for test wells. Seismic technology in marine environments is controversial because of its negative effects on whales, dolphins and fish. Cousteau said that the seismic blasts can interrupt communications between migrating whales, which takes place over hundreds of miles. Hofmeister agreed that the process can be damaging to marine life.

“We are fully aware of the potential negative impacts,” Hofmeister said, adding that many concerns can be addressed in the environmental studies that must be completed before any of the exploration and drilling efforts begin.

“If we are to pursue this, we must take the time to do it right. But there are also trade-offs that have to be made. We have to make those decisions,” Hofmeister said.

Cousteau described the variety of ocean-related issues he’s seen and been a part of during his 75 years of marine exploration and scuba diving, including the problem of plastics in the ocean and the increased intensity of coastal storms. But, he said he has an optimistic vision of society’s ability to do better.

“We can work together. Every one of use breathes the same air. There are no politics here. We are talking about the future of our planet,” Cousteau said. “If you protect the ocean, you protect yourself.”

News anchor Jon Evans of WECT-TV moderated the event with the stated goal that every person there would learn something about the offshore drilling issue.

The North Carolina Coastal Federation helped underwrite the forum.

The Public Square, a collaboration between Cape Fear Community College, University of North Carolina Wilmington and Cape Fear Realtors, was founded to educate and foster civil discourse on issues with local ramifications. The group plans to offer another program next spring.

WILMINGTON – Wood pellets are often marketed as an energy source that’s a better alternative to fossil fuels, but environmental groups worry about ties between the industry and loss of biodiversity, deforestation, faulty trade policies and climate change.

At a forum last week in the Warwick Center on the University of North Carolina Wilmington campus, speakers focused on the effects of the wood pellet industry in North Carolina. They said that wetlands and mature forests are at risk here, industry logging is hurting water quality and wildlife and increasing heat-trapping emissions in the atmosphere.

“Forests aren’t a big part of the conversation about climate change, but they need to be,” said Danna Smith, founder of the Dogwood Alliance, one of the forum sponsors, along with the Cape Fear Sierra Club and Clean Air Carolina.

Demand for wood pellets has increased rapidly in recent years, said Robert Abt, a resource economist at North Carolina State University. Abt noted the decline in traditional timber markets and pine plantations, and how, thanks to an increasing demand from Europe, the wood pellet industry has grown here in the Southeast with the construction of 19 facilities across the region and more on the way.

“The first one in North Carolina was Enviva’s Ahoskie,” said David Carr, general counsel with the Southern Environmental Law Center’s Virginia office, referring to the Maryland-based company’s Hertford County facility that began manufacturing wood pellets in November 2011.

Enviva, which produces 3 million metric tons of wood pellets annually and touts itself as the world’s largest producer of wood pellets, was mentioned frequently during the forum. The company has three wood pellet plants now in the state, with operations also in Northhampton and Sampson counties. At least one more facility is proposed, near Hamlet in Richmond County.

Debra David, with the group Concerned Citizens of Richmond County, also spoke at the forum. She said her community, which is already dealing with many other environmental issues, wasn’t given a chance to speak against the proposed plant in Hamlet.

Related: Enviva Pledges to Protect Forests

The law center has been following the wood pellet industry closely. “It’s based on two flawed assumptions,” Carr said. The first is that the wood pellets are made from waste wood. The second is that as a fuel source, these pellets are carbon neutral. “Both assumptions are incorrect.”

The law center estimates that the pellets are 80 percent hardwood, and that the industry requires the logging of 70 square miles of forest a year, Carr said.

“There’s a myth of American eco-fuel,” said Peter Deane, who has been campaigning against use of wood pellets as a volunteer activist with the Biofuelwatch environmental organization in the United Kingdom. Dean, who traveled to the forum from London, has called the European governments’ support of wood pellets as renewable energy a fraud.

Deane said there is a perception that more sustainable solutions, such as wind power, aren’t the answer and that wood pellets are a “green,” or more environmentally friendly choice. Based on the assumption of carbon neutrality, however, European governments are subsidizing the use of wood pellets.

Forisk Consulting of Watkinsville, Georgia, a business management consulting firm that analyzes forest supplies and wood demand, estimates the global demand for wood pellets will grow at a rate of about 15 percent annually for the next five years before stabilizing at 27.5 million metric tons. This estimate is based on power plants converting from coal to biomass, for example, and an increased interest from countries in Asia. Europe will continue to account for 73 percent of the demand, though, by 2021.

The U.K. will continue to be the largest importer, according to Forisk, with demand expected to increase by 3.3 million metric tons by 2021.

“The U.K. offers $1 billion a year in subsidies,” said William Moomaw, a climate scientist with Tufts University of Medford, Massachusetts. “Without those, it would be far more expensive to use wood pellets for energy.”

Wood pellets are an attractive choice, though, for existing coal plants because they are easily modified to wood pellet use. No one from the wood pellet industry spoke at the forum, but industry supporters say that they are helping lower greenhouse gases and the subsidies will encourage foresters and landowners to re-plant trees.

“But bioenergy is not carbon neutral,” Moomaw emphasized. “We are not doing the accounting well.”  Using wood for fuel is projected to produce higher levels of atmospheric carbon than fossil fuels for decades, he said.

“When we cut down trees for this, we lose all of the other services they offer,” he said, noting that healthy forests improve soil and air quality and help with flood prevention. “Forests stand ready to take up additional carbon dioxide, as they’ve done for 300 million years.”

The industry’s effects, however, go beyond those concerns. Speakers at the forum said logging and wood pellet production threaten the unique ecosystem of North Carolina and the diversity of reptiles and amphibians, as well as other plants and animals that live here.

The North American Coastal Plain, which includes eastern North Carolina, is considered one of the global biodiversity hotspots. Alvin Braswell, who is retired from the North Carolina Museum of Natural History, showed photos of healthy forests that can support animals including bog turtles, glass lizards and the threatened Carolina gopher frog.

The wood pellet industry is another threat to areas already facing other pressures, including development in a state with a growing population. “It also happens that this area is one that is highly imperiled,” said Alan Weakley, an ecologist with the University of North Carolina Chapel Hill.

To combat this, the Southern Environmental Law Center is pushing for clear standards for more appropriate sources for biofuel, including wood waste, smaller diameter “thinnings,” or trees removed to promote healthier forests, and use of crops such as switchgrass. The organization would also like to help establish protections for national forests, wetlands and old-growth forests.

“We’d also like to address some of the assumptions about the industry,” Carr said. This should include a better understanding of the science and impact on the environment and a more sensible policy regarding wood pellets, he added.

Moomaw said that it would be necessary to adjust public perception of the value of forests, beyond what products can be extracted from them, and to establish a strong carbon trading market to help achieve lower carbon dioxide emissions and solar energy programs.

“We need to offer subsidies to keep those trees standing,” he said.

Learn More

• Southern Environmental Law Center: Biomass Energy In the South
• Dogwood Alliance
• Enviva

BOLIVIA – Coyotes are nothing new in North Carolina but there is a growing perception of the species as a problem.

While it’s unlikely that coyotes are doing all the damage for which they’re being blamed, said Jessie Birckhead, an extension biologist with the North Carolina Wildlife Resources Commission, it is clear that coyotes are here to stay and they will take advantage of food people inadvertently leave for them, or prey on pets. As more and more people move to the state, especially the rapidly growing southeastern region, they will have more and more encounters with coyotes. But there are steps to avoiding conflicts.

“People can coexist with coyotes without issue,” Birckhead said. “But it takes all of us doing our part.”

Minimizing those interactions has been the goal of a series of 16 commission workshops held around the state this year, most recently last week in Bolivia at the Brunswick County Cooperative Extension Center. Speakers covered basic coyote biology and attempted to dispel common misconceptions, such as the conspiracy theory that coyotes were introduced to the state by insurance companies. Instead, it’s been a very natural progression as the coyote territory has expanded since the 1980s, when they were found in a few North Carolina locations. Larger predators have often been removed from the ecosystem, and people have developed the land.

“Coyotes are a species that does well around people, and there has been an expansion of their range as land has been developed,” Birckhead said. “They’re good at taking advantage of those opportunities we create.”

Biologists at the event stressed how adaptable coyotes are. “They can live just about anywhere and eat just about anything,” Birckhead said. Their diet includes squirrels and rodents, fawns, trash, fruit and birdseed and, on occasion, a small dog or cat.

“They’re not going anywhere,” said John Henry Harrelson, who is the commission’s biologist for District 4, an area that includes Brunswick County. “We have to learn to live with them.”

Here in Brunswick County, Harrelson said he gets a lot of calls about personal safety, and the safety of pets.

“It can happen,” he said. “I tell people you shouldn’t have pets unsupervised or let dogs off the leash. Here, it’s because of coyotes and alligators.”

Birckhead said the goal is to educate people about coyotes so they understand more if they do see one.

Often, coyotes are monogamous, mated pairs and breed within the confines of the territory they’ve established, to the limit that area can support. Juvenile coyotes can travel great distances when they are kicked out of their territory. In one case, a young female was tracked traveling 260 miles in three months, she said.

“Coyote density is usually overestimated,” said Michael Nunnery, a wildlife officer with the commission. “People will say they hear 20 coyotes near their house. It’s usually fewer. Three coyotes can sound like 20.”

Nunnery demonstrated tips and techniques for trapping coyotes at the workshop and discussed the intricacies and legalities of doing so. Depredation permits are available for farmers who are having problems with coyotes. Farmers and landowners can also use other methods for dealing with coyotes, such as having companion animals, dogs or llamas, introduced into livestock groups.

“Believe it or not, donkeys are especially good,” Harrelson said.

It’s a different situation for people living in urban and suburban settings.

“In rural settings, there’s more space, so people are less likely to have interactions with coyotes,” Birckhead said. “And people there often have more tools for how to handle the situation when they need to. In places where there are more people, they may be unfamiliar with wildlife. They have a lot of questions and concerns, and often want to know what it is they’re seeing.”

Steps You Can Take

The commission offers the following suggestions for preventing conflicts with coyotes:

• Make sure household trash area is secure
• Keep pets inside or in fenced areas
• Don’t feed pets outside
• keep bird feeder areas clean, with seed off the ground
• Encourage neighbors to follow the same protocols

It’s most important to help maintain the animal’s natural wariness of people and to not offer food to coyotes, purposely or not.

“Once coyotes associate food with people, it’s usually downhill from there,” Harrelson said.

Common Coyote Questions

The N.C. Wildlife Resources Commission said there are some questions about coyotes they get asked again and again.

Will coyotes attack me or my child?

This is a common concern but attacks on people are rare and coyotes usually have a wariness of humans. “Often, it’s a matter of talking, educating and calming,” Harrelson explained, regarding when people call with worries. The biologists said it’s a good idea to strengthen that wariness if you see a coyote on your property. Yell or throw a tennis ball if you see one. “Let them know you see them,” Birckhead said.

What about pets?

Coyotes will occasionally prey on domestic animals, especially those that are untended.

“They’re not always seeking out pets,” Birckhead said. “But there is the potential for it. It is something that happens. It’s our responsibility to look after the welfare of our animals and make sure they are safe.”

Why doesn’t the Wildlife Resources Commission do more?

Birckhead said that decades of research show that plans to eradicate coyotes, from poisoning to bounties, don’t work.

“We don’t have an eradication effort going on now,” she said. “It’s unachievable.”

This is where the plans to educate come in, hoping that will mean fewer conflicts with coyotes and a better chance at co-existing. The commission has established hunting and trapping guidelines for those interested. In some cases though, municipal rules surpass theirs.

When should I call the Wildlife Resources Commission or animal control?

Birckhead said that for the most part, people can call the commission if they want to learn more about what they’re seeing. If people see a coyote that is obviously ill, and they notice drooling, listlessness or stumbling, it’s a good idea to contact animal control.

The Wildlife Resources Commission has a Have-A-Problem website with more information about reporting problem animals and learning more about co-existing with wildlife. It’s at www.ncwildlife.org/Have-A-Problem. There’s also a phone line with call 8 a.m.-5 p.m. Monday through Friday: 866-318-2401.

Learn More

• Coexist With Coyotes

Second in a two-part series.

WILMINGTON – When the news broke in June that GenX and other chemicals had been detected in the Cape Fear River and the area’s treated drinking water, it was a call to action for many, both new and experienced environmental activists.

A handful of organizations have rallied or regrouped in response to the threats to clean water, shining a spotlight on the issues and industries that often operate behind the scenes.

“It always takes this kind of crisis to get people thinking about those things they usually take for granted,” said Kemp Burdette, who has been the Cape Fear Riverkeeper with the Cape Fear River Watch for eight years. “It makes people pay attention to the kinds of serious problems we have with the way we allow polluters to contaminate the water.”

This summer, concerned residents have organized rallies and forums to help focus efforts to address the problem. The Wilmington group, Stop GenX in Our Water, has a Facebook following of more than 9,000 members and recently helped organized events with well-known activist Erin Brockovich. Other organizations, such as the Brunswick Environmental Action Team and the New Hanover chapter of the NAACP’s Environmental Climate Justice group, say this issue has forced them to reorganize their priorities.

Clean Cape Fear members were already active in community affairs when they met in June.

“We thought it would be better to unite,” said Emily Donovan, who formed the group along with Burdette and six others. “We could pool our resources and experience.”

Clean Cape Fear members represent grassroots organizations such as Women Organizing for Wilmington, or WoW, along with scientists and politicians.

“It is not possible to separate women from water, so, of course WoW has taken on the Chemours’ contamination of the Cape Fear River,” said Lynn Shoemaker, founder of the organization. “This water crisis is nothing short of a wake-up call that we need more regulations not less. WoW will continue to beat our Teflon pots and pans outside local legislators’ offices, educating voters on the issue, for as long as it takes.”

Adrian Schlesinger is another person who wanted to do something after hearing about GenX. As someone who has been dealing with a long-term illness for many years that leaves her homebound, she needed the help of her parents to get access to unpolluted water.

“I know that not everybody has the help I do,” Schlesinger said. She formed Wilmington Water Share to do the same for others. She collected water and delivered it in a limited area. Eventually, though, she said it seemed a wise choice to merge her group with Stop GenX in Our Water and donate her supplies to them, but she has no plans of stopping her activism.

“I really want to play a role as an individual in helping fix a system that is no longer serving the needs of the people,” Schlesinger said. “I think this has started a dialogue about how we can all do more.”

That’s a similar sentiment and frustration with the status quo that’s led to a reinvigoration of the Brunswick Environmental Action Team, said Sandra Ford, who is on the organization’s interim board. The group was founded in 1996 but faded after about a decade of activism. Organizers reactivated the group earlier this year to fight a number of threats.

“Offshore drilling, terminal groins. Stuff just keeps coming,” Ford said. And now there’s water pollution.

Ford recently spoke at a clean water rally in Wilmington. Contaminated water offers more reasons to bring awareness about environmental issues. “I think there is a segment of the population here in Brunswick County that has no idea that this even exists,” she said.

Awareness, especially of those problems that disproportionately affect communities of color, was a reason that the NAACP added Environmental Climate Justice to their national platform two years ago, said Deborah Maxwell, president of the New Hanover County chapter.

“It was necessary to address a number of issues that keep coming up,” she said. The local group meets once a month and clean water is just one topic they discuss.

She’s a frequent speaker at local water rallies because, she said, this is a concern that affects the community as a whole, and perhaps some of that interest and energy can be channeled into larger environmental issues.

“It’s important to act as one,” Maxwell said. “One voice makes a better sound.”

These groups have seen results, too. “It can seem like a long, slow process,” Donovan said. “But there has been progress.”

Clean Cape Fear, Donovan said, will continue to push for transparency and more open meetings regarding GenX and continue to reach out to local politicians. Another of Clean Cape Fear’s priorities has been distributing information, including flyers, to those who might not have access. This includes bilingual information and a fact-checked website.

“We are very careful about what we have up there. It’s all vetted by scientists,” Donovan said.

Ongoing campaigns include getting clean water to more people, such as students in local schools.

Burdette, the Riverkeeper, says there’s a familiar pattern with this type of contamination.

“First, there’s a public outcry, which happened here?” Burdette said. Gradually, though, the focus tends to shift and it can be difficult to maintain the urgency. It’s up to these groups and activists to help to continue to apply the pressure on politicians and polluters to change water quality for the better, he said.

“It would be great if we could all think more about that,” Burdette said. “I would love it if everyone had a more awareness. If they could take a minute when they turn on the tap to think about where this water comes from and what else is in there besides water, to think about what impacts huge animal agriculture operations and industrial companies have on our water.”

Read Part 1: GenX Response: Stored Water Disposal Set

WRIGHTSVILLE BEACH — For 17 years, children from Belarus have been visiting North Carolina, staying with host families, receiving medical care and learning more about life in the coastal U.S. This year, though, marked the first time that the North Carolina Coastal Federation participated in the project and hosted earlier this summer a dozen children at a Touch Tank Tuesday event at the Wrightsville Beach office.

This outreach program is organized through the American Belarussian Relief Organization, which was founded in 1991 to help children living in areas contaminated with radiation after the disaster at the Chernobyl Nuclear Plant.

“Between 70 and 75 percent of the fallout fell onto Belarus,” said Yasmin Teter, a longtime ABRO organizer. Even though the nuclear accident took place in 1986, the people and ecosystems are still dealing with the residual radiation, she said.

Belarus is affected by an increase in thyroid diseases and cancers, leukemia, birth defects and vitamin deficiencies.

“The idea is that we can lessen the exposure these children have to this radiation,” Teter said. During their six-week stays in the U.S., they have access to clean food and medical care. “We have a number of great doctors, dentists, eye doctors who volunteer their time and offer check-ups for these kids.”

Another aspect is to provide fun and education. They attend beach nights, social events and get to participate in programs like surf camps. The children, along with their host families, also learned more about the estuarine ecosystem at the Touch Tank event. The children divided their time between events like puzzles, coloring and a Jenga-type game with animals on the blocks.

“The idea is that you can only remove so many organisms before the whole thing collapses,” said Tracy Skrabal, coastal scientist and manager at the Wrightsville Beach office.

There was also a station with microscopes and another with interactive tanks where children could gently touch creatures like sea urchins and fiddler crabs. Other aquariums held the less touchable animals, from juvenile fin fish such as herring and mummichog, to blue crabs and oysters.

“These plants and animals are pulled the morning before each Touch Tank event,” Skrabal said. “And then returned. We don’t want to stress them too much.”

“The sea urchins were definitely a favorite,” said Eugenia White, who worked as one of the translators at the event. It was up to her and the others on hand to act as a go-between between the federation staff and the children, most of whom don’t speak English. White would translate the staff’s instructions for gently holding the pointy animals, for example.

“And they ask questions,” she said. “Where are its eyes, what does it eat.”

While the urchins were popular, David Kozhov, a 12-year-old from Belarus, said his favorite was the blue crab. And, in general, he enjoys spending time at the beach.

“I also liked the surf camp very much,” he said.

David has been participating in the ABRO program since he was seven, but this is likely his last year, as he will age out of it. Translators weren’t always necessary, though. One boy spent a lot of time on his own at a sandbox filled with shells and other beach finds.

“He just started digging and seemed to like it,” said Chakala Hill, education specialist. “We were having fun. I showed him how to hold up a conch shell to his ear.”

Much of the success of the program depends on host families, Teter said.

“It can be hard to take on another child, to clothe and feed them. But it is such an important part of this. These host families give so much.”

ABRO is a North Carolina-based nonprofit and many of the volunteer groups are centered in this state. Others, though, are located from New York to Alabama. Since 1991, more than 5,000 children have participated in the program.

Jamie Draper is a local mother who was a host for this group. “To me, it’s a way to show my children that it’s a whole big world out there,” she said. “I hope it conveys a bit of what it means to help others.”

Learn More

• American Belarussian Relief Organization

WILMINGTON — A panel of scientists familiar with the ongoing issue of GenX and other chemical contaminates present in drinking water answered questions and shared plans for continuing research to about 100 last week during a Water Wednesday hosted by Clean Cape Fear in Cape Fear Community College’s Lecture and Recital Auditorium.

In addition to some preliminary studies conducted in the past two months, the Center for Human Health and the Environment at North Carolina State University announced a grant application to the National Institutes of Health for a larger study to examine the effects of these highly fluorinated chemicals.

Dr. Detlef Knappe, who was on the team that first detected the presence of GenX and a cocktail of other contaminants in the Cape Fear River and treated drinking water, has been continuing to test water since the news broke in June. He’s also been testing the effectiveness of home filtration systems on removing this class of chemicals, known as PFCs or PFASs, which have been linked to health problems such as kidney and testicular cancer, high cholesterol, decreased fertility and thyroid problems. These chemicals are used in the manufacture of nonstick coating, water repellant fabric and other products.

“It’s the hope that this will help in purchasing decisions and that people can better understand what they’re purchasing,” he said.

He tested water in five homes with reverse osmosis treatment systems, as well as one with a granular-activated charcoal system, and one home with a combination charcoal and ion resin exchange. In general, the reverse osmosis systems, which included Culligan Aqua-Cleer, Kinetico K-5 and APEC RO-45, where effective in eliminating GenX and the other fluorinated chemicals compounds. However, for those who want to get such a system he recommends treating water you drink, rather than a system for a whole house. “We only drink about one percent of the water that comes into our homes,” he said.

Knappe also noted that the levels of GenX have declined in recent weeks, after The Chemours Co., a chemical manufacturer in Fayetteville, said they would stop releasing the compound into the water. Levels are now closer to the current North Carolina Department of Environmental Quality health goal of 140 parts per trillion.

“But they haven’t dropped as much as I would have expected,” he said. “The question is ‘has it stopped or is it sitting in the river basin?’ ” He also said other similar substances occur at much higher concentrations than GenX and that very little is known about these other emerging compounds. “We really need to push beyond GenX and learn what we can about each of these.”

One reason for this secrecy is the business model behind these chemicals.

“So many of these compounds are proprietary, and are considered confidential business information,” said Dr. Ja

mie DeWitt, a toxicologist with the Brody School of Medicine at East Carolina University. “That’s a challenge for scientists because we have to figure out what these compounds are and what’s the toxicology.”

In her lab, they’ve been testing the effects of GenX compared to PFOA, or C8, for which GenX was meant to replace. They found that GenX, when orally exposed, is toxic for rodents but less toxic for these measures than PFOA.

“The data implies that GenX leaves the body sooner and that it might be less potent,” she said. “But I just looked at a small piece of the pie.”

This work didn’t look other factors such as cancer rates, how long these compounds might stay in humans, or many other health effects. For her, those are the lingering questions. How does GenX, as well as the other emerging chemicals – and the mixtures as they exist in drinking water – influence human health?

A grant proposal to the NIH could help these researchers get some answers. Dr. Robert Smart is director of the Center for Health and Human Environment, which began in 2011 and now has 89 members at state universities and agencies to study, prevent or reduce the adverse impacts of environment factors on human health.

“This would be an epidemiology grant to begin to look at levels of GenX,” he said. “It’s a first step in this process.”

While grant applications can be lengthy and time consuming, this effort would be a time-sensitive one that could be completed in as soon as six weeks, if all goes well.

“Work could begin as soon as a couple of months from now,” he said. “It’s important, relevant work.”

They’re hoping to complete the grant on Aug. 1, said Dr. Jane Hoppin, deputy director for the Center.

“One reason for the urgency is that we don’t want to miss the peak window of exposure. We are trying to position ourselves to better understand these compounds we’re exposed to.”

To address the questions regarding how GenX is stored in the body, the toxicity of GenX, or how long the chemical will remain in the environment, they’re planning a community-based study of Wilmington-area residents who are served by public utility water. They plan to work with the Cape Fear River Watch and the New Hanover County Department of Health to recruit about 400 residents of diverse ages, genders and backgrounds to provide blood, urine and drinking water samples as well as to complete a questionnaire on their water use history. Clinical tests will examine lipid profiles, thyroid function, liver function and urinalysis. Results will be made available to participants and the community, she said.

“We’d also like people to know they can write letters of support,” she said. “We hope that will strengthen our chance of success with the grant.”

Recently, Gov. Roy Cooper announced a partnership of further study of GenX and other compounds with the Centers for Disease Control, who said they’d work on long-term exposure studies.

“The CDC has a lot of resources,” Hoppin said. The exposure modeling and the community study could both provide different pieces of this puzzle. “We’re hoping that this work will complement what the CDC is doing.”

Learn More

• Clean Cape Fear

WILMINGTON – The Clean Cape Fear meeting Wednesday focused on getting the message about water contamination to a wider audience and under-served communities, but the discussion also highlighted larger concerns about ongoing environmental justice issues in the state.

“We believe everyone has a right to clean water and that everyone has the same right to as much information everyone else has,” said Harper Peterson, former Wilmington mayor, during his opening remarks to the 100-plus people gathered at downtown’s Coastline Convention & Event Center. Peterson is also a founder of Clean Cape Fear, an alliance of established advocacy groups, community leaders, educators and professionals working together to restore and protect water quality.

Speakers at the event questioned whether diverse communities of southeastern North Carolina had the same awareness about the presence of GenX, and other perfluoroalkyl chemical compounds that have been linked to a host of serious health effects in both the Cape Fear River and in treated water from the Cape Fear Public Utility Authority.

Cape Fear Riverkeeper Kemp Burdette gave a brief recap of the events of the past several weeks resulting from the Wilmington StarNews breaking the story last month about the release of unregulated chemicals by the Chemours Chemical Co. at the Fayetteville Works industrial site on the Cape Fear River. State regulators last week verified that Chemours is no longer discharging GenX wastewater into the Cape Fear River and is instead diverting it into holding tanks, but water testing continues and concerns remain.

“What I have seen over and over again in my work as an environmentalist is environmental injustice. Whether it’s where we put landfills or hazardous waste incinerators, where we build factory farms or cement plants, or fertilizer plants, the people who are most likely to face disproportionate negative impacts from these facilities are low-income people of color,” Burdette said, adding that these communities often have a limited political voice.

“This happens all over the country, often in minority communities,” said Deborah Dicks Maxwell, president of the New Hanover County NAACP and district director for the Walter B. White District of North Carolina NAACP, which serves the counties affected by the GenX water contamination. “Unfortunately, this time is just happened to impact the whole region.”

Maxwell has been involved in local environmental justice issues for the past five to 10 years, she said, including work at Navassa, a predominately black community in Brunswick County, which was the site of a former creosote wood-treatment plant and is currently an Environmental Protection Agency Superfund site. She’s seen a different level of awareness and outrage for the GenX issue than she’s seen for what has happened in other places.

“We have to broaden that awareness and support. We have to understand that everybody’s backyard is ours,” Maxwell said. But while these water quality forums are drawing large crowds, including the more than 100 at the event Wednesday, she said there are still many who are unaware. “Not enough has been done to communicate with everyone.”

If more people knew what is happening with our water, these events would draw a much larger audience, said Randy Evans, founder of Walking Tall, a mobile ministry serving those in poverty. Evans offers food, medical care and water to those he calls “unsheltered,” because “homeless” has so many negative connotations. For the most part, Maxwell said these groups don’t know about GenX and the other chemical compounds.

“They are worried about today, and when tomorrow gets here, they’ll worry about that,” he said. “But if someone else shows them they care about their health, if a stranger cares, they think maybe I should care, too. If someone says ‘Drink this water and not that water,’ that’s when they start asking questions.”

Evans mentioned that he’s had a few conversations with people about GenX, but he reiterated that local officials could be doing more. “I feel like we’re communicating in clusters, in our own groups,” he said.

Considering the presence of perfluoroalkyl chemical compounds in the water, many – from scientists to environmental activists – have said they are choosing to drink and cook with bottled water or water treated though reverse osmosis, a process believed to remove at least some of these compounds. Burdette said that tests are underway to determine whether this is true.

“But poverty cuts out a lot of choices,” said the Rev. Robert Campbell, chair of the Wilmington Interdenominational Ministerial Alliance. Campbell was among the many speakers at the event who referenced people in the area who don’t have access to traditional media or lack access to uncontaminated water.

There are also language barriers, such as the Hispanic community, which represents about 9 percent of the local population.

What are perfluoroalkyl substances?

“That’s about 21,000 people,” Peterson said during the meeting.

Amanda Boomershine, associate professor of Spanish at the University of North Carolina at Wilmington, was on hand to translate the proceedings.

Campbell suggested printing a tri-fold informational brochure. Clean Cape Fear, an alliance of advocacy groups and community leaders, is also considering information to include in an outreach effort, Burdette said. More than one speaker at the event suggested using information from election boards to reach more people.

“When you run for a campaign, you use every method of communication possible to make sure you reach every registered voter,” Maxwell said.

Jim Flechtner, executive director of the Cape Fear Public Utility Authority, said the authority will likely send within the next two weeks a letter to all its customers, more than 60,000 people, about the presence of these unregulated chemicals in drinking water. He added that the authority will try to have the information printed in Spanish, as well.

Several attendees, and some of the speakers, also urged for a legislative push to encourage elected officials to strengthen regulatory agencies to prevent a similar situation in the future.

“We have to take a proactive approach to whatever is coming down that river,” said Delthea Simmons, co-founder of the Wilmington Progressive Coalition and co-chair of the Social Action Committee Unitarian Universalist Congregation of Wilmington. “Let’s be real here, when you hear ‘tax cuts’ you should hear ‘no more regulators.’ You can pay taxes now or medical bills later.”

The meeting was one of an ongoing series called Water Wednesdays planned by Clean Cape Fear. More such events are expected to be announced in coming weeks.

Learn More

• Clean Cape Fear
• Cape Fear Public Utility Authority

WILMINGTON – There were two common refrains at the GenX forum in Wilmington Wednesday night: that there are many unknowns about the effects the compound will have on human health and that it is up to each individual to determine if they want to continue to drink and use the public water in which the chemical has been detected.

Related: Group Plans GenX Discussion

The opposition of these two ideas was an obvious cause of frustration for many of the 450 people gathered at the University of North Carolina at Wilmington’s Kenan Auditorium.

The event was hosted by WHQR News 91.3, WWAY-TV News and StarNews Media, which earlier this month broke the story about GenX, an unregulated chemical compound made by The Chemours Co. A 16-member panel of scientists, environmental advocates, elected officials and health officials answered questions from the audience. Topics included legal implications and economic effects, but again and again the question “Would you drink the water?” was posed to panelist after panelist.

GenX has received much of the attention in recent weeks, but the larger issue is that it is one of several similar chemicals found in the drinking water of an estimated 250,000 people in Brunswick, Pender and New Hanover counties, said Detlef Knappe, a professor at North Carolina State University. He was on the team that collected water samples upstream and downstream of the Fayetteville Works industrial complex that is home to Chemours and other companies. While this perfluoroalkyl compound wasn’t found upstream, it was detected downstream and in the treated water supply at Cape Fear Public Utility Authority. The concern is because these chemicals are similar to other perfluoroalkyl substances that have been tied to kidney and testicular cancers, ulcerative colitis and other health conditions.

These so-called legacy compounds, perfluorooctanoic acid, or PFOA, and perfluorooctane sulfonate, or PFOS, have been extensively studied for their health effects, according to Jamie DeWitt, a toxicologist and associate professor at the Brody School of Medicine at East Carolina University. She wasn’t on the panel, but has been following the issue.

“The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has determined that developing organisms are most susceptible and established drinking water health advisory levels to protect developing organisms, such as embryos and infants who are breast feeding or formula feeding,” DeWitt said. Other health agencies have determined they are carcinogens and immune hazards to humans. “Taken together, these assessments demonstrate that a certain level of exposure to these compounds is associated with a risk of developmental toxicity, immunotoxicity, and/or cancer.”

In response, the industry has been moving away from these compounds in favor of others. GenX is a replacement for PFOA, Knappe said. “These new chemicals have not been studied very much. “There’s no meaningful health data at all. Despite this, the chemical is everywhere,” he said. You can find them in fast food wrappers, non-stick coating, water-repellent fabric and foam used in fire fighting.

“There should be cause for concern because it’s impossible to say right now how fast we can eliminate them from our bodies,” he added.

“It isn’t just this one, it’s a cocktail of compounds,” said Larry Cahoon, one of the panelists and a professor at UNCW. Many of them are difficult for the layperson to understand, or even pronounce. There aren’t a lot of published studies, but Cahoon said he is aware of some studies from Swedish scientists that are in the works and early indications suggest serious health consequences, he said.

“Thirty-three years I’ve been drinking the water and raised two children on it. You better believe I’m concerned,” Cahoon said.

“PFOA and PFOS represent only two compounds in a family that includes thousands of compounds,” DeWitt said. There isn’t enough information to confidently assess the health hazards. “Some of the compounds are likely to be less toxic than PFOA and PFOS, but some may be more toxic,” she said. “We also don’t know how these compounds influence health when they are part of a mixture, which is likely what really exists in the environment.”

Answers are on the way, but it could take years for a more comprehensive understanding, Cahoon said. Chemours announced last week that it had stopped discharging GenX into the Cape Fear River, the source for most of the Cape Fear utility’s drinking water, and more sampling and investigation is underway at the Environmental Protection Agency and the North Carolina Department of Environmental Quality.

At the forum, both Phillip Tarte, director of New Hanover County’s Health Department and Dr. Phillip Brown, chief physician executive at New Hanover Regional Medical Center, said there will likely be a closer look at data about illness trends in the area. “But it may take a long time to sort out a pattern,” Brown said.

“I don’t think anyone is considering the whole picture yet,” said Mike Giles, one of the panelists and a coastal advocate with the North Carolina Coastal Federation. There’s a concern about drinking the water, he said, but we do much more with it. “We water our gardens with it, we cook with it. And what about the environment? What’s the impact on wildlife and pets?”

The chemical could have a profound effect on animals, Cahoon said. “Pets don’t have the detox mechanisms that we do.”

“This probably leaves people wondering what to do? Should they drink the water or not? In my opinion, they shouldn’t even have to make that choice,” DeWitt said. “We pay for safe water here in the U.S. and we should have confidence that our water is safe for us to drink, which means that potentially harmful chemicals should be thoroughly tested before they are allowed into the environment.”

Kemp Burdette, the Cape Fear Riverkeeper, made a similar point during the discussion. “The way it’s happening is backwards,” he said, that the testing and assessment are coming after it’s already in the river and drinking water.

In the meantime, though, Knappe is also often asked if he would drink the water. He suggests an under-the-sink, reverse-osmosis system to treat water for drinking and cooking.

“I would use the tap water for bathing, dish washing and laundry,” he said. “I would get a rain barrel for my garden.”

Learn More

• Read the Study: Legacy and Emerging Perfluoroalkyl Substances in the Cape Fear River
• Supporting information for the study

KURE BEACH – Anyone who has ambled around the Fort Fisher historic site has seen firsthand a slice of North Carolina’s past.

The mounds of the Civil War earthworks fort are still evident more than 150 years later. Other aspects of that wartime history remain, too, but are less obvious. Those who’ve walked along the site’s seaside revetment have likely passed within 800 yards of a sunken blockade runner. That shipwreck is now the state’s first Heritage Dive Site with more in the works.

The vessel, the Condor, ran aground on Oct. 1, 1864, and it’s perhaps best known as the event that led to the death of one of its passengers, Confederate spy Rose O’Neal Greenhow. But there’s a lot more to know about the wreckage and North Carolina officials are hoping residents and tourists will want to dive below the surface to learn more. Two white mooring buoys now mark the site so divers and snorkelers can see what remains of the blockade runner, which rests just 25 feet under water.

“It’s so close to the surface,” said Gordon Watts of the Institute of International Maritime Research. “It’s really the only time machine we have, and you can go back in time.”

“We have such a rich history off our coast,” said Susi Hamilton of the North Carolina Department of Natural and Cultural Resources, who along with Watts, appeared at a dedication ceremony for the site earlier this month.

The Heritage Dive Site program is meant to increase appreciation for the treacherous waters off the state’s coast often called the Graveyard of the Atlantic. There are close to 5,000 documented wrecks off the North Carolina shore.

“We’ve only found 996 of them,” said Greg Stratton, archaeological dive supervisor with the state’s Underwater Archaeology Branch. Stratton was among those who placed the lines and buoys so others can find the dive site. “We want people to see what we see when we dive.”

A sense of excitement and enthusiasm for the site can lead to increased tourism and preservation, officials said.

“What we’ve found is that, long term, there’s increased stewardship at these sites,” Hamilton said.

North Carolina’s program is based on one in Florida, which now boasts 12 such dive sites. John W. “Billy Ray” Morris III, deputy state archaeologist with the branch, started tentative plans for the Condor site in the 1990s, but the real push to get it ready has only taken place in the past year. One of the primary reasons this wreckage is the state’s first Heritage Dive Site is that it is still mostly intact. Another is its history.

Originally 220 feet long, the Condor was one of five Falcon-Class steamers built in Glasgow, Scotland, for the purpose evading Union blockades of Southern ports and waterways. These were typically lightweight, shallow-draft vessels capable of outrunning and outmaneuvering patrol ships and transporting cargo that included guns and other ordnance. Larger cargo ships would travel from Europe to Bermuda, for example, and a smaller amount of supplies would be loaded onto these quicker vessels that had a better chance of making past Union forces and to their destinations, Stratton said. Today, 218.6 feet remain of the Condor.

“And it’s in fantastic condition,” Morris said.

Divers, using a dive slate prepared for the project, can see parts of the starboard and port paddle wheels and iron-and-copper steam machinery.

On its maiden voyage, the Condor traveled a well-documented path. It first sailed from Scotland to Ireland and was carrying uniforms for Confederate forces. At this point, both Greenhow and Lt. Joseph D. “Fighting Joe” Wilson, a surviving officer from the raider CSS Alabama, were on board. It then arrived in Bermuda on Sept. 1, 1864, and, instead of sailing to North Carolina, it traveled to Halifax, Nova Scotia, to pick up coal, supplies and J.P. Holcombe, a Confederate agent who had been organizing transportation for escaped Confederate prisoners. A Newfoundland puppy was also on board, belonging to pilot Thomas Brinkman.

As it sailed to the New Inlet, the Condor veered to avoid the Nighthawk, another Confederate blockade runner that, unknown to the Condor crew, had run aground two days prior. Greenhow wanted to be rowed ashore because she feared capture. As she was wearing heavy clothing, and carrying a large amount of gold meant for the Confederacy, she drowned when rough waters capsized the boat. She was later given a full military funeral and buried in Oakdale Cemetery in Wilmington. Others, including the puppy, safely made it to shore.

More Dive Sites Planned

The Condor wreckage was chosen as the state’s first dive site because it is so close to the beach.

“We can actually keep an eye on it from the office,” Stratton said.

Divers can refer to numbered placards at the site. Snorkelers can also enjoy the site, especially if the weather is clear. Non-diving visitors can also take a sort of Condor tour, by checking out a replica at the Fort Fisher State Historic Site visitor center and then stopping by the North Carolina Aquarium at Fort Fisher to see photos and engine replicas.

Several groups worked together to make the Heritage Dive site happen, in addition to the Underwater Archaeology Branch, Hamilton said. These include North Carolina Sea Grant, Friends of Fort Fisher, Fort Fisher State Historic Site and local dive shops.

There are more in the works. The hope is that in about a year, another Heritage Dive Site will open, Stratton said.

“We have a five-year plan to have three or four by that time, including one in the Outer Banks,” he said. “This is a part of our shared heritage. And we want to help people enjoy it and teach them how to take care of it. Eventually, it will deteriorate, as all things do in the ocean. But it’s here now.”

Both Stratton and Watts said the wreck of the U.S.S. Peterhoff, also off Kure Beach, could be one of the next sites. The Peterhoff was a British vessel that had been seized by the Union Navy in February 1863 and put into service to blockade Wilmington. The Peterhoff was sunk during its first week of blockading duty after being rammed by the gunboat Monticello, whose crew mistook it as a blockade runner.

“Peterhoff was a large iron vessel and there is an extensive amount of surviving hull structure and steam machinery,” Watts said. “Several of the large cannons that were thrown overboard are still visible on the bottom near the hull.”

“The spectrum of shipwrecks off the North Carolina coast and in the sounds and rivers spans the entire history of the state,” Watts said. “They preserve an exciting physical record that can significantly enhance our knowledge of the past and our collective maritime heritage.”

Learn More

• Heritage Dive Site

WILMINGTON – Consider the ubiquitous plastic water bottle. When you see one, do you think of it as a possible fuel source? Or that one day it might break down into tiny microscopic pieces on which larval fish will feed?

Given the convenience and inexpensiveness of plastics, it is in some ways no surprise that production of plastics has increased so rapidly, from 15 metric tons in 1964 to more than 300 metric tons in recent years. Plastics have progressed so quickly, though, that there is still so much we don’t know about their impact on the environment, but scientists and researchers are trying to figure it out. The United Nations Environment Assembly recently found that the financial damage of plastic is thought to be $13 billion a year, because of its threat to marine life, tourism, fisheries and business. And a recent study from the National Center for Ecological Analysis and Synthesis said that 4.8 million metric tons of plastic waste enter the oceans from land each year. That’s a conservative estimate, they found. It could be as high 12.7 million metric tons.

Closer to home, researchers at the University of North Carolina Wilmington are looking at other aspects of plastics on our lives – they’re testing the burgeoning plastics-to-oil industry and learning more about how plastics work in the local ecosystem. “I do think people are understanding more about the consequences of plastics,” said Susanne Brander, an assistant professor in the biology department. She mentions that some powerful images – like the picture of the albatross whose parents had been feeding it bits of plastic – can make an impression. “But there’s still a lot to learn.”

Brander and her students are looking at how plastics are ingested by the inland silverside, a small fish that feeds on zooplankton and is in turn prey for many birds and larger fish, such as the black sea bass.

“A lot of plastic goes unaccounted for,” Brander said.

There are thoughts that plastics settle in the estuarine sediment and that they break down into pieces so small that even the human eye can’t see them. Her preliminary results show that these fish are eating tiny pieces of plastics, and now these researchers are trying to determine the effects.

“How does that affect their growth and survival? If their bellies are filled with plastics, it would make sense that there are some long-term implications,” she said.

On the other end of the spectrum, the questions are about how we can limit plastics from entering the waterways and oceans in the first place, before they have a chance to harm marine life.

“This is something we’re doing to see if we can solve a problem,” said Bonnie Monteleone, who works in the chemistry department at UNCW and is also the founder of the locally based nonprofit Plastic Ocean Project. In this case, she’s talking about a depolymerizer, a reactor that converts plastics to oil.

One afternoon last month, Judson Bledsoe delivered a small-batch reactor to the rear of the chemistry department at UNCW, loaded it up with an assortment of plastic trash, and plugged it in. When everything goes well, the reactor produces oil from plastic in 45 minutes to an hour. On this day, it wasn’t going as smoothly, and Bledsoe determined that there’s another drain on the power source. Eventually, though, the depolymerizer broke up the series of hydrocarbons that were linked together to form the plastics. He’s found that the return is about 80 percent.

“We started some experiments to see if we could produce a high-value oil from waste plastics. And there’s some support for this. It could be a viable option and there’s certainly enough to keep working with it,” Bledsoe said.

Bledsoe’s engineering background has been helpful as he’s tried to make the reactor more efficient. He is now an environmental studies student, and his work has been focused on making the machine more cost-effective. He’s also used it to test different kinds of plastics, including ocean plastics, to see the differences in the kinds of oil they produce. It is easy to collect materials for this work. On this day, it’s an assortment of plastic packaging, and stuff that friends and coworkers collected for them. But they’ve become more particular about what they use. Plastic bottles, for example, are easily recycled so they focus on plastics that aren’t as readily treated by traditional waste management techniques. And they’ve learned that PVC, or polyvinyl chloride, isn’t a good choice because it makes a poor-quality oil.

“In addition to the oil, we’re trying to learn more about the other byproducts,” Monteleone said.

Bledsoe is capturing and weighing the light gases and the char residue, as well. “We’re trying to look at it from every aspect,” he said.

The reactor is made by PK Clean, a Salt Lake City-based organization that hopes to use this technology to create a useful product, and at the same time eradicate marine waste. The reactor at UNCW is a bench-scale conversion unit.

“One of the things we did is kind of look the paradigm. The company is primarily looking at business solutions,” Monteleone said. But there are ways to work this technology into other scenarios. “Maybe it could work better in a non-profit approach,” she said. “There could be a reactor at waste management facilities, maybe not to sell oil but to fuel the trucks and equipment on site.”

In general, it makes sense to treat plastics this way. “For plastics, the No. 1 option is to not use it,” Bledsoe said. “The No. 2 option, because so little plastic is recycled so it is just taking up a lot of landfill space, is to do something with it.”

Monteleone has seen firsthand the impact of plastics in our oceans. She’s traveled to gyres where floating pollution congregates and she’s been to beaches around the world.

“Each place has its own story,” she said. “In Hawaii and Bermuda, it’s micro-plastics.” Those islands tend to collect the small pieces of plastics that have been broken up the sun and currents. “I was standing on a beach and there was at least 10 inches of these micro-plastics.”

In Wrightsville Beach, it’s cigarette butts and their plastic filters, which don’t biodegrade.

“Plastic is such a big problem,” Monteleone said. “Studies say that more than 660 species are known to be negatively affected by plastics pollution. Plastics are the apex predator of the ocean.”

Because Monteleone has seen the damage, she knows that raising awareness about the issue is a priority and that’s a large part of the goal of the Plastic Ocean Project. The organization works on a number of programs – from encouraging restaurants to be ocean friendly to persuading retail shoppers to carry their own reusable bags. The group would also like to show more people what’s at stake with the plastic pollution problem.

One of their more recent endeavors is to convert the plastics-to-oil reactor to solar power, so they can take it to events and educational programs. The project recently partnered with Mack Coyle, owner Coyle LLC of Wilmington, to make a portable solar generator to power the depolymerizer.

“We did a test run and everything went well,” Coyle said. He’s been working with solar energy for eight years, using equipment from North Carolina-based Carolina Growler, to power several local events such as the O’Neill Sweetwater Pro-Am Surf Fest. With the depolymerizer now portable and solar-ready, they plan to take it to local schools.

It may also make an appearance at another upcoming event, the Fishing 4 Plastics Tournament to take place on June 3. This one takes a different approach to the traditional tournament and is inspired by trips Monteleone has made to the sargassum mats off the coast of North Carolina. Six teams are signed up to leave from Beaufort to go 50 miles offshore to this brown algae that home to a wide variety of fish and marine life and also tends to be a place where ocean plastics accumulate. “The goal is to have fun and the safely and gently remove plastic debris,” she said. Prizes, such as gift cards and sustainable fishing gear, will be awarded for most plastic collected by weight and number –as well as for categories like the most unusual piece found, most useful piece found, and plastic pieces with the most languages.

In her work, she’s taken students on similar trips. “When we get out there, it’s amazing the impact it has when they start pulling plastic into the boat,” she said. The area is an important fishing spots on the east coast, hosts five of the seven species of sea turtles. Teams will also be searching for lost fishing gear, also called ghost gear, which has been known to entangle marine life. “We’re really excited about the event,” she said. For those who can’t make it off shore, there’s a beach sweep of Radio Island and a community plastics-to-art project outside the N.C. Maritime Museum, as well as food, games, and live music.

Monteleone knows that this type of experience can be eye-opening. “But another real goal is catching it before it ends up in the ocean,” she said.

Plastic Ocean Project, along with Surfrider Cape Fear Chapter and Wrightsville Beach Keep It Clean, have another initiative to ask restaurants to curb single-use plastics, such as straws and take-out containers. This ‘Ocean Friendly Establishments’ program is self-regulated, but expects businesses to only serve straws on request, for example, and to educate wait staff about plastics. A list of more than 30 participating business, most of which are in the Cape Fear and Crystal Coast areas, is on their website.

“Taking small steps can be important,” said Dr. Brander. She’s gotten into the habit of avoiding straws and using foil in place of to-go containers for leftovers – but still gets a strange look or two when she does. “More people are becoming aware of the issue, but change is slow.”

There are other ways to help, too. If you can’t make the fishing tournament, look for other events like beach cleanups, Monteleone said.

Brander suggests reaching out to elected officials, on both the federal and state levels. A lot of the work done in the area depends on grants that might be hampered by budget cuts, she said. And state officials recently voted to overturn a longstanding ban on single-use plastic bags on the Outer Banks.

“The reality is, we all have to work together to make this happen,” Monteleone said.

Steps to Curb Use of Plastics

The Plastic Ocean project recommends a few simple ways that people can curtail the amount of plastic pollution.

• Ask to be served a drink without a straw when dining out.
• Bring your own containers for leftovers, or ask for a piece of foil to wrap them in, instead of plastic or Styrofoam containers.
• When fishing, make sure that you don’t leave any equipment, packaging or fishing line behind.
• Use re-usable shopping bags and a stainless-steel bottle in lieu of plastic bags and water bottles.
• Participate in cleanups and beach sweeps in your area.
• Pay attention to packaging when you shop: Avoid plastic containers and ask your favorite brands to consider not using plastics.

Learn More

• Plastic Ocean Project
• PK Clean

If you’re driving through Penderlea in Pender County, it looks like a lot of small towns. There are houses, farms and signs inviting former residents, who have now spread all over the country, back for a homecoming visit. But there is also a uniquely American history threaded throughout the community. This spot was the first of 152 homestead projects developed in 1934 under President Franklin Roosevelt’s New Deal. And it was here that down-on-their-luck farmers came during the Great Depression to try to make a better life for their families.

“Penderlea started during a hard time,” said Pattye Marks Ebert, president of the Penderlea Homestead Museum board of directors. Her family moved to the area in the early 1940s. “We grew flowers. Lilies for Easter and gladiolas.”

She remembers the community building and how important the school was to the area, and reading Shakespeare in the school library. Most of all, though, she remembers people willing to work hard.

“So many of them come back to visit,” she said. It’s the hope that more of them will return this weekend, for the annual Homestead Day. In the past, the event has included music, barbecue, and speakers. But mostly, she said, it’s a way for people to connect with the Penderlea’s history.

Getting its start

Before Penderlea was under federal guidance, it was a project of Wilmington industrialist and real estate developer Hugh MacRae. MacRae is a controversial figure in local history, said David Haase, who is the museum board’s vice president. MacRae worked to oust blacks from city government and played a significant role in instigating the deadly Wilmington race riot of 1898. He left his mark on the Southeastern North Carolina in other ways, too.

“He started St. Helena, Marathon, New Berlin and Castle Hayne,” Haase said. MacRae worked to recruit residents to six farming communities in the early 1900s. Castle Hayne in New Hanover County was settled primarily by Dutch farmers and the first inhabitants of St. Helena in Pender County were Italian. The Columbus County community of New Berlin eventually became known as Delco. MacRae proposed that the Penderlea site was be ideal for a homestead community to the U.S. Department of the Interior, sold the property to the government, and became the first manager of Penderlea Homestead Farms, Inc.

The community was laid out in horseshoe pattern around what would be a community center and school. At first, families were located on 10-acre plots that each faced a road. A scale model at the museum shows each homestead had modern house equipped with electricity and running water, a barn, poultry house, a hog house, and a combination wash and smoke house.

“There were 144 houses, and about five or six floor plans,” Haase said. “About 88 remain today.”

A New Deal

MacRae oversaw the project until 1934, and at that time only 1,500 acres had been cleared and 10 houses built. During the next few years, the project was overseen by different government agencies and plans revamped. The first group of official homesteaders moved there during the fall of 1936. Homesteaders were typically poor farmers who had to be approved and medically fit, according to “The Roots of Penderlea: A Memory of a New Deal Homestead Community,” by Ann Cottle, who is also curator of the museum.

For this New Deal community, the families were also white and Protestant. They were furnished with livestock, seed, feed and fertilizer. Much of what was need to make a farming town thrive was also built during this time – a 23-acre school (with an auditorium, gymnasium, cafeteria, and library) and a community center with a clinic, a home for teachers, a potato curing house, a cane-syrup mill, a cannery, a gristmill and a furniture shop.

One of the community’s proudest moments is when First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt visited in the summer of 1937. According to accounts of the visit, she was gracious, danced with many of the men and said she was proud of the project. Townspeople wrote and performed a pageant for their high-profile guest. The museum has re-printed copies of the program, complete with vintage advisements. More economic possibilities came to Penderlea when it was selected as a site of a hosiery mill financed by the Farm Security Administration in 1938.

Preserving History

Beginning in the 1940s, though, the nation’s economy began to change – and so did the community’s.  Both Haase and Ebert said there’s a misconception that the Penderlea project was a failure. “There were flaws in the design, and some of the initial farms were too small to be sustainable,” Ebert said. “That part of the plan did not work. But to call the Penderlea a failure implies that there’s nothing there.”

Penderlea is still the site of a farming community, although many of the farms have consolidated and are larger now. It was, and is, a tight-knit community that worked and played together.

There is much to be proud of in this history, Haase said. He didn’t grow up in Penderlea, but has a fascination with the time period of the 1920s and ’30s. He became involved with the museum more than 10 years ago. The Penderlea Homestead Museum began in an administration building in 1998 began to push for recognition from the National Register of Historic Places. A committee found that the entire farm city community was eligible for consideration and Penderlea Historic District was listed in 2013. Today, the museum and its artifacts reside in one of the first homestead buildings.

Learn More

• For more information on the Penderlea Homestead Museum, call 910-604-1616 or visit the museum’s website

This is the fourth in a series of stories examining the origins and history of notable and unusual place names along the North Carolina coast.

ONSLOW COUNTY – Many people in North Carolina may think “Marines” when they think of Onslow County. And perhaps there was foreshadowing of the mid-century arrivals of Camp Davis Marine Corps Outlying Field and Marine Corps Base Camp Lejeune, even in the earliest days of the county.

This area north of Pender County and south of Carteret was named in honor of Sir Arthur Onslow, who was a speaker of the British House of Commons in 1734, when the county was established, and was known for his long service and integrity.

“The Onslow family motto was Semper fidelis,” said Lisa Whitman-Grice, director of the Onslow County Museum in Richlands. The phrase, which mean ‘always faithful’ was taken as the Marine Corps motto in 1883.

“This was long before the Marine history in Onslow,” Whitman-Grice said. She also likes to point out that Marine was the name of some of the early settlers here and there was once a town called Marines, when maritime industry and agriculture fueled the economy before the arrival of the military. With that in mind, here is the fourth in the series of stories, speculation and historical theories about local place names.

Alum Spring

This mineral spring, which was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1990, is near Catherine Lake.

“The spring isn’t alum, but it is a mineral spring,” Whitman-Grice said. As a result, it was often prized for its healthful and healing properties, especially from the mid-1800s to the 1930s. It was described as a boldly flowing sulfur spring on a small slope. The area was also home to a poorhouse after the Civil War and the people there started throwing summer picnics. Even when the poorhouse moved, the tradition continued.

“These large picnics were called ‘Big August’ celebrations,” she said. “People would come from all over.”

The gatherings drew people from other nearby communities in southeastern North Carolina and sometimes from neighboring states. It’s estimated that crowds numbered at a few hundred people. At the time, the site had a shelter over the stream source, cribwork for a series of pools, a dancing platform and dressing rooms.

Camp Johnson/Montford Point

This site is a good example about how the military has shaped the county. This spot on the banks of the New River, was once called Mount Pleasant Point and named for a pre-Revolutionary plantation. Now, it’s known for the Montford Point Marines. This was one of the first training bases for black Marines, established in 1942 when segregation policies required African-Americans to live and train separately.

In 1974, it was renamed Camp Johnson in honor of Gilbert “Hashmark” Johnson, a retired Marine Corps sergeant major. Johnson was one of the first African-Americans to join the Marines. He served as a drill instructor at Montford Point as was a veteran of World War II and the Korean War.

“It’s really one of the few military monuments to be named for an African-American,” Whitman-Grice said. The Montford Point Marine Museum is currently housed in the chow hall the Montford Point Marines used during the 1940s.

Courthouse Bay

Before Jacksonville was the county seat, the Onslow government was situated in a town called Johnston, named for Gabriel Johnston, North Carolina’s Colonial governor from 1734 to 1752.

“It was close to the water, and they built a courthouse there,” Whitman-Grice said, adding that there was trouble in 1752. “It’s written that a big wind came in September. Well, we know what that means.”

The hurricane destroyed the courthouse and much of the town, and many residents left. After the evacuation of Johnston, city leaders moved the county seat to a more central location known as Wantland’s Ferry and named for James Wantland, a landowner, innkeeper and ferry operator. It would be renamed Jacksonville and incorporated in 1842. Courthouse Bay, now part of Camp Lejeune, is a reminder of the early history, Whitman-Grice said.

Hammocks Beach

“You see the word ‘hammocks’ often on the coast,” said Dennis Jones, a historical geographer and retired educator. “It comes from the way the trees grow, in a clump.”

The ecological meaning of the word refers to a stand of trees that contrast with the surrounding ecosystem. In coastal hammocks, the stands are usually narrow forest bands behind scrubby sand dunes or on barrier islands, which is in keeping with the location of Hammocks Beach State Park in Swansboro.

The land at the park was once owned by Dr. William Sharpe, said Patricia Hughey, author of books about Onslow County. Sharpe, a New York neurosurgeon, started visiting the county in the early 1900s, bought 4,600 acres here and eventually entrusted care of the property to John Hurst, a local African-American naturalist and guide and son of a slave. Hurst convinced Sharpe to donate the land to the North Carolina Teachers Association, an organization of African-American teachers. The property was envisioned as a resort for black beachgoers during segregation. In 1961, the association gave the land to the state for a park for minorities. Hammocks Beach State Park opened for all following the Civil Rights Act of 1964.

Richlands

It may come as no surprise that the name for this town comes from its productive soil. The Rich Lands was also the name of a vast naval stores plantation.

“We’re pretty insistent on pronouncing the two names,” Whitman-Grice said.

Many place names get shortened or slurred, but in this case, there is a distinct beat between the two syllables when locals say it.

John Avirett owned the property and produced turpentine, tar, pitch and other products from the longleaf pine forest on the site’s 20,000 or so acres.

“He did very well with it,” Jones said. “It’s noted that he made more than $60,000 a year at the time. Imagine what that would be worth today.”

This influential property and associated industry are reflected in other names in the area.

“Tar Landing is one spot on the river, which was as far as the boats could travel and the tar was brought to them to export,” Jones said.

The town still celebrates its agricultural roots with an annual Farmer’s Day celebration on the first Saturday after Labor Day.

Swansboro

Or, if you go by earlier maps, it’s called Swannsborough. This town was established in the mid-1700s on the site of an Algonquin village and was officially named in honor Samuel Swann, former speaker of the North Carolina House of Commons, in 1783.

The town was founded by Thelophilus Weeks, who was a soldier in the French and Indian War, said Amelia Dees-Killette of the Swansboro Historical Society. “And early (place) names were Weeks Point and Weeks Bay.”

Shipbuilding became the major industry for the town. One of its claims to fame is the completion of one of the first steamboats built in North Carolina. Capt. Otway Burns, a prominent shipbuilder in the community, was responsible for the Prometheus, which traveled along Cape Fear River to Wilmington and what is now Southport – and is said to have once had President James Monroe as a passenger.

Other Notable Places

There often seems to be more than one version of good stories. The accounts below come from interviews with local history buffs, as well as local history references.

Bachelor’s Delight Swamp: This waterway that flows into the New River is one people like to speculate about.

“They say, ‘Oh, there must be a lot of pretty girls,” Whitman-Grice said. In this case, Bachelor is a family name and not a marital state.

Bear Island: This name for a 3-mile-long island that’s now part of Hammocks Beach State Park is most likely from a misspelling and not related to the animal, Whitman-Grice said, adding that it’s apparently a variation of “bare” or short for barrier island.

Bell Swamp: The name for this swamp comes from one of the county’s early settlers, George Bell, who owned land here as early as 1713.

Beulaville Highway: Although the town of Beulaville is in Duplin County, this road runs through Onslow County. The town was once called Snatchette, and perhaps a reflection of a rowdy past. Ida Sandlin, the town’s postmistress, renamed it after the Beulah Baptist Church.

Camp Lejeune: The 110,000-acre tract of land the Navy purchased in 1941 was memorialized to honor the 13^th commandant and commanding general of the 2^nd Army Division in World War I, Maj. Gen. John A. Lejeune, whose name, as locals know, is properly pronounced, “luh-JERN.”

Comfort Road: This road leads to the town of Comfort in Jones County.

“The name comes from a visit from George Washington, when he stayed with the Shine family in 1791,” Jones said.

The story goes that Washington, when asked about his night’s rest, replied “I slept in comfort.”

Frenchs Creek: Or, as it’s known on some 1700s maps, Frenchmans Creek. It’s most likely named for French native Alexander Nicola, who settled across from Rhodes Point, where the creek, which rises in southeast Onslow County, meets the New River in the northwest part of the county.

Hadnot Point: This point that juts into the river on the Marine base is named for Charles Hadnot, an early settler.

Half Moon Creek: “This is one of those creeks named for its shape,” Whitman-Grice said. And its name is an early one in the county, appearing on maps in 1744. Part of the curve was straightened, though, in the 1960s as part of a flood-mitigation project.

Hawkins Bay: The Hawkins surname appears on several Onslow landmarks, including this bay, an island and a slough. They’re usually credited to Bazel Hawkins. Dees-Killett said that members of the Hawkins family, including Bazel’s heir Catherine who ran a boarding house in the 1850s, were important to Swansboro-area history.

Hell Pocosin and Purgatory Pocosin: Pocosins are upland bogs and wetlands that aren’t always the most hospitable to humans.

“These names really do describe that,” Jones said.

Hell Pocosin is the Richlands area. Purgatory Pocosin is near Camp Davis.

Hofmann Forest: This site, established in 1934 by the North Carolina Forestry Foundation, is named for Julius V. Hofmann, who established the forestry program at North Carolina State College in 1929.

Holly Ridge: Named for a slight rise where native hollies grew, this was a fuel stop on the railway before the town was incorporated in 1941 with the growth of the military presence.

Huggins Island: Although this island that’s also part of Hammocks Beach State park was first called Stones Island on 1700s maps, it was renamed for Luke Huggins. Confederate forces built a six-gun fort there in 1861 and occupied it from January-March 1862. Union forces destroyed the fort in 1863 but earthworks remain.

Jacksonville: At one point, the town was called Wantland’s Ferry, for James Wantland, Jones said. And there was an effort to call it Cedarville for the native trees. But instead a push to name the town in honor of President Andrew Jackson succeeded.

Kellumtown: When the military base came to Onslow County, many residents were displaced, and received inadequate payment to buy some comparable land elsewhere. Several black farmers bought land from William Kellum and established a community here.

Lake Catherine: Or Catherine Lake, depending on the source. This one has a few stories. Perhaps it reflects a family name, or is named after a lake in Scotland as a tribute to the Avirett family heritage. But there’s a more colorful version, too.

Jones said that the story goes that John Avirett built a house for a teacher named Catherine Cole, whom he hoped to marry. “She didn’t and moved back to New Bern,” he said.

New River: North Carolina has more than one New River. This one begins in the Northwestern part of the county and flows to the Atlantic Ocean. It’s believed that the area was inland lakes, Jones said, that were flooded during a hurricane and created a ‘new river.’

Ocean City Beach: Edgar Yow, an attorney and mayor of Wilmington,  purchased beachfront property on Topsail Island that was a vacation destination for the black community.

Paradise Point: The story goes that there were daughters who lived here that were known for their beauty and charm. But Whitman-Grice said the name instead reflects the natural beauty of the area.

Piney Green: This community name taken from the 18^th century plantation of Joseph Marshall.

Permuda Island: “This name is likely another case of a misrepresentation,” Whitman-Grice said of the narrow sliver of land in Stump Sound in southwestern Onslow County. “It was probably called Bermuda at first and it changed over time.”

Permuda Island is protected as part the North Carolina Coastal Reserve and National Estuarine Research Reserve.

Pumpkin Center: This one had most people we asked stumped. Billy Humphries, who was born in 1934 and lives in the area. believes his aunt may have named it, but he’s not sure – and he doesn’t know the reason for the name.

Snead’s Ferry: Edmund Ennett operated a ferry at this spot in 1725, but Robert Snead settled here around 1760 to operate a ferry and a tavern. He was a controversial figure who is said to have killed Revolutionary War hero George Mitchell in 1791. It’s also said that he was pardoned for the crime because of his political connections.

Stone Bay: Although this could easily be a name with a natural connotation, it’s said to come from an early Onslow County surveyor, William Stone.

Stump Sound: “This one represents the area’s natural history,” Whitman-Grice said, in this case, the  stumps from the maritime forests.

Verona: The inspiration for this town that was established in the late 1800s is Vera McIntyre, whose husband was one of the builders of the Wilmington, Onslow and East Carolina Railroad, which was incorporated in 1885 and existed until 1893, eventually becoming part of the Atlantic Coast Line Railroad.

White Oak River: Early maps show this river as Weetock or Weitock, Jones said – a reflection of a Native American name thought to mean white oak.

“You will still see word ‘Weetock’ around occasionally in the area,” he said.

Learn More

• Onslow County Museum
• Hammocks Beach State Park

WILMINGTON – Airlie Road is only a mile and a half long, but it holds a prominent place in Wilmington’s history – and in the minds of many of the locals. The two-lane roads shows a distinct slice of southeastern North Carolina as it winds through moss-covered live oaks and past stately homes, until it reaches the salt marsh where it turns and runs parallel to the waterway.

For those who’ve driven down the road a time or 20, it’s no surprise that it was designated by the North Carolina Board of Transportation as a scenic byway in 2013. But in recent months, development pressure on the area has increased. Area residents say a rezoning request from Dockside Restaurant for improvements to a parking lot along Airlie Road and another request for a proposed housing community adjacent to the Galleria Shopping Center could dramatically change the character of the area.

Earlier this month, the Wilmington Planning Commission approved the Dockside proposal and that measure is expected to go before the city council during its meeting at 6:30 p.m. Feb. 7. Meanwhile, the city planning commission is set to hold a public hearing at 6 p.m. Wednesday on the housing development plan known as Airlie at Wrightsville Sound and listed on the meeting agenda as “315 Airlie Road.”

More than 50 area residents overflowed a meeting room last week to hear more details about the housing project. The developers, including Charlotte-based State Street Companies Inc. and LandDesign, tried to assuage residents’ worries. It was a tense meeting, with visible frustration on both sides, as each offered opposing views of the best path forward for Airlie Road.

“There is a lot at stake, not only the beauty of the area but what impact (the proposed development) may have on the environment,” said Mike Giles, coastal advocate with the North Carolina Coastal Federation.

A Special Place

Much of the acreage along what’s now Airlie Road was deeded to the Ogden brothers in a 1736 land grant. This was before Joshua Grainger Wright, from whom Wrightsville Beach takes its name, became the owner. Sarah Jones, a Wright relative and wife of wealthy industrialist Pembroke Jones, is credited with beginning to landscape and develop the current Airlie Gardens, which is across the street from the proposed development. The Jones family sold much of the land to the Corbett Package Co. in the 1940s. And the Corbett family often opened it to the public and eventually sold 67 acres to New Hanover County for the gardens, which feature freshwater lakes, trails along Bradley Creek and the 500-year-old Airlie Oak.

“Airlie Gardens and the surrounding area are very special, not only to people living on Airlie Road, but to New Hanover County residents,” said Paula Corbett. Her husband Albert remembers playing along Bradley Creek as a child and the couple now have a home on the waterway. “This historic road is a treasured piece of rich history and culture, and must be maintained for generations to come.”

Paula and Albert Corbett were among those who attended the community meeting last week, and spoke with the developers about the proposal.

Most of those at the meeting agreed that Airlie Road will change as more people want to live near Wrightsville Beach. Many residents mentioned keeping the current, low- to medium-density residential zoning to maintain the current pattern and pastoral feel of the neighborhood of large home sites and yards. With few specific exceptions, commercial uses are prohibited in the existing R-15 district.

‘In Line with Wilmington’s Plan’

Representatives of the project have touted the benefits of their modern, more urban design that has a Southern-streetscape aesthetic, like parts of Charleston, South Carolina.

“It’s is in line with Wilmington’s development plan,” said Jeff Kentner, with State Street.

An earlier version of their plans for the 11.9-acre parcel included a mix of single-family homes and townhomes. The company’s current plan has only 57 single-family lots but still requests a zoning change to UMX, or conditional urban mixed-use development, which is how the adjacent “sister parcel,” the 7.5-acre former Galleria shopping center site that fronts Wrightsville Avenue is currently zoned.

UMX zoning would allow for higher density and the developers’ proposal offers street access to both Airlie Road and Wrightsville Avenue.

The developers’ presentation included details about saving 27 of what they called “heritage trees” on the property and plans for several small parks. They’ll also preserve existing canopy trees and flowering trees and plant new ones, said Richard Petersheim, a landscape architect with LandDesign.

Kentner also said that the Galleria site would include three restaurants, a fitness center, a grocery and a luxury hotel.

“I think the changes they’ve made show a willingness to compromise,” Giles said.

Despite the changes, Giles said additional new houses and businesses will likely have an adverse effect on the quality of nearby waterways. The federation has long worked with officials in Wrightsville Beach, Wilmington, the North Carolina Department of Transportation, and UNC Wilmington to reduce the volume of stormwater runoff flowing into Bradley and Hewletts creeks, in efforts to reduce the amount of contaminants entering the waterways.

“This is work we’ve been doing for years, really, to mitigate the impact of polluted stormwater,” Giles said.

Also discussed during the meeting were the effects the development could have on traffic in the area. Paula Corbett said some of the traffic numbers used may be outdated. Her company, Eastcoast Research, conducted a four-hour, peak-time traffic count on Dec. 22, 2016, and determined that 2,108 cars either turned onto Airlie Road or traveled from Airlie to Oleander Drive and Military Cutoff during the period.

“This small sample does not qualify as significant data,” Corbett said, “but does serve the purpose of showing the significant number of cars which enter and exit Airlie Road.”

Although Corbett likes many of the aspects of the community proposal, one of the things she’d like to see going forward is a comprehensive traffic-flow study. Corbett also prefers a wider, 50-foot setback from the road to maintain the scenic integrity of Airlie Road, she said.

During the meeting, Kentner said the cars from the Airlie Road development would ultimately not add to congestion in the area because residents would be able to walk, rather than drive, to many retail destinations. Kentner and other development representatives at the meeting expressed some willingness to make other compromises, including increasing the buffer between the community and the street.

Although several at the meeting suggested postponing the discussion, the developers said they were planning to keep their appointment Wednesday with the planning commission.

Learn More

• Conditional District Rezoning Case Summary

This is the third in a series of stories examining the origins and history of notable and unusual place names along the North Carolina coast.

PENDER COUNTY – There’s little mystery to where Pender County got its name. Maybe because its history is relatively new, compared to other North Carolina counties. It separated from New Hanover in 1875. Of the state’s 100 counties, only a handful were founded later. On the other hand, like many other coastal spaces, it was inhabited and explored for much longer than that.

The state’s oldest home is on Pender’s coast. It was also the site of the first North Carolina battle in the American Revolution. When it came time to make things official, though, they turned to William Dorsey Pender, a West Point graduate and Confederate general who died at age 29 in 1863 in Staunton, Virginia, following a leg amputation related to injuries sustained during the Battle of Gettysburg. You can find his likeness on a monument near the Pender County Courthouse in downtown Burgaw. It’s probably a good place to continue our look at names up and down the coast, with this third in the series of stories, speculation and historical theories about local names.

Burgaw

The county seat was named for the Burgaw Creek and for many years, it’s been a local legend that the name had Native American origins. “It was kind of a good-natured joke,” said Mike Taylor, director of the Pender County Library. “That it came from a name that meant mud hole.” It was an idea that took hold, and can still be found in some documents and books about the area.

Taylor, however, researched the topic and believes the name actually has German origins. When the area was an upland bog, it was known as the Big Savannah that bloomed with wildflowers much of the year. Botanist B.W. Wells included a chapter about it in his 1932 book, “The Natural Gardens of North Carolina.” Early settlers likely came from a town called Burgaw, or Burgau – which means a fortified place on a wet meadow, he said. There are also a number of Burgaw castles, or ‘water castles,’ in Germany and Austria.

Sloop Point

One of the oldest homes in the state is at Sloop Point, said Jeanette Jones, president of the Pender County Historical Society. The home, constructed around 1726, is similar to Quaker-style homes found in the Caribbean and was part of a land grant of about 1,000 acres extended to John Baptista Ashe. Beverly Tetterton, a local history expert, said one unusual feature of the house is its cooling system. Near the rear of the house is a hole in the floor that allows cool air from underneath to ventilate a bedroom. At the front of the house, an opening in the porch ceiling allows air to rise to a closet on the second floor and into the front bedrooms. A renovation of the plantation was completed in 1989, which kept the colonial wood flooring, paneling, doors and windows.

A sloop, by the way, is a fore-and-aft rigged boat with one mast and a single jib. And they were a common site on the local waterways, thanks in part to an early shipyard and port. It’s believed that the plantation was where the sloops made landfall. The plantation also operated an early salt works, making the much-needed commodity from the local seawater.

Topsail

Maps from the mid-to-late 1700s mention New Topsail Inlet and Topsail Sound, making it a name with a long history. Local legend say pirates would hide in the area, or perhaps sail through the waterways hoping to ambush unsuspecting victims. It became a habit to watch for the top sails of the pirate ships, Taylor said. “There were a couple of areas with the Topsail name.” Beaufort Inlet in Carteret County, for example, was known as Topsail Inlet a few centuries ago, and then Old Topsail Inlet before it took its current moniker.

For the most part, though, the name stuck in parts of Pender and Onslow counties. Much of the reason is because when beach development came to the area after World War II, Topsail was the name chosen. Before that, according to local histories, the island was called Sears Landing (which is now the name of a restaurant) and Long Island. Topsail Island spans 26 miles, so it is extensive but by no means the longest of the state’s barrier islands.

Penderlea

This community in northern Pender County was the first of 152 New Deal homestead projects developed in 1934 under President Franklin Roosevelt. It was designed as a farm city for down-on-their-luck agricultural workers. Perhaps the name, a combination of the county and a word that refers to arable land, helped lure families here. Hugh MacRae, who also developed other farm communities in Southeastern North Carolina including Castle Hayne in New Hanover County, was instrumental in designing Penderlea. He oversaw the community until it began to be operated under federal management.

It was built in a horseshoe pattern, still evident today. Farms were 10-acre plots. The community also included a 23-acre school campus and buildings for social gatherings, potato storage, a cannery, grist mills, a general store and furniture factory. That’s according to the Penderlea Homestead Museum, which was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 2013. One of the highlights of Penderlea was a visit from First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt in 1935. Today many homes, the large community center, and other structures associated with the project remain.

Black River

There are dozens of Black Rivers in the United States and more in other countries around the world. And those are just the waterways named as such. There are more black water rivers, including the Northeast Cape Fear River, which also flows through Pender County. For the most part, these rivers are called this because the leaf matter, or tannins, stain the water dark, like tea. This particular Black River begins in Sampson County, and flows along the Bladen-Sampson county line and then along the Bladen-Pender line.

The unique characteristics of the water lead to unique ecosystems. The Nature Conservancy has worked to protect the Black River in Pender County, which has many meanders, artesian springs and mature swamp forests. This includes the 2,700-acre Roan Island, a silt island located at the confluence of the Black and Cape Fear Rivers. Roan Island is accessible only by boat, and its open canopy forest includes trees that are thought to be more than 1,000 years in age, perhaps the oldest stand of trees east of the Rocky Mountains.

Other Notable Names

There always seems to be more than one version of good stories. The accounts here come from interviews with local history buffs, as well as local history references. A few are listed below.

Atkinson: This community was formed along the Atlantic and Yadkin Valley Railroad. For a time, it was named for W.H. Lewis, who owned the land on which the town was founded. Lewis, however, was instrumental in calling the town Atkinson, for an engineer who helped survey and complete roads in the area.

Beattys Bridge: This road near Atkinson is named for a prosperous family that built an antebellum mansion that still stands at the bridge that crosses the Black River, Taylor said. The 1991 movie Rambling Rose, starring Robert Duvall and Laura Dern, was filmed at the home.

Big Savannah: Both the Old Savannah and New Savannah roads in Burgaw reference the wet savanna that was destroyed in the 1950s for development and farmland. The site was studied extensively in the 1920s and was said to be prolific with wildflowers, Taylor said.  It contained a remarkable number of sedges and carnivorous plants.

Blueberry Road: Blueberries grow particularly well in southeastern North Carolina. And Pender County has been home to the North Carolina Blueberry Festival for 14 years. This road in Currie, as well as Berry Patch Road in Hampstead, reflect this history.

Canetuck: This community, sometimes also spelled Caintuck or Kaintuck was known for rich farmlands. The best story about the name is that two hunters in the area had such a successful day that they found themselves with more game than they could carry. So, they decided to ‘tuck’ it into the ‘cane’ grass that grew there.

Croom’s Bridge: Or, as it’s listed on maps, Croomsbridge. Jones said she used to live on this road, so the story is one that interested her. The Croom family is one with many ties to the area and believed to be among the early settlers here, dating to the late 1700s.

Currie: This town is named for John H. Currie, director of the Cape Fear and Yadkin Valley Railroad. Prior to its establishment in 1888, it was the site of the Battle of Moore’s Creek Bridge during the Revolution.

Dirty Hole: At least one local history text features an old photo of a community known then by this dusty name. It’s located at what is now the intersection of Fennel Town and Stone House roads.

Foy Creek: This waterway in southern Pender flows into Topsail Sound and is named for the Foy family, who owned and operated Poplar Grove Plantation for at least five generations. The creek forms the headwaters of Futch Creek, and there is a Futch Creek Road that runs parallel.

Fremont Street: Burgaw’s street plan was designed with a large central square by surveyors with the Wilmington and Weldon Rail Road in 1878, Taylor said. And every surname of each railroad president is represented. This one is named for Col. Sewell L. Fremont, superintendent of the railroad during the Civil War.

Hampstead: Although there is an entertaining story about George Washington stopping at this community and feasting on ham, the origins of this name are likely much more mundane. The London neighborhood of the same name was probably the inspiration.

Holly Shelter: This tract of land that consists of almost 50,000 acres has served as a wildlife refuge and game land is said to take its name from the Holly Family of Pender County. The state-owned Holly Shelter Game Land dates back to 1939 and is one of the largest, least-disturbed longleaf pine ecosystems in North Carolina.

Lane’s Ferry: The story goes that there was a ferry that operated across the Northeast Cape Fear River site near Rocky Point. It’s also been a store and gathering place since 1881. It’s now the location of Lane’s Ferry Dock & Grill, in a home and general store built in 1932.

Marlboro: At one point, there was a stop on the Wilmington and Weldon Railroad that went by this name. Despite the tobacco-heavy connotations, it’s likely a reference to the marlstone found in the area, Taylor said.

Mary Slocum Road: Mary Slocumb is the woman who rode 31 miles through Pender County on horseback during the Revolutionary War, after getting a premonition of her husband’s death. Although her husband didn’t die, she did tend to wounded soldiers that day. This road, minus the ‘b’ in its spelling, is in Watha.

Porters Lane: This road in Rocky Point refers to Dr. Elisha Porter and his 1840s-era, two-story plantation home at the end of the road.

Rocky Point: Although you wouldn’t know it now, this was once a truly rocky point, Taylor said. “There was a large marl outcropping that was after during the Civil War.” In fact, it was mined 1879-80 to build what is still known as “The Rocks” closing the “New Inlet” between Fort Fisher, or Federal Point, and Smith Island, also known as Bald Head.

Satchwell: In addition to railroad executives, streets in Burgaw were also named for prominent people, Taylor said. East and West Hayes streets, for example were named for the 19^th U.S. president, Rutherford B. Hayes. Satchwell Street is in honor of Dr. Solomon Sampson Satchwell, who was instrumental in forming the State Board of Health and the North Carolina Medical Society.

Shelter Neck: This community is closely associated with state’s Unitarian Universalists, a church with no creed other than a shared desire for spiritual growth, which operated a school here beginning in 1902 for children who otherwise lacked access to education.

Stag Park: Although this road sounds like it could be from any modern development, it actually has a long history. It’s said that in 1663, explorers from Barbados surveyed the area from a bluff and saw a large herd of deer, Jones said. There’s an historical marker on the road, as well.

St. Helena: This community is another of Hugh MacRae’s settlements. This one, which consisted of mostly Italian immigrants, was named for the mother of the Roman emperor, Constantine the Great.

Van Eden Road: This road takes its name from founder Frederick Van Eeden, a Dutch physician and botanist, who created a settlement here from land purchased in 1909.

Watha: On early maps, this area was listed as Welsh Tract because of its early settlers. It was also called South Washington, before it moved to the current location with the construction of the railroad. The station there was called Hiawatha, from which the town took its name.

White Stocking: There are a couple of theories about how this predominately black community got its name. Although some accounts say residents hung white stockings from trees, many think it relates to the stocking-shaped road that was covered in white sand.

Yamacraw: This name is most closely associated with Yamacraw Bluff in Georgia, for a Native American group. It does appear elsewhere, including Pender County, and is thought to be Catawban for “great people.”

Learn More

• Pender County Museum and Historical Society
• Cape Fear Historical Institute
• Penderlea Homestead Museum
• Poplar Grove Plantation

Third in a multi-part series

HOLLY RIDGE – When Hurricane Matthew approached North Carolina in October, many in the state – from scientists to casual observers – watched to see the effects on shorelines. Storm surge and increased wave action can visibly wear away the coast. How would properties with bulkheads fare? Or, for those with wetlands conservation in mind, would living shorelines deliver what they promised?

Living shorelines are designed to protect vulnerable marsh habitats. In the case of hurricanes, though, living shorelines are also meant to be filters of stormwater runoff and to mitigate the erosion caused by the water that inevitably comes with the storms.

Larry Jansen chose his home in Holly Ridge’s Preserve at Morris Landing in part because of water and coastal access. As a volunteer with the North Carolina Coastal Federation, he’s been watching the 310-foot living shoreline completed there in July as the fifth phase of an ongoing restoration project, and he returned to the site soon after the hurricane passed through.

“I couldn’t really see any impact at all,” Jansen said.

Living shoreline proponents say that’s no surprise.

“For the most part, these shorelines are behaving exactly the way we expect them to,” said Tracy Skrabal, a coastal scientist with the federation.

Living shorelines are generally made with a permeable sill, such as bagged oyster shells or rock, that follows the natural slope of the land, with marsh grasses and other wetland plants behind.

“When the water rushes up, there’s nothing impeding the flow,” Skrabal said. So, they are designed for the water to come in and go back out.

Although these observations are a good sign, there is more meticulous work being done in the aftermath of the hurricane. Carter Smith is a doctoral student at the University of North Carolina – Chapel Hill Institute of Marine Sciences in Morehead City.

“It started about a year and a half ago, with the goal of comparing how bulkheads, living shorelines and natural shorelines perform in major storm events,” Smith said of the research.

In the weeks since the hurricane, Smith has visited the project’s 30 study sites from Southport to Manteo.

At each, there are comparable shoreline structures that will face similar storm surge and wave energy. For the purposes of the study, living shorelines are those that have had some type of restoration work, such as the addition of marsh sills and aquatic plantings, and natural shorelines are unmodified. Both are compared to the hardened bulkhead type structures that are common along the coast. In the coming months, Smith will work on assessing the post-storm effects. Right now, though, she has made some preliminary findings.

“For the living shorelines, I would say there are no detectable instances of damage,” Smith said. For natural shorelines, there was measurable marsh erosion. “In some cases, a loss of over five meters (about 16.4 feet) from last year.”

Some bulkheads remained intact, but there are some stretches where bulkheads were damaged. Hardened structures such as bulkheads can fail in a number of ways during storms and the damage is often obvious.

“What we see is that the vertical surface of bulkheads is more susceptible to high-energy events,” Skrabal said. “And storm waves can scour away what’s in front of them.”

The same can happen behind the bulkhead, when saltwater overlaps the structure and weakens it, causing structural damage or collapse.

Smith’s project also includes conducting boat surveys along 100 kilometers, or about 62 miles, of North Carolina shorelines, taking photos and noting the location coordinates of damaged structures.

“I would say that at least 50 percent of the bulkheads we surveyed were damaged, from minor damage to full-on collapse,” Smith said.

A post-storm assessment is also expected to be released by the Division of Coastal Management, analyzing how sills, marshes and bulkheads fared during the storm.

For years, coastal conservationists have been championing living shorelines for protection of marsh habitat.

“When you look at bulkheads, they ecologically bisect the habitat,” Skrabal said. “Marsh needs sediment, and they (bulkheads) tend to starve them of that with erosion and wave energy.”

Conservationists also have been encouraging property owners to consider living shorelines for better, more sustainable protection of their property. But bulkheads are by far the most popular choice for property owners. A previous study from the Institute of Marine Sciences estimates that as much as 9 to 16 percent of the coast is protected with bulkheads, and permits for bulkheads are easier to obtain. Whereas, it can be more difficult, months-long process to get permits needed to install a living shoreline. Bulkheads are more expensive, though, and can cost thousands of dollars, depending on the length of the shoreline.

“And the cost of repairing bulkheads after storms is considerable, too,” Skrabal said. It is her hope that the example of how well living shorelines did during the storm will convince more homeowners to consider them rather than repairing or replacing bulkheads.

“One of our projects, Morris Landing, seemed untouched by the hurricane; the sill structure looked as it did before and that’s the point of them,” Skrabal said.

This resiliency is something Erin Fleckenstein, a coastal scientist with the federation’s northeast office, has noticed, too. She cited a homeowner at Silver Lake Harbor on Ocracoke Island who had a living shoreline built there this past summer.

“Before, they were facing considerable erosion, mostly due to ferry traffic,” Fleckenstein said. But the owner reached out to Fleckenstein after the hurricane and made a point of saying how pleased they were with the erosion control and how well the shoreline did.

Friday: Planning in the wake of hurricanes

Read the first and second installments in the series

Learn More

• Morris Landing Clean Water Preserve Project
• Previous living shoreline research

This is the second in a series of stories examining the origins and history of notable and unusual place names along the North Carolina coast.

NEW HANOVER COUNTY – This part of the southeast North Carolina coast has been shaped by the ebbs and flows of the Cape Fear River, a body of water with a name so creepy it has inspired Hollywood movies and likely hundreds of ghost stories.

Native American inhabitants called the river Sapona, and it was also called the Charles, the Rio Jordan and the Thoroughfare at various points in time. A group of early settlers evacuated so quickly, they left behind their cattle and a sign about inhospitable conditions, said Chris Fonvielle, a history professor at the University North Carolina Wilmington. Now, most think of the name as a warning about the dangerous Frying Pan Shoals that guarded the entrance to the river.

“Hundreds of vessels shipwrecked there,” he said. But there is some mystery.

“It seems there was a time that it was known as Cape Faire or Cape Fayre,” Fonvielle said. “Was it a mispronunciation or misspelling? Or was it an effort to get people to think this was a fair place to settle? Because Cape Fear wasn’t the best name? We can’t be sure.”

Of course, that’s the case with many local names. Some have good stories, some offer speculation. We continue our look at this aspect of local history, after our first installment about Brunswick County, with some details about the names of New Hanover.

Wilmington

“Spencer Compton,” said Beverly Tetterton, local history expert and formerly of the New Hanover County Public Library. “There are lots of Wilmingtons, all over. And they are all named for him.”

Like New Hanover, named for the noble House of Hanover family, some local places were named in an attempt to curry favor in colonial times. Wilmington, like similar cities in Delaware and Vermont, was named for Spencer Compton, the Earl of Wilmington.

“He was a big wig,” Tetterton said. And the images of him prove it.

Tetterton was part of a group that invited the current Earl of Wilmington to visit the city for its 250^th anniversary. “Of course, we were told that his title is Marques of Northampton, which is a higher title,” she said.

Unfortunately, the marques – who is also named Spencer Compton – wasn’t able to make it.

Red Cross Street

Local children leaned a variety of tricks to help remember the order of streets in downtown Wilmington, from Queen to Princess. Many of the names are said to be borrowed from another city. “It’s either Liverpool or Philadelphia,” Tetterton said.

Philadelphia was a large, established city when Wilmington was founded but … “I think it is Liverpool,” she said.

Her theory makes sense, considering that Wilmington was also called New Liverpool briefly, and there is still a Liverpool Street in town. A Princes Street in Liverpool matches to an earlier spelling of Princess used here.

The English city also has a Red Cross Street, as does Wilmington.

“One thing I learned is that Red Cross is actually a reference to the Plague,” Tetterton said. “The American Red Cross wasn’t founded until 1881.”

Early Wilmington was a segregated community, but not always geographically separate, Tetterton explained. Blacks and whites lived close to one another in downtown Wilmington, but white-owned business were usually located on certain streets.

“Black-owned business were typically found on Seventh and Red Cross streets.”

Snow’s Cut

There’s no mystery behind this name. It comes from Maj. William Arthur Snow, district engineer with the Army Corps of Engineers during the late 1920s. Snow supervised the $5.3 million project to create the man-made canal that connects the Cape Fear River with Myrtle Grove Sound, which became part of the Atlantic Intracoastal Waterway and allowed boats to navigate the area more easily. The channel and a swing-truss bridge were completed in 1931, according to the Corps.

The project was a huge undertaking that earned Snow praise for his efficiency. It also considerably reshaped New Hanover County. What was Federal Point peninsula became Pleasure Island. The project continues to reshape the area. According to the Corps, the 90-foot-wide navigation channel is now more than 400 feet wide along much of Snow’s Cut, mostly as a result of erosion caused by waves, tides and boat wakes. Corps officials estimate that the north and south banks are eroding at more than 1.6 feet per year, leaving steep banks along the channel.

Freeman’s Beach

Snow’s Cut ended up going through much of the land owned by the Freeman family. Alexander Freeman, a free person of color, worked as a fisherman in the area and with his wife Charity started buying property along the peninsula. It was said to have included 180 acres at the time of Alexander Freeman’s death in 1872. “The Freeman family sold much of it for what is now Carolina Beach,” Tetterton said.

The family, and the land, also have played a role in local history: This area was developed into the Seabreeze resort in the 1920s, one of the few area beaches that were open to African Americans. At its most popular, it attracted black people from across the region and was home to hotels, restaurants, a Ferris wheel, and several music venues – and in fact became known as a music mecca during the 1940s, with the nickname ‘Bop City.’ Freeman Park, a popular camping and recreation area, is at the north end of Carolina Beach.

Sunset Park

Suburbs became an important part of New Hanover’s history as the area grew beyond its downtown center. Some were creatively named, such as Winter Park, “when you know it’s still hot,” Tetteron said.

Developers of the more modern Landfall community allude to the fact that this was where Giovanni de Verrazano made, well, landfall. “It wasn’t there,” Tetteron said. “Well, I guess there’s a slight chance.”

Sunset Park is a community developed in 1914 on Carolina Beach Road with an apt name, at least in that you can watch the sun sink from most of the backyards there.

“All of the cross streets are named for presidents,” said Jennifer Daugherty, local history librarian at New Hanover County Public Library. This accounts for the street names like Monroe, Van Buren and Harrison. A marketing poem was published for the new community at the time: “It reaches to the “Dram Tree”/Made famous long ago/And many mounds and batteries/Its history will show/ Regardless of the prices/It costs to reach the mark, We’ll beautify the landscape/Of lovely Sunset Park.” The poem goes on to promote the development’s sidewalks, sewers and water mains.

Other Notable Names

There always seems to be more than one version of good stories. The accounts here come from interviews with local history buffs, as well as local history references. A few are listed below.

Bluethenthal Field: Before it was the Wilmington International Airport, it was known by this name. It’s taken from noted local aviator and World War I veteran Arthur Bluethenthal.

Brooklyn: “No one is actually sure why this neighborhood is called that,” Tetterton said. “My theory is that there was an encampment of Northern soldiers there and they taught the locals how to play baseball.”

Carolina Place: Another one of Wilmington’s early suburbs, this one started for railroad employees “This one was for the worker bees,” Tetterton said. Railroad executives lived across the street in Carolina Heights.

Castle Hayne: A big home near the area’s Dutch settlements was known as Castle Haynes. The community shortened it to the current name.

Clarendon Park: This neighborhood, and a corresponding street, and the town of Clarendon and Hyde County, were named for Edward Hyde, the Earl of Clarendon. Of note, the Cape Fear River was briefly known as Clarendon River in the 1660s.

Dawson Street: This thoroughfare in downtown Wilmington was named for the first Civil War mayor of Wilmington, John Dawson, Fonvielle said.

Delgado Street: This street and neighborhood near Wrightsville Avenue dates to the early 1900s and the Delgado Cotton Mill Co. The mill was named for Dolores Delgado Stevens, who was the wife of mill president, Edwin C. Holt. Some of the small cottages still standing in the area were built as mill housing.

Dram Tree Park: Although the tree isn’t there any longer, this park on the Cape Fear River marks its passing. Once upon a time, the somewhat misshapen Dram Tree was a landmark to mariners from colonial times. Once the mariners had navigated the tricky shoals and the mouth of the river and reached this point, they could have a dram, or about an eighth of an ounce, of rum or grog. The Dram Tree was eventually destroyed by dredging, but a young cypress was planted in its honor.

Dry Pond: Like The Bottom, these downtown Wilmington neighborhoods are named for their low elevation, Tetterton said. Most of Dry Pond was destroyed when they put in the Cape Fear Memorial Bridge.

Empie Park: Adam Empie was credited with building the Episcopal church in Wilmington and North Carolina when he first came to the state in 1811 to work at St. James Episcopal Church in downtown Wilmington. This multi-use park is named for him.

Fort Fisher: The fort was named in honor of Charles Frederick Fisher, who died July 21, 1861, in the Battle of First Manassas or the First Battle of Bull Run, Fonvielle said.

Greenfield Lake: Before it was a park and recreation area, this water feature was a creek and then a millpond for a plantation owned by Dr. Samuel Green in the 1730s.

Jacob’s Run: This was once a creek before it was paved over and became part of a tunnel network that runs underneath downtown Wilmington. It’s named for either George Jacobs, who lived in the area during the American Revolution or Joseph Jacobs, a local builder, according to “The Big Book of the Cape Fear River.”

Keg Island: The name of this island opposite River Road Park on the Cape Fear River promises a good time. “It looked like a keg or a whiskey barrel,” said Joseph Sheppard, local history librarian at New Hanover County Public Library. “Sometimes the names of these things are pretty simple.”

Love Grove: As poetic as it sounds, it’s actually a family name, Tetterton says. There was a Love Plantation, as well as a Love Cottage. “Is that great?”

Lumina Avenue: The Lumina Pavilion was a public entertainment venue constructed by Consolidated Light & Power Co. that opened in 1905 and was home to countless balls, big band performances and movies. The last big band performed there in 1952 and the building was demolished in 1973.

Masonboro: “It’s one of the earliest names,” Tetterton said. The name for the island and sound appeared on a map as of 1770. It is thought to come from a group of Freemasons who built there.

McRae Street: People think that this road in Wilmington was named for Hugh MacRae, Daugherty said. In fact, it was an ancestor of his family, Revolutionary War veteran Alexander MacRae.

Money Island: Fonvielle himself was lured by the possibilities of Money Island – and the thought of the treasure that Capt. William Kidd buried there – when he was a kid. “It’s all legend,” he said. “It was probably thought up by some mother to keep her children from getting underfoot.”

Monkey Junction: Before this area between Wilmington and Carolina Beach was developed, it was mostly farms. At the crossroads, though, there was a gas station – one with a monkey. “Apparently, there is even a photo of the monkey. So, I guess it’s true,” Tetterton said.

Porters Neck: A neck is typically a narrow strip of land, which accounts for part of this name. The other come from John Porter, who had a land grant for the area in the 1700s.

Shell Island: This resort north of Wrightsville Beach was a one of the few in the area open to African American beachgoers during segregation.

Wayne Drive: “This one has personal significance,” Fonvielle said. His father, Wayne Fonvielle, helped develop the Beaumont neighborhood off Market Street, primarily for returning World War II veterans. “It was a great neighborhood. These veterans all got married around the same time, and they all had kids at the same time.”

Winoca Terrace: This development was named through a contest, Tetterton said. It’s short for WIlmington, NOrth CArolina.

Wrightsboro: This community, as well as Wrightsville Beach and other landmarks, were named for Joshua G.Wright and his family, who developed the area.

Zeke’s Island: “Three well known hermits lived in this area,” Sheppard said. “They weren’t hermits like you think of them, as philosophers. But more men who were down on their luck and wanted to find a quiet place. They became local characters.”  Zeke, or as it was spelled on earlier maps, Zeek, was named for one living there in the mid-19^th century, he said. “At the time, there wasn’t really anything there, it was a wilderness.”

BRUNSWICK COUNTY — Maybe there were once many eagles on Eagles Island and perhaps people were just hungry when they named Brunswick County landmarks like Frying Pan Shoals and Corncake Inlet. The truth, though, is that names of places may not be as straightforward as they appear. They do, however, reflect the families and culture that shape who we are.

What we name the things around us does indeed reflect something about us. This is the first in an occasional series on coastal places names that take a look at those places over the next several months. Each story will feature one or two of the 20 coastal counties.

Let’s start with Brunswick.

Those familiar with local history might know the county’s name comes from Brunswick Town, the community started along the Cape Fear River in 1726. Founder Maurice Moore choose the name as a way to honor George I, the King of England and Duke of Brunswick. It was a familiar practice in colonial times, and the reason there are so many English and European names along the coast.

For much of its early history, though, the lands west of the Cape Fear River were a part of New Hanover County. For more than 20 years in the 1700s, those in and around Brunswick Town fought for their own regional independence – something that was finally granted in 1764, said Jim McKee, manager of the Brunswick Town/ Fort Anderson Historic Site.

So the reason Brunswick County is so named today is part an effort to please far-away monarchs and part good ‘ole American spirit.

While this story, and others, are well established, other names are replaced over time with new ones or their origins get lost and we can only guess at their meanings. “I try to listen to those ‘I heard’ or ‘I thinks,’” said Musette Steck, former president of the Southport Historical Society. “There’s usually a kernel of truth in there, a place to start looking.”

She and others who follow those leads can see our coastal counties in a different way, in a way where street signs and town names show the way to our local history.

I Am Street

One of the favorite origin stories in Brunswick County is how a street in Southport came to get the name I Am. It’s not always a favorite, though. Steck wishes someone would have kept to the tradition of naming the streets after notable figures in the town’s history. That was, after all, how Moore and Rhett streets got their name – as well the reason for streets Lord, Howe and Dry. Robert Howe Jr. and William Espey Lord Jr. were two of the founders of the town and William and Mary Jane Dry were among the county’s leading citizens, McKee said.

Along this set of streets, there was a two-block alley in downtown Southport that wasn’t adequately named according to the telephone company doing work in the area in the 1950s. The story goes that a town clerk decided to have a bit of fun by using the well-known ditty, “How Dry I Am.” Steck believes that the same group of townsfolk who once held a funeral service for a man’s legs are also responsible for this bit of fun. (After 18 years, she finally believes she learned where the legs are buried, she said.)

Lockwoods Folly

“It’s one of the oldest names in the area,” McKee said. This tidal river that flows from the Green Swamp first appears on a map in the 1670s. It’s now known as Lockwood, or Lockwoods or Lockwood’s. But the Folly stays. One of the most popular stories about the origin is that a Mr. Lockwood, about whom not much is known, built a boat along the banks of this river, McKee said.

“But it couldn’t get down the river,” he said.

The whole enterprise was dubbed an act of foolishness or folly. There is some evidence that the ill-advised venture was related to a settlement that failed for some reason.

An alternate theory, according to “The North Carolina Gazetteer,” is Folly is a variation on the French term folie. Although it means “madness” today (which supports the previous theories) it could mean a delight or favorite abode in the 17^th century and was therefore used in the naming of English estates.

Keziah Lake

Sam Keziah, a retired insurance agent and son of the principal of a Shallotte school, learned about one of his influential relatives soon after moving to Brunswick County as a boy. Bill Keziah was his great-uncle.

“He was a newspaper man, along with the Harpers of the State Port Pilot,” he said.

As a reporter, he was also deaf, and would interview his sources via handwritten notes.

“I think someone like that at that time, in the ’50s, would have really stood out,” Keziah said.

And maybe that is why there are quite a few Keziah namesakes in Brunswick County. One is Keziah Park in Southport, a four-acre parcel home to the Indian Trail Tree. “It’s said that these trees were bent to point to good hunting and fishing grounds,” he said.

Another of those is in Boiling Spring Lakes. It’s no surprise that the name of that town comes from the spring that flows through the area and is said to discharge 43 million gallons a day. According to the town, the spring was once known as Bouncing Log Spring, because of a piece of petrified wood churning in the water.

“The town is alleged to have 50 lakes there, and there’s a Fifty Lakes Drive,” Keziah said. “Most of them aren’t very big.” And some of them do have names, like Seminole or Mirror or Patricia. There’s also a Keziah Lake located to the north, close to Pretty Pond and a neighbor of Harper Lake.

Bald Head Island

This island at the mouth of the Cape Fear River is one long known to sailors. The island marks the location of the dangerous shifting sands of Frying Pan Shoals, which are named for their shape, as they jut out handle-like from the island. Perhaps this is why mariners made sure to note any relevant geographical features.

“There are a number of different accounts of ship captains referring to Bald Head Island as Barren Head,” McKee said. “The island had a big sand dune and it looked like a bald man’s head.”

The island was a part of one of the first land grants in the area, which went to the Smith family, McKee said, and became known as Smith Island, and the town that is now Southport was Smithville.

“The island started to become known as a resort area and as a place to enjoy salubrious, healing sea breezes,” he said.

The current community and resort of Bald Head reverted to a version of its earlier name. Something similar happened with Smithville, McKee said. The town was the site of a natural deep-water harbor. Deep Water Point is located near the Bald Head Island Ferry terminal. Nineteenth century residents wanted to capitalize on that economic possibility.

“Eventually, it was decided that maybe the name was the problem,” he said. “It was renamed Southport in March 1887 to see if that would get things going.”

Waccamaw

Although Lake Waccamaw is in Columbus County, the northwest corner of the Brunswick also takes this name as one of the townships, from the Waccamaw Siouan tribal nation. According to tribal history, the name Waccamaw first appeared in 1712. The Waccamaw Siouan call themselves the People of the Falling Star, for the origin story of the lake – that a meteor streaked through the night sky and waters flowed into the crater to form the lake.

Although the history of the tribal name is unclear, historians used the Catawba language for comparison and guess that it came from a game called Wap-ka-hare. Its translation means “ball knock” and it’s pronounced something like “wahumwar.” According to the tribe, it’s assumed that Waccamaw is an English version of this pronunciation.

Brick Landing

Many names in Brunswick County are derived from notable families. The Gause family were influential planters and there have been landmarks called Gause’s Hill, Gause Landing and Gause Beach. They are also indirectly responsible for this community.

“The Gause Family had one of the nicest houses in the area,” Steck said. There’s also the Gause Tomb, with brick walls 18 inches thick. “It got its name because that’s where they unloaded the bricks.”

More modest brick tombs were more typical of the era and the elite planter class. The Gause Tomb, though, dates to the 1830s and is considered a show of wealth. The cambered brick-paved roof, supported on the interior by vaulting and a central brick pier, is similar to the brickwork at Fort Caswell, and historians speculate that there may be a connection.

Fort Caswell

One of Keziah’s favorite namesakes in Brunswick County is Richard Caswell. He was an

accomplished resident of the state, he said. Caswell was born in Maryland in 1729, but moved to Kinston, where he is buried, to work as a surveyor before pursuing a career in law. He represented North Carolina at the first Continental Congress and eventually became the state’s first governor in 1777. He served another term in 1785.

The fort dates to 1825 and was built because the area was vulnerable, according the site’s history. The construction of the fort, built of stone and earthworks, was considered one of the strongest in the world and most of it remains today. There is also a nearby Caswell Beach in the Brunswick County and a Caswell County in the northern part of the state.

To Learn More

• Brunswick County’s Comprehensive Historical Survey
• Whittler’s Bench, newsletter from the Southport Historical Society
• Brunswick County Historical Society

WILMINGTON — With the first of a new, larger class of ships to transit the recently widened and deepened Panama Canal calling at East Coast ports in June, state port officials here have begun investing in projects to accommodate the behemoth vessels. Meanwhile, a team of academics here is proposing what they say could be a more economical and environmentally friendly way to handle the cargo from the so-called post-Panamax ships, which are predicted to carry as much as 62 percent of the world’s container tonnage by 2030.

The opening of the Panama Canal to the much larger vessels was the culmination of a nine-year, $5.25 billion project expected to usher in a new era of commercial shipping. Some ports, such as Norfolk and New York, have already begun to deepen channels to the 50-foot depths and 160-foot widths these larger ships require.

The N.C. Ports Authority is investing more than $100 million in a port-modernization plan, said Cliff Pyron, the authority’s communications manager. The plan includes berth enhancement, purchasing new post-Panamax container cranes and installing a submerged toe wall along the berths in preparation. A $16 million dredging project to enlarge the ship’s turning basin in the Cape Fear River was approved in December 2015.

The authority had purchased for $30 million land in 2006 near Southport as a possible international port site to accommodate deeper draft ships, but the plan was put on hold in 2010 in the face of public and political opposition.

Now, a group from the University of North Carolina Wilmington is proposing that port officials consider another idea, the use of lightering barges, or lighters, flat-bottomed vessels equipped with container-handling cranes. The barges have a shallower draft and are used to load containers off-shore and bring cargo to and from ships and ports, according to a paper from Dr. Larry Cahoon and two of his graduate students in the Master of Coastal and Ocean Policy program. The barges, also known as lighters, could solve the navigational and other challenges for post-Panamax ships here, they said.

“The use of lighter barges has a lot of merit,” said Cahoon, who is an oceanographer with a background in coastal policy.

Pyron said ports authority staff were not familiar with the research.

Cahoon said he first learned of lighters by reading a marine technology publication. The barges were used in Hong Kong while that port expanded. They have also been used at the mouth of the Mississippi River. Cahoon’s graduate students, Jonathan Bingham and Kathryn Cyr, were eager to look into the feasibility of lighters in a local setting as part of a research project.

“Smaller ports are ambitious to catch up with some of the bigger ports in ways that aren’t ideal,” Cyr said.

As the research continued, acquiring a fleet of barges, or working with a private company to do so, began to make more sense.

“I don’t know why it’s not used more,” Bingham said.

Cahoon and his students looked at the challenges of navigating larger ships through the 26-mile long river channel and making the 90-degree turn at Battery Island to reach the port. With use of lighters, the larger ships would remain offshore and the more maneuverable barges would make the trip to and from the port. This would alleviate the considerable costs associated with making and keeping the channel navigable by post-Panamax ships.

“It isn’t a one-time cost,” he said. “It would have to be done again and again. Dredging, and re-dredging is an expensive proposition.”

By comparison, the barges are cheap, he said.

Also, with lighter barges, the river could be spared from additional environmental damage. Deepening the channel can have effects on the river system.

“One of these is saltwater intrusion,” Cahoon said. “Anyone can see the results of what has happened with this.”

Cahoon said evidence of the change is apparent in the stands of dead cypress trees upriver from the port, where salinity has increased in what was once more freshwater or brackish wetlands. “They don’t tolerate this saltier water,” he said.

Another potential benefit of lighter barges is a reduced chance of ballast water from large ships introducing invasive species into local waters. According to the paper, ballast water is responsible for the invasion of Gracilaria vermiculophylla, a seaweed, in the Cape Fear River.

“It has really caused problems for those who fish the waters,” Cahoon said. “It has made it impossible for them to work in certain areas.”

Although the use of lighter barges appears to make logistic, economic and environmental sense, according to the authors, there is a potential problem.

“The Jones Act is the biggest hurdle,” Cyr said.

The law, which is more formally known as the Merchant Marine Act of 1920, states that only ships built, registered and owned by U.S. citizens and manned domestic crews may deliver cargo by water between ports here. Cahoon said he was unaware of any U.S.-made lighters. Congress would have to issue a waiver to allow the port to use foreign-built vessels.

“It’s something they’ve done in the past, and it’s entirely possible that they’d do so in this case, too,” Cahoon said.

The team completed its research earlier this year and are eager to get the idea out to the public.

“Basically, we think it’s an idea that makes a lot of sense,” Cahoon said.

Learn More

• Read the UNCW report
• UNCW Master of Ocean and Coastal Policy Program

WRIGHTSVILLE BEACH — Eulis Willis is an author and elected official, who’s been mayor of Navassa in Brunswick County for 17 years. But it’s his Gullah heritage that he will talk about Wednesday to begin the North Carolina Coastal Federation’s summer Coastal Speaker Series.

His talk will focus on the past and present of the Gullah/Geechee culture, a fast disappearing remnant of a society of African slaves that once stretched along the Southeast coast from the Cape Fear region of North Carolina to Jacksonville, Florida. It’s now centered on the islands and in the low country of South Carolina and Georgia.

“The Gullah were people who specialized in a trade, in this case it was growing rice,” Willis said.

They were West Africans who were brought to work as slaves on rice plantations, and evidence of these African roots and culture still exist along these waterways. “There is a lot about this history that isn’t well understood, or well documented,” he said.

But, he hopes through education and events like this, more people will learn about it.

To most Americans, the golf courses and gated resorts for the wealthy on Hilton Head Island typify the islands that hug the South Carolina-Georgia border. Those who read Pat Conroy’s “The Water Is Wide” or saw its movie adaptation, “Conrak,” may remember that these island were once inhabited entirely by Gullahs, or Geechees, who were descended from West African slaves. The plantation owners fled after the islands were captured by Union forces early in the Civil War, and the freed slaves and their descendants lived for generations in relative isolation. They developed a unique culture and language.

Growing up in Navassa, Willis said he didn’t experience the same kind of Gullah/Geechee culture that those in Charleston, Savannah and the nearby Sea Island communities might. He learned of their unique language and customs when he met his South Carolina-born roommate while attending North Carolina A&T State University in Greensboro.

“He could talk and I just didn’t understand what he was saying,” he said. “Many of these communities were very isolated after the Civil War. They developed their own language patterns, food patterns, medicine patterns. Many of them from their West African parents and grandparents.”

Willis learned more about his own heritage much later, when he was researching his book, “Navassa—The Town and its People,” in the early 1990s. “I wanted to write about my hometown, its history, how it got its name,” he explained.

Through that process, he learned that what is now Navassa was once home to six rice plantations. He also learned that in 1819, there was a man who worked as a slave on one of them. “And now, seven generations later, here I am,” he said.

More of the pieces fell into place in 2006, when Congress declared a coastal swath of land that now starts in Pender County and ends in St. Johns County in Florida the Gullah/Geechee Natural Heritage Corridor and made a commitment to preserve its culture and history.

“It wasn’t until 15 years after I wrote my book that someone told me it was an ideal model of African diaspora,” Willis said.

After that Congressional act, researchers started trying to map areas with a Gullah/Geechee history. They started in South Carolina and as they moved north, they found more interest and eventually extended the corridor into southeastern North Carolina, Willis said.

The corridor is managed by a commission, which is made up of 15 members representing North Carolina, South Carolina, Georgia and Florida. Willis is one of three from this state.

The federation’s Speaker Series began in 2014. It features a new expert each month during the summer to discuss a variety of topics, from legislation that effects the coast to honeybee populations to oyster habitats.

“It’s a way for us to engage the public,” explained Ted Wilgis, a federation educator.

This month’s topic is a new one for series, but it relates to the work of maintaining coastal habitat, especially in terms of its cultural significance, and environmental justice. Part of that is understanding the different aspects of the history of the coast, Willis said.

“I don’t think there are very many people, especially in this area, who are aware of this Gullah heritage,” he said. “We’d like to get more people involved and eventually open heritage centers in all of the states, including North Carolina.”

It’s the commission’s goal to help spread the word about how the Gullah/Geechee people shaped the coast and how the influence continues today.

“It’s an incredible story and an incredible history,” Wilgis said.

To Learn More

• Gullah/Geechee Nation
• Gullah/Geechee Cultural Heritage Corridor

The ecology of the N.C. coast is teeming with a variety of life, but this area is also part of a larger region now recognized by an international environmental group as one of the most biologically diverse places on Earth.

The Critical Ecosystems Partnership Fund in February recognized the North American Coastal Plain, a more than 800,000-square-mile area that stretches from Florida to Maine, as the world’s 36^th biodiversity hotspot. The organization, based in Arlington, Va., is a joint initiative with French, European Union, Japanese and other interests around the world focused on biodiversity conservation of the most biologically rich and threatened areas by non-governmental, private-sector and community groups.

Now, the North American Coastal Plain joins areas such as the Cape Floristic Region in South Africa, the Mediterranean Basin and the Tropical Andes as biodiversity hotspots.

“I think there has been an awareness of this, even for decades,” said Reed Noss, with the University of Central Florida’s biology department. However, it hadn’t – until recently – received official designation as a biodiversity hotspot.

“There are a couple of factors they look at for this,” said Alan Weakley, director of the UNC Herbarium, and one of the coauthors with Noss on a study that helped establish this label. Much has to do with the number of species and endemic species found in a particular area.

“Another factor is the endangerment of the land,” he said. “How much is no longer available for these species?”

The coastal plain is high in plant diversity especially, he said, and meets the necessary threshold of more than 1,500 endemic vascular plants, those with tissues that conduct water, sap and nutrients, such as flowering plants and ferns.

The hotspot designation is also meant to bring attention to those areas with more than 70 percent habitat loss.

“We’ve lost 86 percent of the habitat, way above that,” Weakley said.

The research continues, but the richness of endemic plants – with 1,800 species found in the coastal plain – as well as the 138 species of native fish and 113 species of endemic reptiles, means that the region easily qualifies. Casual environmentalists might know some of the names on these lists, the Venus Flytrap or one of the area’s other insectivorous plants, for example. But there is much more here.

“This area is a real center for biodiversity and definitely meets the global criteria,” said Noss, who with a group of other scientists started a project in 2001 to map plants and animals only found in 25 or fewer counties. “We were looking at those species with a narrow range. We found that there are hotspots across the South, and most were in the coastal plain.”

A Closer Look

Noss found a number of myths and misconceptions about the coastal plain. Much of this area is flat and low in elevation, leading many to assume it lacked the geographic diversity that would encourage corresponding diversity in plants and animals. Also, there was confusion about the pattern of fire that is necessary to bring about different stages of forest in the southeastern U.S. Scientists now understand how important fire is to local ecosystems, and the area’s historical inclination of lightning-induced fires fostered the high number of endemic plant varieties.

Noss noted that the list of endemic plants keeps growing, thanks to new discoveries and changes in how plants are named and classified. Scientists are continuing to look at native species of ants, grasshoppers and lichens, which could strengthen the hotspot status for the region.

This hotspot has two subsections, the Geological Coastal Plain in Florida and Texas, and the Coastal Plain Floristic Province, which includes the area that sweeps through North Carolina’s eastern region. Noss, Weakley and the other scientists on the team delineated the borders of these areas.

“In North Carolina, the division is actually pretty sharp between the coastal plain and the Piedmont area,” Weakley said. “The areas are biologically distinct.”

The two areas, in total, are larger than most previously identified hotspots, but smaller than the Horn of Africa region. This region is about the same size as Mesoamerica, which includes Guatemala, Belize, El Salvador, Honduras, Nicaragua, Costa Rica and parts of Mexico and Panama.

The region’s vulnerability is another factor. More people live in the coastal plain and alter the native vegetation, which places local biodiversity at risk. Conservation priorities for this area are aimed at what sets it apart, such as reduction of urban sprawl and identifying potential refuges within the hotspot.

Conservation in Mind

The concept of biodiversity hotspots started to take shape in the 1980s with the work of British environmentalist Norman Meyers, American primatologist and herpetologist Russell Mittermeier and others who began to ask difficult questions about the priorities of preserving the world’s natural heritage. With so many places and species under threat, they wondered at how conservationists could help the largest number of species in the most sustainable, economical way. They determined that focusing on places with a higher percentage of diversity might be the best way.

“At that time, there were 25 regions that were recognized as irreplaceable and highly vulnerable,” Noss said.

In 2011, the number had grown to 35 areas that covered a little more than two percent of the Earth’s surface, but were thought to contain as much as 43 percent of the world’s endemic plant and animal species.

“There was some backlash,” Noss said. “Some pointed out that places with low diversity, such as the tundra boreal forests, are also valuable and vulnerable. Of course, this idea was to focus on one way to minimize the role of extinction.”

Today, the Critical Ecosystems Partnership Fund, which includes Conservation International, the MacArthur Foundation and the World Bank, is instrumental in providing grants to protect these hotspots.

Noss and Weakley hope the biodiversity designation will mean that the Southeastern U.S. will be in a better position to receive grant funding.

“Our hope is that with the hotspot, there will be more conservation for the coastal plain, that more donors will mean more money for things like land acquisition,” Noss said.

Weakley said the designation bodes well for expanded conservation in North Carolina. “With this official standing, it provides scientists with something to point to when seeking grant money,” he said.

Hot in North Carolina

In this state, the North American Coastal Plain includes areas like the Green Swamp in Brunswick and Columbus counties, which has some of the highest fine-scale plant species richness in the world. Some plots have more than 50 species, he said.  And there are the 20 to 25 insectivorous plants there.”

Also in Columbus County, Lake Waccamaw is home to the Waccamaw silverside fish, found nowhere else.

“Longleaf pine forest is also of particular concern here,” Weakley said.

Because of factors as varied as fire suppression and residential development, these forests now cover less than five percent of their former range, which leaves less habitat for species like the red-cockaded woodpecker.

“I think it is underappreciated how many people come to the area for ecotourism,” Weakley said. “More people than you might expect come to the state see the flytraps, and the orchids in the Green Swamp.”

Weakley said that preserving the coastal plain is a way to preserve this aspect of the economy and a way to protect North Carolina’s culture and history.

“You know, we are the Tar Heel State. A lot of the colonial and post-colonial past of this area is based on the products of the longleaf pine,” he said. “Those forests weren’t managed sustainably, but preserving them now also means maintaining that cultural heritage, too.”

David Salvesen understands the power of film. As a researcher at the University of North Carolina who studies and teaches sustainable land use, he didn’t set out to become a documentarian. But he wanted to learn why public opinion doesn’t always coincide with the consensus among the scientists about the effects of climate change.

“It’s a pretty sizeable group that doesn’t believe in it,” he said. “And many scientists are kind of attacked for their position on climate change.”

So Salvesen turned to people who work outside and recorded their personal experiences with the land and water around them. The result is “Climate Stories NC,” a series of short videos that feature beekeepers, Christmas tree growers, fishermen and conservationists. Each is a first-person account of work and life.

“These interviews are based on their own observations,” he said.

One subject, G. Richard Mode of Morganton, said he believed that “climate change was something Al Gore cooked up in his basement.” But as he got older he watched how warming temperatures altered his beloved hobbies – trout fishing and duck hunting. Leigh-Kathryn Bonner, a third-generation beekeeper, discusses the decline in honeybee populations and how the changing climate and shorter spring seasons disrupt her hives.

On the coast, Willy Phillips is owner of the Full Circle Crab Co. Inc. in Columbia and offers a fisherman’s perspective to the series. He’s been active in water quality and other issues for many years and was also on the state Marine Fisheries Commission.

“People are always trying to advance an agenda of one kind or another, he said. “But this is just common sense observation.”

He’s also willing to talk about these issues, because he’s more outspoken than many fisherman are because of his time in the public sphere.

“When you live in the swamp, like we do, things change fast,” he said. “It’s pretty dramatic, the changes we’ve seen in just a generation. We’re on the front lines. We’re on the cutting edge of this experiment we’re conducting with nature.”

Salvesen is the director of UNC’s Institute for the Environment’s Sustainable Triangle Field Site, which focuses on issues and challenges related to sustainable cities and urban planning.

“I don’t really have experience with film,” he said.  “I’ve learned it’s actually very complicated to produce these short films.”

He’s working with editor John Wilson and videographer Warren Gentry to shoot the interviews and background footage, and he is spending hours editing the video packages.  Salvesen received a grant from the Z. Smith Reynolds Foundation for “Climate Stories NC.”

Right now, a handful of videos are available online and Salvesen expects to have as many as 18 of them edited and posted by the end of the summer. Many of the segments are short, less than four minutes long.

“I wanted to make them available to environmental groups and organizations that do advocacy,” he said. “Most of the groups I reached out to said that shorter is better.”

So far, he’s hosted two screenings and discussions but hopes to add more to his calendar in the coming months. The idea is for people to watch them when and where they can to further the conversation about how climate is affecting lives in North Carolina.

“The people’s consciousness on these issues has evolved quicker than the leadership’s,” Phillips said.

Because they see what is happening, Phillips and other fishermen are more ready to ask questions about things like sea-level rise and policy changes. And he believes that film is a tool that can help bring about these important discussions.

“I think it’s really the only way to approach a majority of the population,” he said.

Willie Phillips, a fisherman and fish dealer in Columbia, talks about the changes he and other fishermen have seen related to climate change.

When plans were made more than 20 years ago to place a hazardous waste incinerator in his county of a few hundred residents, it was difficult to build a consensus against it – until they placed a TV set in front of the grocery store and played videos of people discussing the issue. “Within a few days, the commissioners were forced to reject the plan.”

The ability to film and show films about these issues across platforms both new and traditional is powerful. “It’s a wonderful thing,” Phillips said. “And it’s a wonderful thing to show people what we do.”

The power of a picture is also being used to remind people about the possible effects of offshore drilling.  Screenings of “Shore Stories,” are meant to show local audiences how communities around the world have been affected by offshore drilling. The Atlantic Ocean has been taken out of the federal proposal for new offshore oil and gas leases for the time being, but there is still more to do.

“I hope the movie will galvanize people,” said Mike Giles, coastal advocate with the N.C. Coastal Federation. “It’s something we still need to be concerned about.”

To Learn More

• Climate Stories NC

WILMINGTON — Wilmington’s Tide Water Power and Light building posed a problem for officials in recent years. When it was built in 1951, it was the height of modernity. But the decades since haven’t been kind. Its classic mid-century architectural details were left to languish. When the New Hanover County Commissioners voted to the renovate the building at 320 Chestnut St., though, the question turned to how to take this tarnished modernist gem and update it for 21st century standards.

Designers and architects restored the property with energy efficiency and sustainability in mind, while also maintaining what makes the building unique. They added windows, a new HVAC system and lighting sensors help cut costs, but its crowning achievement is the green roof and employee break area that looks out over downtown. The idea was not only to make the building more efficient, but to consider the enjoyment of the people who would spend time there.

“It really is something we thought about,” said John Sawyer, whose firm Sawyer, Sherwood & Associate Architecture oversaw the renovation. The building now features windows that open, stairways that are accessible, visible and safe, and more daylight, even in interior offices.

“Windows are designed so that everyone has some access,” Sawyer said. “There won’t be anyone who won’t know it’s raining outside.”

And when it’s nice out, county employees will have access to a plant-covered roof, complete with a path and benches.

The Lower Cape Fear Stewardship Development Coalition, a regional nonprofit organization focused on protecting natural resources, recently awarded the county one of its Stewardship Awards for the redesign of the building.

The building’s livability is exemplified by this green space. “The roof was painted white, which is also energy efficient,” Sawyer said.

The difference is that the glare is inhospitable if you happen to be on the roof. The living roof though, facilitates cooling and lessens stormwater runoff. And its seventh-floor location offers great view of the surrounding city. “It’s the best of both worlds,” he said.

The roof, as well as a section of the second-floor roof that’s visible from the third-floor hallway, comprise about 3,500 square feet covered in sedums. About eight different varieties of these succulent plants were grown in trays in a greenhouse last year.

“They are well-suited to rooftops,” said Scott Spike, vice president at Sawyer, Sherwood & Associate Architecture.

The plants retain water, even when planted in a gravel medium. Although there is an irrigation system to water the plants during especially dry times, our rainfall should keep them healthy and thriving. The sedums also offer color, and flower from June to October, in hues from pink to yellow to purple.

“The flowering overlaps around August,” Spike said. “That’s a good time to be up here.”

Each plant tray on the roof, which measures about one-foot-by-two-feet, interlocks for installation but can be picked up if there’s a problem underneath. The trays sit on two layers of roofing membrane.

As in the past, the roof at 320 Chestnut is still home to mechanical equipment, but updated technology means that it takes up significantly less room. The architects reclaimed part of that space for an employee break room that looks out over the green roof.

Smaller duct work also means that they were able to add room and headspace in the hallways, giving the interior of the building a roomier feel. Offices have individual temperature controls, and the floor plan was altered slightly for ease of use and to add conference rooms for those who work there. The $7.7 million project also strived to maintain the character of the building. Distinctive blue enameled steel panels on the exterior were refurbished, as was the black marble by the elevators on the first floor.

“It’s safe to say that there are only a few buildings of this style remaining in the state,” said George Edwards, executive director of the Historic Wilmington Foundation. “Many have been torn down, but I think we are acquiring a greater appreciation for these modernist structures.”

The design of Tide Water Power and Light was inspired by the German Bauhaus school of design, one of the most influential in the modern aesthetic. “It was built by the regional power company in post-war exuberance, when there was an enthusiasm for the future,” Edwards said. “The city was getting back to normal after the war.”

The building gained the attention of the Historic Wilmington Foundation several years ago, when it popped up on their annual list of threatened buildings. One year it was listed as the most threatened. Since then, the foundation has been among the supporters of preserving the building as the county considered what to do with it. “It was a great decision to restore it,” Edwards said. “It’s a jewel and now it will last another 60 to 75 years.”

Those of us who live on the coast expect an influx of visitors during the beach-going summer months, but we also get our share this time of year, mainly family and friends visiting for the holidays. After the presents are unwrapped and the last the toasts of eggnog, what do you do with them?

Sure, there are the blockbuster movies and the malls. But where can you take winter-time visitors to experience the beauty of the coast?

We asked around. After consulting staff at the N.C. Coastal Federation, neighbors and our Coastal Review Online Facebook friends, we’ve come up with some suggestions. The state parks and aquariums that are scattered along the coast are always good bets. Most offer some type of winter programming, a lot of it geared for kids. Just call or check the websites for operating hours and program times.

Here are a few special places, starting along the northern coast and working south.

Northern Coast

Dismal Swamp: Its name has an eerie appeal, harkening back to Colonial times when settlers found all the swampy, wet places along to the coast to be foreboding and scary. And this particular one was great indeed, once covering more than a million acres. What’s left is both a state park and a national wildlife refuge that straddles the border between Virginia and North Carolina. The park, in South Mills has 20 miles of trails, a 2,000-foot boardwalk and a hydraulic arm bridge that spans the Dismal Swamp Canal. If you’d like to try mountain biking or kayaking, but don’t have the equipment, you can rent both here.

They’re closed Christmas Day, but kid-friendly programs to help make winter treats for birds takes place this weekend. The First Day Hike ushers participants by the remains of an old stone lock on the canal – and there’s hot chocolate at the end. For those close to Virginia, an entrance to the refuge near Suffolk is the meeting site for a Winter Owl Prowl on Monday evening by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.

Lake Mattamuskeet: The centerpiece of this national wildlife refuge in Hyde County is the 40,100-acre lake – the largest natural lake in the state. It’s also a shallow one, with an average depth of about three feet. Because of its location on the Atlantic Flyway, it’s well-known as a spot for wintering waterfowl. Birdwatchers can sometimes spot thousands of individual green-winged teal, pintails, snow geese and tundra swans through February. In addition to the 240 species of birds that are indigenous to the area, the refuge is also home to deer, otter, bobcats and black bear. Hunting permits are issued through a lottery system and fishing (with the proper license) is allowed year round. Anglers can catch largemouth bass, white perch, crappie, sunfish, catfish and blue crabs. Mattamuskeet’s East Main Drive, a five-mile-long gravel road bordering the southern shore, is a good spot to see the park’s mammals and birds. The visitor center on site will be closed Christmas Day and New Year’s Day, but guests can still enjoy the refuge.

Pungo Lake: Just north of Mattamuskeet, this smaller lake in the Pocosin Lakes National Wildlife Refuge is one of Sam Bland’s favorite Christmastime haunts. The federation naturalist says it’s a great place to take visitors to see tundra swan and black bears. “There are always great things to see there,” he says.

Corolla: The Outer Banks Wildlife Education Center is ideally situated, said Sharon Mead, who is the curator for the site. It’s in the Currituck Heritage Park, which also includes the 1920s-era Whalehead Club and a picturesque, red-brick lighthouse. It’s close to the village of Corolla, which is one of the spots around the state with a population of wild horses. The center is between the ocean and the sound, and you can sit in one of the gazebos and take in the sunset, Mead said. “There’s no better place, in my opinion,” she said.

Although you have to wait until March if you’d like to climb the lighthouse, the center is open (with the exception of state holidays) and visitors can check out the 8,000-gallon aquarium stocked with native fishes and a gallery with more than 250 antique waterfowl decoys. There’s a full schedule of programs the week after Christmas if you need to entertain children. This includes a birding basics program for those 14 and older, and a lesson in calling wild turkeys for those 7 and up, and a program on ducks – teals, mallards and pintails can be found here during the winter – for ages 6-13. Some programs require pre-registration. The center is open Monday through Friday from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m., with the last entry at 4:30 p.m.

Cape Hatteras National Seashore: Winter may be best time to experience America’s first national seashore, which stretches from the southern tip of Bodie Island on the Outer Banks all the way to Ocracoke. Traffic on the beach is light this time of year, limited to a few hardy fishermen. You don’t need a four-wheel drive. Just park at one of the turn-offs along Hatteras or Ocracoke islands and walk. Pick a raw winter day. There’s nothing like an angry sea to feel the power of nature without endangering yourself. Go at low tide and see what gifts the sea has left behind. What visitor doesn’t like to go home with shopping bags full of seashells and skate egg sacs?

N.C. 12: If your visitors are more interested in policy than seashells, the 12-mile drive along this battered road from Oregon Inlet to Rodanthe is an eye-opener. Flooded numerous times by storms and now high tides, the section of road is an ongoing construction zone. Two-story-high sandbag walls line portions of it. Other sections have been moved and bridged. State bulldozers and front-end loaders stand ready to do battle with the sea. There’s no better place in North Carolina, maybe on the East Coast, to see what rising seas mean on a shifting barrier island.

Central Coast

Take a ferry ride: The state offers six ferries that cross inlets, rivers and sounds. Some take just a few minutes, while the ferries to Ocracoke take a couple of hours to cross Pamlico Sound. There’s no cheaper way to get out on the water without your own boat. Bring binoculars and search for native shorebirds and winter visitors. You may see fishermen working crab pots and pound nets.

Down East: This remote region of eastern Carteret County stretches for more than 50 miles along U.S. 70 and N.C. 12. Fishing is still a way of life in the small villages that dot the roads. Watch oystermen work the beds in North River or their nets in Back Sound. Any exploration of the region should start at the Core Sound Waterfowl Museum and Heritage Center on Harkers Island. From duck decoy to boat building, the museum celebrates the culture and heritage of Down East.

Beaufort waterfront: N.C. Coastal Federation staff who live in the area like to take visitors to stroll the waterfront to look at boats and catch glimpses of the horses on Carrot Island across Taylors Creek. There are plenty of shops and places along the way to get a warm drink or something of stronger fortification.

Hammocks Beach State Park:  During warmer months, visitors can come to this park near Swansboro, between Jacksonville and Morehead City, to access Bear Island, a three-mile-long, undeveloped barrier island accessible only by private boat and the park’s passenger ferry. Visitor facilities are winterized this time of year though, and ferry service doesn’t resume until April – except for a couple of special programs. “We’ll be doing two hikes on Bear Island for the First Day Hikes,” said Sarah Kendrick, park superintendent. They begin at 10 a.m. and 2 p.m. include a ferry ride to the island, where you can learn more about winter habitats and wildlife and have a chance to collect seashells. And at 10 a.m. on Monday, you can join a park ranger for a boat ride to Huggins Island in Swansboro to explore one of the Atlantic coast’s better-preserved earthwork fortifications and learn its role in the Civil War. All events require pre-registration. If you have your own canoe or kayak, you can explore the park through its paddle trails. There’s a six-mile trail around Huggins Island and a 2.6-mile water path to Bear Island. The park is closed Christmas Day.

Southern Coast

Surf City: If you’re brave enough to take a wintery dip, come to this small beach community on Topsail Island for what is called America’s biggest New Year’s Day swim event. The Dolphin Dip is celebrating its 14^th anniversary and organizers are expecting more than 4,000 people – some in costume – to take a quick swim in the ocean. According the Dolphin Dip Foundation, the purpose is to: “Cleanse the soul. Challenge yourself both mentally and physically. Overcome doubt, worry and fear.” There’s beach-side yoga at 10 a.m., too, before the event. Otherwise, you must be present at 11 a.m. at the Roland Ave. beach access for the noontime swim. Prizes will be awarded to the best costumes, but only those participants who complete the Dip. After the swim, and maybe a cup of coffee, check out the Surf City pier or walk the beach. This is the spot where a beachgoer found a fossilized Megalodon tooth earlier this year.

Masonboro Island: Although barrier islands dot the N.C. coast, one of the unique aspects of Masonboro Island (a 5,653-acre coastal reserve) is that it is located near Wilmington and Wrightsville Beach, one of the most populous parts of the coast. It’s a popular site during summer and the occasional location for raucous boat parties. If you don’t have your own boat (or kayak/canoe/paddleboard) to access the island, you can use a private service. One of these businesses, Wrightsville Beach Scenic Tours, operates a $25-per-person shuttle to the island about six times a day during the busy season.  “It’s evolved into kind of a beach concierge service,” said Joe Abbate, owner of the business and a biologist. They’ll help with extras like beach chairs and other equipment you might need to explore Masonboro.  During colder weather, the boats are still there, but the trip can be less than pleasant. “While the weather’s still nice, though, we’ll keep doing it.” (Call or check out their website for more information.) And there are advantages to wintertime on Masonboro. “You’ll see more oddities,” he said, and there’s better shell collecting and more bird life. Some of his favorites this time of year are the red-throated loon and the horned grebe. Visitors are asked to take care while enjoying the 8.4-mile island, though. The marsh and tidal flats are important habitats. Walk along the beach, but avoid the dunes, marsh grasses and eelgrass beds.

Green Swamp: One of the good things about areas such as the Green Swamp in Brunswick County is that it is open every day, from sun up to sun down.  Located between Winnabow and Shallotte, the preserve is well known as a place to see the 14 insectivorous plants that are found here, from pitcher plants and sundew to extensive Venus flytrap populations. Although about 13,000 acres of the area is pocosin wetlands, you can also find some excellent longleaf pine savanna environment – and the animals that go with it. Among the wildlife seen here are the fox squirrel, Bachman’s sparrow and the American alligator. Even inexperienced hikers can enjoy the primitive trail (marked with red diamonds) in the area, which is flat and about a mile and a half long. You’re advised to wear waterproof, close-toed shoes. The preserve is managed by The Nature Conservancy and part of the area is also a game lands managed by the N.C. Wildlife Resources Commission. These areas throughout the state are available for hunting, although you need proper permits and are asked to avoid the hiking areas. Hikers and other visitors should also keep in mind that hunting takes place here and be cautious. More information and hunting schedules are available through the commission.

OCEAN ISLE BEACH — Nostalgia and remembrance are important to the holiday season. Typically, we only look back a few generations when we make family plans for Christmas and the New Year. Recently, though, one cook in Brunswick County looked back a little further – to our Colonial past – for a food-centered presentation.

“It’s nice to go back in time and think about food the way our forefathers might have,” said Karen Moshoures. “The bills of fare for Christmas time had meats and vegetables, but not as many sweets as you’d think.”

Ingredients like sugar and spices were rare and expensive. Recipes were unspecific guidelines and were accomplished, without modern cooking equipment, in cauldrons on wood fires.

For the past three years, Moshoures has been the host of local cable channel ATMC-TV’s “The Coastal Kitchen.” The presentation was a part of the regular Tuesday night lecture series at The Museum of Coastal Carolina in Ocean Isle Beach.

“We tend to cover history and we thought this would be a good fit,” said Susan Silk, marketing coordinator for Ingram Planetarium and the museum. “Karen’s programs are popular because they are informative and tasty.”

Moshoures has given other food-related talks at the museum in the past – on topics from seafood to appetizers. But this Colonial Christmas program was an ideal assignment for her. She is a big believer in holiday gatherings and she lived in Great Britain until she was 12, a place that is the root of Colonial traditions in the United States. Although she still travels there on a regular basis and is familiar with plum puddings and English desserts, Moshoures researched recipes and traditions for this lecture for more than a year.

Not all of the recipes turned out well. “I think people back then ate because they got hungry, and not necessarily because the food tasted good,” she said during the presentation.

Still, attendees enjoyed the wassail and cookies she offered served.

There were two resources she found to be helpful: the Colonial heritage programs in Williamsburg, Va., and Old Salem, the Moravian settlement in what is now Winston-Salem. She did include some savory dishes for the program like the Welsh Rabbit (or Rarebit) recipe from Chowning’s Tavern.

“But I love to bake,” she said. So she focused on desserts, including those sweetened with molasses and brown sugar. “I also wanted to include ones that anybody could do in their own homes,” she said.

She tweaked the recipes in her own kitchen in Ocean Isle Beach, where her show is also taped. She and her husband both love to cook and got into the habit of cooking for crowds, sometime 30 or 50 people at a time, when one of their dear friends was diagnosed with ALS, or Lou Gehrig’s disease. “We would cook once a week to help keep his friends and family close by,” she said.

Their kitchen reflects that love of entertaining. Moshoures has a stainless steel double-refrigerator and five ovens. It’s right next to the extensive dining room that seats 16 people. Other rooms in the home reflect a love of history, antiques and decorating for the holiday.

“We have always tried to be a place where anybody can come for Thanksgiving or Christmas if you don’t have anywhere else to go,” she said. It’s a holiday sentiment that is timeless.

Colonial Recipes

Apple Tansey

From The Compleat Housewife, or Accomplished Gentlewoman’s Companion, 1754

“Take three pippins, slice them round in thin slices, and fry them with butter; then beat four eggs, with six spoonfuls of cream, a little rosewater, nutmeg, and sugar; stir them together, and pour it over the apples; let it fry a little, and turn it with a pye-plate. Garnish with lemon and sugar strew’d over it.”

Moshoures Notes: The cook tried three different versions of this dish, using varying modern measurements in place of these ambiguous ones. Although she guesses that the desired result would be apples baked in custard, the results were closer to an egg-ier taste, she said. Pippins were a popular apple, but Granny Smiths work in their place.

Blown Almonds

From The Court and Country Cook, or New Instructions for Confectioners, 1702

“After having scalded and blanch’d your Almonds, let them be stirr’d about in the White of an Egg:  Then let them be put into powder’d Sugar, and well roll’d in it. Having thus ic’d them over once, if you perceive that they are not done enough, dip them again  into the White of an Egg, and afterwards into powder’d Sugar:  At last, they may be laid upon a Sheet of Paper, and bak’d in an Oven, with a gentle Fire.”

Moshoures Notes: This recipe for basic candied nuts works well for modern cooks, too. Use ½ to 1 cup blanched whole almonds, 1 egg white and ½ cup sugar. Try using a finer-grained sugar, but not powdered. Put the sugar on a plate or saucer about ¼ of an inch thick. Lightly beat the egg white. Dip the almonds in the egg white, and then the sugar, and place on a pan. Allow to dry 20-30 minutes and repeat dipping almonds into the egg white and sugar. Bake at 300 degree oven for 15 minutes. You can watch a video of this recipe in a replica Colonial kitchen.

Holiday Wassail

Wassail is a translation of “To your health”

1 cup sugar

4 cinnamon sticks

3 lemon slices

2 cups pineapple juice

2 cups orange juice

6 cups dry red wine

½ cup lemon juice

1 cup dry sherry

2 lemons, sliced

Boil the sugar, cinnamon, and 3 lemon slices together with ½ cup water for 5 minutes. Strain and discard the cinnamon and lemon. Heat (but do not boil) the remainder with the remaining ingredients. Garnish with lemon slices and serve warm. Makes 20 servings

Recipe courtesy The Williamsburg Cookbook

Gingerbread

Several versions of this holiday treat can be found in Colonial cookbooks. Moshoures decorated them with a sprinkling of powdered sugar.

1 cup sugar

2 teaspoons ginger

1 teaspoon nutmeg

1 teaspoon cinnamon

1 1/2 teaspoons baking soda

1/2 teaspoon salt

1 cup melted margarine

1/2 cup evaporated milk

1 cup unsulfured molasses

3/4 teaspoon vanilla extract

3/4 teaspoon lemon extract

4 cups stone-ground or unbleached flour, unsifted

Combine the sugar, ginger, nutmeg, cinnamon, salt, and baking soda. Mix well. Add the melted margarine, evaporated milk and molasses. Add the extracts. Mix well. Add the flour 1 cup at a time, stirring constantly. The dough should be stiff enough to handle without sticking to fingers. Knead the dough for a smoother texture. Add up to 1/2 cup additional flour if necessary to prevent sticking. When the dough is smooth, roll it out 1/4 inch thick on a floured surface and cut it into cookies. Bake on floured or greased cookie sheets in a preheated 375 degree oven for 10 to 12 minutes. The gingerbread cookies are done when they spring back when touched.

Recipe courtesy Entertaining Ideas from Williamsburg

Last of two parts

BLADENBORO – N.C. 53 follows the Cape Fear River as it winds through the country of Bladen County. The scenery is typical of this part of the coastal plain: vast swampy woods dotted by small plots of farmland and modest clapboard houses. Then, you approach the entrance to the Whitehall Plantation Game Land.

Here, it’s burned-out trees and shrubs along sections of the road. Inevitably, when people drive by or visit the property, they pepper Matt Turner with questions. “They want to know what’s going on,” said Turner, a land conservation technician at the game land. “They want to know if we’re hurting the wildlife. I tell them ‘No, we’re actually helping the wildlife.’ ”

This stretch of loblolly and slash pine will eventually become longleaf pine forest and offer habitat for a variety of native plants and animals, said Kenneth Shughart, a forester with the N.C. Wildlife Resources Commission. Turner and Shughart were recently working on a five-person effort to burn a 280-acre piece of the property.

Turner, sitting atop a bulldozer, watched the fire and smoke approach the dirt road that crisscrosses the game land. His job was to make sure no stray sparks floated across. One by one, the other members of the crew emerged out of the smoke and walked to where the bulldozer and a small cluster of trucks were parked, to drink water and refill their torch canisters with fuel.

After only a few moments, they go back to the fire, this time steadily dripping the fuel to create new fires in evenly spaced lines. The shrubs and grasses ignite easily and burn quickly in a low hum. The larger vegetation, though, erupts with a large, showy whoosh. It’s hot and smoky at the burn sections, but other parts of the property only a short distance away, seem unaffected.

This section had already been thinned and prepared for the burn that started in late September. The area had also been sprayed with herbicide which will eventually help limit the competition that the young longleaf seedlings may face. Shughart was able to burn all but 90 acres before the recent rains came. Once he finishes the last of the burn, he’ll go back a few weeks later to reseed.

“We’ll be seeding longleaf pine as well as native grasses,” he said, like wire grass, big bluestem and Indian grass. In five or six years, if all goes well, this parcel will be full of 6- to 8-foot-tall pines. In another 50 or 60 years, visitors will see a mature longleaf stand. “What we’d eventually like to do for the whole property is a natural, unevenly aged longleaf forest,” Shughart said. “That will take 100 years or more.”

Whitehall’s 1,658 acres include wetlands and Cape Fear River floodplain and offer habitat for deer, turkey, waterfowl and small game that attracts hunters, hikers, anglers and birdwatchers – something that the Wildlife Commission hopes will continue with this plan. But it isn’t the only forest under the purview of Shughart, who is based out of Bladenboro and oversees forests in North Carolina’s southern coastal plain for the agency. He and others in the field, such as Angie Carl of The Nature Conservancy, work in the Green Swamp, in Boiling Spring Lakes, Holly Shelter Game Land and the Croatan National Forest, as well as other areas throughout the coast. Prescribed burns in each of these places can happen all year, depending on its individual requirements.

“The first step is always to assess the land, to determine what it needs,” Shugart said. For coastal pine forests, that usually means burning at least every five years. After the assessment comes the planning. Each burn involves compiling a detailed report. “They are 30 pages or more with maps and contingencies,” Carl said.

As beneficial as it can be, fire can also cause considerable damage – to both the wildlife habitats they’re intended to help and to surrounding human environments – if conditions aren’t right.

The benefits of a prescribed burn are many. “One thing I don’t think people think about is that controlled fires actually decrease the chances of a catastrophic wildfire,” Shughart said.

These burns can reduce the forest litter than can fuel accidental fires. Prescribed burns can also control insect populations, expand conditions for animals that graze and, in the long run, improve the appearance of forest stands. These benefits must be weighed against potential negatives. Air quality for neighboring communities is always a factor, as is downstream water quality.

“We have to think about what is happening all around the site,” Carl said.

At one of the burn sites Carl manages, she has to think about how smoke will impact a nearby hospital, and a facility with contained animals. “Although ecology is improved through these fires, our first priority is always safety,” she said.

Then there’s the weather. With the plan in place, fires can then only proceed under the appropriate conditions. “You’d like to have some rain, but not too much,” said Patty Matteson, a North Carolina-based public affairs officer for the U.S. Forest Service. Damp soil can protect unseen tree roots and microorganisms from too much fire damage.

“And the winds can’t be too high or too low,” she said. Winds should be high enough for the smoke to get up and about.

Understanding all of this means that fire specialists have to learn how fire behaves. It can either move with the wind, as in a “heading” fire or against the wind as a “backing” fire. “Flanking” fires move at right angles to the wind. Heading fires are usually the most intense with a faster spread rate and longer flames, according to the Forest Service. Backing fires are the least intense.

For these reasons, wind direction must always be taken into account when planning a burn. For the Whitehall burn, Shughart had been watching the weather for weeks. Although conditions were mostly sunny and a bit windy, he was also thinking about other atmospheric elements not usually found on local weather report, like waiting for the right mixing height and the transport winds that will determine how high the smoke goes and in what direction. “Of course, that’s just a part of it,” he said. “Even things like surface winds and relative humidity play a factor in a burn.”

When the weather is looking just about perfect, more immediate preparations are made. “Then, on the day of the burn, we notify the Forest Service, and the county 911 center,” he said, so fire trucks aren’t sent to the site by accident.

Another necessity is an experienced burn crew. Turner normally works at the game lands boat dock, but he took training courses offered through the Forest Service on both a national and state level, to be able to participate in the burns on the property. The courses cover firefighting and wildland fire behavior. “Anyone can take them, and they tell you how to act in a fire, and what to look for, what could be dangerous,” he said.

This Bladen County burn, as with many that take place in the autumn, is meant to prepare a site for replanting. But other types burns take place at other times of year. After Shughart reseeds this portion of the game land, he’ll come back again in the winter to a more established forest on the other side of the dirt road and burn the understory to clear out vegetation and shrubs and to make way for smaller plants to thrive and offer the right habitat for certain animals.

Other burns are conducted at different times of year, depending on what plant and animal species need to benefit. Those conducted in winter, from January to March, are considered dormant season burns. “It’s colder and easier to control the burn,” Carl said.

They are also less likely to disturb animals such as nesting birds.

Those prescribed fires that take place in the summer or spring can mimic natural cycles. “Sometimes, they are necessary for seed production,” Carl said. “We burn in the spring, because there are some plants, some of the native grasses, that only flower after a burn.”

For all of the burns that take place in a given year, it’s is no surprise that many more don’t happen – or are postponed – because one or more of the necessary variables weren’t right. And there are other contingencies that can happen as well. Many of the planned burns that the U.S. Forest Service hoped to conduct in the state this season were put off because most of their fire personnel were fighting wildfires, Matteson said. “It’s just something we’ll have to revisit later.”

For the Nature Conservancy, Carl had hoped to conduct burns this fall. “We have an active burn crew scheduled from January to August,” she said. Those are the times that it is a little easier to make things happen for prescribed fires.

When conditions don’t cooperate, she has to be more flexible in the planning. Even when a fire crew is on standby, it doesn’t mean it will happen.

“There’s still one more burn I’d like to do this year,” she said. “We’ll see how it goes.”

First of two parts

When people ask her about the necessity of setting periodic forest fires, Angie Carl explains that coastal forests are really fire forests. “Just as a rain forest depends on rain, ours depends on fire,” she said.

As a fire specialist for The Nature Conservancy, Carl oversees what people in her business call “prescribed burns” – controlled fires that attempt to mimic the natural fires that once shaped the coastal landscape. So many of the rare plants we associate with our woodlands, from native grasses to orchids to Venus Flytraps, can’t exist without fire, she said. As so it goes with other members of the coastal ecosystem, from insects and birds to reptiles and mammals – each depending on the successive layers of forest growth and fire.

So close are the relationships between many species and fire, they likely developed over long periods of time. “These species evolved with fire,” said Kenneth Shughart, a Bladenboro-based forester with the N.C. Wildlife Resources Commission.

It’s no coincidence that our area has so many lightning strikes. “We have the second highest strike area, after Florida,” said Carl, a Wilmington resident who is the conservancy’s coastal fire and restoration manager. Historically, those strikes ignited fires that have burned through forests and grasslands, sometimes for months on end.

But as more and more people inhabited the coastal plain, fires were put out as quickly as possible to protect people and their homes and communities. “With prescribed burns, we are essentially just mimicking what nature would do,” Shughart said. “Before fire suppression was so intense.”

Proactive burn programs started in the 1950s and ’60s, according to the U.S. Forest Service. “This is especially true in the longleaf pine forests of the coastal plain,” said Patty Matteson, acting public affairs officer for the Forest Service. “More recently, we’re looking into what fire can do for the mountains and Appalachia.”

In the Southeast, talk of fire and longleaf pine often go hand-in-hand. At one point, it’s estimated that the tall pines covered 90 million acres from Virginia to Florida and west to Texas. Now, longleaf savannahs are only thought to cover about a quarter of that territory, according to The Longleaf Alliance, based in Alabama.

Although there are a number of factors for the decline, one often cited is the lack of fire in these forests. Without frequent burns, other pine species that are faster growing than the longleaf, such as loblolly and slash pine, shade out the young longleaf and soon dominate the forest plot. Once relegated to marginal areas, like the edges streams and ponds, these other forests are now more numerous.

In other fire-neglected areas, poor-quality hardwoods and shrubs have encroached, and there’s more competition for space, water and nutrients, which make it more difficult for native species to thrive. Fire, though, can limit this understory and give these endemic plants more room and resources.

Fortunately for the longleaf, a number of environmental organizations are working to re-establish this native ecosystem where possible through controlled burns. Each year, several thousand acres are burned in North Carolina, according to the Forest Service. Although other chemical and mechanical treatments have been tried, none is more effective than fire. Even one prescribed fire can improve habitat for wildlife, reduce the amount of debris that can cause accidental fires and increase access and travel for people and animals alike. Most forests and grasslands require multiple fires over a number of years to fully reach their potential, though, often on a schedule of every one to five years.

For many of the tiny, unique plants of the coastal plain, it’s sunlight that’s necessary for them to prosper and propagate. “A lack of fire means lack of sunlight,” Carl said. “And without sunlight, there are no orchids or pitcher plants.”

Plants are only the beginning of fire-dependent species, she said. “Not here, but elsewhere, there’s an insect that can only mate with the heat of the fire. Here, it’s a bit similar for red-cockaded woodpeckers.”

This endangered bird has very specific habitat requirements: mature pine forests with little understory, or the kind that depend on frequent fires.

Other species that are found in fire-prone areas include the indigo snake, the eastern coral snake and the gopher tortoise, which digs long burrows that help it and other species escape underground when fire comes to their forests.

There are also animals that require the habitat that results from one of the successive stages brought about by fire. The northern bobwhite benefits from frequent disturbance through prescribed fire. Grassland habitat is important for field sparrows and eastern meadowlark. The years between fires allow litter to accumulate for ground-nesting birds and offer scrubland birds like indigo bunting, blue grosbeak and brown thrashers a place to feed.

Some people fear how fire affects wildlife in the moment. But Carl said that often isn’t an issue. Burns are often conducted during non-critical, non-nesting times. “Many of these areas we’re talking about on the coastal plain also have wetlands and standing water,” she said.

Most animals escape the flames by going to the water or underground. Or they simply leave. “But they come back again,” she said.

Often the conditions are ideal for animals after a burn, for those who feed on insects, or those that forage for seeds from those plants that germinate during fire.

Wednesday: On a burn

BEAUFORT — The video feed begins at ground level with close-ups of a few blades of grass. Soon, though, the tiny aircraft soars overhead and offers up majestic views of marshes and river. Or, in other cases, beaches and forests, or the community clubhouse and pool. Similar scenic, aerial videos of locations around the world, set to soothing music, can be found on YouTube and on Facebook feeds.

These unmanned aerial vehicles, more commonly known as drones and less commonly as UAVs, have transitioned from a strictly military use to the world of hobbyists, cinematographers and entrepreneurs. Local scientists, too, see the possibilities of UAVs.

Larisa Avens, a research fishery biologist, has been working to estimate sea turtle populations along the N.C. coast since 2007. She plans to use drones next spring, when sea turtles congregate at Cape Lookout National Seashore, as part of a population study for NOAA’s Southeast Fisheries Science Center in Beaufort. Previous work used satellite data and on-the-water collection techniques to estimate the number, health and turtle species.

“We’ve looked at manned aerial efforts, too,” she said. “But they are expensive, and can be challenging logistically to schedule a crew and plane. They are also potentially dangerous.”

Drones, though, are less expensive and more responsive. Previous work has shown kind of a migratory bottleneck at Cape Lookout, of mostly loggerhead turtles. “But we’ve also seen some Kemp’s Ridley,” she said.

There is still much to be learned about this smallest of sea turtles and the promise of drones could fill in gaps, Avens noted.

Gary Roberson, a biological and agricultural engineering professor at N.C. State University, already knows the benefits of drones in agriculture. “With UAV, there’s an opportunity for farmers to really know and understand what’s going on out in the field,” he said.

It’s a way to look at everything from nitrogen content in corn fields to disease detection in peanut crops, Roberson added.

And Sara Schweitzer, a wildlife diversity biologist with N.C. Wildlife Resources Commission, hopes to use drones to gather more information about the nesting sites of marine birds like brown pelicans and snowy egrets, especially in remote areas “A lot of the groundwork we do is disruptive,” she said. “But with this, we can get to areas most people can’t.”

The possibilities don’t end there. Theoretically, drones can be used to evaluate the condition of coastal infrastructure, such as lighthouses, study shoreline erosion or calculate the amount of debris in the ocean. They could be used in emergency situations, to help stranded wildlife or to measure the effects of sea-level rise.

“It’s not just about pretty pictures,” Roberson said. “There are layers and layers of data that can be analyzed here.”

The Federal Aviation Administration is scheduled to clarify a plan for the safe use of civil unmanned aircraft systems in the next year. Until then, special permits and exemptions must be granted on a case by case basis. Avens is currently working to finalize four layers of permits before she can proceed with the springtime project. In addition to the FAA, the group needs to negotiate with officials about using military airspace, as well as the park service land the site encompasses. She also is obtaining the necessary authorization for research that can affect endangered species. “There are a lot of stakeholders in this process,” she said.

The excitement about working with drones has not caught up to the regulatory end of the process. “I understand their caution,” Roberson said. “There are a lot of very real concerns.”

Those fears range from aviators worried about encountering drones on their flight paths to issues of privacy and inappropriate use. “It’s the same with any new technology,” he said.

Unmanned aircraft have been around for a while, but recent advances in drone equipment, sensors, software, GPS systems and cameras have created an ideal confluence for experimenting with what new UAVs can do. A quick stop to an online marketplace reveals how accessible drones can be, with models available under $100.

UAVs that can navigate difficult marine environments are more expensive, but still feasible for research purposes. A bigger price tag comes with the software. “We need very explicit software programming,” Avens said.

First, there is software that will pilot the drone in uniform patterns. “It needs to stay on track and cover a very specific area,” she said. There is also a need for software that can help analyze the data it collects.

Avens’ work is part of a larger network of research to be undertaken by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, said J.C. Coffey, a lead systems engineer for the organization’s unmanned aircraft system project. “NOAA and its partners believe UAVs and other unmanned systems have the potential to efficiently and safely bridge critical observation gaps in hard-to-reach regions of the Earth, such as the Arctic and remote ocean areas,” he said.

In North Carolina, the group is working with scientists for surveys of menhaden and sea grass, as well as work in the National Estuarine Research Reserve.

The Raleigh-based Precision Hawk already knows the value of drone data. The company, founded in 2008, now has a global presence, often working more in Latin America and Canada than in the United States. In many cases stateside, the company files for an exemption and are allowed to operate the UAVs they manufacture and help clients understand the information.

“Once the rules are more firmly in place, we foresee agriculture making up about 80 percent of the market,” said Lia Reich, senior director of communications for the company.

Insurance companies could also be major customers, she said. “Following a hurricane, for example, claims agents can be equipped with UAVs and be able to assess the damage right there,” Reich noted.

Recently, David Johnston, an assistant professor at Duke University Marine Laboratory near Beaufort, hosted a workshop for 55 attendees on using UAVs in marine science. Plans were also announced plans earlier this month for a facility at the lab that can help fills the gaps in training UAV pilots and hardware support for scientists seeking to use drones in their work.

“It’s a great chance to collaborate for analytic use of UAVs,” Schweitzer said.

Already, the Duke program will be supporting a research effort in Costa Rica this fall to study seal populations. They also have an outreach program in the works with East Carteret High School in Beaufort. The N.C. Coastal Federation will allow Duke researchers to use drones to monitor wetlands restoration at its sprawling North River Farms project in eastern Carteret County.

At NCSU, the mechanical engineering department has been building drones for 30 years, Roberson said. Now, a collaboration course is planned for the fall, in which students will first build a drone and then learn more about how to use it in research. “It’s a start to finish project, where on the back end we will be focusing on data,” he said.

“There’s a lot of excitement right now,” Roberson said. Although interest in any new tools waxes and wanes, he thinks the potential of UAVs will stand the test of time. “Once we know more about real world applications, it will build again,” he noted.

Last of two parts

There are a number of important ingredients in a good fish fry. Let’s run through them.

Good quality fish is probably the most important ingredient. Take time to shop for the right fish with the best, fresh flavor.

To dip or not to Dip: In general, the fish cooks we talked to recommend dipping in a wet mixture of only for certain types of seafood, like fish or scallops, or if you like a thicker crust. Otherwise, it’s a good idea to rinse and moisten the filets with water and shake off, said Nick Wolosuk.

Breading: Try a North Carolina-based seafood breader, such as Moss’ or those from Atkinson Milling Co. or House Autry Mills. You can also try making your own breader. Use the recipe below as a guideline or make your own cracker meal with crushed saltines.  Whatever method you select, go for light seasoning that doesn’t overpower the fish and shake off excess breading.

Oil: This was one of the most widely differing points among the cooks. Some use regular vegetable oil, or peanut oil. Others use soybean oil or even lard, which has the longest tradition in coastal Carolina frying.  For deep drying, canola oil is hard to beat because it’s mild tasting and inexpensive. Butter isn’t a bad choice for gentle sautés. Olive oil, on the other hand, is not a good choice for frying because it will break down and smoke at lower temperatures than will other oils.

Cooking temperature/method: No matter the fat choice, cook the fish at a high temperature, of at least 350 degrees and up to 375 degrees. Most chefs recommend a deep fryer.  Submerging the fish in hot oil will seal the outside a golden brown and produce a flaky, moist inside. You can also pan-fry, but again make sure the temperature is hot and there is ample oil. Colder oil results in soggy, fatty fried fish.

Frost’s Fried Fish

4 fresh fish filets

1-2 cups cracker meal, ground fine

2 eggs, optional

½ cup milk, optional

Peanut oil

Salt and pepper to taste

Rinse fish fillets and shake off excess water. If using the wet dip, mix together eggs and milk in a shallow dish. Place the cracker meal in a separate shallow dish. Salt and pepper the fish, and then dip fish in the egg mixture (if using), followed by the cracker meal. Shake off excess breading. Heat oil in deep fryer to at least 350 degrees. Drop fish pieces in hot oil and fry for about five minutes, or until golden brown. Drain on paper towels. Sprinkle with additional salt and pepper and serve. Makes four servings.

Recipe adapted from Norwood Frost and Frost Seafood House.

Seafood Breader

½ cup all-purpose flour

½ cup yellow corn meal

1 teaspoon salt

½ teaspoon black pepper

½ teaspoon garlic powder

½ teaspoon onion powder

½ teaspoon paprika

Mix together ingredients and store in an airtight container.

Recipe adapted from Original Ocracoke Cook Book.

Pan-Fried Catfish

For those who don’t have a deep fryer, here is a recipe adapted from John T. Edgerton’s classic book on Southern food.

4 catfish filets, each about a ½ pound

Lard, for frying

Salt and pepper to taste

½ cup yellow corn meal

Lemon wedges

Rinse the fish fillets in cold water and pat dry with paper towels. In a heavy iron skillet, melt enough lard, or shortening, to reach a depth of ½ to 1 inch. Rub the fish with salt and black pepper and coat with white cornmeal, shaking off excess. When the fat in the skillet is hot, but not smoking, place the fish pieces gently in the skillet, spaced so as not to touch. Fry for about four minutes, until crisp and well-browned. Turn the pieces and fry on other side to same crispness. Lift the pieces out of the fat and place to drain on paper towels. Serve with lemon wedges.

Recipe from Southern Food: At Home, on the Road, in History.

First of two parts. 

The enduring appeal of fried fish is evident in its lifelong enthusiasts. Nick Wolosuk of Buxton Seafood, sells fish day after day on the Outer Banks, and his favorite fried fish is still his own recipe. And Andy Gaus has been working in the kitchen at Calabash Seafood Hut for 14 years, but still fires up his Fry Daddy at home on a regular basis.

Frying fish can seem deceptively simple. Take this recipe for Fried Drum from the Original Ocracoke Cook Book as an example: “Cut in pieces, salt and roll in corn meal; fry in hot oil ‘til brown.” That one sentence is the entirety of the preparation instruction. When it’s done right, you might think that’s all there is to it. But when it goes wrong, you wonder what happened. Even though there are few parts, each element – the breading, the oil, the fish, the cooking temperature – is important to the final outcome. Luckily, chats with a few North Carolina professionals are a good way to learn some secrets. Even if they tell you there’s not really that much to it, more questions and answers reveal there is often a specific process for their success.

In general, the rules are fresh fish, light breading, simple seasoning and hot oil.

Lard used to be the frying method of choice for fish. An 1872 Southern cookbook recommends cooking fish pieces in boiling lard. And that was how Stephen Holland learned, as well, when he dated the daughter of the owner of Faircloth’s, the classic seafood house in Wrightsville Beach. “I always had to wait for her to finish work, so her dad told me I might as well learn to cook while I was there,” he said.

After that start, he became the owner of Holland’s Shelter Creek Fish Camp restaurant in Burgaw, a remaining testament to the local popularity of fried seafood. “There aren’t many places like this left,” he said. He still serves thousands of pounds of fish, shrimp and oysters every week, with the help of people who have been with him many of the 34 years he’s run the restaurant that sits on the Northeast Cape Fear River. Holland has since moved from peanut oil to trans-fat-free soybean oil, because so many people are allergic to peanut oil, he said.

Lard is still a part of the recipe at some restaurants, though. Calabash, in the southern part of the state, is billed as the seafood capital of the world, serving up general portions of seafood in a laid-back atmosphere. Lundy’s Lard, a kind that is not hydrogenated, is part of the secret at Calabash Seafood Hut, said Gaus.

The Calabash style started to become well known more than 60 years ago. It’s one that’s emulated at restaurants throughout North Carolina and the South – and been lauded in publications such as The New York Times. The Calabash Seafood Hut, which was established in 1969, has a few other frying secrets, such as using self-rising flour, a simple salt and pepper seasoning and Carnation canned milk. What’s important, Gaus said — and the other cooks all agree — is the temperature. “You want to make sure it’s hot enough,” he said.

“I take my finger, coated with a little water, and test the oil,” said Wolosuk. “When its sizzles real good, you know it’s ready.”

The hot oil helps seal the fish so it cooks from steam and heat, and not oil saturation, which leads to soggy and unappetizing fish.

These professionals all use deep fryers as well. “There’s just more oil in it, so the fish is coated and completely covered,” said Norwood Frost of Frost Seafood House in Salter Path.

It allows for an evenly cooked fish. “I’ve been doing this for 35 years,” he said. “And I haven’t had many complaints.”

Frost also helps address the other issue in frying fish: the question on whether to use a wet dip, such as a mixture of egg and milk, when preparing the dish. Many cooks just rinse fish fillets, pat dry and then coat with a breader. Frost said that’s really all that’s necessary for most fried fish. “You might want to use a dip if you’re frying something like shrimp or scallops,” he said.

Of course, for those that like a thicker coating on fish, the wet dip before the breader is a good idea.

The quality of the fish, whether fresh or fresh frozen, is also more important to these cooks and chefs than the type of fish. Holland often pays specials attention to the paths the seafood industry takes, watching local flounder go to top buyers in Japan and noticing the increase of the price of oysters in the wake of the Gulf Coast oil spill. It all makes him especially careful of his sources, and the taste, of the fish he purchases. Wolosuk in Buxton relies on the seasonal catches to determine what fish end up on his plate. He likes drum and bluefish, and sometimes mahi mahi. There are many options here, just go for excellence, they say.

With good fish, you don’t want to overpower the delicate flavor with a lot of seasoning and spice. That’s why many of these cooks go for salt and pepper, and often little else. You can use many breaders, including cracker meal, but you might also want to look at breading mixes made in state. Wolosuk is a fan of Moss’ Seafood Breader Mix, from Buffaloe Milling Co. in Kittrell. Holland likes the products from Atkinson Milling Co., which was founded in 1757, in Selma. House Autry, based in Four Oaks, might be the most familiar to many fish-fry fans.

Keeping it simple doesn’t mean you can’t experiment. “You want something nice and mild,” Wolosuk said. “But believe it or not, a little paprika does wonders and gives it a really nice flavor.”

Others wouldn’t think of frying fish or seafood without a bit of Old Bay seasoning.

All of these cooks and chefs are quick to tout their credentials – usually in the form of how many hundreds of pounds of fish they fry each week and the number of years they’ve been doing it. So when you get your fresh flounder or spots, take their advice: keep it simple, but pay attention to the details.

Wednesday: Frying fish, step by step