Notorious for its bloated and rigid regulatory structure, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers’ Civil Works program is looking to slim down and speed up, all while redirecting resources and prioritizing programs.

As detailed in 12 memorandums released in March, the agency’s new initiative, “Building Infrastructure, Not Paperwork,” seeks “to deliver critical projects and programs for the nation more efficiently, sooner, and at less cost than the current ways of doing business,” Assistant Secretary of the Army for Civil Works Adam R. Telle stated in a February press release.

“This will eliminate bureaucratic delays and provide fast, clear decisions needed to save lives and empower our economy,” he added.

According to the release, the plan’s 27 initiatives are grouped under five categories: maximizing ability to deliver national infrastructure, cutting red tape, and focusing on efficiency, transparency and accountability and prioritization. The plan would not affect the Corps’ execution of its emergency response support to natural and human-made disasters.

Even by federal government standards, the Corps’ Civil Works is massive, managing about $259 billion in water resource assets and employing an estimated 37,000 full-time-equivalent employees, 98% of whom are civilians, according to a 2025 congressional report.

Through the initiatives, there are assurances that all projects are reviewed for the best path forward, said Eugene Pawlik with the Corps’ public affairs in an email, responding to questions from Coastal Review. “(The Corps) will be focused on strategically allocating available resources to prioritize the most pressing infrastructure needs across the country.”

The slow pace of the permit approval process will be addressed with new technology and geospatial tools that will expedite jurisdictional and permitting decision-making as well as reduce subjectivity in identification and elimination of Clean Water Act areas, Pawlik said.

Additional permitting goals, he wrote, include reissue and expand the existing Nationwide Permit program, eliminate barriers that prevent establishment of new mitigation banks, leverage private capital to modernize and expand generating capacity at Corps facilities, provide long-term leases with rights to additional revenues to entities willing to pay for capital improvements, and reform how the Corps conducts Section 408 reviews and engineering oversight.

The Section 408 program allows people or entities to make changes to a civil works project following reviews that are to verify that the changes do not have negative effects on the public interest or the project itself.

No additional funds nor dedicated budget item is being requested to implement the program.

“We believe the transformation initiatives will be a more effective use of annual appropriations,” Pawlik said.

But a closer look at just two interconnected and increasingly important tasks that the Corps is charged with in North Carolina and numerous other states — that is, dredging clogged inlets and nourishing eroding beaches by pumping in sand — may seem logical and sensible. But it’s not that simple.

With both activities being done more frequently, while sand supplies are becoming more sparse, the Corps is more often being asked to put the dredged sand from navigation channels on the beach. And more often, and to the enormous frustration of the permit applicant, it’s not permitted.

“In the Wilmington District, maintenance dredging often serves a dual purpose through the Beneficial Use of Dredged Material,” the Corps press release said, referring to a program created under the Water Resources Development Act of 2016. “The district uses beach-quality sand removed from navigation channels and inlets to provide for North Carolina’s coastal communities.”

On the Outer Banks, for instance, dredged material from Oregon Inlet in past years had been pumped onto an adjacent beach on the north end of Pea Island National Wildlife Refuge.

“Maintenance dredging is about more than just keeping the channels clear and ships moving; in North Carolina, it’s also a critical tool for coastal resiliency,” said Col. Brad A. Morgan, commander of the Corps’ Wilmington District. “By placing dredged sand back onto our beaches, we aren’t just maintaining a channel—we are protecting coastal infrastructure, supporting the local tourism economy, and restoring vital habitats.”

But the state Division of Environmental Quality has to permit sediment placed on state beaches, and it requires that sand to meet standards. On federal lands, such as the Pea Island refuge and Cape Hatteras National Seashore, the U.S. Department of Interior also must permit the sand placement. Even when sand is removed from a nearby location, it’s not necessarily transferable to the beach where it’s needed.  Dredged sand may be the wrong color or size, or testing has revealed pollutants or toxins. It might be mucky and unsuitable for bird habitat. It might be too fine for the targeted location, meaning it would soon blow away. Or as happened in 2015 at North Topsail Beach, it could be too rocky.

Still, the Corps would continue to ensure that dredged material used as beach fill meets required standards, Pawlik said.

“The Flood and Coastal Storm Risk Reduction programs reduce risk for millions of Americans and billions of dollars of infrastructure,” he wrote. “(The initiative) will ensure USACE pursues cost efficiency through better use and scheduling of dredging assets nationally and increased use of dredged materials for beneficial use.”

Pawlik said that the Corps’ district commanders would review all projects and be “key players” in forward motion of projects and allocation of resources “to prioritize the most pressing infrastructure needs across the country.”

Each of the 12 memorandums provides details of different aspects of implementation of the “Building Infrastructure, Not Paperwork” program, addressing what many people have frequently noted about the agency.

As one excerpt from the memo, “Prioritization of Efforts Within the Army Civil Works Program” reveals, there’s room for improvement: “In recent years, the Corps has prioritized every effort all at once, which of course means there are no priorities and that we can mask lack of delivery with progress on paper.”

Coastal Review will not publish Friday as our offices will be closed in observance of Good Friday.

Second and final in a series

As the North Carolina Coastal Resources Commission’s Science Panel studies the effects of permanent beach erosion control structures such as seawalls and jetties, a critical aspect of the analysis will be looking at the lessons learned.

The commission banned hardened structures on the ocean shoreline in 1985 because of the down-shore erosive effects on the beach. Still, there are numerous examples of such structures in place along different parts of the coast, with varied degrees of effectiveness.

Erosion is not only more severe and longstanding on the Outer Banks, which are more exposed to the power of the open ocean and coastal storms than other parts of the North Carolina coast, it is the most dramatic and unforgiving, especially on Hatteras and Ocracoke islands. But coastal erosion is a statewide issue. To that point, federal beach nourishment projects in North Carolina began in 1965 at Wrightsville Beach and at Carolina Beach, and nourishment at both locations has been done in recent years.

When development and tourism took off on the Outer Banks in the 1980s, it didn’t take long before beach cottages began lining ocean shorelines.

Still, the forces of erosion had no mercy, and Kitty Hawk began losing beachfront properties. After the commission issued a variance to the hardened structures ban in 2003, permitting sheet-piling along N.C. Highway 12 in the beach community, then-Sen. Marc Basnight strongarmed the state’s ban into legislation.

Then in 2011, the North Carolina General Assembly passed a law that permitted four “test” terminal groins and has since expanded the permissible number of groins to seven. To date, four communities submitted permit applications: Figure Eight Island, Ocean Isle Beach, Bald Head Island and Holden Beach. Holden Beach has since withdrawn its application.

Long before the ban, numerous attempts were made to shore up the beach oceanward of the 1870 Cape Hatteras Lighthouse in Buxton. By 1930, the nation’s tallest brick lighthouse was a mere 98 feet from the ocean.

According to National Park Service records, interlocking steel sheet-pile groins were installed in the 1930s on the beach near the lighthouse and reinforced a few years later. Over the years, dunes were built, grasses were planted, the beach was nourished, revetment and sandbag walls were installed.

In 1969, the U.S. Navy installed three reinforced concrete groins to protect its base, which was adjacent to the lighthouse at the time. But the erosion continued. More sandbags were put in place; more beach nourishment was done. The Navy left in the 1980s. While the National Park Service officially gave up its beach nourishment and dune stabilization efforts in 1973, it continued trying in ensuing years to protect the lighthouse from the sea with rip-rap, artificial seagrass, sandbags and a scour-mat apron.

Finally, after much study and public debate, with the ocean lapping at its foundation, in 1999 the lighthouse was relocated about a half mile from the beach.

Fast-forward a quarter-century and, since September 2025, 19 unoccupied beach houses near that same beach in Buxton have collapsed into the ocean.

Escalating beach erosion along the state’s entire coast, but especially in Buxton, has put difficult discussions about lifting the hardened shorelines ban back on the table. The few existing permanent erosion-control structures built over the years on North Carolina beaches have yielded mixed results.

Oregon Inlet

One of the most successful examples of a terminal groin doing what it was intended to do, and with relatively minimal harm, is the 3,125-foot terminal groin and 625-foot revetment built in 1991 to protect the N.C. Highway 12 tie-in at the Herbert C. Bonner Bridge, which has since been replaced and renamed the Marc Basnight Bridge. The $13.4 million groin is substantial — ranging from 110 to 170 feet wide at its base and 25 feet wide at its landward end, and 39 feet wide at its seaward end — and was built to withstand waves as high as 15 feet, according to an analysis done by the state Division of Coastal Management, “North Carolina’s Terminal Groins at Oregon Inlet and Fort Macon,  Descriptions and Discussions.”

Located on the south side of Oregon Inlet at the north edge of Pea Island National Wildlife Refuge land, the groin placement encouraged sand buildup, or accretion, landward, resulting in a wide expansion of 50 acres of sandy property on the inlet side of the historic state-owned Oregon Inlet Life-Saving Station. The building is vacant, but has been weatherized to preserve it for future use.

The groin site and surrounding beach have been regularly monitored by state and federal coastal scientists. Studies have shown that the structure has likely increased shoaling of a spit on the Bodie island side and deepening of the channel. Yet, the groin has cause little if any destructive downstream erosion while adequately protecting the highway and bridge infrastructure.

But the report warned that within the next 20 years or so, the continued southward migration of the Bodie Island spit could push the inlet’s main navigational channel up against the terminal groin structure itself.

“If this were to occur, the result would be severe scour and an increase in the maintenance necessary to preserve the threatened integrity of the structure itself,” according to the document.

Beaufort Inlet/Fort Macon

Since Fort Macon was constructed in 1834, about 25 erosion-control structures adjacent to Beaufort Inlet have been built, including groins, breakwaters, timber cribbing, sand-fencing and seawalls, as well as multiple beach nourishment projects, according to the terminal groin report.  The first phase of the terminal groin project began in 1961 and included a 530-foot seawall, a 250-foot revetment and 720-foot long, 6-foot-high terminal groin. Phase II, beginning in 1965, extended the groin 410 feet oceanward, and another groin was built west of the revetment to address extensive soundside erosion, while 93,000 cubic yards of sand was placed on the ocean beach.

The third phase, started in 1970, extended the terminal groin another 400 feet, to a total of 1,530 feet long. A 480-foot-long stone groin was built to stabilize the beach fill, and another 100,000 cubic yards of sand was placed on the ocean beach. Total costs for the three-phase project was $1.35 million.

Effects of the project include increased wave energy along the Fort Macon State Park and Bogue Banks area, and continued increases in wave energy were predicted. A sediment deficit has created erosion on the inlet’s western shoreline. Meanwhile, the sand spit at Fort Macon has migrated into the western bank of the navigation channel, indicating that the terminal groin has become inefficient at trapping sediment.

“Without constant beach nourishment, the terminal groin would no longer perform as observed historically and potentially fail altogether,” the report concluded.

Buxton

Dare County is planning a nourishment project in Buxton, as well as restoration of one of the Navy’s three abandoned reinforced sheet-pile groins that had been installed in 1969. According to the recent application to repair the southernmost groin, which is 50% or more intact, that groin had been lengthened in 1982 on the landward side by 300 feet, and armor stone was added two years later. New sheet piles and additional scour protection were added to the structures in 1994. The other two groins in the original groin field are too damaged to qualify under the Coastal Resources Commission’s “50% rule” that permits repairs.

Dare County Manager Bobby Outten has said publicly that the county is under no illusions that the project planned for this summer will solve the erosion issue for good. But the hope is that it will serve as a Band-Aid long enough to find a more permanent solution to erosion that is now so severe it is threatening the livelihoods of community residents and the island’s tourism economy, as well as N.C Highway 12.

Retired East Carolina University professor and veteran coastal geologist Dr. Stanley Riggs, who has studied the Outer Banks since the 1970s, agreed that the fact that the lighthouse had to be relocated to save it illustrates why Buxton’s erosion is not going to be easy to tame for long, with or without groins. When the first coastal survey from Virginia to Ocracoke was done in 1852, the original 1802 Cape Hatteras Lighthouse, which was destroyed, had been 1,000 feet from the shoreline, Riggs recently told Coastal Review. All told, the shoreline has receded 3,000 feet, or about two-thirds of a mile, at the cape, he said.

“And it’s been constant,” Riggs said. “It oscillates a little bit, but the main direction has been constant.”

As Riggs explained, offshore just north of the motel area in Buxton, there is an underwater rock structure that is set at an oblique angle relative to the barrier island. Similar “old capes” are also off Avon and Rodanthe, he said. The rocks are under as much as 50 feet of water, and they dictate how the waves refract there.

“And so, if you fly over it, and you get the right angle down there, what you see is a series of cusps, and one side of that cusp will be stable, the other side will be highly erosional,” he said. Groins will only make the eroding side erode faster. And when there are permanent or semipermanent structures along the beach, the shore face — the part that is under water — starts to erode and gets steeper and steeper, he said. And the steeper it gets, the more severe the overwash and the more difficult it is to hold the sand in place. That’s a big reason why beach nourishment is having to be done more frequently.

Not only does the Outer Banks stick out farther into the Atlantic, there is also a narrower continental shelf, which allows the bigger waves to come ashore from the open ocean without the wider “speed bump” needed to dissipate the power.

There’s no negotiating with the ocean, Riggs said. Considering the combination of coastal dynamics at play in Buxton, efforts to control erosion will continue to fail.

“It’s that land-sea-air interface that is really the highest energy place that we’ve got on our planet,” Riggs said. “And there’s some things you can do there. There’s some things you shouldn’t do there, you can’t do there, and it’s a matter of understanding how that system works.”

Ocracoke Island

A persistent erosion hot spot on the north end of the island along N.C. Highway 12, the only road between the Hatteras Ferry Docks and Ocracoke Village, has been patched on and off for decades by increasing numbers of ever larger numbers and size of sandbags.

But even the type of large, new, trapezoidal bags permitted at Ocracoke, Pea Island and Mirlo Beach have not held up as expected, according to a presentation provided by Paul Williams of the North Carolina Department of Transportation at the February Coastal Resources Commission meeting.

Williams presented details at the meeting of NCDOT’s revised request to increase the base of the sandbags from 20 to 30 feet and the height from 6 feet to 10 feet, to better protect them from being undermined by waves.

The newer bags have open ends at the top, which proved to be a problem at Pea Island, Williams told the commission. The Pea Island Refuge at the Visitor Center, he added, faces similar risks now to that seen at Mirlo Beach in Rodanthe in the years before the hotspot was bypassed with completion of the Rodanthe “Jug-Handle” Bridge.

“The performance has not been what we anticipated,” he said, describing how they were flooded at the top, which caused the sandbags to deflate. “This product, there may be some modifications that can be made to make them more resilient.”

Some of the new bags were also installed along with traditional sandbags at Ocracoke, and they’re still covered, Williams said, but roughly 1 mile of sandbags along N.C. 12 are at risk of being undermined during the next big storm.

“So it’s basically to give us more latitude on different products, to try to protect the roadway out there better than traditional sandbags have,” Willams told Coastal Review after the meeting. “We’ve used them for decades out there, and especially Mirlo, they really got tossed around during storms. We were looking to find a more resilient product, and we’re working on evaluating other options out there.”

The new sandbags with an opening at the top are quicker to fill, he said. They’ve worked at other areas, but conditions elsewhere are not as fierce.

“When you’re on the Outer Banks, you’re under constant pressure during some of these storm events, because we’ll have a storm set up on the coast and grind for days at a time,” Williams said. “And every tide cycle is just steadily pulling sand out of the bags, and we need to have some way to stop that.”

Even though many of the traditional sandbags without the troublesome opening are still in place at Ocracoke, Williams said that about half of them, or about 1,000, have been exposed and need to be replaced. Another issue on the island is the limited amount of sand available to cover.

Sandbags, which are considered temporary erosion-control structures that are permitted parallel to shore to protect imminently threatened roads or structures, have rules about color and size, but those rules have been notoriously abused with regard to the “temporary” part, with extensions often adding up to decades at a site, making them “hardened structures” in everything but name.

Before Nags Head in 2011 started nourishing its eroded beaches in South Nags Head, for instance, even battered and torn sandbags weren’t removed for years, and property owners often successfully sued the state to keep longstanding stacked rows of protective bags in place in front of their oceanfront homes on the eroded beach.

As sea levels continue to rise, storms intensify and erosion accelerates, even sandbags as fallbacks in the absence of other impermissible erosion-control structures are becoming less effective, as evidenced by photographs of huge piles of sandbags lined up against undermined houses at North Topsail Beach.

Ocean Isle Beach

Responding to the state legislature’s repeal of the ban on hardened erosion-control structures on the coast, Ocean Isle Beach in 2011 began the planning process to pursue permits to install a terminal groin at Shallotte Inlet to stem erosion that for decades had chewed away at the island’s east end. Five years later, state and federal approval was in hand to build a 750-foot-long terminal groin, but environmental groups in 2017 filed a lawsuit to stop the project. A ruling in March 2021 in the 4th Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals affirmed a lower court’s ruling that the project alternatives were properly considered. By April 2022, the $11 million terminal groin was completed.

Today, a diminished beach remains in front of multi-million-dollar homes that were built after the groin was in place. Rows of sandbags block the surf from reaching some of the oceanfront homes, and several lots remain vacant because there is no longer enough property left to meet setback requirements.

In November, the Coastal Resources Commission allowed the owners of eroding vacant oceanfront lots to use larger sandbags to protect their properties.

Interest in future terminal groins

The Village of Bald Head Island, the first community to build a terminal groin after the “test groin” law passed, was issued a permit in October 2014 to build the erosion-control structure, which was completed in 2015.

North Carolina Department of Environmental Quality monitoring of the project after its completion did not turn up significant issues requiring corrective measures, according to its January 2024 report.

“While ongoing post-construction monitoring performed by the permittee has not identified any significant issues that would require corrective or mitigative measures, the Village performed a maintenance beach nourishment event, received nourishment from the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers’ regularly scheduled Wilmington Harbor maintenance project, and is currently seeking permit authorization for a second Village-sponsored maintenance nourishment event,” according to the document.

Six other communities have expressed “varying degrees” of interest in building a terminal groin project, including North Topsail Beach and Figure Eight Island, as noted in the report.

First in a series

Something potentially and significantly consequential is underway now in North Carolina that could alter management of the state’s increasingly battered Atlantic coastline.

The state Coastal Resources Commission’s Science Panel is in the process of finalizing an analysis of beach erosion-control structures, a report that is expected to be submitted to the commission in June. Although the 10-member advisory panel’s study is meant to inform policymakers of their options, some fear – or hope – that it’s the first step toward repealing the state’s longstanding ban on hardened shoreline structures.

“Alarms are sounding in nearly all of our oceanfront counties,” state Division of Coastal Management Director Tancred Miller said at the commission’s meeting in November at Atlantic Beach, referring to threats from accelerating beach erosion. “Nourishment costs continue to rise and the lifespan of many of these projects is painfully short. Infrastructure is increasingly vulnerable, and some communities are very concerned.”

Since September 2025, the Hatteras Island village of Buxton, home of the Cape Hatteras Lighthouse and the massive corner of wild beach known as Cape Point, has seen 19 unoccupied oceanfront homes collapse into the surf. In addition to a beach nourishment project, Dare County this summer is planning to restore the only salvageable groin of a 57-year-old groin field in an attempt to prolong the project’s lifespan.

In response to calls from Dare and Hyde counties, among others, to allow more options to address erosion, the division last winter asked the Coastal Resources Commission to review the structures.

“We must approach these challenges with open minds, innovation, and balanced pragmatism,” Miller urged. “We must take a critical view of our past and current practices, embrace what continues to succeed, and replace practices that are no longer working.”

But even the draft outline that the Science Panel submitted at the commission’s February meeting,  titled “Report on The Effects of Hard Structures on Sandy, Open-ocean Coastlines,” revealed the complexity involved in redirecting, blocking, deflecting, buffering, or absorbing the power of an open ocean energized by high winds, with forceful longshore and cross-shore currents feeding beaches with sand here, starving them of sand there.

“We’ve broken this into two categories according to how these erosion-management measures function; essentially all erosion-management approaches fall into two categories,” CRC Science Panel Chair Laura Moore told the commission. “One is structures or approaches that trap sand, and the second is structures that that really harden the shoreline.”

While the report will provide details about protective barriers and techniques, she said, it is less about offering remedies than providing information about effects of each option. It will also include comparisons to beach-restoration methods such as nourishment and living shorelines.

Erosion has been a fact of life along North Carolina’s 320-mile-long ocean shoreline for centuries, but before coastal development and tourism went into overdrive, the Coastal Resources Commission, the 13-member body that sets coastal policy in the state, took steps to preserve beaches.

In 1985, after studying the down-shore erosive effects of seawalls, bulkheads, groins, jetties and sandbags, the commission established a policy banning permanent hardened structures on the ocean coast. Sandbags were permitted as temporary structures.

Upheld in court in 2000, the ban was codified as law three years later by the North Carolina General Assembly. Then in 2011, a law was passed that permitted a limited number of terminal groins — sand-trapping barriers built near inlets or at the end of an island. Much of the ban, however, remains the law of the land. Environmentalists and countless coastal scientists have credited the limits on hard structures for preserving the state’s coastal wildlife and beautiful natural beaches, which attract millions of tourists every year. But critics blame the ban for limiting the ability to protect shorelines, as well as private and public property and infrastructure.

No magic, one-size-fits-all formula exists to address erosion, Moore said, and many factors will need to be weighed.

“There are approaches and strategies that can either shift the erosion problem to another adjacent location, or in some cases, we can slow the problem down,” said Moore, who is professor of coastal geomorphology at the University of North Carolina Chapel Hill. “We can create more time to make perhaps bigger adjustments that are likely to be needed going forward.”

With seas rising and Atlantic storms intensifying over recent decades as a result of climate change, erosion on the state’s barrier island beaches has been happening faster and more dramatically, especially along the high-energy Outer Banks coastline, where erosion rates at some locations – as severe as an annual average of 14 feet – are among the highest on the East Coast. Dozens of oceanfront houses on eroded beaches, pounded and undermined by surging surf, have fallen into the sea. At the same time, more Outer Banks inlets and waterways are filling with sand, clogging channels that until the recent past had always been navigable.

But the entire coast has been experiencing its own degree of changing and increasingly destructive conditions, and the pressure has been building to find ways to prevent or mitigate damages at different locations, each with different conditions.

“I would say most of the North Carolina coastline is either barrier or behaves like barrier,” Moore told Coastal Review. “Certainly, subsidence in the north is a factor that’s going to make the relative rate of sea level rise a little higher. But there’s also the shape and the orientation of the shoreline and the wave approach angles and the wave energy and how those drive longshore sediment transport gradients, and how much sand is coming into a stretch of coast versus how much is leaving. Also, a really big factor is how frequently in the past the coast has been nourished.”

The final report is to be centered on sand-trapping and shoreline-hardening structures, Moore said. But it will also look at other widely used erosion management tactics, ranging from avoidance with setbacks or relocation, sand trapping with fences or beach plants, and building the beach with sand nourishment and dunes.

The two-category design of the document is focused on function of the structures, she said, “because there are hundreds, maybe even thousands, of coastal erosion management approaches out there, and they all essentially fall into two buckets.” What the panel of volunteer scientists cannot do, she added, is analyze each approach.

“What we are trying to do is provide a better, clearer explanation of how structures function and what their effects are,” Moore said.

Moore emphasized that the science panel’s task is to provide an assessment of structures on the coastline. But she understands the urgency people feel for finding a “solution” rather than a range of options.

“And although we’re not providing recommendations, I do want to highlight that we will be discussing tradeoffs, and I think that’s really important, because whether an approach has benefits or negative effects depends on the perspective and goals of the beholder,” she said. “We certainly know that there are efforts afoot to repeal the ban. And again, it’s not our job to say whether that should or should not happen. It’s our job to lay out in a clear way what the tradeoffs are, given how these different approaches to mitigating erosion function.”

Next in the series: How have hardened structures currently installed on North Carolina beaches performed?

HERTFORD — Even as the proposed Mid-Currituck bridge project has been uncharacteristically zipping along in the planning process, a new analysis of two revenue options has cast doubts on the project’s future, with serious concerns raised about the latest estimated construction costs that hover around $1.2 billion.

The North Carolina Department of Transportation presented a report Feb. 18 to the Albemarle Regional Planning Organization comparing a traditional toll project and a “P3” toll project, as required by federal law, to determine “value for money.” With a traditional toll project, the state is responsible for financial, operational and construction-related risks. A “P3” toll project is where a private sector/single developer has responsibility for revenue, financial, operational and construction-related risks.

“The base case financial results from the comparative analysis reveal that neither the Traditional Toll Delivery nor the P3 Toll Delivery are currently financially feasible,” the report said. “The analysis highlights funding gaps of $1,005 million for the Traditional Toll Delivery and $875 million for the P3 Toll Delivery, both of which exceed the $173 million of committed STIP (State Transportation Improvement Plan) funding.”

And it doesn’t appear that sunny prospects are around the corner. “Project costs have continued to increase above inflation and any schedule delays would likely increase costs further,” the report adds.

NCDOT has scheduled another presentation to the Albemarle Regional Planning Organization of the Mid-Currituck bridge comparative analysis for 11 a.m. Wednesday at the Albemarle Commission headquarters, 512 South Church St., Hertford.

A decision on the next step must be made by the organization’s board by its April meeting.

Although the transportation department and the North Carolina Turnpike Authority, the state agency responsible for tolling, are not advocating for any particular decision, the report said, it did cite several potential options.

One option is to adjust the STIP schedule and submitting it again to compete for funding, or removing the project from the schedule all together, which would free up the $173 million bridge allocation to be used for other Division 1 projects. Other options are to continue applying for federal grants, looking for other funding sources, consider local sales or occupancy taxes, and/or request an annual state appropriation.

Despite the challenging budgetary situation, the bridge agencies are still in the fight, with both NCDOT and the Turnpike Authority continuing to advance the project toward construction, Logen Hodges, the authority’s marketing and communications director, said in an email responding to questions from Coastal Review.

So far, he said, three permits have been issued for the project, including those issued by the N.C. Department of Environmental Quality’s divisions of Water Resources and Coastal Management on Sept. 19, 2025, and one issued by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers on Oct. 28, 2025. While geotechnical investigations are being completed, another permit application to the Coast Guard is pending.

First identified as a need in 1975, the proposed bridge would connect the Currituck mainland at Aydlett to Corolla, on the Currituck Outer Banks. The 4.66-mile-long bridge would cross Currituck Sound and a 1.5-mile-long bridge would cross Maple Swamp on the mainland side about 25 miles south of the Virginia state line.

But the project, which has a timeline of five years for design and construction, has been rife with conflict, budget shortfalls, waning and waxing political support and repeated legal challenges. Dare and Currituck counties, and most of their respective towns and villages, have been pushing for the bridge for decades as a necessity to decrease traffic volume and improve hurricane evacuation.

At the same time, vocal opponents, many of them residents from both sides of the proposed bridge, have maintained that the bridge would be a costly boondoggle that would damage the environment and increase traffic.

Legal challenges were filed by the Southern Environmental Law Center, which challenged the permit issued by DEQ on different fronts.

“The timeline for resolution of this legal challenge is uncertain,” Hodges wrote. “Due to the pending legal challenge of an environmental permit and additional project funding needs, the project schedule will remain uncertain. To reflect this, the project construction let date has been extended by one year and may continue to be adjusted until a project schedule is determined.” 

On behalf of No Mid-Currituck Bridge, a citizens’ group opposed to the bridge, and the Sierra Club, an environmental nonprofit group, the SELC submitted a Petition for a Contested Case Hearing to the state in November that challenged the DEQ’s Coastal Area Management Act, or CAMA, permit. 

The petition argues, among others, that the bridge will bring adverse effects and disrupt communities on both sides.

“The permit for the construction of the Bridge Alternative would induce dramatic increases in traffic and development on both the mainland and Outer Banks, strain already overburdened coastal wastewater and drinking water infrastructure, permanently harm estuarine waters, wetlands, and other surface waters,” the document states.

In a separate action, the law center submitted a petition for judicial review to the state in December, also challenging the issuance of the permit by Coastal Resources Commission and DEQ.

To the community on the northern Outer Banks and the southern end of mainland Currituck County, as well as for visiting property owners and tourists, the summer traffic crossing the Wright Memorial Bridge back and forth from Currituck to Dare counties is an annual headache, with bumper-to-bumper traffic clogging roads to and from Corolla every weekend and holiday.

According to a September 2025 traffic and revenue report, more than 1 million vehicles crossed the Wright Memorial Bridge in July 2023, the highest count to date. 

“The proposed (Currituck bridge) is expected to provide significant distance and time savings to residents and visitors, particularly to those that travel to the most northern portion of Dare County and the Currituck County portion of the Outer Banks,” the report said. “The (bridge) will reduce peak season congestion for trips to the south, facilitate planned growth north of the (Wright bridge), and improve emergency evacuation for those residing on all parts of the Outer Banks.”

Tolls would be charged starting in 2032, according to the report. Minimum tolls in 2023 dollars for cars would be $6 each direction, with discounts for tolls paid by transponders and future increases reflecting the inflation rate. Trucks and other heavy vehicles will pay proportionally higher tolls.

The report also states that the optimal toll rate of $15 would generate 90% of the maximum forecasted toll revenue. In the numerous models, calculated rates were as high as $40. 

But Hodges cautioned that the models are not just that.

 “While estimated toll rates were used for the purpose of the analysis, all toll rates are set by the North Carolina Turnpike Authority Board of Directors,” he wrote in the email. “Formal toll rates for the Mid-Currituck Bridge would not be established until closer to the facility’s opening.”

The $173 million in committed division funds represents about 20% of the total STIP funding for Division 1, Hodges said. Depending on the outcome of the project schedule, the DEQ permits would not expire on their own, he said. The Corps’ permit, however, is set to expire iis set to expire on Dec. 31,2030, unless an extension is granted.

But if the Albemarle Regional Planning Organization decides to move the project to the last five years of the STIP, he said, it could potentially be eligible for funding at statewide, regional impact funding and division needs tiers.

“Ultimately whether the project is funded and programmed for construction would be dependent on available funding at each tier and how the project scores relative to other projects submitted for prioritization,” he wrote.

Whatever its fate, it’s taken a lot of resources for the Mid-Currituck Bridge proposal to finally reach the runway, only to be stalled indefinitely — or eliminated. 

“Since the early 1990s when the project was first conceived,” Hodges wrote, “approximately $60 million has been spent on early project work, including preliminary engineering, environmental analysis and initial right-of-way acquisition.”

This report has been updated for clarification.

Dominion Energy’s 2.6-gigawatt offshore wind project based in Hampton Roads, Virginia, which was ordered by the Trump administration to stop work right before Christmas, has resumed the project and is now on track for completion by early 2027.

But the 26-day shutdown of Coastal Virginia Offshore Wind, also known as CVOW, came at considerable cost to the company, its customers and the nation’s energy needs. 

According to its Jan. 30 project update, Dominion tallied the current total project cost at $11.5 billion, reflecting $228 million for increases associated with the suspension, as well as $580 million related to actual/estimated tariffs. Dominion’s update in May 2025 had the project cost at $10.8 billion.

“It’s a terrible time to be restricting any source of new energy and especially sources of new clean energy that can be constructed in places that otherwise have limited ability to add new generation, whether that might be a new gas plant or a new coal plant,” Katharine Kollins, president of the Southeastern Wind Coalition, told Coastal Review.

When fully operational, CVOW’s 176 wind turbines will generate enough energy to power up to 660,000 homes, making it the largest offshore wind farm in the U.S and one of the largest wind energy production facilities in the world. Dominion, which provides electricity to 3.6 million homes and businesses in Virginia, North Carolina and South Carolina and natural gas service to 500,000 customers in South Carolina, said the wind project is critical to its “diverse energy supply strategy” to meet growing regional demand.

“I think from the wind industry’s perspective, this is an industry that has been operating for over 20 years and has shown that there’s an ability to put a significant amount of new clean energy on the grid every year — when the free market is at play and when they are able to construct in areas where it makes sense to have wind,” Kollins said.

Citing risks to national security, the U.S. Department of Interior issued the suspension order on Dec. 22 to CVOW and four other offshore wind projects in varied stages of development on the East Coast. The following day, Dominion sued the federal government.

In the action, filed in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia, Dominion argued, in part, that it had worked extensively with military interests while developing the project to ensure that any concerns about radar, training or operational readiness were addressed. Not only did the agency director lack the “generalized authority” under the lease regulations to order the suspension “at whim,” the lawsuit said, the government did not cite an “applicable trigger” to halt construction.

“Our nation is governed by laws, and a stable legal and regulatory environment is essential to allow regulated public utilities like (Dominion)  as well as other businesses, contractors, suppliers, and workers, to invest and support our nation’s energy needs and associated jobs,” according to the lawsuit.

“Sudden and baseless withdrawal of regulatory approvals by government officials cannot be reconciled with the predictability needed to support the exceptionally large capital investments required for large-scale energy development projects like CVOW critical to domestic energy security, continues the legal document. “That is true regardless of the source of energy.”

Based on a 2022 agreement with regulators on cost-sharing, for project costs beyond $10.3 billion up to $11.3 billion, the company and the customers each pay 50%, and from $11.3 billion to $13.7 billion, the company pays 100%, according to Dominion’s Jan. 30 project update.

Customers in Virginia, but not North Carolina, currently pay about $11 a month to cover CVOW costs, said Jeremy Slayton with Dominion media relations in a Feb. 10 email response to Coastal Review. Cost recovery, which influences rates, is updated annually, he added, and the October 2025 filing is still before the Virginia State Corporation Commission.

On Jan. 16, the court granted Dominion’s request for a preliminary injunction that allowed construction at CVOW to resume while the lawsuit is resolved. Courts have now allowed all five stalled offshore projects to operate for the time being.

“While our legal challenge proceeds, we will continue seeking a durable resolution of this matter through cooperation with the federal government”, Dominion Energy said in a press release.

The company didn’t waste time getting back to work. According to information provided by Slayton, project construction was by late January about 70% complete, with the facility expected to deliver its first power to the grid by the end of the first quarter of this year.

“Our U.S-flagged wind turbine installation vessel Charybdis completed the first turbine installation today,” Slayton wrote in the Jan 27 email. 

So far, he added, all 176 monopole foundations have been installed, and 119 of the 176 transition pieces — the yellow parts that connect the foundations to the turbine towers — are in place.

Also, two of the three offshore substations have been installed, the deepwater offshore export cables installation has been completed and the nearshore export cables installation is about 60% completed. And about 67 miles of an estimated 231 miles of inter-array cables, which carry energy created by the wind turbines to the offshore substations, has been installed.

Onshore electric transmission construction is expected to be completed in early 2026. Before the abrupt stop-work order, CVOW, which started construction in 2024, had expected to flip the power switch on by that date, and be fully operational by the end of 2026.

In addition to the obvious benefit of clean, plentiful energy, the project has brought millions in economic value to the region, including many jobs and dollars while under construction.

“Offshore wind, in particular, provides the United States with a generational opportunity to supply large amounts of affordable, reliable power while spurring investment and creating U.S. jobs,” Dominion argued in its filing.

According to Dominion, the completed project will create 1,100 direct and indirect jobs annually in Hampton Roads, equaling about $82 million in pay and benefits, $210 million in economic output, $6 million in revenues for local governments and $5 million in state tax revenue.

Since Donald Trump’s reelection, the president has focused on dismantling renewable energy-related projects — solar, wind, battery storage, even grid modernization —  in the U.S, and replacing it with fossil fuel and nuclear power. But he has reserved his strongest animus for offshore wind, apparently based on his objection to 11 wind turbines in the water off his Aberdeenshire, Scotland golf course.

Shortly after he purchased an estate there in 2006, according to a July 29, 2025, article published online by the BBC,  Trump “soon became infuriated at plans to construct an offshore wind farm nearby, arguing that the ‘windmills’ — as he prefers to call the structures — would ruin the view.”

He also insisted that the turbine blades killed “all” the birds, but surveys at the site have to date not found a single bird strike. In addition to calling wind energy “a scam,” as quoted in the article, the president regards wind power as “very expensive, very ugly energy”.

Despite Trump fighting the plans through the Scottish courts and ultimately the UK’s Supreme Court, construction of the “monsters” went ahead in 2018.

“It clearly left him smarting and he’s not had a good word to say about wind power since,” the article said.

According to an Audubon study, most bird deaths are caused by striking buildings, especially tall ones with large windows, and cats eating them. On land, building collisions alone are estimated to kill over a billion birds each year in the U.S., the report said.

“On the open ocean, birds can be killed or injured when they collide with ships or offshore oil platforms,” the report stated. “Similarly, offshore wind infrastructure — including turbine blades, towers, electrical platforms, and construction equipment on boats — all pose potential threats.”

The report goes into much detail, but best practices were summed up as “Avoid, Minimize, Offset and Monitor.”

Dominion states on its website that it uses the latest technologies to protect birds and other wildlife, such as time-of-year restrictions, installation of anti-perching devices and acoustic monitoring.

Typically, offshore wind production is generated by three-bladed rotors attached to a ocean-worthy structure that houses a generator insider turbines attached to elevated platforms. Cables from the generator deliver the energy to the bottom of the tower to the underwater transmission cables to onshore power stations. 

But technology has evolved considerably since the first offshore turbine was built in Denmark in 1991.

“As turbine technology continues its rapid evolution — with units now reaching 26 (megawatts) — and floating wind advances toward commercial scale, the industry finds itself at a critical juncture that will shape its trajectory for years to come,” Power magazine reported in a Feb. 9, 2026, article published online.

Global offshore wind capacity reached 83 gigawatts at the end of 2024, the article said, and it appears that the 2025 report will show it was another banner year for the industry, with new construction “positioning the sector for accelerated growth through the decade.”

Significant projects have been constructed or are planned in European and Asia-Pacific regions, the magazine said. Meanwhile, the U.S. offshore wind industry is sputtering, resulting in a severe impact to the market. The International Energy Agency, according to the article, forecasts a 60% downward revision from 2025-2030 for U.S. wind energy, equaling 57 GW of both onshore and offshore capacity “that is now unlikely to be built.”

It appears the U.S, for now, may be left in the dust.

“Offshore wind technology continues its relentless march toward larger, more powerful machines,” according to the article. “The average capacity of turbines installed offshore in 2024 reached 10 MW, according to (the Global Wind Energy Council), a figure that would have seemed implausible a decade ago. Yet, the frontier has already moved well beyond that threshold.”

Still, in the long run, the realities of market forces and the limitations of dirty or destructive energy resources can make an unlimited, clean energy such as wind an unavoidable choice. Offshore projects may be a younger industry in the U.S., but it is considered a powerful renewable resource to tap. While land-based wind projects are less costly, wind speeds are generally higher and more constant offshore, allowing turbines to generate more electricity for longer periods.

In the U.S., solar and wind have often been the most affordable energy resource, but they are also compatible grid partners, Kollins said, with wind at its peak when the sun is not.

“Generally, wind turbines have higher generation factors in the winter and in evenings, and those are two times when solar has less output,” she said, “So if you have a lot of solar on the grid, you can add a lot of wind before you really need storage.”

Once all five of the offshore projects are operating at full capacity, she said, that’s when people will see the benefits of having more electricity produced, when they need it — such as the recent weekend deep freezes along the East Coast.

“These things are going to be generating their full output all weekend when everybody’s got their heat turned on and is using max electricity load,” Kollins said, adding: “Offshore wind is highly correlated with winter storms.”

There is an increasing demand overall for electricity, Kollins noted. And construction of gas turbines and nuclear power is many years down the road.

“These electrons are needed so badly,” she said.  “We are in a period of rapid economic growth, and in order to continue fueling that growth, we need every resource available.

“And offshore wind provides one of the only ways to build a significant amount of new energy generation in the near term.”

MANTEO — Shoaling in a Roanoke Sound channel just outside Shallowbag Bay has once again prevented the state attraction Elizabeth II from leaving its moorings at Roanoke Island Festival Park for maintenance.

And once again, Dare County has agreed to help manage another dredging project for the state so the ship can motor to the Wanchese state shipyard for its overdue haul-out.

“We’re still essentially in the planning stages,” Dare County Waterways Commission administrator Barton Grover said in a recent interview. “We’re not exactly sure what path we’re going to take moving forward.”

The 43-year-old wooden-hulled vessel, built to represent a 16th-century English sailing ship that participated in Sir Walter Raleigh’s 1584-1587 Roanoke Voyages, was last hauled out for dry-dock maintenance in 2021, after sitting in brackish water for four years.

Grover said that the proposed project would be addressing the same clogged area near where the channel intersects at Roanoke Sound and Shallowbag Bay that had earlier blocked the ship from moving.

In November 2020, the county had approved a contract and a grant application to conduct maintenance dredging in the channel to allow larger vessels, including the Elizabeth II, to access Manteo harbor. The vessel, which has an 8-foot draft, was able to safely leave its dock in Dough’s Creek about a week earlier than completion of the project in late February 2021, according to the county website.

Although the Roanoke Channel is officially a federally authorized channel, Grover explained that the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers pipeline dredge does not do work north of Wanchese. Ultimately, a bucket-and-barge method was used for the 90-day project, which increased the depth of about 2.2 miles of channel from as little as 1 to 5 feet to 9 feet. Another 290 feet in a connector channel to the ship’s berth was also dredged. Costs for the $1.9 million project were appropriated by the North Carolina General Assembly, with an additional $170,000 provided by the state’s Shallow Draft Navigation Channel Dredging and Aquatic Weed Fund and the town of Manteo.

Some of the factors that come into play with the proposed dredge project, Grover said, include higher costs to dispose of the dredged material, as well as the lack of an obvious disposal area.

In the earlier projects, the material — scooped from the channel, piled onto a barge and then transported to land — was hauled off in a truck to the be placed on top of the county’s Manns Harbor landfill. But the increased expense may have made that option less attractive, he said. Other possibilities could include placement in a permitted area of water, or beneficial re-use along a shoreline or other area, he said.

Another consideration under review is whether the local hopper dredge Miss Katie would be capable of doing the necessary work instead of again using a bucket-and-barge method, Grover said. But the choice of an appropriate disposal site could also come into play in determining costs for that dredge to reach the site.

Typically planning and permitting for a similar dredge project takes at least “six-plus” months, he said. Also, the state has yet to secure the funding. Ideally, he said, a project would be ready to go during the upcoming winter of 2026-2027.

By then, the 69-foot-long ship will have been sitting in the brackish water alongside its dock in Dough’s Creek for about six years.

Michele Walker, assistant communications director at the North Carolina Department of Natural and Cultural Resources, said in an email responding to questions from Coastal Review that the last condition report was done by surveyor Paul C. Haley with Capt. G. W. Full & Associates Marine Surveyors in 2016, when numerous issues, including signs of rot and deterioration of the exterior and interior, were detailed.

When the vessel was hauled out in 2021, she added, Haley did not travel to the Outer Banks because of the COVID-19 pandemic, but he verified with the firm’s staff on site that the earlier repair recommendations had been completed.

“In addition, the ship is inspected annually by the U.S. Coast Guard,” Walker wrote. “This provides us approval to operate as an attraction vessel, which allows us to have passengers on board while moored.”

Walker added that the ship is maintained above the waterline throughout the year, with more extensive maintenance done while Roanoke Island Festival Park, a state museum that memorializes regional English precolonial and Native American history, and the adjacent Elizabeth II State Historic Site are closed January through mid-March.

Haley’s 2021 report, while emphasizing his familiarity with the vessel from doing the surveys in 2004, 2011 and 2016, also lauds the park for always following through on the surveyors’ recommendations.

Notably, when compromised planking documented in the earlier survey had been replaced, he said, the frames exposed during the work were observed to be in good condition. Also, all the critical repairs and plank replacements had been completed, he said.

“The vessel has a good maintenance program by the park and they haul out the vessel on a regular basis for repainting of the bottom and doing any maintenance work that requires the vessel being out of water,” he wrote.

Except for a few months in the winter, the Elizabeth II welcomes visitors aboard to experience a sailor’s view of ship life and duties, guided by interpreters in period costumes who regale them with stories.

As a representative vessel, the Elizabeth II was built based on knowledge of the tools, materials and basic designs used in Elizabethan-era shipbuilding, but there are no original design sketches of the actual merchant ships that sailed during the late 1500s to Roanoke Island from England. Still, the three-masted, square-rigged ship with dashing blue-and-white markings contrasting with its wooden hull — even while rarely moving from its dock across from the Manteo waterfront — has reliably served its mission as an ambassador for the state, the Outer Banks and Manteo’s heritage as the site of the first English colony in America.

But since the flashy ship’s 1984 launch during the town’s 400th anniversary celebration of the Roanoke Voyages, which culminated in the ill-fated “Lost Colony” that was never seen again after its governor left for supplies in 1587, once-routine day trips to visit coastal ports or join in community festivals fell by the wayside due to lack of funds, scheduling difficulties and other challenges. And gradually, even annual haul-outs started being delayed for multiple years, despite that prolonged time in the water for wooden hulls can lead to damage from shipworms and rot.

The ship’s current dockside stranding was not anticipated during the last review five years ago.

“It is the plan of this office to be present and to conduct a full survey at the haul out at the beginning of 2022,” Haley wrote in the report. “With this in mind, it is our opinion that the vessel is suitable for her present use.”

On Dec. 18, the nonprofit Friends of Elizabeth II indicated no intent to give up the ship, so to speak, posting a notice seeking to hire a new captain for the vessel. Applications were due Jan. 29. In addition to overseeing the maintenance of the ship and leading the crew and interpreters, the job’s responsibilities include training staff and volunteers in rigging, sailmaking and marine woodworking.

The required duties also illustrate that the Elizabeth II isn’t just a pretty ship decorating a small historic North Carolina town’s harbor. The captain must not only understand Coast Guard regulations associated with “moving watercraft” through waterways, the captain must be capable of “sailing the Elizabeth II as needed.”

At first glance, the four, multi-colored snakes might be crawling across the cover of the long out-of-print paperback.

The chilling dead-eyes, the intricately patterned scales, the pointed heads and slender bodies are practically lifelike illustrations drawn by Donald R. Brothers, the same man who wrote “An Introduction to Snakes of the Dismal Swamp Region of North Carolina and Virginia” in 1992.

But what was then another modest nature guidebook, is now a remarkable collection of precise drawings created by a self-taught artist, a professional natural scientist and lifelong snake lover raised on the edge of the Dismal Swamp.

“Everyone that would see it would say, ‘Oh, man, this is so good to have,’” George Jackson, Brothers’ first cousin, said from his family’s cottage in Kill Devil Hills. As he showed off an old copy of the book, he added, “That’s what led to me pushing him to do it again.”

Jackson, 76, grew up with his older cousin in Elizabeth City, where Jackson still lives with his wife Blair. Brothers, 88, who is now retired and resides in Boise, Idaho, where he spent much of this career, was initially reluctant to do an update because of health issues.

“I said, I’ll do all the legwork. All you have to do is say yes, and I’ll make it happen,” Jackson recalled, adding he was relieved when his cousin agreed.

“I think one of the real jewels of this is that it’s written by a guy who was born here, lived here throughout his high school years, and this is when he developed this fascination with snakes.”

What’s also so impressive about his cousin, Jackson added, is that he had failed three years of school before he finally managed to graduate from high school, and it was only years later that he was diagnosed with dyslexia. Even more surprising to Jackson, he never saw his cousin draw, and had no idea he was such a talented artist. To him, the drawings provide the most unique value.

“If you’re trying to get straight on snakes, by looking at something — rather than it being a shot of a snake in the wild — it is from someone like Donald who just spent hours and hours and hours with a specimen, looking at it and drawing it,” Jackson said. “But there is an art form here that is important,” he added, not just for art’s sake, but as a depiction of nature as viewed by the artist.

When the Virginia state herpetologist J.D. Kleopfer, with the Virginia Division of Wildlife Resources, saw the drawings, he told him that he was amazed at Brothers’ accuracy in his illustrations. In fact, he said he had counted every scale on one of the snake drawings, and it was completely accurate.

In an interview, Kleopfer agrees that the book shines the most thanks to Brothers’ hand-drawn artwork.

“Biological illustrations are a kind of a thing of the past,” he said. “They’re a dying art form.” Elaborating on what he had conveyed to Jackson, Kleopfer was impressed at the beauty of the drawings.

“There’s such incredible detail with the scale count or the scale pattern on the head and on the belly and on the animal itself,” he said. “That’s really finite detail to have as a biological illustrator, and because photography, basically, you know, took over.”

After consulting with Kleopfer and other herpetologists, Jackson made relatively minor updates on species and taxonomy.

Although the information is accurate, the book, then and now, is intended for nonprofessional readers, or as the revision says, “a cultural artifact that provides a snapshot” of the snakes in the region, and the author’s relationship to them. Two appendices are included with details on snake name changes and identifying shed snake skins.

The 2025 book was published in August, with a suggested retail cost of $24 from select outlets or tidaltalebooks@gmail.com.

But Jackson, who is a semi-retired lawyer, admits he doesn’t particularly like snakes, and still remembers his revulsion as a kid when Donald Ray, as he was known then — the oldest of his eight cousins — had asked him to carry a burlap sack filled with live water snakes. And then there was his bedroom, smelling of formaldehyde, lined with big, snake-filled jars.

“At that age, snakes are like monsters,” he said. “But I just remember my grandparents letting me go in there and you didn’t have to be told ‘Don’t touch anything.’ I didn’t.”

Still, Jackson said he appreciates the importance of snakes in the natural world, and the value of a guide book on snakes in the region to all the nonscientific folks who enjoy the outdoors, or are curious about the snakes in their yard.

The guide is as thorough as any nonscientist could want or need. There’s information about the appearance, habitat, diet, behavior and even reproduction of numerous regional snakes, from worm snakes to rattlesnakes, and whether they’re venomous and how to identify them.

Brothers, who has six children, 24 grandchildren, and eight great-grandchildren has been married to his wife Judy for close to 50 years. In addition to a full career in various natural sciences positions, the author, along with his wife, also managed to build a passive solar-powered home with a huge garden and numerous livestock they raised for food.

“We did the forming, framing, glazing, roofing, painting, plumbing, electrical, interior work and cabinets,” Brothers wrote on his website. “Only pouring the concrete, countertops and carpeting were done by others. Our home would be one of the first thermal envelope home build in Idaho.” 

As he described his youth, Brothers said he grew up about a 10-minute bicycle ride from the southernmost edge of the swamp — “a fine place to study snakes.”

In an earlier memoir Brothers wrote, “Swamp Water in My Veins,” he told how he began collecting articles about snakes when he was young and writing things down. But he continued to struggle in school, with one teacher reporting that “Donald is interested in snakes and not much else.”

“Dispelling false popular beliefs about snakes was one of the primary objectives of the book,” Brothers wrote, explaining why he wrote the 1992 guide. “This was important because such beliefs contribute greatly to anxiety and fear.”

A partial list: snakes are slimy, they can jump, their tongues can sting, they can hypnotize their prey, they don’t die till sunset, the hiss of a snake is poisonous and some can crawl as fast as horse can run.

“More education is needed to dispel false popular beliefs and appreciate these interesting and important creatures of the animal kingdom,” he said.

As someone who also loves snakes, Kleopfer, who has served as Virginia’s state herpetologist for 20 years, agrees that snakes are misunderstood.

“You know, snakes can be very polarizing,” he said. “Of course, you have the whole Garden of Eden story, which doesn’t help. There’s probably no other animal, group of animals that has more misinformation and folklore about it than snakes.”

But snakes eat lots of things we don’t want to deal with — such as carrion, he said.

“Snakes play an incredible role in the ecology of our ecosystems and controlling rodents and pests and stuff like that,” he said. “They’re also food for other animals as well.”

And snakes want nothing to do with people, so the best thing is to accept them and let them be.

“I always said that resolves 99% of all wildlife interactions, particularly with snakes,” Kleopfer said. “Just follow those four easy words: ‘Just leave it alone.’”

Even venomous snakes are not nearly as sinister as their reputations have them.

“Cottonmouths, or water moccasins, have a curiosity factor about them, but those things are big babies,” he said. “I mean, you really have to do something extraordinarily stupid to get bit by one. Yeah, they’re venomous, but they’re quite reluctant to strike.”

But all the better if Brothers’ well-illustrated book helps educate people about the value of snakes and basic science of herpetology.

It’s just a very cool historic document,” Kleopfer said. “It would be a nice addition to anybody’s literary collection if they’re into that kind of natural history or regional type of history.”

Though sleek and beautiful as they may be, he conceded, snakes fall short of the cute and winsome appeal of other animals that share their neighborhoods.

“They’re never going to be embraced like our furry and feathered friends are.”

Post has been updated.

WANCHESE — Genetic testing of purportedly wild-caught shrimp served earlier this month at dozens of Outer Banks restaurants found that 64% of the shrimp was actually imported.

On behalf of the Southern Shrimp Alliance, SeaD Consulting collected and analyzed shrimp samples from randomly selected seafood restaurants in Duck, Southern Shores, Kitty Hawk, Kill Devil Hills, Manteo, Rodanthe, Salvo, Avon, Buxton, Frisco, Nags Head and Hatteras, according to a Dec. 17 press release from SeaD.

Of the 44 restaurants tested, 43 had verbally claimed to serve local American wild-caught shrimp, but only 16 — 36% — were found to be serving local shrimp in the tested dishes. The remaining 28 restaurants had served imported farm-raised shrimp, but only one of them admitted it. All 44 of the eateries had used imagery to imply that they served local shrimp. 

“The findings raise concerns about seafood transparency in an iconic coastal region known for its local fishing heritage,” the release said.

Despite the Outer Banks’ poor showing, it was noted that Wilmington did even worse, with an “inauthenticity rate” of 77% in previous testing. 

SeaD (Seafood Development) Consulting, in partnership with Florida State University, holds the patent for the Rapid ID Genetic High-Accuracy Test, or RIGHTTest, that was used in the survey conducted Dec. 2-6. The Southern Shrimp Alliance, an advocacy trade group, has funded the genetic testing of shrimp throughout the region.

Shrimp, the most popular seafood in the U.S., was an $8 billion market in 2025, with Americans consuming 5 pounds per capita of shrimp a year. But it’s not local shrimpers who are raking in big profits.

According to the U.S. International Trade Commission, 93% of the shrimp consumed in the United States comes from overseas, with 1.7 billion pounds of shrimp products imported in 2024, valued at $6 billion. Meanwhile, commercial shrimp harvests in the Gulf of Mexico and the South Atlantic declined from $522 million in 2021 to $269 million in 2023; $25 million to $14 million, respectively, in North Carolina. 

The demand for shrimp is only increasing, along with the creativity in how to serve it.

“We don’t need to undersell our industry and our product,” David Williams, a commercial fishery scientist and co-founder of SeaD, told Coastal Review in a recent interview. A generation ago, shrimp cocktail was the extent of its use in most American cuisine; now there’s a dozen different shrimp dishes on menus, he said. “It should be a proud part of our industry”

As the Alliance detailed, imports, depending on the country, can be “dumped” at lower prices because they use cheap labor, and sometimes even forced, trafficked or child labor. Some countries use a lot of antibiotics, or grow shrimp in polluted ponds. A few countries impose tariffs ranging from 13% to 45% on U.S. wild-caught and farmed shrimp.

While most restaurant prices for shrimp dinners are on the higher end of the menu, they’re not reflecting the dock prices, which have remained low. But more recognition for the quality of wild shrimp as a food source would increase its value.

“The only real way of doing that is that people in restaurants appreciate wild caught shrimp,” Williams said. And diners who choose to eat wild seafood should be able to trust that they’re getting what they’re paying for, otherwise, it’s misrepresentation.

“You charge a premium for a product that’s not a premium,” he said.

North Carolina does not have a law that requires restaurants to disclose the origin of shrimp on menus. Certain retail seafood products fall under federal country-of-origin requirements, but they do not apply to restaurants. North Carolina U.S. Rep. David Rouzer, R-7th District, has recently met with the Alliance and others in the industry and is looking into the legislative remedies and other shrimp industry issues.

“Tackling mislabeling is crucial to ensure that consumers receive the shrimp they are sold,” Blake Price, deputy director of the Southern Shrimp Alliance said in the release. “This testing shows American fishermen are regularly losing sales of their own product to shrimp farmed in countries with safety, labor, and environmental abuses.”

Mark Vrablic, general manager of Willie R. Etheridge Seafood in Wanchese, said that he’s not directly aware of Outer Banks restaurants misrepresenting imported shrimp as local. Still, he has had people tell him that they were told the seafood they were served had come from Etheridge’s, when he knew it didn’t.

“I would love for it not to be this way, but I wouldn’t dare sell a farm-raised shrimp and call it domestic,” he told Coastal Review in an interview. People have a right to know what they’re eating, he added. “I’m not going to sell something marked one thing and it’s something else.”

Vrablic, 66, agrees that the biggest problem with imported shrimp is that the dock price shrimpers are paid is almost too low to make it worth the costs and work involved. 

Probably 25 countries send shrimp here, including Saudi Arabia, Turkey, Ecuador, Peru, Mexico and Venezuela, he said.

“When fuels went up real high two years back, (local shrimpers) were going to have to either raise prices or just get out of it, because they were going to go broke,” Vrablic said. Even with gas lower now, he said, the “homeboys” should still be getting prices 30% to 40% higher.

“But because of the millions of pounds of farm-raised that’s available daily, it’s just overwhelming,” he said. “The market is staying down because of the supply.”

Vrablic, who is a member of the Etheridge family, once one of the most powerful fishing clans on the Outer Banks, began fishing when he was 14 years old, and later joined the family restaurant business for a few years before taking over commercial management and sales.

Until about 20 years ago, shrimping was a short summer fishery in North Carolina, he said. But as the climate changed, the waters warmed to the shrimp’s liking. Now the season stretches from July Fourth until December or later.

“I don’t like imports, Vrablic said. “They’ve crushed us like cockroaches. They’ve taken our markets away, and our fishermen can’t get the fair share what they should be getting. When I fished, I made a lot of money. We didn’t have imports.”

But the fact is, he said, the increased demand for shrimp on the Outer Banks, and elsewhere, exceeds what local shrimpers can catch. And almost all farm-raised shrimp is from overseas.

“We produce shrimp in this country, but we do not produce enough,” Vrablic said, and referred to the 1.7 billion pounds that were imported last year. “Where would we find something like that?”

To his point, he explained, Etheridge Seafood doesn’t have the capacity or bargaining power to meet the volume of the demand.

“We keep a heavy inventory of shrimp, and it’s just the whole world dumps on us,” Vrablic said.

Bottom line, Vrablic says that something has to be done about the unfair competition from imported shrimp. Ideally, restaurants and fish markets should prioritize serving local catch, but when they can’t, they need to be honest about the origin of the shrimp they’re selling. And it would help if consumers remember that wild-caught shrimp also is a seasonal product.

“When restaurants say ’Mark, what will we do if we went three or four months without shrimp?’ I said, ‘If I got no shrimp … we could treat it like we do soft crabs or scallops or oysters when it comes in season.’ People come buy them just like they do watermelons. When it comes out of season, guess what? You come up short.

“Then they’ll just buy more fish from me,” he said, “because they can’t compete with me with fresh fish.”

The following eateries on the Outer Banks found to be serving authentic, American, wild-caught shrimp in the random sample of 44 restaurants:

1. 1587 Restaurant & Lounge, 405 Queen Elizabeth Ave, Manteo.
2. Barefoot Bernie’s Tropical Grill & Bar, 3730 N. Croatan Highway, Kitty Hawk.
3. Basnight’s Lone Cedar Café, 7623 S Virginia Dare Trail, Nags Head.
4. Coastal Cravings, 1209 Duck Road, Duck.
5. Goombays Grille & Raw Bar, 1608 N. Virginia Dare Trail, Kill Devil Hills.
6. Greentail’s Seafood Market and Kitchen, 3022 S. Croatan Highway Unit 34, Nags Head.
7. I Got Your Crabs Shellfish Market and Oyster Bar, 3809 N. Croatan Highway, Kitty Hawk.
8. Lucky 12 Tavern, 3308 S. Virginia Dare Trail, Nags Head.
9. O’Neal’s Sea Harvest, 618 Harbor Road, Wanchese.
10. Outer Banks Brewing Station, 600 S. Croatan Highway, Kill Devil Hills.
11. Red Sky Casual Dining & Cocktails,1197 Duck Road, Duck.
12. Roadside Bar & Grill, 1193 Duck Road, Duck,.
13. Sea Chef Dockside Kitchen, 8770 Oregon Inlet Road, Nags Head.
14. The Paper Canoe, 1564 Duck Road, Duck.
15. Village Table & Tavern, 1314 Duck Road, Duck.
16. Vicki B’s Restaurant & Market, 301 Budleigh St., Manteo.

BUXTON – Faced with devastating destruction across a significant segment of its beachfront, this small Outer Banks village is seeking help for coastal solutions, including measures that could require potentially controversial legislative action by the state and federal governments.

Since September, 15 houses have collapsed on a stretch of beach in Buxton just north of Cape Hatteras, the distinctive point of land midway along the East Coast that juts far into the Atlantic. Adaptation to storms and natural forces have fortified the community since its establishment in the late 1800s, but now stunningly rapid erosion is endangering its future.

“Today, small areas of our oceanfront have deteriorated to the point where we can no longer shoulder these challenges alone,” Dare County Board of Commissioners Chairman Bob Woodard wrote to members of the North Carolina General Assembly in November. “With your support, we can preserve our coastline, protect public infrastructure, and sustain the economic engine that benefits all of North Carolina.”

The county is one of the few “donor counties” in North Carolina, with more than 3 million people annually visiting Dare’s beaches and national parks and generating significant state tax revenue, he said. So far, he added, the county has spent about $275 million for beach nourishment as well as additional millions to maintain inlets, with little state or federal assistance.

In addition to a beach nourishment project in 2026 for Buxton, the county is planning to repair a purportedly half-intact groin, one of three installed in 1969 to protect the former Navy base constructed in 1956 near the original location of the Cape Hatteras Lighthouse.

Dare and Hyde counties also have asked the state Division of Coastal Management to lift the 1985 state ban against hardened structures so the remnants of the two deteriorated groins at the site can be replaced.

But beach stabilization of any sort on the Outer Banks, with its extraordinarily high-energy coastal conditions, is becoming more challenging in a changing climate with quickly evolving and often unpredictable consequences: Sea levels are increasing faster than projected, storms are intensifying, rainfall is heavier.

In recent years, Hatteras and Ocracoke islands on the barrier islands’ southern end have been suffering dramatically increased shoaling in its inlets and far worse erosion at numerous hot spots along N.C. 12, the island’s only highway. Over wash, loss of dunes and road damage is becoming more frequent and difficult to mitigate, sometimes resulting in loss of vehicular access for hours or days. 

People say things feel different. Residents — from old timers to long-time transplants — have noticed places flooding where they never did before, shoaling in waterways that had never clogged before, and erosion consuming an entire shoreline that had been wide and stable just a few years before. And this fall and winter, even seasonal nor’easters have switched to overdrive, with the storms coming in one after another and more often than some ole salts say they’ve ever seen. 

“When we really developed these islands in the ’70s and ’80s, it was a different system, and we need to recognize that, acknowledge it, and plan accordingly,” Reide Corbett, executive director of the Coastal Studies Institute and Dean of the Integrated Coastal Program at East Carolina University, said in a recent interview. “We can’t let self-interest lead the way. We need to understand what this looks like, and we need to get behind better policy. And it starts with how we develop.”

Responding to increasing numbers of house collapses in Buxton and Rodanthe, the Hatteras Island’s northernmost village, state leaders are urging Congress to pass legislation introduced by Rep. Greg Murphy, a Republican from North Carolina’s 3rd District, that would authorize proactive Federal Emergency Management Agency flood insurance payments to remove threatened oceanfront houses before they fall.

While the proposal has garnered bipartisan support, FEMA is currently understaffed and targeted for downsizing, reorganization or even elimination, and its flood insurance program is woefully underfunded.

A delegation representing local, state and federal officials toured the damaged area in Buxton on Nov. 24, where dozens of additional oceanfront houses are scattered willy-nilly, awaiting near-certain demise. Numerous members of the group expressed shock at the disarray and destruction at the scene.

Meanwhile, North Carolina Department of Environmental Quality Secretary Reid Wilson has directed the Coastal Resources Commission’s Science Panel to analyze shoreline stabilization options, including the potential effectiveness or negative impacts of groins.

Erosion on Buxton’s oceanfront has been a persistent problem for many decades, at least to the infrastructure on the beach, such as the Cape Hatteras Lighthouse.

“It was quite obvious to everybody that in the course of time the lighthouse would topple into the Atlantic Ocean and the thousand acres of park land, upon which no tree and scarcely any blade of grass grew, would be swallowed up by the warring ocean currents that swirl around the point of Cape Hatteras,” author Ben Dixon MacNeill wrote in an article published on July 30, 1948, in the Coastland Times. At that point, he noted, in just the lifetime of a middle-aged man, erosion had already whittled away 1,500 feet of beach. 

Despite the 1937 congressional directive to the National Park Service to preserve what would later become Cape Hatteras National Seashore as a “primitive wilderness,” until the early 1970s, according to park documents, the agency spent more than $20 million to stop the “natural process” of barrier island movement. Projects included installing in 1930 steel sheet pile groins along the beach by Cape Hatteras Lighthouse; installing in 1933 additional sheet pile groins at the lighthouse; nourishment of the beach in 1966 near the Buxton motel area with sand dredged from Pamlico Sound; and in 1967 placement of revetment of large nylon sandbags in front of the lighthouse.

In addition, the U.S. Navy built three reinforced concrete groins in 1969 to protect its facility near the lighthouse; the beach near the Buxton motels was nourished again in 1971 with material dredged from Cape Point; and the beach near the Navy operation was nourished in 1973 with Cape Point sand. 

Those actions were in addition to construction and repeated reconstruction of sand dunes, as well as beach fences and planting grasses, shrubs and trees to hold the dunes. 

Finally, in 1973, the National Park Service acknowledged the futility and unsustainable costs of stabilization, and abandoned its efforts. The agency, however, did continue various attempts to protect the lighthouse with riprap, offshore artificial grass, sandbags and a scour-mat apron. With the sea by then lapping at its base, the lighthouse in 1999 was relocated a half-mile inland.

In a letter dated Jan. 9, 1974, from the U.S. Department of Interior to a Buxton resident, the agency promised that all available data would be analyzed before determining future beach stabilization management decisions in the Seashore, including relative to the groins.

“The most reliable scientific data we have obtained thus far offer no evidence that the existing jetties or groins at Buxton provide acceptable protection from ocean forces,” the department added. “While some stabilizing effect may be gained in the immediate area, the jetties actually cause more erosion in adjacent locations.”

A report the year earlier published by University of Virginia coastal scientist Robert Dolan, et. al, to analyze the effects of beach nourishment in Buxton, in fact, said that the groins — short jetties extending from a shoreline — rapidly increased erosion by the motel area, causing dune destruction and ocean over wash into private property.

“The groins, somewhat unexpectedly, are trapping sediment at the expense of the beaches to either side and as a result of their success, the reach protected by the groins has become stable,” the report said, adding that the localized erosion problem at Buxton had followed construction of the groins.

Barely more than four years after they were built, the groins were damaged by storms and required repairs with new sheet piling. Patches and reinforcements continued until the Navy in 1982 abandoned the base, apparently leaving the groins to the elements.

By the time heated discussions kicked in about whether the lighthouse should be saved in place or moved, the community tried to persuade the federal government to not only maintain the by-then-deteriorating existing groins, but also to add a fourth groin. The petition was soundly rejected, and the Navy, the Park Service and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers appeared to want nothing to do with the groins.

Today, the county sees the sand trapping barriers — even a single groin — as a way to prolong the effectiveness of a $50 million beach nourishment project, and importantly, as a way to buy time while consultants determine a long-term strategy for Buxton.

Dare County Manager Bobby Outten reported in March that, according to Coastal Science & Engineering, the firm hired to do the beach nourishment and groin work, the southern-most groin would meet the state’s 50% rule that allows repair of an existing structure that has 50% or less in damages. The county is currently awaiting approval from the state, as well as acknowledgement that the application meets the exemption criteria for an exemption from the hardened structures statute, he said.

If the groin work is approved, contractors estimate the $2 to $4 million project would take up to two months to complete this summer and involve about 640 feet of repairs, using steel sheet pile and riprap scour protection within the original footprint.

As Outten summed up the current dilemma facing Dare and other North Carolina coastal communities: There are two extremes, either hold the coast in place as it is, and build sea walls. Or let nature take its course, let the houses fall and see the economy crumble.

“And neither one of those extremes is acceptable,” he told Coastal Review. “To anybody.”

TYNER – As neighborhood businesses go, Timbermill Wind is quiet, clean and visually striking. And barely a year from the start of its wind energy production in this rural northeastern North Carolina community, it is already pumping money into local coffers.

At a ceremony held Tuesday at the site of the project’s local operations, Ken Young, CEO of Apex Clean Energy, the operation’s owner, presented a large, ceremonial check representing about $750,000 in net tax payments to Chowan County.

“There’ll be many more like it,” Bob Kirby, a Chowan County commissioner, told a small gathering of local officials and community members.

According to a Timbermill Wind press release, annual payments to the county over the project’s 30-year lifespan are expected to total about $50 million, which will support community needs such as education and emergency services. The infusion of revenue, so far, makes Timbermill the county’s single largest taxpayer, officials said, equaling more in property taxes this year than last year’s top nine taxpayers combined.

With the silver blades of a turbine turning slowly in the background over his shoulder, Kirby couldn’t help boasting that the land-based wind facility was the first of its kind to be permitted in North Carolina.

“There’s a $400 million investment that’s sitting behind me,” he said.

Beyond the benefits to the county and state, Kirby added, Timbermill is also a huge help to local farmers who receive annual payments — the amount is deemed proprietary information — to lease their land to the business.

“The people who own these farms are under unbelievable stress to their way of life,” he said. “For the leaseholders, this sort of thing, that’s a predictable source of income for them.”

While farmers lose access to a small amount of their land, they can continue as usual to farm the land under the turbines.

During a tour of part of the production site, Richard Bunch, a local representative for Timbermill, while standing in front of a turbine, told the group that farmers are able to get relatively close to the side of the tower when they’re working the land, although they can get closer after the corn or other crops is harvested. 

“He’s going to lose a half an acre here, that’s all,” Bunch said.  “And he’ll have income for 30 years.”   

A 6,000-acre tract, bordered by tall trees and owned by timber company Weyerhaeuser, was the first site to be cleared for the project, said Win Dale, a project representative for Timbermill.

“Once they cut every tree down, every stump was removed,” he said, waving toward a large circle of open land surrounding a turbine.

Each “crane pad” at the 45 sites, he said, is an eighth of an acre.

Hunters now have new access roads to the area, where they hunt mostly for deer, as well as some bear and wild turkey, Bunch said.

“They rented this whole tract from Weyerhaeuser to hunt,” he said, adding that he’d heard that they’re quite happy with the change. “Between a company and a hunting group, to be able to say that — that never happens.”

Farmers are also enjoying the easier access to their land, Dale added.

“The roads are like interstates compared to what they were before,” he said.

The towers themselves are 345 feet tall. Counting to the tip of the blades — the project has a total of 135 — each “windmill” is 591 feet tall. Providing a short lesson for visitors, Tyler Finley, facility manager for Timbermill Wind, explained that each tower is divided into five sections. Inside, there’s a ladder running up the middle with a platform at each level. The three blades are attached before they’re elevated to the top. 

“It’s kind of like building a very big Lego,” he said about the assembly process.

When they’re moving, the 242-foot-long blades create a 4-acre sweep area. Shadow flickers that would otherwise pass over homes are mitigated by siting towers away from residential structures.

Finley and other Timbermill representatives said that the blades, which are a composite of fiberglass with an interior metal structure, don’t kick on until the wind reaches at least 7 mph, and they’re capable of pitching from zero to 90 degrees. When winds reach about 50 mph, they’ll flatten to reduce surface area. Feathering of blade pitch provides “aerodynamic braking,” and trailing-edge serrations on the blades help reduce noise.

From the onsite substation, a 6-mile line is connected directly to the Dominion Energy “point of intersection,” Finley explained.

Apex has a power purchase agreement with Google, meaning it provides Google with a portion of the power produced at Timbermill. But the power is obtained from the grid, which collects energy from numerous sources.

“It’s an integrated power market,” Finley said.

Simply put, the energy produced by the wind turbines is eventually sent to a large distribution network, where it is purchased by different customers. The concept is similar to global oil and gas markets, where the location of the energy source is rarely the direct recipient of that energy.

 According to Timbermill, the 189-megawatt wind energy project developed and operated by Charlottesville, Virginia-based Apex Clean Energy generates enough clean energy to power the equivalent of 47,000 U.S. homes.

Timbermill, which came online in Dec. 2024, became the second industrial scale land-based wind farm in the state.

Although it was permitted earlier, numerous delays led to it being behind the 104-turbine Amazon Wind U.S. East wind farm that straddles Perquimans and Pasquotank counties and that started its 208-megawatt operation in early 2017.

The Apex Community Grant Program has awarded more than $120,000 for local nonprofits and support for regional reforestation and other community conservation projects.

Speaking after the event, John Mitchener, 84, a native of Chowan County who had served as commissioner from 2010 to 2018, said he was on the board when “the significant decisions” were made about permitting the wind farm.

He noted that opinions initially seemed to be divided between the folks in the Yeopim area, who reside south of Edenton toward the Outer Banks, and the other side of the county.

“The people who objected the most lived down there, and the people who lived up there objected the least,” he said.

While Mitchener said he couldn’t pinpoint the reason for the differences, he said that he knew it was important to maintain a polite and civil approach.

“Part of my outlook as a public official,” he said, “is to try to have the conversation where you could come back to it.”

And as it turns out, he said, people in the community all seem pretty happy now with Timbermill.

First of two parts.

It was a nasty January day about 14 years ago, not long after publication of his book, “The Battle for North Carolina’s Coast: Evolutionary History, Present Crisis, and Vision for the Future,” when veteran East Carolina University coastal scientist Dr. Stan Riggs, the book’s lead author, had an unexpected and impactful visit. Not only did it prolong the sunset of his then-50-yearlong career, it cemented the reach of his legacy beyond academia to the lives of everyday people.

And it inspired Riggs to write 10 reader-friendly books focused on a blend of science, culture and history of North Carolina’s northeast and central coastal region.

Related: Riggs to launch first book in series Sunday on Harkers Island

“I’ve done a lot of work here, but science builds on itself,” he said. “And so, I just decided in 2018 that they could just put me in the ground, and who would care? Who would know what I’ve learned?”

In October, the first volume in the series, “Cape Lookout National Seashore, Paradigm for a Coastal System Ethic,” was released. Subsequent volumes, several of which are already written, will cover North Carolinas Inner Banks, or inland coastal region, Outer Banks and the continental shelf.

The books, all planned for release over the next three years, present Riggs’ coastal science research in accessible and understandable language, accompanied by striking photographs and graphics that seek to educate, enrich and engage readers.

Also, the ecotourism-centered program called North Carolina Land of Water that was first proposed in the book, “The Battle for North Carolina’s Coast,” has been transformed from a dim concept into its current sunbeam of possibilities. All because of the support offered to him on that blustery day.

“A nor’easter was blowing Billy out there — it was cold!,” Riggs, 87, recalled in a recent interview with Coastal Review. “I got a knock on the door, and two people were standing there. They introduced themselves and asked if we would take them out on a field trip. And I said, ‘You don’t want to go out there today.’”

But they insisted on a tour of the region he and his co-authors had written about in the book. They wanted to see it for themselves, and chat with some of the folks who lived there. Intrigued, and convinced his visitors were serious, Riggs made some quick phone calls, and soon they were all piling into a vehicle and hitting the road.

“We had one hell of a good trip,” Riggs recalled about the four-day adventure. Starting in Greenville, the group wound their way through the Albemarle Penisula and Inner Banks counties, along rivers, through the wildlife refuges, and down the Outer Banks to Ocracoke Island, then on to a ferry to the Core Banks. Some year-round residents shared “incredible” meals, he said, and invited them to stay.

“We covered the whole system,” Riggs said, a tinge of amazement still in his voice. Finally, as everyone said their goodbyes, one man got out of the car and walked over to Riggs.

“He put his arm around my shoulder, and he said, ‘The real reason we’re here is we’re going to give you some money.’

Surprised, Riggs responded: “‘I don’t need money.’ He said, ‘Yes, you do.’ I said, ‘Why?’”

“‘We want you to implement the vision that you set out in your book,’” Riggs recalled. “And that was the beginning of NCLOW.”

After the visit, representatives from the Kenan Institute for Engineering, Technology and Science at North Carolina State University provided funding for Riggs to create the North Carolina Land of Water, or NCLOW. The nonprofit is “dedicated to advancing coastal science, education, and community stewardship through research, outreach, and partnerships,” while working to ensure that the state’s coastal systems are “understood and safeguarded,” according to a press release.

In October, NCLOW announced the appointment of Stanton Blakeslee to its board of directors to guide the nonprofit’s future projects and fundraising. As noted in the release, the appointment “comes at a critical inflection point for the organization,” and his leadership will encourage “strategic investment and cross-sector innovation.”

Blakeslee, 55, who had attended ECU and worked for the N.C. Literary Review, is currently the president and CEO of Instigator Inc., a Greenville-based life science marketing firm. His experience includes investment in real estate development and consumer goods industries, and he serves as a member of the East Carolina Angels, an angel investment network.

So far, he has helped Riggs divide his approach to NCLOW in two phases, Blakeslee said. 

“Phase one culminated with the development of the books,” he said. “It was a way for Stan to formalize not only his life’s work, but what he sees as a sustainable future for the coast.” 

Blakeslee’s background as an entrepreneur who understands private equity and venture capital as well as conservation work provides insight into the goals of NCLOW, he explained.

“So the more I started to hear about what he was envisioning, I was like, ‘Oh, wow. So there’s like an economic concept behind everything that you’re trying to do here.’ We’re not trying to stay off the coast. What we’re saying is let’s look at where the opportunities are and invest …  so we can sustain this resource for everyone.”

Riggs’ earlier work with the Bertie County and Scuppernong River projects are two big success stories that drive NCLOW’s future initiatives, Blakeslee added. By harnessing creative ideas to manage and maintain the natural resources, a community’s economy and sustainability can benefit. For example, Windsor, Bertie’s county seat, mitigated flooding risk by requesting the water in a river dam be released slowly about a week before a predicted storm. And the community constructed tree houses above the river’s edge to rent, which quickly became a popular ecotourism attraction.

“The geographic setting of Bertie County provides a prime basis to capitalize on the incredible water system it has been blessed with,” Riggs wrote in his 2018 report, “From Rivers to Sounds in the Bertie Water Crescent” that proposed an approach to ecotourism and environmental education. “Consequently, NCLOW recommends developing a series of five educational and recreational ‘water hubs’ for ecotourism development.”

NCLOW can serve as a catalyst for other communities to take active steps towards sustainability, Blakeslee said. It’s a matter of determining the challenges, how to address them, and how to transform them into economic opportunities.

“I think Stan proved a lot of that in its first 10 years,” he said. “And now we’re looking at what the next 10 years, and possibly 20 years, looks like.”

Over his long career, Riggs, professor emeritus at ECU, has authored or co-authored 16 books and more than 100 journal articles.  But data-heavy research terminology and scientific jargon is a heavy lift for nonscientist readers, Riggs noted, and he believes that educating people about the science in their lives is a critical responsibility so people can understand the processes and relevant public policies that affect their lives.

“You know, when I was at the university, I got all my salary and everything was public funds, and all my research came from public organizations,” he said. “And so I see this as a give-back. It’s one thing to go out there and do a project and raise money and write your technical papers. But nobody in the public domain will ever, ever, read a technical paper.”

Riggs said he decided to write the Cape Lookout book because it is a success story. The undeveloped barrier island showcases how natural beaches recover, adapt and rebuilt after storms because over wash and other coastal processes are not blocked by infrastructure.

With an affable, every-man persona and an uncanny ability to recite minutia about ancient and ongoing geologic processes at seemingly every location he encounters, Riggs has spent considerable time traveling throughout the coastal region talking to residents and politicians in small communities, many of which are stressed by poverty, job losses and frequent flooding. 

As described in “The Battle for the North Carolina Coast,” the “Land of Water” coastal system in northeastern North Carolina includes a huge “drowned-river” estuarine system that encompasses vast shorelines, marsh, swamp forest wetlands, pocosin swamps, Carolina bays and blackwater streams.

“The natural resources that constitute this “Land of Water” can play an increasingly important role in the tourist economy, a role that would revitalize the region … build on the natural and human history and the dynamic coastal resources of northeastern North Carolina within an overarching and integrated umbrella program for sustainable, water-based ecotourism,” the book said.

And indeed, much of the land in northeastern North Carolina, from ocean beaches to river shorelines, from farmlands to forests, is surrounded by a body, or several bodies, of water. The Albemarle-Pamlico estuary is the second largest in the country, behind Chesapeake.

Although still rich with wildlife and natural resources, the low-lying region, some just inches above sea level, is becoming more threatened by impacts of climate change and rising seas: increased flooding, saltwater intrusion, stormwater inundation, shoreline erosion, ocean overwash and storm surge.

“The way I think about this is, you better understand the dynamics of our planet,” Riggs said. “That doesn’t mean that you have to be a scientist. It means you have to know something about water. You have to know something about land. And that comes down to the problem of education.”

That is, people, as a society, need to understand that how and where there is growth and development cannot be unlimited or driven by profit. 

Riggs says he’s had the benefit of learning over the decades from numerous other “incredible” scientists with whom he has worked together in teams, sharing spaces in classrooms and research ships. He has spent years warning about the futility of trying to control destructive natural forces, whether or not people believe they’re created by man-made causes such as burning fossil fuels. On the coast, sea walls, sandbags, and jetties ultimately make things worse by increasing erosion and will ultimately fail anyway, he has preached.

But as nightmare damages from storms, such as the recent deadly flooding in the mountains from Hurricane Helene, have increased, he said he’s noticed that people are starting to listen; they’ve realized that climate conditions are not the same as they were in the old days.

“There’s nothing wrong with the history and and yes, we can respect the history, but the history includes change,” he said.  “We better understand how rivers (and oceans) work, and if we don’t understand that, there will be human disasters. The more we politically ignore the science, the bigger the human disasters.”

Next in the series: “Cape Lookout National Seashore, Paradigm for a Coastal System Ethic”: An excerpt.

Update: A ninth oceanfront Hatteras Island house fell late Friday; an unoccupied structure at 23047 G.A. Kohler Court, Rodanthe, collapsed shortly before 6 p.m.

Original report follows below:

BUXTON — It started two weeks ago, when one small, unoccupied house here fell into the ocean, long before two powerful tropical storms were approaching Hatteras Island.

But by mid-afternoon Tuesday, shortly before high tide, both hurricanes Humberto and Imelda, while well offshore, had supercharged the ocean off Cape Hatteras, where the Outer Banks bend out farthest into the Atlantic. In a highly unusual spate of structural surrender, five houses along the beach in Buxton — all unoccupied and all off Tower Circle Road or Cottage Avenue — collapsed, apparently one after another and all within 45 minutes after 2 p.m.

Before midnight, another nearby house gave way to the pounding surf.

Then, at about 8 p.m. Wednesday, the eighth house fell onto the same stretch of beach, adding to a staggering amount of debris scattered along the oceanfront and buffeted by swirling surf.  

“We’ve got at least one or two more tides to go before this thing calms down,” John Robert Hooper, the owner of Lighthouse View Oceanfront Lodging in Buxton, told Coastal Review Thursday. “It’s a messy situation right now.”

Debris is spreading south through much of the village oceanfront, which is part of Cape Hatteras National Seashore. But unlike in Rodanthe, Hatteras Island’s northernmost village that experienced 12 house collapses from 2020 to 2024, the debris has not spread as far or as wide along the beach. Instead, much of it has been trapped under houses and driven by wind and surf into neighborhoods.

“We are working very closely with Dare County to coordinate cleanup activities,” said Dave Hallac, superintendent of Cape Hatteras National Seashore.

Hallac told Coastal Review Thursday that the National Park Service had been in contact with the property owners before the homes collapsed and is working to again communicate with them.

“We are implementing emergency cleanup activities to protect these federal lands and waterways and to prevent continued impact from the spread of debris,” he said. “We’re planning on starting tomorrow (Friday) morning.”

From what he had seen, Hallac said that it appears many of the houses still had contents inside when they fell. He said the park service had also observed “pieces and parts of septic drainfield lines and other wastewater system components.”

About two dozen park service personnel were planning Thursday to start collecting debris Friday between the southern end of Buxton and Cape Point.

The entire stretch of beach from the north end of the village to the Off-Road Vehicle Ramp 43 will remain closed until further notice.

Dare County Board of Commissioners Chairman Bob Woodard said Thursday that county and park officials expected to meet with the county’s contractor in Buxton Friday morning to assess the site and coordinate the cleanup response.

“We’re trying to get the homeowners to get contractors to move that debris to the road, so that our guys can come in with bucket trucks and pick it all up and haul it all away,” Woodard told Coastal Review.

Woodard said he believed that most, if not all, of the fallen houses were owned by out-of-town people. But there are an additional dozen or more homes along the same area of beach that are still vulnerable to collapse, he added. 

“We thought there would be a lot more going down yesterday, with that high tide at three o’clock,” Woodard said, referring to Wednesday’s rough conditions.

Considering the extensive impact of the offshore storms, the chairman couldn’t help lamenting the bad luck in the storm’s timing, saying it wouldn’t have happened if a beach nourishment project now planned for 2026 had been in place. 

“We were all praying once we’ve moved the nourishment from ’27 to ’26, just hoping and praying that we wouldn’t have any damages until then,” he said. “But unfortunately, with Mother Nature in 2025, we’ve had three weather systems that kicked us in the butt down there.”

Hooper, who was born in Buxton in 1954, said that these multiple collapses over such a short period of time is dramatically worse than he can recall happening before. 

“Oh, yes, it is,” he told Coastal Review. “There is something else going on here, rather than this normal erosion. You know, clearly the ocean’s higher, but … where is the equilibrium?”

A beach nourishment project in Buxton a few years ago seemed to have mostly ended up at Cape Point a couple of miles south, he said. Yet, Hooper, who had served as a Dare County commissioner from 2000 to 2004, said he has seen ebb and flow of the shoreline over the years, a slow rebalancing.

“And we may be there today, and this may be the end of it, I don’t know,” he said. “But clearly, as quick as all this stuff happened, this is a new element.”

Hooper has had sandbags – technically, a temporary measure only — in front of his oceanfront motel and cottages in Buxton since about 1992, he said, and he repaired and expanded them in 2013.

“Until now, we’ve been able to manage,” he said. The cottages, located south of the motel, have been most affected by the swell.

“I’ve been here fighting this thing for 50 years now, off and on, and probably this morning it’s my first house (that’s) unsafe because of the sewage,” he said. “It’s been tough, but it’s been really tough this fall with some of the PR, and certainly storms like this don’t help”

Since about Aug. 20, he said, visitation in Buxton had been hurting. Since mid-August, he said, he figures that businesses are off 60-70%.

Still, Hooper said that even though it hurts in the short term, losing the houses that were so close to the surf was a looming threat that seemed inevitable. 

“But at least in my viewpoint, you know, we got that over with,” he said. “Because nothing is worse than a house sitting out in the ocean.”

EAST LAKE — Red wolf populations in northeastern North Carolina are still far from recovered, but there are optimistic signs that the highly endangered species now has a solid chance.

More wolves are breeding, more pups are surviving, coyote hybridization has been cut, and there are fewer mortalities from vehicle strikes and gunshots.

While still modest, those successes reflect increased community engagement and renewed commitment from the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and its numerous partners.

“It’s kind of a small crew, but we’re really dedicated to what we’re doing here,” wildlife biologist Joe Madison, North Carolina program manager for the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service’s Red Wolf Recovery Program, said during a virtual meeting held Sept. 23 to provide updates on the program. “We want to make this work. We want to work with landowners to make this work. We don’t want to impose it.”

Madison said that only about half of the red wolves roam within Alligator River National Wildlife Refuge land. The population, as of August, according to Fish and Wildlife data, totals about 30 red wolves, including 18 collared adults as well as uncollared juvenile wolves and a few other adults. This population roams the designated recovery area, 1.7 million acres of public and private land in Hyde, Dare, Tyrrell, Washington and Beaufort counties. Red wolves have been seen in all five counties

It is the only known wild population in the world.

Red wolves had once ranged over wide swaths of the U.S. mainland, including much of the Gulf Coast and Southeast regions, but after years of overhunting and habitat loss, the animals were declared extinct in the wild and added to the Endangered Species List in 1967. Twenty years later, four pairs of captive wolves, offspring of wild stragglers captured earlier in Louisiana, were transferred to Alligator River National Wildlife Refuge, headquartered in Dare County. Innovative management tactics led to steady population growth, reaching a height of about 120 red wolves by 2007.

In 2020, there were only about seven collared wolves.

But poor communication with landowners led to angry confrontations over wolves coming onto private lands, while coyote hunting regulations led to mistaken identities.  Political support and funding for the recovery program dropped precipitously, and more wolves were being shot, whether intentionally or by mistake. By 2015, proposals were introduced to drastically reduce or potentially eliminate the program. After a series of lawsuits by environmental groups, the recovery program was eventually restored.

As Red Wolf Recovery Program Coordinator for the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service Emily Weller has acknowledged, the agency had to change the way it operated.

“Reintroducing a large carnivore into the wild had never been done before, and the focus of this program in the beginning was almost entirely biological,” Weller said, according to minutes of a management update meeting in September 2024. “But the social aspects, the community engagement, and human dimension — those were the cracks in our program’s foundation.”

Now the concept of “collaborative conservation” is viewed as critical to the survival of the red wolf, she said recently. 

“We cannot recover this species on our own,” Weller said during this week’s virtual update. “Our work depends on a pretty complex network of organizations, agencies, communities and individuals.”

That network includes veterinarian care at North Carolina State University and local veterinarians, staff with the North Carolina Wildlife Resources Commission, and assistance from numerous nonprofit and nongovernment groups.

“The science tells us what’s possible,” Weller said. “But it’s the relationships, the trust, the collaboration, that really determine what’s achievable.”

The Fish and Wildlife Service also now works with “Prey for the Pack,” a habitat-improvement program that engages with private landowners in eastern North Carolina wolf recovery areas in mutually beneficial habitat programming.

The Red Wolf Recovery Program also works closely with 52 zoo and wildlife centers across the country as part of the Saving Animals From Extinction, or SAFE, program, an initiative of the Association of Zoos and Aquariums, which currently cares for 280 captive red wolves. Part of the program’s goal is to increase the SAFE population to 400.

“They are a critical piece of this program in that they support the establishment of wild populations in maintaining genetic diversity,” Weller said.

Much care goes into choosing captive wolves to transfer to the recovery program in hopes of future pairing, as well as deciding which pups to place into dens with similarly aged pups for wild mothers to adopt, Weller noted.

“We rely on universities and academia for research and data to guide and base our decisions, and we’re using it constantly to adapt our management,” she said. “And then we need close coordination and communication with local landowners and community members to understand and incorporate their concerns and hopes for their community, as they have the most direct bearing on conservation and recovery, since they are the ones that live with the red wolves.”

Weller said that, other than a period of time when spending was frozen or restricted, the current funding for the Red Wolf Recovery Program had not been reduced.

Ultimately, she said, success will be when red wolves can be delisted — when they don’t need human help to survive — which is expected to take about 50 years, if all goes as planned.

Criteria that meets that goal include measurable thresholds: three viable populations, distributed to maximize redundancy and protect from catastrophic loss; one population of at least 180 and two with a minimum of 280 wolves, each with high gene diversity. Populations must be stable or growing for a decade with minimal human help and have a 95% probability of persisting for 100 years.

And finally, there must be long-term commitment that the sustainable populations can be maintained into the foreseeable future without Endangered Species Act protections.

“Red wolf recovery is about far more than just saving the species,” Weller added. “It’s about restoring ecosystems or landscapes to their natural balanced state and creating healthier environments that benefit plants and wildlife, including game species, and people.”

Every December, the red wolf program issues a release strategy for the coming year, that sets out a plan of how many captive wolves to release into the wild population that will best enable genetic diversity and sustainable growth. Changing conditions will be considered in any necessary revisions.

“It is also important to recognize that the ability to execute many of the releases is highly dependent on numerous on-the-ground factors,” according to the 2024-25 plan. “These factors include, but are not limited to, the ability to successfully capture specific wild Red Wolves, the correct timing of birth, and size of wild ad captive litters, to allow for pup fostering, and the survival of individual wild Red Wolves included in the scenarios.

“Given the myriad of factors that influence the different scenarios, the Service’s actions described in this strategy require real-time flexibility and the ability to adapt to changing factors on the ground and situations; thus, they require management discretion in the field to maximize the chances of success.”

Madison said that the team depends on having that flexibility to make judgment calls and adjust management tactics. During the update meeting, he elaborated on numerous and highly complex strategies that go into pup fostering, proper wolf-human interactions and handling — as little as possible — and wolf feeding – frozen, wild, small mammals like rabbits, raccoons, nutria and fresh frozen roadkill, like deer — and matchmaking (wolves are picky and fickle, too).

But Madison seemed quite pleased with the improvements in pup population survival, an obviously critical component of species recovery.

The pup survival rate to one year is typically about 50%, he said, but after two complete litters didn’t make it in recent years,  the recovery team determined that the likely cause was canine distemper.

“So this year when these pups were in an acclimation pen, and they were five weeks old, we went in the pen, recaptured them, and we gave them their first round of vaccines,” Madison explained. “Also, we implanted them with abdominal transmitters so we would be able to track them after they were released.”

So far, so good, he said. A family group that was released into the wild in May seems to be thriving.

“We may go into the season with a great plan, but then, you know, stuff happens out there,” Madison said. “And we have to adjust and make do with the best we possibly can.”

Precariously perched as a narrow strand protruding into the stormy Atlantic Ocean, Ocracoke Island and its vulnerable highway have been a longtime headache for coastal scientists and road engineers.

Worsening erosion, flooding and storm damage exacerbated by climate change have heightened the urgency for the year-round community: What can be done to save their beloved island?

Researchers met with islanders Sept. 10 at the Ocracoke Community Center to present a study that modeled what the island’s future may hold under different scenarios, from the status quo to new efforts at beach nourishment and bridging.

The bottom line is that the very road itself, along with ongoing attempts to block the ocean’s advance with dunes and stabilize the roadbed with sandbags, has instead resulted in the narrow, low landscape that is currently so under threat by natural forces.

“The heart of the challenge is that the storm events we need to protect roads and buildings from would actually otherwise provide a lifeline for barrier islands in the face of rising sea levels,” Laura Moore, professor and associate chair of research with University of North Carolina Chapel Hill, said in an interview before the meeting. “It’s an extremely difficult reality, but unfortunately, the more successful we are in preventing storm impacts, the more quickly we’re managing the barrier islands out from under us.”

Accessible only by ferries, private boats and small planes, Ocracoke Island, most of which is part of Cape Hatteras National Seashore, depends on a single, highly vulnerable highway stretching about 13 miles from the ferry dock on the north end of the island to the village.

The road, N.C. Highway 12,  has been protected by oceanside sandbags for years along one section about 5 miles from the northern ferry terminal known as the South Dock because of the link to Hatteras Island. But not only are the sand barriers unable to withstand the overwash during storms — the road was impassible and closed for several days after Hurricane Erin in August — the stacking lanes by the ferry dock have also suffered severe erosion.

“It’s very threatened,” Moore told Coastal Review. “I mean, we spend so much time thinking about the road, and yet (potential loss) at that terminal is a storm away, maybe two.”

The multiyear study, led by the UNC Chapel Hill researchers as part of a team that also included scientists from N.C. State University, Duke University and East Carolina University, as well as representatives from the N.C. Department of Transportation, the National Park Service, Hyde County and Tideland Electric Member Corp., is intended to provide information based on scientific modeling, and does not make recommendations or propose solutions.

“What we were charged with was to consider how different management strategies might influence the future landscape,” Moore said. “So, we have looked at different management strategies under different sea level rise scenarios, and we are able to say something about how the different strategies will likely influence Island width and island elevation and the persistence of the island in the future.”

In other words, as Moore explained, the study did not set out to design and test strategies; it instead modeled, which is essentially, “if you do ‘X’, this is what is likely to happen.”

“We’re really looking at relative differences between the management strategies in terms of their effects on the island,” she said.

Moore said that researchers studied current coastal conditions and processes and worked off data and prior research provided in the N.C. 12 Task Force report and NCDOT feasibility studies for guidance as the team developed the strategies to be reviewed: the status quo, i.e., dune road and/or sandbag rebuilding and maintenance; beach nourishment, i.e., widen or nourish the eroding shoreline with sand pumped from stored dredged material or offshore deposits; or road alternatives, i.e., relocate the ferry dock(s), which would eliminate the need to maintain hot spots on N.C. 12,  or build a bridge or causeway to Hatteras Island.

What the modeling revealed is that under the status quo, the island would continue to narrow until, within years or decades, it would become impossible to maintain the transportation corridor. With use of beach nourishment, there would be short-term improvement for 10 to 20 years. But elevating or bridging the road would help to rebuild the landscape.

It’s the first time that the coastal scientists have been able to customize a barrier island model that includes all these processes for a particular location, Moore said, as well as conduct hindcast to calibrate that model.

“Not only are we supporting the local community and the stakeholders … we’re also supporting the scientific community and barrier island communities more broadly because what we’re learning also advances the science so that we can do even better next time,” she said.” It’s really been a beautiful next step to both be coproducing the science in a way that contributes to the local conversation and also contributes to the scientific advancements so that other communities throughout the world on barrier islands can also learn from one another.”

The Ocracoke erosion and road problem has been the target of much study by several iterations of an N.C. Task Force, a multiagency panel of coastal scientists and engineers and government officials that focused on seven vulnerable areas — the “hot spots” — all but one on Hatteras Island. The most recent group was established by the Dare County Board of Commissioners in 2021, with a report released in 2023.

Back in 1972, renowned University of Virginia coastal scientist Robert Dolan, who died in 2016 at age 87, warned in a study published in the journal Science about the consequences of development on the Outer Banks.

“Barrier dune development has been encouraged by man along the Outer Banks of North Carolina to stabilize the barrier islands,” according to the study abstract. “This modification of a delicately balanced natural system is leading to severe adjustments in both geological and ecological processes.”

Dolan, who was credited with being the first scientist to determine that the Outer Banks, rather than being anchored to coral reefs, was instead a 30-foot-deep shifting “ribbon of sand,” later elaborated, saying that the islands’ dune system “may be detrimental to the long-range stability of the barriers and may become more difficult and costly to manage than the original natural system.”

While other coastal scientists have built on Dolan’s research, including Moore, it is undeniable that the complex tension between natural forces and humanity’s need to control them where they live is becoming more difficult in places like Ocracoke.

“And so, the only reason the barrier islands exist in the first place is because of these processes that move sand from the front to the island interior,” Moore said. “That’s what formed these islands, right? And so now that things are changing more rapidly, we’re just really getting pinched in a way that we haven’t seen before.”

In simple terms, barrier islands are built higher and broader by overwash and wind carrying sand over the land. Where the ocean is battering away at the shoreline, the swath of land from the ocean to the sound side collects the sand, unless it’s blocked.

“We are understandably wanting to protect road and roads and infrastructure,” she said. “It makes perfect sense from that perspective, to build a dune to protect the road.”

As sea levels are getting higher, and storms intensify, the battering is more powerful. “And if we don’t allow the island elevation to build up, it will eventually become fragmented and drown in these areas,” Moore said. “So we’re kind of fighting a losing battle, unfortunately.”

Sea levels have been rising ever since the islands formed, she added. But it’s now rising much faster. Between the year 2000 and 2050, seas have been expected to rise 12 inches, a rate Moore called “very significant.”

“It’s so unfortunate, but if we can’t quickly slow the rate of sea level rise, we’re definitely going to have to find different ways to live at the coast,” she said. “In the case of barrier islands, if we want them to persist, we need to find a way to allow them to shift underneath us or accept that we may lose the ability to live on them at all.”

Still, with adjustments, there is hope, Moore said. Citing the 2.4-mile Rodanthe “jug handle” Bridge” and, farther north, the 2,350-foot-long Richard Etheridge Bridge as examples, she said sand will rebuild the island and the shoreline when the natural processes are allowed to happen.

The main goal of the research is to provide the scientific models of several scenarios so the community can work with partners in planning their island’s future.

“It’s really an opportunity to be an incredible example and posterchild leading the way for coastal communities broadly, because they are at the forefront,” Moore said.

Naturally, islanders can see that conditions are changing, and something has to be done, said Randal Mathews, chair of the Hyde County Board of Commissioners and an Ocracoke resident. For the time being, he said, the consensus seems to be to do beach nourishment.

“Well, it’s going to buy some time, because there’s no long-term plan, and there’s no real good short-term plan.”

What could be a reasonable solution, he said, is to “harden” the area with a jetty by the South Dock Ferry Terminal.

What the island folks don’t want to do is move the ferry terminal toward the Pony Pens in the middle of the island, as has been proposed in the recent past.

“They did a survey, and it was 90% of the people don’t want to move south and don’t want to lose access from Hatteras, because they know, like after Dorian, that’s what it was like here, logistically,” he said. “We were dying.”

Mathews said he is truly grateful for Moore’s and her research team’s work, and islanders are listening. But meanwhile, Ocracoke can’t withstand repeated hits to its economy, and the ferry system and road access are major concerns. And he knows that they need political support and funding.

“You know, in the big picture, there’s a lot of moving parts that we have to address, we have to come up with these short-term solutions,” he said. “And we’ve got to  go to Raleigh, and we’ve got to go begging, you know, and that that’s how it works.”

EAST LAKE — In the sadder, more gruesome labor of wildlife conservation, a new count of dead wildlife on the asphalt of two strips of highway within Alligator River Wildlife Refuge continues to reflect the merciless decimation of living creatures by vehicular traffic.

A new report, “US 64 Roadkill Monitoring Survey Year One Interim Report,” released Aug. 13 by the nonprofit Wildlands Network, counted more than 5,000 vertebrates representing 144 species, as well as 1,050 snakes, 1,186 turtles, and 1,529 frogs dead alongside the highway or flattened on the pavement. The first year of the two-year study covered Aug. 1, 2024, to July 31, 2025.

“It’s pretty remarkable carnage, and we’re sure that’s an underestimate, because some things get removed by vultures,” Ron Sutherland, the conservation group’s chief scientist, told Coastal Review.

The updated information will be valuable to planning for proposed wildlife crossings under sections of U.S. Highway 64 and nearby U.S. 264, a need highlighted over the years by numerous vehicle strikes of critically endangered red wolves. Huge bear and deer that run into the road are also increasing hazards to human life, especially at night. 

Although the red wolf had once roamed much of the Southeast, the only wild population of about 30 red wolves, including about a dozen pups, is currently managed by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service’s Alligator River and Pocosin Lakes refuges within a five-county recovery area in northeastern North Carolina, a good portion of which is intersected by the two highways. 

“One happy surprise is we didn’t see any red wolves,” Sutherland told Coastal Review. “One of the reasons we set out to do the project, one of our goals, was to keep the road clean of roadkill.”

Vehicle strikes, in addition to gunshots, have threatened recovery of the species.  Wolves have been known to be drawn to the highway to eat the dead animals, and tragically suffer the same fate as their would-be meal.

“Research is an important step in the construction of wildlife crossing structures,” the report states. “In order to be cost effective, it is imperative to know where hotspots of wildlife road-crossing activity occur so the sites can be chosen that are most effective both in mitigating wildlife road collisions and maintaining habitat connectivity.”

The study route was chosen to inform planning efforts by North Carolina Department of Transportation, Fish and Wildlife, and the North Carolina Wildlife Resources Commission to develop proposals for wildlife crossings and fencing installations on U.S. 64, the report stated, “with the immediate goal” of reducing wolf strikes.

“We also realized that providing more recent roadkill data would be essential as a fresh baseline for evaluating any future wildlife crossings that were installed on the highway,” according to the report.

Earlier roadkill surveys along U.S. 64 were completed between 2008 and 2011 as part of the North Carolina Department of Transportation planning for a proposed 27.3-mile-long widening and bridge replacement project. The road-widening plans, which had included numerous wildlife crossings, have since been dropped, but construction of a replacement bridge connecting Dare and Tyrrell counties over Alligator River is underway. Construction plans include wildlife crossings and under-road tie-ins at both ends of the bridge.

Sutherland said that the survey team chose to drive at a less pokey pace, about 35 mph or so, and skipped weekend surveying, due to the increased amount of traffic now on the highway. Wildlife officers were informed about large carcasses such as bear so they could be promptly removed, and smaller creatures were scooped up and tossed into the woods. Not pleasant, but unfortunately dead animals along the road are not unusual.

“Overall, you know, I’ve had a lot of years of experience working down there and seeing the wildlife before we started the survey,” Sutherland said. 

While he wasn’t shocked by the continued high numbers of roadkill, he said he didn’t expect to see so many birds. In one period of time, after a rare snowstorm, the technicians found hundreds of deceased yellow-rumped warblers alongside the road, many of which were apparently struck while seeking patches of grass without snow cover. It may not prove Darwin’s theory of natural selection, but intelligence matters even for birdbrains.  As Sutherland noted, of the 68 different types of dead birds — totaling about 800 — there were only three crows, the geniuses of the bird world.

“We know how to keep all these other wildlife species from getting hit on the road, because you can build crossings under or over the road, with fencing to steer them to the right places,” he said. “And it works for basically everything, but the birds. That’s going to take some work to figure out.”

Last December, U.S. Federal Highways’ Wildlife Crossing Pilot Program awarded a $25 million grant to build crossings on U.S. 64 by Buffalo City Road, a red wolf “hot spot” in East Lake on the Dare County mainland where the animals often cross into the refuge. Wildlands Network teamed up with the Center for Biological Diversity, another conservation nonprofit, to raise an additional $4 million in private donations for matching funds, Sutherland said.

If all goes as hoped, Sutherland expects that construction of the crossings could start in late 2026

“It’s expensive because they’re having to raise the road up to be able to put underpasses underneath,” he said, adding that design details are still being worked out.

With the project construction including what he described as a kind of “big ramp,” there will be opportunities to also put small crossings and tunnels on each side for the little crawling, slithering and hopping species, hopefully allowing a total of six to 10 crossings.

“But that’s going to be kind of a win-win situation, because that way that at least part of Highway 64 is going to be elevated,” Sutherland said. “And with sea level rise and storms and hurricanes and so forth, it’s going to be a good for climate resiliency, too, to have the road elevated.”

It was the massive scale of destruction in the North Carolina mountains after Hurricane Helene last year that spotlighted how advantageous microgrids — small independent power grids — can be to communities that have suffered disasters.

After horrific flash floods from the storm that hit Sept. 27 inundated many of Asheville’s roads and buildings — and nearly all of its vital utility infrastructure — critical help soon arrived from the New Orleans-based nonprofit disaster service Footprint Project in the form of mobile renewable power.

An estimated 1 million western North Carolinians lost power in the storm. Many were also left without running water, food and shelter.

“We saw the value in what they were doing, in deploying small-scale solar and battery storage to help communities that lacked access to power, water and telecommunications,” North Carolina Sustainable Energy Association Executive Director Matt Abele told Coastal Review. “And so we jumped in right away and helped to fundraise for them to be able to expand the amount of work that they were doing in that part of the state.”

Apparently, the practicality and flexibility of the technology also impressed officials with the North Carolina Department of Environmental Quality State Energy Office, which on Aug. 12 announced a $5 million investment to provide accessible post-disaster emergency power with permanent and mobile microgrids.

“Hurricane Helene showed us that we need to be prepared to withstand severe weather emergencies,” Gov. Josh Stein said in a press release announcing the plan. “That means rebuilding our energy infrastructure with resilience in mind.”

Along with NCSEA and the Footprint Project, the state energy office will collaborate in the project with Land of Sky Regional Council, as well as a network of regional partners.

With as many as 24 stationary microgrids that would be installed across six western counties affected by Helene and two mobile Beehive microgrid hubs, one on the coast, the other in the mountains, the project is intended to fill critical needs in communities statewide.

Essentially four large shipping containers with solar panels on top of the outside and battery storage systems inside, each Beehive — the “Hive” — operates independent of the stationary power grid. Smaller mobile solar-equipped trailers — the “Bees” — are dispatched to affected areas to provide power for essential services such as water filtration stations, charging stations for phones and other devices and hotspots for internet through cellular or satellite connections.

Abele said that NCSEA became familiar with Footprint through its relationship with Green Tech Renewables, a nationwide distributor of solar and battery storage that had partnered with the Hawaii Solar Energy Association and Footprint in responding to Maui wildfires.

Abele said his organization reached out via email to Footprint as Helene was approaching the mountains. As it turned out, the large scale of the damage and the randomness of impacts from the storm really highlighted the value of the Beehives being able to go where needed.

“I think that’s the beauty of having a setup like these Beehive microgrids, where you can charge mobile equipment,” Abele said. “Because only investing in permanent infrastructure, it’s like trying to essentially find a needle in a haystack and predict exactly where the next storm is going to hit, versus having the equipment on hand and ready to go, to be deployed to where that next storm is.”

Green Tech’s Raleigh location had solicited donations of solar panels and other supplies, as well as raised funds to purchase products such as photovoltaic wire and batteries, and trucked it to western North Carolina to support Footprint Project’s work, as described in an article published by Elizabeth Ouzts for the nonprofit news site Energy News Network in October 2024.

According to the article, by late December the group had built about 50 microgrids throughout mountain communities. That was the most ever since it started in 2018 in response to founder Will Heegaard’s experience two years earlier working as a paramedic in New Guinea and struggling to find power to refrigerate blood supplies.

Heegaard, today operations director for the Footprint Project, which he founded with partners Jamie Swezey and Nate Heegaard, said the group is working toward replacing the fossil-fuel-powered generators that have long been serving communities after disasters with battery-charged solar panels. Not only are Beehives and Bees not dependent on fuel supplies, they’re quiet and clean.

“Responders use what they know works, and our job is to get them stuff that works better than single-use fossil fuels do,” he told Energy News Network. “And then, they can start asking for that. It trickles up to a systems change.”

Even if the microgrids don’t outright replace those generators, Heegaard added, they can supplement them, helping fuel supplies last longer.

The state’s grant will provide about two beehives with mobile equipment and permanent installations with fixed solar and battery storage that would be attached to either local government buildings or nonprofit center or other location where people congregate after a storm, Abele said. 

“And so those are all really important decisions in terms of where that investment is being made, to ensure that it is being made in a place that people will go and serve the community appropriately,” he said.

“Because the worst-case scenario is, you walk down a path of investing, and then deploying infrastructure, and then that infrastructure sits unutilized during a natural disaster because it’s inaccessible,” he said.

According to the state, the Land of Sky Regional Council, part of the Appalachian Regional Commission, will soon begin purchasing the Beehive microgrids, and site selection for the microgrids is to begin this fall. The stakeholder engagement for the installation will take place in September, and project completion is anticipated in June 2027.

One of the most significant reasons that solar-powered microgrids like the Beehive hadn’t  found much traction in the U.S. is because of the high cost of batteries, Abele explained.  But now, he said, the price of batteries — similar to what happened earlier to solar panels — has decreased about 92% in the last 15 years, making the much-improved technology affordable.

“We’ve seen sort of a smattering of these projects on an ad hoc basis, but not a comprehensive strategy around deploying this equipment,” he said.

In addition to the proposed Beehives, there have been other smaller microgrid projects in the state, including on Ocracoke and plans in Charlotte.  

“But aside from that, there aren’t a ton of examples that you can point to in other states,” Abele said. “And so I think North Carolina really is going to be a leader in setting the example for recovery after a natural disaster.”

BUXTON — A newly emerged area of petroleum pollution on Buxton Beach will be addressed by a U.S. Army Corps of Engineers-contracted response team, the Corps’ Savannah District announced late Wednesday.

After residents here again reported the presence of fuel sheen and odors, as well as the appearance of long-buried infrastructure and debris on the shoreline after a storm late last week, Col. Ron Sturgeon, the Corps district commander, visited the site Tuesday with Cape Hatteras National Seashore Superintendent Dave Hallac.

“We are committed to the health and safety of the community,” Sturgeon stated in press release Wednesday. “The beach environment is difficult and changes from day-to-day, but we are dedicated to finding the petroleum contamination and removing it.”

On Aug. 1, the National Park Service temporarily closed Old Lighthouse Beach lifeguard area and a 0.3-mile section of beach extending south from the southern end of Buxton village to about 0.4 miles north of Ramp 4, an area adjacent to what is officially known as the Buxton Formerly Used Defense Site.

The U.S. Navy, followed by the Coast Guard, operated bases on Buxton Beach from 1956 until 2010. Buxton Beach Access is at the south end of Old Lighthouse Road.

Hallac said the meeting with Sturgeon and members of the Corps’ response team was “very productive.”

“We had an opportunity to inspect the site and discuss next steps,” he said in an Aug. 5 text, responding to a question from Coastal Review. “They will be providing public information as they continue to evaluate options and advance a plan, but I am confident that they are moving very rapidly, as fast as they can, and are committed to mitigating the current threat to the environment.”

The contamination and debris problem had first revealed itself after a series of coastal storms in late summer 2023. Those storms caused severe erosion along the shoreline at Old Lighthouse Beach, exposing chunks of fuel-soaked peat and large pieces of buried infrastructure left behind from the Navy and Coast Guard bases. As a result, the beach was closed for safety and health reasons from Sept. 1, 2023, to June 12, 2025.

Since 1991, the Corps had been responsible for remediating the former Navy property as one of the Defense Department’s Formerly Used Defense Sites, or FUDS, under the Defense Environmental Restoration Program. Over the years, the program had removed tons of polluted soil and set up numerous monitoring wells.

After the 2023 exposure of petroleum contaminants on the beach, the Corps conducted numerous investigations but was unable to isolate a direct source. Still, the FUDS office took responsibility for removal of tons of soil with evidence of petroleum. Although its authorization does not include removal of buried infrastructure, the Corps’ contractor was permitted to haul away tons of debris, including concrete, pipes, cables and wires, that had to be removed to access the contaminated soil.

Meanwhile, the Coast Guard had conducted a Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation and Liability Act, or CERCLA, investigation at the Buxton Beach site. According to an October 2024 press release, the Coast Guard Civil Engineering Unit Cleveland initiated the site investigation in August 2023 to identify any potential contamination resulting from operations at Old Group Cape Hatteras between 1982 and 2013, when the base was abandoned.

The final CERCLA site inspection report, released in August 2024, includes details of vast amounts of herbicides, pesticides, wastewater, petroleum and various chemicals spilled, leaked and deposited at the site over the years, by either, or both, the Navy and the Coast Guard. 

One draft assessment of tests performed in 2011 at the fueling station found certain chemicals, such as PCBs, at levels that were deemed above acceptable for residential or laboratory detection limits but below permissible for commercial/industrial sites.  Other contaminants, such as arsenic and certain metals, were determined to be naturally occurring. Even evidence of per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances, or PFAS, at the site was considered acceptable because it’s normally found in sea spray.

But the passage of time, the overlapping pollutants from both bases, in addition to regulatory complexity, apparently has satisfied the Coast Guard’s responsibility for the current environmental condition, from its point of view.

“In accordance with the U.S. Code and U.S. Environmental Protection Agency regulations the CERCLA investigation sought to determine actionable remediation levels associated with volatile organic compounds, semi-volatile organic compounds, heavy metals, and chlorinated solvents,” the Coast Guard said in an Oct. 4, 2024, press release. “The investigation findings concluded that there are no actionable levels of these contaminants resulting from past Coast Guard operations at the sites.” 

Coast Guard officials did not respond by deadline to an email asking whether the Coast Guard had plans to remove any remaining infrastructure that may be associated with Group Cape Hatteras. Both the Navy and the Coast Guard were obligated to remove all their buildings when they left the site, according to the park service, which owns the land.

Brian Harris, a Buxton resident and a founding member of the Buxton Civic Association, said that the latest petroleum was evident on the beach on the morning of Aug. 1, along with a portion of the remains of what some believe was from the Coast Guard’s wastewater treatment infrastructure. As typically happens on the beach, the exposed pollution and debris was soon recovered by sand, he said, and could be uncovered again at any time.

But unlike the initial incident in 2023, Harris said he has total confidence in the Corps’ FUDS team and Sturgeon, whom he can now call directly to discuss concerns. 

“A year ago, we were screaming and sending emails to all our congressional representatives and senators,” he said. “And we have contacts now.

“The Army Corps of Engineers isn’t going to tell you what they’re doing until they do it,” he continued. “But (Sturgeon) was here, and they’re working on a plan right now.  At this point, it’s light years above where it was last year.”

The Corps’ contracted response-action team will arrive as early as next week, the Corps said in the press release, and will continue to monitor the site conditions to determine the appropriate actions, including containment with oil-absorbent booms.  

“The Savannah District will concurrently mobilize equipment and personnel to excavate and remove petroleum-impacted soil from the beach and dunes,” it said. “These actions will not affect the upcoming petroleum comprehensive soil and groundwater sampling that begins in September/October 2025.”

RALEIGH – Nearly 40 years after the U.S Fish and Wildlife Service launched an innovative program to save the eastern red wolf from extinction, a nonprofit conservation group is challenging the agency’s prior decision to not upgrade to a more protective management designation, despite its outsized importance to the species’ survival.

Arguments were heard Wednesday by U.S. District Court Judge Terrence Boyle for the Eastern District of North Carolina in a federal court case filed by the Center for Biological Diversity that contends the Wildlife Service acted unlawfully when it decided to continue classifying the critically endangered population of red wolves as “nonessential.”

“Judge Boyle is so engaged on this issue … that he’s really able to dig in at this extremely deep, detail-oriented level,” said Perrin de Jong, a senior attorney for the Center for Biological Diversity, during an interview Thursday about the 90-minute hearing. 

Following listing the wolves in 1966 as “threatened with extinction” on what later became the Endangered Species Act, the Fish and Wildlife Service about 20 years later established an experimental “non-essential” population of wild red wolves. and released four pairs into Alligator River National Wildlife Refuge in northeastern North Carolina.

It is the only known wild population of red wolves in the world.

The intensively managed recovery program had promising success until about 2010, when management was scaled back. That was before court actions restored much of the program.

The Center for Biological Diversity had petitioned the agency in 2016 to reclassify the red wolf population as essential. The petition was denied in January 2023.

“The service is violating its duty to consider the best available science and the facts that have taken place since 1986 that affect the survival of the red wolf in the wild,” de Jong told Coastal Review.

In a request for comment on the case, a spokesperson for the U.S. Interior Department responded in an email Thursday that the agency does not “provide comment on active litigation.”

Mortality by vehicle strikes and gunshots have been an increasing challenge to the wolves’ survival, de Jong said.

Changing the classification to “essential” would extend more protective measures for the animals, he said, including allowing another layer of protection with a critical habitat designation.

The conservation group also is asking the agency to change their enforcement code to match a 2018 court ruling by Boyle that banned property owners from shooting red wolves unless they were threatening animals or people.

“The science indicates that the greater protections will result in greater conservation success, and inversely, lower protections result in higher poaching pressure,” he said.

The Wildlife Service is not disputing the conservation group’s argument that the agency has the authority to change the essentiality determination, the legal term for the classification, he added. 

“You could describe it as, ‘We’re not going to revisit the essentiality determination, because we don’t have to.’”

Today, there are believed to be 18 known red wolves surviving in the program’s five-county recovery area, in addition to unconfirmed numbers of wolves and wolf pups that do not have collars and have been born or fostered in the wild this year.

Updated data on the Red Wolf Recovery Program was not available on the Fish and Wildlife Service website, but a spokesperson said the new data is expected to be posted in early August.

RALEIGH — A federal court decision issued Wednesday blocks the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service from using a potentially harmful algaecide at Mattamuskeet National Wildlife Refuge, a compound that environmental groups argued would endanger the waterfowl the refuge is supposed to protect.

Refuge officials had issued a notification in 2023 that it planned to do a trial application of chemical pellets within the next two years to test their effects on persistent blooms of blue-green algae on the 40,000-acre Lake Mattamuskeet, the state’s largest natural freshwater lake.

But environmental groups were concerned that the product, according to its label, could be toxic to birds. 

In response, the Southern Environmental Law Center in Chapel Hill, on behalf of Defenders of Wildlife and the Sierra Club, filed a lawsuit, asking for a preliminary injunction to stop the refuge’s plan. The agency agreed during a subsequent court hearing to suspend its plan until April 2025, and a final hearing was held in May.

Wednesday’s order by U.S. District Judge Terrence Boyle for the Eastern District of North Carolina Eastern Division can be appealed within 60 days,  Ramona McGee, senior attorney and leader of the Wildlife Program at the Law Center, told Coastal Review Wednesday.

“The Service is currently evaluating the court’s order,” a U.S. Department of Interior spokesperson said in an email sent Wednesday afternoon, responding to a request from Coastal Review for comment on the decision.

The email also addressed a question about the number of staff at the refuge.

“Lake Mattamuskeet National Wildlife Refuge is part of the Coastal North Carolina National Wildlife Refuges Complex, which includes refuges from Cedar Island to Currituck. As such, Lake Mattamuskeet’s management is through a complex approach — with staff throughout the complex assisting and leading activities.”

As McGee explained, the Southern Environmental Law Center argued successfully that the Fish and Wildlife Service had violated the National Environmental Policy Act by failing to evaluate and disclose the potential impacts of the algaecide.

“This experiment was merely a distraction,” McGee said in an interview. “It was never designed to address those root causes of the lake’s water quality problems. Instead, this was a project that was explicitly experimental and alarmingly, was using a product that can kill and harm birds.”

The refuge had proposed to use Lake Guard Oxy, a sodium percarbonate-based algaecide used by Pittsburgh-based contractor BlueGreen Water Technologies, on about 600 acres of several isolated areas around the perimeter of Lake Mattamuskeet.

In recent years, the lake has been plagued during warm months with algal blooms that have become populated with cyanobacteria, which can be harmful to people and animals.

The proposed treatment, according to the agency, was intended to reduce the toxic algae enough to allow the beneficial phytoplankton to be reestablished. In the process, the refuge said, it could help restore water clarity in the lake.

In 2001, the North Carolina General Assembly provided $5 million toward the pilot study.

Refuge officials also said that, once dissolved, the pellets were safe for birds. Steps would be taken, the officials added, to prevent their exposure to undissolved pellets.

But rather than a singular problem, the algae is a symptom of an unhealthy ecosystem in the lake that has excessive nutrient levels and near complete loss of submerged aquatic vegetation, the environmental groups said.

Situated in the center of rural mainland Hyde County, the lake, which is 6 miles wide, 18 miles long and an average of 2 feet deep, has suffered severe water quality degradation over recent decades. The refuge totals about 50,000 acres and still attracts thousands of wintering tundra swan and other migratory waterbirds, as well as numerous species of resident duck.

In 2016, the North Carolina Department of Environmental Quality’s Division of Water Resources listed the lake as having impaired waters, based on high alkalinity and levels of chlorophyll-a, both indicators for cyanobacterial harmful algal blooms that produce cyanotoxins.

An effort led by the North Carolina Coastal Federation, which publishes Coastal Review, created a collective and holistic approach to restoring the lake, with the Lake Mattamuskeet Watershed Restoration Plan being released in 2018. In the years since, the strategies in plan, which include drainage improvements and restoration of the submerged grasses, have been implemented as time, funding and staffing have allowed.  

“We hope that the Fish and Wildlife Service refocuses on the long-term solutions that will address the root causes of Lake Mattamuskeet’s water quality problems” McGee said.

Considering anecdotal reports about staff cuts at wildlife refuges — none have been confirmed by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service — McGee said it makes the court decision even more timely in its benefit to the birds. As part of its proposal to do the pilot treatment, the refuge had promised that staff would shoo, or haze, the birds away from any undissolved pellets that could harm them. 

“I think it would have been very concerning for the Fish and Wildlife Service to proceed with a risky experiment like this when it did not have adequate staff to monitor and manage the project,” she said.

Reprinted from the Island Free Press

After wrestling for years to secure timely maintenance of the Rodanthe-Stumpy Point emergency ferry channel for Hatteras Island, the Dare County Waterways Commission decided Monday that the best solution would be for the county to secure the permits to have its local dredge do the work.

The commission had agreed last month to request modification of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers’ permit that would allow mechanical dredging of a troublesome area in Rodanthe Harbor. But after recent discussions with the Corps, Ken Willson, the county’s consultant with Wilmington-based Coastal Protection Engineering, said that in considering all the factors, it made sense for the county to explore permitting for dredging the channel to 12 feet and working as needed year-round.

“The idea for going deeper is basically to allow the Miss Katie (the county vessel) to do maintenance dredging,” Willson, speaking remotely, told commissioners at its July meeting in Manteo.

As Willson explained, the Corps is authorized to dredge “6 feet plus 2” feet deep with a pipeline dredge, but it cannot dredge in the warm months during turtle nesting season.

The permit would have to be modified to allow mechanical dredging with a bucket-and-barge, but that application would cost about $100,000 and take many months to complete. And the Corps can’t even promise that the environmental assessment would be modified.

In exploring an alternative approach, Willson said that it would cost an estimated $122,000 and take about a year to do vibracore sampling and obtain permits for the Miss Katie, not including submerged aquatic vegetation or shellfish surveys that may be required, which could increase total costs to about $150,000. Typically, the state would pay 75% of the cost of the assessment, with the county picking up the remainder.

The commission unanimously approved a motion requesting the Dare County Board of Commissioners to pursue permitting the Miss Katie to maintain the emergency ferry channel.

Commission administrator Barton Grover said that the county would seek to permit hopper and pipeline dredging, as well as bucket-and-barge, so all bases would be covered.

“The good will” the community would feel knowing that the channel was accessible, Waterways Commission Chair Steve “Creature” Coulter noted, “is worth every penny.”

Catherine “Cat” Peele, with the N.C. Department of Transportation Ferry Division, told commissioners in an earlier remote discussion during the meeting that recent test runs in the channel showed that it remains navigable, with about 6 feet of water still on the Rodanthe end where the shoaling had been an issue. Last September, Dare County paid about $100,000 to have a bucket-and-barge remove about 600 cubic yards of sand from a small area in the basin.

The Ferry Division is planning to dredge its portion of the channel in Stumpy Point in November, she added. The Corps is responsible for dredging the remainder of the channel, which was created in 2009 to provide emergency access to and from Hatteras Island when N.C. Highway 12 becomes impassable.

Also, Willson discussed a recommendation for the commission to consider extending the area for a planned cultural resource survey that is required as part of the recently approved EA that included the Hatteras Inlet bar.

The original box to be surveyed was slated to cost $87,000, he said. An extension to the east would tack on another $27,000. But then a northwest segment on the west side of that buffer is continuing to slowly migrate to the north, he added, so it would probably be worth surveying another 1,000 feet to the north, which would add one more day of work.

The thinking is that it’s cheaper to look ahead to make sure that the area that may be dredged is already covered by the cultural survey, Grover explained in a later interview.

“While they’re already there doing cultural resource surveys at the bar, we’re going to go ahead and get the Connector Channel surveyed,” he said. “Because, like Ken said, it’s a lot of mobilization costs … But once you have that contractor up here, it’s only an extra $10- $20,000 for them to do additional areas, whereas if you’re going to bring them up just for that one additional area would be like $50,000. So that’s why we’re thinking ‘Okay, while we’re up here, where do y’all think the channel may move in the future?’”

Grover said the board of commissioners will also be asked at its August meeting to approve the extended survey work.

In another matter, a question was resolved about whether it was a waste of time to include Barney Slough South in the Rollinson Channel and Silver Lake maintenance dredging project the Corps is planning for the fall. Other channels included in the project were Sloop North, the Hatteras Ferry Channel, and the Hatteras Connecting Channel. Last month, Coulter pointed out to Ronnie Smith with the Corps that the ferries don’t use Barney or the Ferry channels.

Peele, with the Ferry Division, reiterated to the Waterway Commission that the Ferry Division considers that Barney Slough was not worth dredging, and had communicated that in a recent meeting with the Corps.

“We told them even if you clean it out, it’s going to fill right in,” Peele said.

But after Monday’s meeting, Grover said that the Corps informed him that it has decided it will not dredge Barney Slough or the Hatteras Ferry Channel after all. Instead, in addition to Sloop Channel North, they will dredge the Hatteras Connecting Channel and Rollinson Channel.

“They are reconfiguring their proposed channels to be dredged,” Grover said, adding that the Corps will now maintain the route that the Ferry Division had requested.  “And that is the one that vehicular ferries have been using for several months now. That’s the one the passenger ferry always has used.

“So that’ll be good for the Ferry Division. And it’s good for the charter fishing fleet, because there is some shoaling when you leave the breakwater.”

This story is provided courtesy of the Island Free Press, a digital newspaper covering Hatteras and Ocracoke islands. Coastal Review partners with the Free Press to provide readers with more environmental and lifestyle stories of interest along our coast. 

Part of a series about the effects federal budget and staff cuts and the cancellations of programs and services are having in coastal North Carolina.

MANTEO — In the six months since the chaotic and seemingly random cutting in the federal government began, a terrible uneasiness has descended on the northeast corner of North Carolina, where all of the state’s nine national wildlife refuges employ neighbors and family members who live in the rural communities in which they’re located.

At least 10 Coastal North Carolina National Wildlife Refuge Complex staff and five employees of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service’s regional Ecological Services office in Raleigh, so far, are believed to have voluntarily left their jobs, whether nudged by coercion or incentives.

With staff forbidden to speak with media, and ongoing legal challenges and limited public information creating uncertainty, no one appears to know what will happen to their refuges.

“I just found out we should be getting some staffing numbers from the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service in the next couple of weeks,” Howard Phillips, the Southeastern representative for the National Wildlife Refuge Association, a nonprofit advocacy and support group for the refuges, told Coastal Review, citing informed but unofficial sources. “The dust seems to be settling a little and (the agency) is starting to get a handle on where they stand.”

But Phillips, who retired at the end of 2020 as manager of Pocosin Lakes National Wildlife Refuge in Tyrrell County, says he fears that serious consequences are already baked into the refuges’ cake, no matter what the government decides to do. The lack of trust engendered by often abrupt, unexplained cuts of staff, research and budgets as well as the “crippling” brain drain of expertise, experience and local knowledge has only made the situation more problematic.

“Could the administration suddenly decide they want to hire everybody back and start doing conservation again?” he continued. “That would take at least six months, probably 12 months. They’d have to be trained.”

The stark reality, he added, is that without knowing the Trump administration’s timeline or goal in the current upheaval, it’s impossible to understand the long-term impacts and impractical to expect much to change, much less improve.

“I mean, they’ve just given no indication that they’re going to do anything that’s going to reverse the trend right now, which is down, down, down, down,” Phillips said.

An unnamed spokesperson from the agency’s public affairs office ignored Coastal Review’s request to authorize or facilitate a refuge staff interview, but responded to several questions about impacts on North Carolina’s wildlife refuges in a May 23 email.

“As part of the broader efforts led by the Department of the Interior under President Trump’s leadership, we are implementing necessary reforms to ensure fiscal responsibility, operational efficiency, and government accountability,” the spokesperson wrote. “While we do not comment on personnel matters, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service remains committed to fulfilling our mission of conserving fish, wildlife, and natural resources for the American people.” 

Refuges in the coastal complex encompass nearly a half-million acres of farmlands, swamp forests and pocosin peatlands, intersected by rivers, streams, canals, lakes and sounds within the nation’s second-largest estuarine system.

The nine refuges — Alligator River, Pea Island, Mackay Island, Currituck, Mattamuskeet, Pocosin Lakes, Cedar Island, Swan Quarter, Roanoke River — are stretched along vast swaths of geography in the coastal plain that provide habitat for unique species and globally important ecosystems.

For instance, the critically endangered wild red wolves, the only surviving in the world, roam within a five-county recovery area based out of Alligator River, descendants of Spanish mustangs range free in Currituck, and thousands of migratory birds and waterfowl passing along the Atlantic Flyway overwinter every year at Mattamuskeet and Pocosin Lakes.

Mattamuskeet, the state’s largest natural lake, is undergoing an innovative and intensive watershed restoration project many years in the planning. And Pocosin Lakes, named for the Native American term for “swamp on hill” because of its boggy peat soil, has been studied by Duke University researchers for its ability to remediate carbon pollution. The refuge has also nearly completed an extensive rewetting project to restore the ability of the pocosin peat to absorb carbon dioxide and resist wildfires.

Two major wildfires in and around the refuge in recent decades have burned deep in the ground for many weeks, spewing tons of carbon back into the environment, with one smoldering for six months before it was finally extinguished.

Therein lies the dilemma — and the risk — to the refuges: What happens when there’s no one available to take proper care of the refuges, and to even continue the conservation mission?

Pocosin Lakes, for instance, with the recent retirement of former manager Wendy Stanton, no longer has a refuge manager.

“You know, with Wendy gone now, I don’t know that there’s anybody left at Pocosin Lakes that really understands that hydrology restoration and how it works,” Phillips said.

But it’s more than the upper-level staff, said Bonnie Strawser, president of the Coastal Wildlife Refuge Society, a local nonprofit group that supports all of the eastern North Carolina refuges. It’s also the loss of staff that maintain buildings and trails, she said, as well as the biologists who monitor water and test soil.

Strawser, who retired in 2020 after 40 years with Fish and Wildlife as visitor services manager, said that the project leader for Coastal North Carolina National Wildlife Refuge Rebekah Martin has designated acting managers in each refuge, but that’s in addition to their regular jobs with the refuges.

Martin is based at the agency’s Roanoke Island headquarters but is not authorized to speak to reporters. According to a 2023 article on the coastal refuges website, Martin oversees about 400,000 acres of habitat with more than a dozen endangered or threatened species. At the time, it said, the complex had 35 employees and more than 400 volunteers.

“We are currently down to 10 staff, and this is regular O and M — operations and maintenance — funded by general funding, refuge funding,” Strawser said in a recent interview. “Now that does not include firefighters or law enforcement, because they are funded through different programs.”

Strawser said that there were no probationary employees in eastern North Carolina, so no one had been outright fired. Some staff who agreed to resign under one of the agency’s two rounds of the deferred resignation program, she said, were quickly shut down and put on administrative leave for varied periods of time while collecting their salaries.

Cuts in both the U.S. Forest Service and Fish and Wildlife Service will also hamper the agencies cooperative response to wildfires and disasters, including with the national interagency incident management teams. Strawser is a member of one of three teams in the southern area.

“I don’t know what in the world we’re going to do when fire season comes,” she said. “They stood down our team. It’s not going to be available, they said, at least until after July.”

As Strawser noted, a lot goes on behind the scenes to keep the refuges humming, including procedural processes to keep records and run programs, as well as have sponsors to maintain the “casual hire” personnel to respond to emergencies.

“But the Fish and Wildlife Service, because they lost so many people in the administrative positions, they don’t have anybody to handle the payments and the travel, so they can’t sponsor” for a team member, she said.

For the time being, the public many not notice much difference when they go to a refuge, Strawser said.

“The visitor centers are run by volunteers,” she said. “The public programs are conducted mostly by volunteers.” But there’s only three maintenance people for their nine national wildlife refuges.

“There’s been no talk of closing anything, but it’s just common sense there will problems if there’s nobody to grade the roads, if there’s nobody to do the mowing on the road shoulders, she said. “And if there’s no ‘daylighting’ of the roads, they’ll get overgrown, the sun won’t reach down, and the mud doesn’t dry out and the road is destabilized and before you know it, they’re not drivable.”

Mike Bryant, who was succeeded by Martin, had served as refuge manager for 20 years, from 1996 to 2016, and he witnessed decreasing support for the refuges from the federal government, he told Coastal Review in an interview. After retirement, he had also served as consultant for the National Wildlife Refuge Association, and was former president of the Coastal Wildlife Refuge Society. Although he said he keeps in touch, he is no longer directly involved with either group.

Since about 2010, Bryant said there has been a steady decline in staffing.

“You have refuges where there were multiple people, and with some of them, there’s just one person left, and so that’s part of the story,” he said. “So it had nothing to do with the past 60 or 90 days, whatever it is now.”

But it’s not just mandated reductions in staff that threaten the refuges, he said. The management challenge is also an aging workforce that may not be replaced.

“You got over half a million acres of National Wildlife Refuge in multiple counties, and spanning across North Carolina to the Virginia border, with all kinds of infrastructure and management mandates and no staff to get those mandates done,” Bryant said. “They’re just wondering, how are we going to meet our responsibilities if we’re the only ones left? It’s a morale buster.”

After being fully staffed around 2003, he said it seemed as if the Department of Interior stopped prioritizing conservation and Congress slowly began losing interest in supporting the refuges.

“The Fish and Wildlife budget has so many facets to it, so many other responsibilities under various laws, endangered species and ecological services and all these other entities within the agency, fisheries and all those things, are all important,” Bryant said. “But Congress was never convinced to budget specifically for operations and maintenance of national wildlife refuges.”

Meanwhile, scores of new refuges came on line in the last 25 years. And rather than hiring more personnel, more work was heaped on less staff.

“I was hired in 1996 to manage Alligator River and Pea Island,” Bryant said. “Two years later, when the manager left Mackey Island and Currituck refuges, the regional office called me and said, ‘Hey, we want you to manage those two.’ All of a sudden, I had four refuges.”

Two years later, he was told to hire and supervise a new manager at Pocosin Lakes. Then staff was reduced, forcing him to share staff between the refuges. Next, Roanoke River was added to his responsibilities — along with the 90-minute drive each way. During all those years, he was bumped up just one pay grade.

Bryant said he gets why people get frustrated with the inefficient, cumbersome aspects of the federal government. But he remembers back when the Clinton administration had reduced both staffing and regulations, and not only succeeded, but ended up with a balanced budget.

“We went through all of those things without ever feeling like the sky is falling,” he said. Rather than taking rational steps to achieve efficiency, the interest now seems more in “just destroying the government, constantly degrading it, and yes, crafting corruption.”

“There’s a few bad actors, no doubt, always, in every organization everywhere, no matter what the enterprise,” Bryant added. “There was a rational process to deal with bad employees, grounded in policy. And the policy was grounded in regulation, and the regulation was grounded in law.”

The first official unit of the National Wildlife Refuge System was Pelican Island in Florida, established for conservation in 1903 by President Theodore Roosevelt. Today there are 570 refuges and 30 wetland management districts on more than 150 million acres entrusted to the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Services and enjoyed by 69 million visitors.

Bryant is rooting for not just survival of the struggling refuge system, but its revival.

“I think we’ll recover,” he said. “I’m optimistic about that. But we’ll be deeply scarred.”

NAGS HEAD — Jockey’s Ridge used to be known as the tallest natural sand dune on the East Coast, but now it’s described as its largest natural active sand dune system.

While it may not be as high as it was in 1973, the unique phenomenon of nature is still there — famously thanks to Carolista Baum, a young mother who that year physically blocked a developer’s bulldozer.

A celebration of the 50th anniversary of Jockey’s Ridge State Park held June 5-8 drew thousands of people, from folks who had rolled down the dune as children to tourists who climb it every summer to watch the sun set, to share in appreciation of the beloved Outer Banks landmark.

Festivities included a duneside performance last Friday by the popular indie band, the Connells — with a surprise appearance by North Carolina Gov. Josh Stein — followed by the Outer Banks’ first drone light show.

In his introduction to a documentary about “magical, awesome” Jockey’s Ridge screened at the park’s visitor center late that Saturday afternoon, park ranger Austin Paul said the 22-minute “collection of heartfelt stories” from the community and state officials about the site will continue to grow as more content is gathered.

“Jockey’s Ridge is kind of like the center point of the Outer Banks, Ann-Cabell Baum, Carolista Baum’s oldest daughter, says in the film. “Jockey’s Ridge is so many different things to so many different people … It’s part of our souls, it’s part of our hearts, it’s part of our families.”

Baum and her siblings used to play every day on Jockey’s Ridge, she recalled in a later interview with Coastal Review.

One day the children saw a bulldozer arrive to start digging on the backside of the dune, and Baum, then age 6 1/2, along with her sister Inglis, 5, and her brother Gibbs, 3 1/2, dashed back to their nearby home to tell their mother. Carolista immediately ran over to the spot and stood in front of the bulldozer, not moving until the operator gave up and left, Baum said. 

Her petite 33-year-old mother, a dark-haired Edenton farm girl who grew up with six brothers, then promptly removed the distributor cap, and went about rallying the community in what became the “Save our Sand Dune” campaign to get the state to preserve Jockey’s Ridge.

It wasn’t the first time that developers had raised the ire of the locals — by then the Villa Dunes subdivision was already built on the northern edges of the dunes, and plans for the new development had already been submitted to the town. But this time, the whole community got behind her mother, Baum remembered.

“She was sincere and loving and kind,” her daughter said about Carolista, remembering how people always would come by her jewelry shop to visit with her and chat.

A year after the bulldozer was banished, the dune was declared a National Natural Landmark, and the following year the state park was created.

As former Nags Head Mayor and Commissioner Renee Cahoon says in the documentary, the park is an asset to the town in multiple ways.

“No one else has a Jockey’s Ridge,” she says. “It’s not just cultural icon; it’s also a business icon.”

The park is routinely in the top five of the most-visited state parks in North Carolina.

Last year, 1.2 million people visited. But during the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020 and 2021, visitation went through the roof, at 1.9 million and 1.8 million, respectively. Both years had the Nags Head park as the No. 1 most-visited state park. It is currently back to prepandemic visitation.

“It’s more than a fabulous sand pile,” Peggy Birkemeier, a member of the Friends of Jockey’s Ridge Board of Directors, says in the film.

As Birkemeier notes, Jockey’s Ridge has a bounty of natural resources that offer numerous “exciting experiences” for visitors.

The backside of the park abuts the Roanoke Sound, with its long shoreline meandering northward along brackish marshes and toward the ancient maritime forest of Nags Head Woods. It includes a sound beach access that is popular with families. There are also unpaved trails through shrub forest areas beyond the shoreline that lead to the lower expanse of the dunes.

And the night sky above the dunes presents some of the most dramatic scenes on the Outer Banks. In fact, any time of day or night, cloudy or starry, at sunrise or sunset, the sky from Jockey’s Ridge is a wonderment.

“It is certainly a place where many memories are made,” Birkemeier says about the park. 

Legacy projects for Jockey’s Ridge that are in the works include the creation of a trail that loops around the park with informational markers about 10 different significant areas — such as hang gliding and the sometimes-buried sand castle — and a time capsule with various artifacts that is tentatively planned to be kept on display at the visitor center museum.

When the park first opened on May 31, 1975, the big dune was 140 feet tall, Jockey’s Ridge State Park Superintendent Joy Cook explained to Coastal Review in an interview after the event. But shifting maritime winds continually rearranged its estimated 30 million tons of sand, mostly quartz blown in ages ago from the mountains, into different shapes, while surrounding development influenced sand travel. Now the dunes are a system of three smaller hills that are 60 to 80 feet tall. 

“It’s moving 1- to 6-feet to the south each year,” she said. “The prominent wind is out of the north. The dunes are north-south orientation, and the southeast corner is moving faster than the rest of it.”

About six years ago, she said, the park had to relocate the sides of the corner that were moving into the road, and it will probably have to be moved again in a few years.

But even at its decreased height, being on top of Jockey’s Ridge is close to a surreal experience, and it’s not only because of the panoramic view of sea, sound and landscape. The vast expanse of undulating sand at times feels nearly mystical. Depending on the time of day, as well as the weather conditions, the shadows cast by the light and the wind-carved designs in the sand can transform the dunes into art.

But as every local knows, Jockey’s Ridge is the last place a person would want to be in extremes of any weather: a blazing hot summer day, a very windy or rainy day, or any degree of thunderstorm. And sometimes being on top in the middle of all that sand can be disorienting — it’s not unusual for visitors to lose their bearings.

On the flipside, kids delight in rolling and leaping down the dune, and young adults love to slide down them on boogie boards — especially if there’s a rare snowfall. Not to mention that the hang-gliding and kite flying, if the wind cooperates, is extraordinary.

Carolista Baum, an artist and a jeweler, died at 50 from a brain tumor. She remains as one of the most admired personalities in Outer Banks history, not only for her vibrancy and strength of character, but for her courage to stand her ground and protest what she believed was wrong.

As many recognized during the anniversary celebration, without Carolista taking action at that moment, and creating the momentum and inspiration in the community for the preservation fight, it’s likely that Jockey’s Ridge would not have been here to celebrate its 50-year anniversary.

“In 1973, she stood in front of a bulldozer and probably wouldn’t have been arrested,” Baum said. “It was a different time then. But I think she still would have stood in front of a bulldozer if that happened today.”

HATTERAS — Long famous for its bountiful fishing, Hatteras Island now has a new state-of-the-art processing and packing facility that keeps Outer Banks fish local from sea to plate, while also enabling local fresh catch to be shipped directly to customers.

And it’s owned by a local fishing family, to boot.

“The thing was, all this fish used to go to Virginia to get processed,” owner Jeff Aiken said during a recent tour of Jeffrey’s Seafood, situated along Back Creek in Hatteras Village.

The business officially opened May 21 during a ribbon-cutting celebration.

At a time when commercial and charter fishing enterprises face multiple challenges, the new facility is especially good news, Lynne Foster wrote in a message to Coastal Review.

“Jeffrey’s brings vitality to our Working Waterfront,” said Foster who along with her husband Ernie Foster run the Hatteras-based Albatross Fleet. “It also offers hope to the fishing community as well as the island community, which include many supporting businesses that rely on a vibrant fishing fleet and the sale of their catches.”

Working nearby in the chilly, 55-degree fish-cutting room, with heavy metal music seeming to set the pace, Aiken’s son Kelsey, 35, skillfully sliced through fish, one after another, cleaning and filleting. Along with another four or so people, they work their knives swiftly on large tables from early morning hours until about noon.

“As soon as we cut it, it gets bagged, we vacuum seal it and then it’s placed in a box to be shipped,” Kelsey Aiken said. Delivery drivers transport fish to local restaurants and markets from Hatteras to Avon, and sometimes to Rodanthe and Ocracoke. Fish awaiting processing are packed in ice, or stored in large freezers.

In addition to a temperature-controlled fish cleaning and cutting area, and rooms for packing, freezers and storage, the 11,000-square-foot facility also includes Hatteras Seafoods, the new retail market on the ground floor. Additional space remains for a small restaurant that is being planned, with the idea of serving local seafood favorites as well as beer and wine.

Proper cooling is provided by on-site freezers as large as walk-in closets, and the flash freezer — 30 degrees below zero — includes three gigantic fans to keep the air moving. There is also a chute from an ice machine on the upper floor to an “ice room” below.

“This is the brand-new vacuum sealer,” Jeff Aiken said, pointing to a long, steel machine with a pressing device on top. “That’s a $35,000 piece of equipment,” he added, as Kelsey Aiken demonstrated on a rockfish, using a 4-milliliter bag.

Nearby, there is the shrimp grader, another huge machine that not only pinches off the shrimps’ little heads, but also sorts them by four different sizes.

Jeff Aiken said that the business buys most of its shrimp from Native Seafood in Ocracoke, which has a deepwater inlet.

Although the warmer water from climate change has created boom years for shrimpers from Florida to Virginia, Jeff Aiken said, most of the local catch has to be processed in Engelhard and Swan Quarter because of depth limitations for the 60-foot shrimp trawlers. But he said that he hopes they’ll be able to get smaller shrimp boats into Hatteras for processing in the near future.

The retail store displays whole fish on ice in the glass cabinet, as well as filleted fish. A large window offers the customers in the retail store a view into the remarkably shiny and clean cutting room, showing the men, all wearing gloves and waterproof overalls, as they worked.

“I wanted them to see what’s going on,” Jeff Aiken said.

Fish scraps are returned to the water, to be happily “recycled” by other sea creatures, he added.

The facility also has an upstairs area for offices, meetings and storage, with an outside deck that boasts a wide view of the creek, the Pamlico Sound and lovely sunsets. Once the new website is up and running this winter, fresh-frozen filleted fish and shellfish will be able to be ordered online and shipped next-day air directly to consumers.

Jeff Aiken, along with his then-partners, founded the original fish house at the Hatteras docks in the 1980s, soon expanding to a wholesale business that involved driving a refrigerated truck packed with fresh Outer Banks catch to Hampton, Virginia.

Over the years, Jeff Aiken’s business adapted and evolved along with the fishing industry, as numerous local fish retailers and processors downsized or closed entirely.

But it was the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020, when supply chain disruptions left local chefs without fish to serve, that led to the dramatic expansion of Aiken’s business.

“They said, ‘Hey, you got the fish. Can you cut the fish?’” Jeff Aiken recalled. “So from that point, it spread by word of mouth and they kept coming.”

By then, Kelsey Aiken and his wife, Kelly, had joined Jeff Aiken in the business.

Jeff Aiken said he had purchased the fish house from Lee Peele, who had owned it when it was called Quality Seafood. It is also where he worked for $5 an hour when he first came to the Outer Banks in 1981.

“We were finally out of that little space out of Hatteras Harbor and we were cleaning all the fish for the charter vessels,” he recalled.

Jeff Aiken, who is from Hampton, Virginia, where he still has a home, credits his daughter-in-law Kelly, the company’s retail manager, with securing grants from the U.S. Department of Agriculture in 2021 to renovate and enlarge the facility with the goal of improving efficiency and capacity. The business had to pony up about a third of the matching funds.

“We’re in it for a million and they’re in it for two,” Jeff Aiken said. “And they got what they paid for.”

Now local chefs at local restaurants can ask for the fish they want to be filleted to order, Kelly Aiken said. Whenever possible, she said, the fin fish as well as seasonal oysters, shrimp and crab are local catch, and Jeffrey’s continues to partner with Ocracoke and Wanchese fish operations. The business also works with a distributer to bring its fresh fish — frozen and labeled — to North Carolina farmers markets to sell.

But Jeff Aiken said while their business sells almost all North Carolina product, and would never buy foreign shrimp, it’s impossible to guarantee that all their fish is strictly from the Outer Banks since fishers work within the realities of fisheries ecosystems and seasons.

“Fish have fins and tails and they swim,” he said. “They go where ever they want.”

And some fish they sell aren’t local at all, such as salmon from Norway or Scotland.

Jeff Aiken said that they buy most of their shrimp from Native Seafood in Ocracoke, which has a deepwater inlet. Although the warmer water from climate change has created boom years for shrimpers from Florida to Virginia, he continued, most of the local catch has to be processed in Engelhard and Swan Quarter because of water depth limitations for the 60-foot trawlers. But he added that he hopes they’ll be able to get smaller shrimp boats into Hatteras for processing in the near future.

Any customers looking for a brief history of Hatteras fishing can walk to the hallway behind the retail store to view a collection of historic to contemporary photographs of fishermen, including Jeff Aiken, with their boats, their family, their friends and the fish they caught.

“We call it the Hall of Fame,” he said, adding with a laugh: “Or, the Hall of Shame.”

One prominent picture is of the Ada Mae, a skipjack built in 1915 by Ralph Hodges and named after his then 13-year-old sister, who was Jeff Aiken’s grandmother.

The vessel, a former oyster dredge boat that is believed to be the last surviving skipjack in the state, has been restored. Today the boat is moored in New Bern and has participated in the reenactment of Blackbeard’s battle on Ocracoke Island, with Jeff Aiken onboard.

“All of those guys are local fishermen,” Jeff Aiken said, in between telling numerous fish tales about the various scenes lining the walls. “These pictures kind of bring the life to commercial fishing.”

BUXTON — As anyone who owns an old house knows, repair projects often reveal unfortunate surprises. Such is the case with the first complete restoration of the 155-year-old Cape Hatteras Lighthouse, but the remedy will be considerably more complex.

Halfway into the $19.2 million project, potentially dangerous cracks in critical structural components of the tower’s ironwork have been discovered deep in the tower’s upper wall, creating inevitable project delays and unbudgeted cost increases.

In an update on the project provided Thursday during a virtual presentation, Lindsay Gravel, project manager for North Brookfield, Massachusetts-based contractor, Stone & Lime Masonry Restoration Services Inc., detailed recently uncovered degradation of iron support brackets near the top of the 198-foot-tall lighthouse.

Signs of deterioration had been first detected in 3D scans done in August, and engineers decided that further investigation was warranted inside the wall, Gravel told a small group of media.

“After we did this first round of exposure, we had the architectural and engineering team come out on site, and they had some concerns,” she said. “So with the shoring in place, we decided it was beneficial to expose the entirety of these brackets, each and every one.”

Out of the 16 brackets, 13 were severely cracked on the interior flange, and 15 had cracks on the exterior elbow, which engineers determined to be a structural concern. Looking deeper, more cracking was found in the interior web.

“So this has a large crack in this exterior component,” Gravel said, pointing to a slide showing the bracket. “And this is where the observatory deck plate sits on top. So this is where visitors will be walking, which is why these brackets are such a large component of the lighthouse for visitor safety.”

Gravel later added that each of the brackets weigh 2,200 pounds, while each deck plate weighs 1,000 pounds. “So 16 of those brackets, and 16 of those deck plates, it’s a lot of weight up there,” she said.

Cape Hatteras National Seashore Superintendent Dave Hallac said that the National Park Service has not yet determined what the additional work will cost. After a structural engineering model is developed to determine the cause of the cracking, recommendations will be devised for proposed repairs.

“And once we know what that repair prescription looks like, we will develop an estimate to do that work,” he said. “And then once we know what that total is, we’ll determine how we’re going to fund it.”

While he was not happy about the kink in the restoration plan, Hallac emphasized that he is pleased with the overall work.

“We actually have not seen a lot of unknowns in this project,” he said.

The project, which began in late 2023, was initially supposed to be completed in about 18 months.

The unexpected is to be expected during restoration of historic structures, Hallac said, and he lauded Stone & Lime for their expertise.

“They have made incredible progress on this project and done a really good job of working with us as a team to work through the challenges that have come up,” he said. “Because no project on a structure like this that’s unique and over 150 years old is going to move forward without some surprises.”

During her comprehensive review, Gravel provided a brief history of the lighthouse, followed by a head-spinning recitation of the work that has been completed, is underway, and is upcoming.

An overview

First, 25 levels of scaffolding were installed around the lighthouse. Then coatings on the exterior, including the famed swirled black-and-white day mark, and interior, including stairs, hand railings, landing beams, window sills, were removed. Metal components were primed to prevent rust. Mock-ups of new day marks were developed to test how they weather in different lighting.

Also about 700 bricks have been replaced, and 75 bricks repointed with natural cement, the historic stockade fence that went around the keepers’ buildings is being installed, the ornamental fence that had once encircled the lighthouse is being replicated, and landscape plantings have been installed.

Extensive work has also been done on many of the 269 lighthouse steps, parts of which had signs of corrosion, Gravel said. After a small crack was detected in one stair tread, the 255 stairs up to level 10 were surveyed, as well as some others. More than 100 stair treads will be repaired, and 44 treads, four brackets, 200 bolts, 120 nuts and 75 spindles will be replaced.

Gravel showed a photograph taken high up on the spiral staircase, with a missing step providing a dizzying peek of the black hole at the bottom — a view most lighthouse climbers would prefer to avoid.

“It’s not every day that you get to see the lighthouse with a missing tread in it,” Gravel said.

By incorporating the project’s modeling and precision molds created for components, Gravel said the technology helps the contractor’s team streamline its workflow, prevent errors and accurately capture the as-built conditions.

“This result is a high modern, high value approach that supports long term preservation efforts and leaves a detailed digital record to use for the future,” she said.

In 1999, the lighthouse was moved 2,900 feet inland to protect it from the Atlantic Ocean that swirled at its base. Although the dramatic and successful move protected the tower from being taken by the ocean, the historic 1870 lighthouse structure itself was not restored. But after the move, there were projects done to replace degraded stair treads, according to an email from the Park Service, responding to questions from Coastal Review.

After a chunk of metal fell in 2001 from a bracket on the lower staircase, the lighthouse got more attention.

Most of the stair treads were replaced in 2002 and 2008, the Park Service wrote. The current project will install tread replacements to replace those that were not originally replaced and those that are damaged, according to the information. The stair system’s spindles and bolts that hold them and the treads onto the stair stringers have corroded over time and “will be repaired or replaced based on their condition,” the email said.

Cracking in a couple of brackets had been known from investigations in the 1980s, the email said.

“At that time, architects and engineers recommended leaving the damaged lighthouse brackets alone because the load paths — the way that forces on the metal was routed from the top of the lighthouse to other areas — had likely been reestablished through the masonry following the cracking,” the email said. “In other words, any downward forces on the structure from the weight above was now being held up by the bricks in the limited areas where the cracked brackets were observed.”

Though potential cracking was anticipated, the email continued, the extent could not be known without removing multiple layers of brick.

“With substantially more cracking being observed now, bracket repairs or replacements will be necessary for the long-term structural integrity of the tower.”

Typically, about 1,500 visitors a day between April and October climb the lighthouse, the tallest brick beacon in the nation. The lighthouse is likely not going to reopen before 2026, or later depending on the bracket repair timeline. Meanwhile, Cape Hatteras National Seashore is currently developing new plans for climbing, the Park Service said.

“We expect that at least the same number of people will be able to climb annually,” according to the email. “There may be fewer people in the lighthouse at a time to help reduce crowding, but we expect at least the same number of people to be able to climb annually through expanded climbing opportunities throughout the day and year.” 

The Cape Hatteras Light Station store, restrooms and portions of the grounds remain open to visitors.

MANTEO — Amidst the tedium of a generally uneventful two-day meeting of the state Coastal Resources Commission last week, embers of prior tensions flared anew when Commissioner Jordan Hennessy contended that the panel had not properly authorized its lawsuit seeking to restore a protective environmental rule for Jockey’s Ridge.

The commission voted 9-3 against a motion Hennessy had advanced to withdraw from ongoing legal battle against the Rules Review Commission. Only Coastal Resources Commissioners Robbie Yates and Steve King voted with Hennessy, who took issue with how the lawsuit had been authorized.

“The crux of the issue here is that there was never a formal motion made, never a formal second made, or a formal vote to file a lawsuit against the Rules Review Commission,” Hennessy told the panel May 1 during the second day of the meeting. “And for something of that significance, I think it should have had a vote of this full commission to file suit against another state agency.”

After claiming he had been “stonewalled” by the commission and its legal counsel Mary Lucasse in seeking information, Hennessy, who was appointed to the board in 2023 by then-Insurance Commissioner Mike Causey, made a motion to direct counsel to “go ahead and withdraw that lawsuit.”

In her terse response, Lucasse detailed her answers to Hennessy’s “multiple requests,” including providing records of her authorization to bring the case.

“And then, as you know, information has been given about the lawsuit at every single legal update that we’ve had since then,” she continued. “I’ve kept you advised, and this commission has continued to be aware of and approve the steps that council has taken with that litigation from the beginning.”

The Coastal Resources Commission filed the lawsuit in late 2023 after 30 rules it had approved through a required periodic rules review process were removed from the Administrative Code, a move made shortly after the Rules Review Commission that fall kicked them back to coastal commission. The lawsuit asked the court to reinstate all 30 rules.

The 10-member Rules Review Commission, which is appointed by leaders of the GOP-controlled North Carolina General Assembly, argued those 30 rules were vague or inconsistent with state statutes. 

After filing the lawsuit, the Coastal Resources Commission voted to temporarily restore 16 of the rules state Division of Coastal Management officials said were critical to day-to-day operations.

One of those longstanding rules designated Jockey’s Ridge as an area of environmental concern, or AEC.

In April 2024, State Geologist Kenneth Taylor confirmed that Jockey’s Ridge is a unique geologic formation that qualified it as an AEC.

A public hearing on a proposed amendment to the coastal commission’s rule governing the Jockey’s Ridge AEC was held at the end of its April 30 meeting, with four people speaking in support of the proposed amended rule. The proposed rule is nearly identical to the original 1984 rule, which protects the landmark from incompatible development and sand loss. Public comment is open through June 2.

Nags Head Mayor Ben Cahoon, one of the commenters, delivered a sharp rebuttal of the Rules Review Commission’s rationale for abruptly revoking the AEC protection in 2023, asserting the Coastal Resources Commission’s “righteous” role in protecting Jockey’s Ridge while condemning the “absurdity of the process” in which the coastal commission had been forced to spend valuable time and resources.

“But now, ideological forces that value unrestrained and excessive commerce supported by industries that are biased against environmental regulation want to erode your authority,” Cahoon told coastal commissioners.

In February, a Wake County Superior Court judge ruled in the coastal commission’s favor, and the rules commission appealed. It’s unclear how quickly the dispute can be resolved.

Related: Judge restores state’s 30 erased coastal development rules

“The CRC’s actions relating to the rules designating Jockey’s Ridge as an AEC and establishing use standards are related to the rules that are part of the RRC’s appeal of the Superior Court’s March 3 amended order (of the lawsuit,)” the coastal commission said last week in an email response to Coastal Review.

“The appeal has not yet been docketed in the Court of Appeals,” the email stated. “After Appellant RRC files the record for the appeals, the parties will submit briefs to the COA (Court of Appeals.) Only after the appeal is fully briefed will the Court of Appeals decide whether to schedule oral argument. The time required for the Court Appeals to issue an Opinion varies greatly from a few months after an appeal is fully briefed to more than a year.”

Coastal Resources Commission Chair Renee Cahoon, also in addressing Hennessy’s contention, said that the lawsuit was a direct result of the legislature’s budget provision that allowed the the codifier of rules to withdraw the rules. The rules pertinent to the Jockey’s Ridge AEC designation, “just disappeared from existence — 30 or more at a time,” she said.

“It made a major impact on the people that we serve in the state of North Carolina and the 20 coastal counties,” Cahoon said. “This was a decision that was not taken lightly. It was not taken unadvisedly, and it was taken in response to, basically, the disappearance of rules.”

Hennessy is a former top aide to Republican Sen. Bill Cook who represented Dare County in the legislature. He later became a businessman with county affordable housing development contracts and dredging project contracts about which a federal grand jury sought county records and subpoenaed six county commissioners late last year.

Hennessy also questioned that it took nearly a year for the lawsuit to be filed after it was authorized as well as the expenses incurred dealing with the protracted legal action.

“It’s by law that we have to go through the rules review process,” he said. “If you don’t like it, ask the legislature to change the law, but it’s to the point of that the legislature has had to appropriate two and a half or a quarter of a million dollars to the Rules Review Commission to defend its lawsuit against us.”

Commissioner Lauren Salter responded that the state Division of Coastal Management staff tried to “resolve (the Rules Review Commission’s) nitpicking issues” repeatedly, and it wasn’t the Coastal Resources Commission that picked the fight.

“We sought relief for the people of North Carolina, so that they would know what rules were in play and not lose rules overnight,” she said. “That’s why the lawsuit was filed after 307 days. We tried everything.”

BUXTON – Just north of Cape Hatteras, businesses along a small stretch of soundside beach colloquially known as Canadian Hole have become a microcosm and barometer of a newly fraught international relationship.

Windsurfers from Canada have reliably flocked to the Outer Banks since the 1980s, and they were later joined by kiteboarders when that sport took off in the 1990s. But the Trump administration’s recent threats to annex the nation’s northern neighbor, followed by the U.S. imposing tariffs on trade, have triggered a backlash among our otherwise would-be Canadian visitors.

U.S. Customs and Border Protection data shows that visitors crossing the Canadian border into the U.S. dropped 12.5% in February and 18% in March, according to an April 18 NBC News report. In 2023, about 20.7 million visitors from Canada visited the U.S.

Although there have been cancellations, local watersports shops say that plenty of Canadians are still visiting the Outer Banks because of its renowned conditions for windsurfing and kiteboarding.

With spring bringing warmer temperatures and a nice southwest wind, the northern watersport enthusiasts are starting to arrive on the Outer Banks for the season.

“I’ve put up a Canadian and a U.S. flag,” said Brian Klauser, owner of Ocean Air Sports in Avon.

Klauser said he had received “tremendous feedback” from his regulars.

“All of my customers are repeat customers. You can set your watch to it,” he told Coastal Review.

And, as Klauser noted, these visitors are dedicated.

“They’re not just coming for a week,” he said. “They’re coming for two to eight weeks, because they love it here.”

Pamlico Sound’s Canadian Hole, a watersports destination between Avon and Buxton on Hatteras Island, is often referred to as the Haulover Day Use Area. With its shallow, wide-open water, mild weather and windy conditions, the spot has earned a reputation among enthusiasts, along with some other Outer Banks beaches, as the premier windsurfing and kiteboarding destination on the East Coast.

All of Hatteras and Ocracoke islands are within the Cape Hatteras National Seashore.

“We get a lot of Canadians in the shop and there’s a lot of return folks we talk to,” Chris Rutledge, a salesman at REAL Watersports in Waves, a Hatteras Island village north of Avon, told Coastal Review. “It’s probably down a little bit, but I’m seeing a lot of people down in Canadian Hole.”

Any kiteboarders and windsurfers from northern climates who may still have snow on the ground appreciate that spring is a great time of the year on Hatteras Island to enjoy their sport, he said. Those conditions remain favorable into fall.

“This area is so special,” Rutledge said. There’s plenty of unobstructed space in the sound to ride, or to catch waves in the ocean, he explained, yet the spot is smaller and less crowded than other destinations.

Despite that difference — and despite the unpredictable tariff-wielding elephant raging in the background — politics is sidestepped by businesses here as much as possible.

“We appreciate our Canadian customers,” said Stacey Saunders, the general manager of Frisco Woods Campground on Hatteras Island. She emphasized in a recent interview with Coastal Review that the business tries to avoid anything political, but she has heard some outspoken opinions from even the campground’s most loyal Canadian customers.

“We believe in your right to free speech,” she said in a comment directed specifically to Canadians and the right to express their political opinions, while she, herself, wanted to avoid politics.

Numerous Canadian customers have blamed politics or a sense of feeling unsafe for deciding not to come back to the Outer Banks, said Saunders. She cited a recent email as an example. 

“I’m sorry to inform you we wish to cancel our May camping reservation due to Mr. Trump,” explained the author of an email that she read aloud. “We will probably return in four years when Mr. Trump is president no longer.”

Saunders said that, so far, there had been only a “moderate” number of cancellations from Canadians, and about 80% have been from repeat customers.

Still, she noted, sites reserved for June and July mostly by windsurfers and kiters are not canceling. The campground, which is celebrating its 50th anniversary in 2025, has a large waterfront launching area that makes it very popular with these visitors.

“They’re very loyal and have been here for years,” she said.

One notable cancellation was a “caravan” of Canadians who had reserved 23 campsites, which equals about 60 people, she said.

“We’ve also lost store revenue,” she added, “because if they’re not here, they’re not purchasing anything.”

But looking on the bright side, Saunders said that the canceled reservations open more sites on the soundside – and potentially for new customers.

An April 10 post on Reddit by ParkingKnowledge6105, said that his group of 25 Canadians, who have traveled to Cape Hatteras for about 30 years for a monthlong vacation, have all canceled.

“It is hard to underplay how deeply offensive the Trump 51st state bs has been. Or the lies about fentanyl or balance of commerce,” according to the post. “You guys have no idea how pissed off Canadians are , and dismayed by how many still support Trump. A lifelong friendship was thrown under the bus.”

Keith Croghan, owner of The Sea Monkey Lodge & Kite School on Ocracoke Island, said the island always has its share of visiting windsurfers and kiteboarders, although not as many at Hatteras Island.

And not yet this year.

“I haven’t seen hide nor hair of Canadians,” he recently told Coastal Review. “So the impact on us is even greater.”

Ocracoke, a small island on the far-south end of the Outer Banks, is — more than most — dependent on tourism revenue.

‘I haven’t seen hide nor hair of Canadians.’

— Keith Croghan, The Sea Monkey Lodge & Kite School, Ocracoke Island

“Yeah, we really feel it when people don’t show up,” said Croghan, who has run the The Sea Monkey Lodge & Kite School for 15 years.

“I would like to consider Ocracoke a sanctuary,” he added. “If any Canadians feel ostracized by all this, tell them they’re welcome to come down and visit our special little island here on the Republic of Ocracoke.”

Lee Nettles, executive director of the Outer Banks Visitors Bureau, also prefers to look beyond the current gloom of uncertain times.

“We, of course, welcome international guests, and we want to continue welcoming international guests,” he told Coastal Review. “But from the last statistics that I saw, Canadian visitors are less than 1% of our overall visitation. So in terms of the real business impact, it remains to be seen, but I don’t expect it to be great.”

Most Outer Banks visitors drive from Virginia, North Carolina, Ohio, Pennsylvania, New York and other northeastern states. And, he added, tourists from Canada represented about 50% of total international visitation.

As the 2020 pandemic showed, Nettles said, the Outer Banks’ reputation for its natural environment and wide-open beaches is sought out as a refuge during stressful periods. That and being an affordable drive-to destination has somewhat sheltered the barrier islands from the same shocks other destinations may experience.

“Everybody’s calling for a soft year,” Nettles said about other tourism areas in the state, “and it seems like we’re in better shape than a lot of folks.”

Over the years, Dare County has proven to possess a remarkable ability to not only recover from various shocks, but also to come back strong.

In 2023, the most recent available data, Dare’s total visitor spending was $2.15 billion, about 9% higher than the previous year. State taxes were $70.4 million and the local taxes were $77.9 million, totaling $148 million for the year. Combined with the visitor spending, the total of $3,891 per capita is the highest of any county in North Carolina.

As far threats of layoffs or funding decreases in the national parks and refuges, Nettles said he doesn’t yet know details and won’t speculate on impacts except to say he has confidence in the management.

“Obviously the national and state parks and our refuges are hugely important tourism assets and are greatly valued by our visitors,” he said.

The Outer Banks tourism-based economy has survived a series of human-made and natural disasters, and not just hurricanes.

“I think the storms come in different forms,” Nettles said.

“We’re no stranger to challenges. We’ve had wildfires, road closures, bridge closures. We’ve had recessions, we’ve had government shutdowns, and COVID,” he said. “All of which to say, tourism has been real resilient despite natural and man-made challenges.”

DUCK — Fifty years after the need for a bridge between mainland Currituck County and its barrier island beaches was first identified, and 30 years after a draft planning document for the proposed mid-Currituck bridge was first released, a recent public meeting revealed that the same issues are still being vigorously debated, costs have skyrocketed, and funding is still lacking.

Even with the green light in 2019 to finally begin the permitting process, the project continues to face considerable hurdles, including stark disagreement in the communities the bridge would connect.

Attendees at a recent hearing in Duck told state officials the bridge was needed to relieve the bumper-to-bumper traffic that clogs the only thoroughfare to the Currituck Outer Banks.

“Residents are literally trapped in their homes,” a woman from Southern Shores, a northern Dare County town, told state officials during the March 18 hearing held by the state Division of Coastal Management. “This is not just an annoyance. This is a safety risk. Getting people evacuated would be virtually impossible.”

The bridge project has received wide support from Dare and Currituck counties and most Dare towns.

But those who live in Currituck County communities on either side of the bridge — Corolla and Carova at the beach and Aydlett on the mainland — lamented the impacts of even more traffic on their neighborhoods’ infrastructure, environment and quality of life.

“Yes, we have a traffic problem,” commented Corolla resident Barbara Marzetti, a co-founder of the citizens group No Mid-Currituck Bridge, or NoMC, during the Duck meeting.

The bridge would make the situation worse, she added. If the bridge is built, the people will come. And then more people will come.

“It’ll bring more development,” Marzetti said. “Right now, we have an environmental disaster with the water and septic issues.”

Marzetti, who is also president of the Corolla Civic Association, said North Carolina’s northernmost barrier island communities can’t take “dumping all those people here.”

“We’re already overtaxed in terms of infrastructure here,” she told Coastal Review in a later interview. “There will be day trippers up the gazoo.”

Another public hearing on the proposal has been scheduled for 5-7 p.m. April 16 at the Currituck Extension Center, 120 Community Way in Barco, on the mainland side.

Although folks on the mainland are also worried about increased traffic, the Currituck Outer Banks is a more fragile environment that is home to a national wildlife refuge and wild mustangs. Even though the northern Outer Banks are less exposed than the southern communities on Hatteras and Ocracoke islands, the area is still vulnerable to intense tropical weather and coastal storms.

According to the North Carolina Department of Transportation, the proposed bridge is needed to provide an additional hurricane evacuation route to meet the state standards of 18 hours to evacuate an area. Once built, the bridge would offer a 40-mile shortcut to travelers, saving as much as two hours one-way during peak tourism months.

In 2022, the Currituck County Department of Travel and Tourism estimated that 500,000 travelers visited the county during the 10-week peak summer travel season each year. It would be a good bet that nearly all are heading to the Outer Banks, where they’ll end up on N.C. Highway 12 — also called Duck Road along this stretch — and likely stuck in gridlock.

NCDOT data shows the average summer weekend traffic in 2017 on two-lane N.C. 12 in Southern Shores was 22,236 vehicles. More recent DOT traffic counts were not readily available.

The proposed project includes a 4.66-mile-long bridge across Currituck Sound and a 1.5-mile-long bridge across Maple Swamp on the mainland side in Aydlett, about 25 miles south of the Virginia state line. On the Outer Banks side, the bridge would tie-in at Corolla, a popular upscale resort community renowned for its shopping, big houses, wide beaches and charming historic village. Just to its north, 11 miles of unpaved sand roads wind through the tiny community of Carova, where the wild mustangs famously roam free.

Currituck County records show 57 applications in Carova for new single-family dwellings since January 2015.

Although Currituck County Planning Director Bill Newns said he didn’t have the exact percentage of buildout in the completely off-road beach community, there were originally thousands of large lots, but there had been no new real subdivisions.

“Pretty much, it’s all been platted out … some of that stuff goes back to the ’90s, ’80s, and before then,  that were already platted out,” he told Coastal Review.

“Typically, all those roads are private,” Newns said, “The county doesn’t have control of them.”

Longtime Carova resident Jay Laughmiller, who owns a water-treatment business and is also the volunteer fire chief, said he has seen firsthand the wear and tear on the community from the thousands of summer visitors. He fears that the “already controlled chaos” would be exacerbated by the bridge.

“It would not be good for the area,” he told Coastal Review. “Yes, it would grow the economy, because it would bring more people here. But the infrastructure itself can’t handle too much more.”

In the last decade or so, Currituck County has successfully marketed tourism by featuring captivating photographs of the horses frolicking on Carova’s wide-open beaches. Consequently, wild horse tours are one of the most popular attractions for visitors. Tourists and property owners are also allowed to drive on beach corridors and the unpaved roads, which has inevitably created conflicts and hazards for both horses and people.

With Carova’s beaches becoming parking lots every summer, the county in recent years instituted a permit system to control the beach traffic.

Impacts from the crowds are seen not just in rutted roads or damaged dunes; the volume and intensity of such growth is overwhelming the environmental balance.

Unlike neighboring Corolla, Carova has no stores, restaurants, public water, visitor facilities or wastewater systems. But it does have numerous single-family homes, most small and modest but with a few of 20 or more bedrooms.

Laughmiller said that septic systems and water from private wells, both subject to state regulations, are increasingly being compromised. Local rules allow placement of wells on a site to be determined after, rather than before, the house and septic, he said. Although septic must be at least 50 feet from the well, he said, leaving the well selection last can limit the quality of the well water.

“There’s no aquifers  there — it’s all groundwater,” Laughmiller said.

Sometimes the water is too salty or has high levels of arsenic, iron, tannin or other unwanted stuff, or is stinky from sulfides, Laughmiller said.  But current regulations, he said, look only at certain levels of bacteria before permitting a well.

Climate change effects such as rain deluges and drought, as well as increased impermeable surface coverage resulting from development, make it harder to cope with the challenges. Already, floodwater has to be pumped off the roads after big storms. Without improvements, Laughmiller said, problems with septic intrusions into well water “is only going to worsen.”

Currituck Sound is also vulnerable to climate impacts.

Julie Youngman, attorney for the nonprofit Southern Environmental Law Center, speaking at the Duck hearing, said the proposed bridge location crosses environmentally sensitive areas.

“I tell you, the ends of the bridge are going to be under water because of sea level rise before they find the money to pay for it,” she said.

The law center has represented the No Mid-Currituck Bridge group in an unsuccessful federal lawsuit challenging the bridge construction. The court ruled last year that the NCDOT had followed the law in issuing its 2019 record of decision, but the legal group is keeping its eye on the project during the permitting process.

In 2012, the project was estimated to cost $660 million, and somehow went down to $489 million in 2018, then to as low as $440 million, until soaring up to its current estimate of $1 billion.

Private-public partnerships, managed by the North Carolina Turnpike Authority, part of the state Department of Transportation that manages toll roads, have been on, then off, then on again, with unconfirmed speculation that a proposed toll would be about $50 round trip.

Youngman, who noted that her family had long vacationed on the northern Outer Banks, said that there are other less expensive and less environmentally damaging alternatives that NCDOT has not pursued, including construction of a flyway at the intersection of the U.S. Highway 158 Bypass and N.C. 12 in Southern Shores.

Logen Hodges, director of marketing and communications at the North Carolina Turnpike Authority, said the latest finance plan had not been finalized, but it is likely to include federal and state funds and toll-backed debt.

After applying for a competitive $425 million federal grant to fund some bridge costs, the agency was informed last October that it was not chosen for the award.

“The team is still evaluating all potential funding sources to deliver the project,” he responded in an email. “The toll revenue projections will be updated over the course of the next year with updated traffic and revenue forecasts. That analysis would also inform potential toll rates. Actual toll rates would not be set until much closer to the project opening.”

Comparative analysis is ongoing to evaluate whether to deliver the project as a “a traditional toll project,” or as a public-private-partnership toll project, he said.

The Albemarle Rural Planning Organization in August 2024 gave its approval to the Turnpike Authority and NCDOT to continue development of a potential private-public partnership, which was initially authorized only from 2009 to 2014.

In addition to a Coastal Area Management Act, or CAMA, permit, various other permits are required, including from the state Division of Water Resources, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers and the Coast Guard.

“We will be in a better position to provide an updated project schedule after all environmental permits are received,” Hodges wrote. He added that all right of way parcels have not yet been purchased.

Newns, Currituck’s planning director, said the county has not yet done a detailed plan to address the projected boom in growth if the bridge is actually built. And after hearing talk about it since the 1980s, he wasn’t going to speculate on the chances of construction.

“I don’t have an idea, because every time you think you’re a little closer to it, it takes a step back,” Newns said. “So yeah, I couldn’t honestly answer that question.”

SWAN QUARTER — Turns out that those million big, invasive fish that were supposed to be swimming in Lake Mattamuskeet didn’t show up, as contractors conducting a mass removal project that began last year reevaluate the estimated population of common carp in the state’s largest natural freshwater lake.

“What we found is we’re not finding the carp numbers in the lake that we thought were there,” Kendall Smith, refuge manager at Mattamuskeet National Wildlife Refuge, told the Lake Mattamuskeet Watershed Restoration Plan Core Stakeholder Team at a recent meeting.

“So far we have not detected any aggregations of fish. We are finding concentration, places where you find more fish than others, but nothing that would be considered an aggregation,” he said.

Smith explained that the refuge will continue to work with the contractor during the year to review other techniques, assess the issues with the carp’s habits and reproduction, and determine the next approach.

“We’re learning a lot about their movements, confirming whether or not they do activate in the wintertime or early spring,” Smith continued.

But reduction of carp, aggressive bottom feeders that are blamed for much of the lake’s turbidity, is just one of the multiple challenges being tackled. The team, made up of folks with local, state and federal expertise, including representatives from governments, nonprofits and landowners, is proving to be as resilient and adaptive as the lake itself.

“Like anything worthwhile, it’s the hard stuff you’ve got to pay attention to,” local farmer and former refuge biologist Kelly Davis told Coastal Review, “because the easy stuff works itself out, right?”

A member of the North Carolina Wildlife Resources Commission, Davis, along with her late husband Blythe, for decades farmed 2,000 acres of farmland in Hyde County, of which about 150 acres drain into Lake Mattamuskeet.

In her observation, the lake’s biggest issue in restoring the submerged aquatic vegetation, or SAV, is the haziness of the water, to which the carp contribute by churning up the lake bottom.

“Whatever’s killing the grass,’ she said, “it’s sedimentation. It’s cloudy waters.”

 Often referred to as a jewel of Hyde County, Lake Mattamuskeet, the centerpiece of the refuge, is 6 miles wide, 18 miles long and averages 2 feet deep.

The 40,000-acre lake, expansive and often shimmering, is famously photogenic. Serene cypress swamps along its border could be described convincingly as habitat for elves and gnomes.

But its beauty belies its environmental vulnerability. It is situated on low land, surrounded by pocosin forests and rich farmlands, intersected by gated canals that drain water, sediment and nutrients into the lake.

In addition to nearby rivers, the vast Pamlico Sound, to the lake ecosystem’s benefit and detriment, contributes some of its marine life and waters, whether pushed in by wind-driven tides or flooding. 

Since the 1990s, the submerged aquatic vegetation in the lake had gradually then suddenly disappeared, depriving the hundreds of thousands of waterfowl along the Atlantic Flyway that had stopped over for food and shelter.

Once Hyde County’s community hub, the lake, the refuge and the long-closed Mattamuskeet Lodge, which the county plans to restore and reopen, is still supporting hunting, fishing and farming activities. And ducks, swans and geese still alight at Mattamuskeet, but now mostly at the seasonal duck impoundments created around the lake.

Since 2017, the stakeholder team has been focused on solutions to the lake’s water quality problems, including loss of SAV and persistent algal blooms, as well as flooding and drainage of the surrounding land.

Guidance for the work has been provided by a watershed restoration plan facilitated by the North Carolina Coastal Federation, in partnership with Hyde County, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and the North Carolina Wildlife Resources Commission. The Coastal Federation is the publisher of Coastal Review, an independent online newspaper that covers coastal issues in North Carolina.

Despite uncertainty with staffing and funding concerns related to recent cuts in the federal government, work at the lake and surrounding land is ongoing and planned for upcoming months, according to a discussion during the Jan. 30 team meeting in the Hyde County Government Complex.

Five projects, funded by a $16.86 million Regional Conservation Partnership Program grant awarded to the North Carolina Coastal Federation, are designed to enhance water quality within the Lake Mattamuskeet watershed.

Project planned are improvements in the Fairfield Drainage District including installing a pump station to reduce drainage into the lake and enhance crops, restoring 1,000 acres of wetlands on converted agricultural land, constructing a 4,506-linear foot living shoreline to protect a Natural Resources Conservation Service dike in Swan Quarter and other critical infrastructure, facilitating agricultural best management practices to mitigate discharge of agricultural runoff into the lake, and outreach to aquaculture producers in an effort to boost participation in oyster restoration.

The Coastal Federation is currently working to finalize a partnership agreement with the Conservation Service, according to the federation’s coastal advocate Alyson Flynn, the meeting’s moderator. She also said that the federation has contracted with consultant Jonathan Hinkle to assist in the design and modeling of the large-scale restoration projects.

Part of the work, which has a four-year timeline, with a potential 1-year extension, involves diverting, pumping and draining water on the land in a way that would avoid adding sediment or nutrients to the lake, a hydrology challenge to engineer and a problem when there may be divergent goals. Drainage improvements also include cleaning out major drainage canals.

 “We all agree that the lake is in poor health, and we want to help fix it, but what that looks like seem to change,” Flynn said in an interview, referring to the proposed Fairfield project. “And so, yes, by diverting that fresh water up into the north, we’re hoping that the lake water will naturally filter out through that designed wetland before it gets to the Intracoastal Waterway in the north, with the assistance of pumps.”

Davis, who attended the stakeholders meeting informally as an area landowner, said that water is affected by changes in sea level and by wind tide, and there’s no choice but to work with the conditions, whatever their whims.  

“There will be times where some of that water movement is hampered until the wind shifts and blows the sound back out, but that’s part of water management in Hyde County, or really on the peninsula,” Davis said. “Whether the water body is the Pungo River, the Intracoastal Waterway, the Pamlico Sound, or Lake Mattamuskeet, the whole idea is to try to get the sediment trapped somewhere before it hits that water. And as the water slowly move through wetlands, the slower you can move the water, the more time it has for the sediment to fall out, and the more what you’re sending to the water bodies is mostly just water.”

What is important, she added, is that all the projects’ stakeholders are engaged and involved — and patient.

“They’re big projects, but they’re also projects that should have decades of value. The projects don’t have to be perfect,” she said, adding that every challenge that is addressed at the time makes a difference. “Because the needs are now, and they will be in the near term and the long term, and the wind still blows the sound out.”

This story was updated at 1:48 p.m. Feb. 19 to note that Dominion Energy and Avangrid’s Kitty Hawk Wind website had been removed.

KITTY HAWK — Wind projects that are leased, permitted or under construction in or near North Carolina are likely to survive buffeting by renewed wind energy skepticism from the Trump administration.

Shortly after taking office in January, President Donald Trump issued an executive order barring new offshore wind leases and requiring reviews of existing and permitted wind projects. Although it was not targeting existing leases, industry supporters have questions about what rules, permits or projects it could impact and the potential for broader impacts through the workforce and manufacturing industries.

“It’s not that companies are moving on as business as usual, but there’s so much uncertainty that they can’t just come to a screeching halt, and then all of this could change in five minutes,” Karly Lohan, Southeastern Wind Coalition’s senior Carolinas program manager, recently said in an interview with Coastal Review. “They have to keep going and figure this out as they go. And realistically, we’re probably not going to know an answer to a lot of those questions, and the true implications of this offshore wind executive action until … we know.”

Lohan noted that the nonprofit coalition she represents is focused on educational outreach about wind energy and does not speak or act as a trade organization for the industry.

A wind project off Kitty Hawk along the Outer Banks that’s owned by Avangrid Renewables and Dominion Energy is not yet under construction, but it still has active leases. The website link above was active at the time this report was published, but appeared to be down Wednesday afternoon. An Internet Archive version of the page was saved Jan. 30.

Dominion Energy’s $9.8 billion Coastal Virginia Offshore Wind, or CVOW, project off Virginia Beach is going full speed ahead. The 2.6-gigawatt project is currently about half done and is expected to be completed on schedule by the end of 2026, according to company spokesman Jeremy Slayton.

Duke Energy, along with Total Energies, has leased an offshore area off Southport for a wind farm known as Carolina Long Bay project, but it is in very early permitting stages.

“We are still easily at least six or seven years away from construction for any of those projects,” Lohan said.

The two land-based wind energy projects in North Carolina — Amazon Wind U.S. East in Elizabeth City, completed in 2017, and Timbermill Wind in Chowan County, completed in 2024 — will not be affected by the orders, Lohan said. Duke Energy has expressed interest in future land-based projects in North Carolina, but no information has been released about potential locations or plans, she said.

While Dominion is working to complete its Virginia Beach project, it is keeping its CVOW-South, formerly the Kitty Hawk North project, on hold for the time being, Slayton, the company’s spokesman, said.

“CVOW-South provides us with a potential option for additional offshore wind development,” he said in an email. “Our most recent long-term planning document, the Integrated Resource Plan, forecasts this project, if we pursue it, for the mid-2030s. At this time, we do not have a firm timeline or cost for developing this lease area.”

Dominion Energy came to an agreement in July 2024 to purchase one-third of the Kitty Hawk North project, which is about 27 miles east of Corolla, the northern end of the Outer Banks, and about 38 miles southeast of the Sandbridge community in Virginia Beach.

“Avangrid was willing to sell a portion of the project at a reasonable cost,” Slayton told Coastal Review at the time. “And we believe it was prudent to take advantage of this opportunity to meet the growing needs of our customers with clean energy and also help us achieve the requirements of the Virginia clean Economy Act, which calls for up to 5.2 gigawatts of offshore wind.”

If developed, the project will connect to the grid for CVOW-South at a new substation at Corporate Landing in Virginia Beach, near Naval Air Station Oceana, he said.

Katharine Kollins, president of Southeastern Wind Coalition, a nonprofit advocacy group, said that wind power production in the U.S. is behind the mature development of both offshore and onshore wind in Europe, but it has the capacity and resources to build a robust wind energy industry.

“It requires economies of scale in manufacturing, all of the components it requires, economies of scale in construction and development and even in operations and maintenance,” she told Coastal Review recently. “And so what the manufacturers have been saying to advocates in the industry for years is, ‘We need a solid pipeline of projects before we can commit a billion dollars to building a manufacturing facility in the U.S. that can then produce the major components, or an offshore wind turbine that would include your towers, your blades.’ Right now, I think the only thing that we can manufacture in the U.S. is foundations.”

Like any energy production, wind energy is an equation of risk versus benefits, she said. And wind is economical, clean and safe, she added. “You don’t hear anything about wind spills,” she said. Yes, there are bird mortalities associated with strikes, but far, far less than the estimated one billion annual deaths from birds striking buildings.

Kollins said the problem is uncertainty. “You know, uncertainty is not good for investment, and so if you have some significant political uncertainty, that makes it really hard for investors to move forward with any of those components that I was mentioning, whether in components, referencing manufacturing, referencing development, even thinking about leases.

“Like, am I going to go pay $100 million to lease a square of ocean that, then I might have another presidential administration that says, ‘I don’t really like this?’ No thanks,” she said. “It does make it hard to overcome. This is an industry that should be nonpartisan.”

BUXTON — The federal cleanup of Buxton Beach has been remarkable, if only for the stark improvement in its appearance compared with a few months earlier.

With the surface building debris mostly gone, and petroleum-soaked soil removed, now the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers is turning its attention to the long-term well-being of both the site and the community.

“The dune is clean, the oil is gone from the groundwater, and the beach is clean,” said Brian Harris, co-vice president of the Buxton Civic Association in a recent interview with Coastal Review. Still, he said, a lot remains to be done at the Cape Hatteras National Seashore beach where a secret submarine survey base once operated.

The Coast Guard also operated a base at the site from 1982 until 2010.

“All those buildings that were once there, they’re still there — all the foundations,” he said. “So, it’s great that the beach is clean … but as this thing keeps eroding, I don’t want my son to have to deal with this in 10 years.”

Harris said that he is looking forward to participating in upcoming meetings of the Restoration Advisory Board, or RAB. Within months, the structured group of community and agency members is expected to start meeting regularly to discuss environmental restoration at the Buxton Naval Facility.

“You know, we’ve got everybody at the table now,” he said. “And that’s really what the RAB is going for — to keep this thing going forward, and the plan for the future.”

Contractor Baywest, a St. Paul, Minnesota-based environmental services company, completed removal of petroleum-contaminated soil and water before Christmas and did a final walk-through with the National Park Service on Jan. 17, according to Corps of Engineers Formerly Used Defense Sites (FUDS) Program Manager Sara Keisler.

The $4.8 million contract will end in June 2025, after Baywest completes beach plantings.

Keisler said another contractor, Yuma, Arizona-based Nicklaus-Ensafe JV, will begin a comprehensive survey of the site in February or early March that will investigate whether more contaminants remain underground.

“Currently, the initial deliverables, which is our work plan and our safety plan, are in the process of being written and reviewed,” Keisler told Coastal Review. “Those will be reviewed by many entities, including the Corps and then we have an independent technical review that has to be done, which is done by our center of expertise.” After several other reviews, the work will be able to start.

The $177,000 contract is scheduled to end in May 2026, she said, but it can be extended if needed.

In 1991, the former Naval base in Buxton, which was a submarine monitoring station from February 1956 until June 1982, was designated as a Formerly Used Defense Site, leaving the responsibility for its cleanup to the Corps. Starting in 1989, the FUDS team removed tons of petroleum infrastructure at the 50-acre site, as well as polluted soil and water, and continued to monitor groundwater. In the last test in 2024, the contaminant levels were below state standards.

But increased beach erosion, exacerbated by rising sea levels and coastal storms in September 2023, exposed chunks of concrete and oily clumps of sand, creating dangerous debris and a strong diesel odor. As a result, the park service closed three-tenths of a mile of Buxton Beach, and a FUDS team returned to the site.

The teams spent month after month investigating the site, and after the September 2024 reoccurrence of petroleum evidence, they developed a response plan, and hired the contractors.

FUDS teams only have the authority to remove petroleum, they’re not allowed to remove underground structures unless they’re in the way. 

“While the primary purpose of the ongoing response action is to remove petroleum-impacted soil, some of the remnant infrastructures that impede excavation access to the petroleum-impacted soil have been removed, too,” the Corps’ FUDS team in Savannah District said in a press release. But workers ended up removing considerable amounts of material.

“The team began excavations Oct. 2, 2024, and … they have removed 1,442 cubic yards and 24,126 gallons of petroleum-impacted soil and water, as well as approximately 138,400 pounds of concrete, 1,153 feet of pipes and 1,088 feet of metal cables and wires.”

As of Dec. 11 2024, a total of 4,599 cubic yards of petroleum-impacted soil has been removed; 99,526 gallons of water; 278,000 pounds of concrete; 1,153 feet of pipe; and 1,088 feet of metal cables and wires, according to the Buxton Naval Facility page on the Corps’ website.

Although it took nearly a year after the first report in 2023 for the Corps to start aggressive removal of petroleum contamination, no single source has yet been identified, despite numerous early efforts by the agency.

“From our perspective, the source is previously unremoved contaminated soil and groundwater,” Cape Hatteras National Seashore Superintendent Dave Hallac told Coastal Review. “In other words, at this point, there’s no evidence that there is what you would call a traditional source of bulk product, for example, a tank that’s sitting in the ground that’s just been leaking … Rather, what’s been observed just appears to be soil and groundwater that was contaminated, perhaps decades ago by the Navy.”

Hallac added that the Corps has done some geophysical work, including with ground-penetrating radar and an “excellent” study using a magnetometer looking for anomalies. Between reviews of that work, and similar ground studies done by the park service, combined with the comprehensive survey by the contractor, the superintendent said he is confident that any remaining petroleum source will be found.

Even after frustration with the slow start on remediation and disagreements about how to address the problem, Hallac said he is appreciative of the FUDS team’s partnership.

“Yes, we feel that the Corps has made a solid effort to remove the heavily contaminated soil from the beachfront area and mitigate the impact of those soils or ground waters washing into the Atlantic Ocean,” he said.

Hallac said he’s pleased that most of the huge chunks of concrete and other surface debris on the beach are now gone. His main focus, he said, was “to stop the bleeding” with the petroleum problem.  But he’s not giving up on getting the remaining buried infrastructure removed. 

“We’re moving forward in that level of priority order,” he said. “We are still in conversations with the Corps, the Navy and the Coast Guard about what to do about everything underground.”

Corps officials are also encouraged that, at least for now, the issue with the intermittent petroleum contamination at Buxton Beach seems to have been alleviated.

“We actually didn’t have any odors after this contractor was on the site,” said Keisler, with FUDS, “and there hasn’t been any since.”

KILL DEVIL HILLS — It speaks to the storytelling talent of National Park Service interpreter and historian Darrell Collins that audiences listening to his talk about the Wright brothers’ aerodynamic breakthrough of roll, pitch and yaw would often have tears welling from their eyes by the end.

Collins, who won numerous national and international awards during his four-decade career with the agency, died in his Manteo home on Dec. 24 at age 69.

As sons of a preacher, with lives absent scandal or even romance, Wilbur and Orville Wright’s story of first flight might seem heavy on aviation physics and difficult to translate in an engaging way, Scott Babinowich, acting deputy superintendent with the National Park Service Outer Banks Group, said during a remembrance for Collins held Saturday at Wright Brothers National Memorial.

“But Darrell had a gift to take those challenging concepts and craft them in a way that’s relatable to everybody,” he told the audience that filled the park’s Flight Room, where Collins had given his talk “thousands of times to hundreds of thousands of visitors.”

“He found a way to blend science and history and art to paint a picture that resonated with everybody that entered this building.”

Babinowich noted that in an agency as large as the park service, “it is rare to find a park ranger who had such a lasting impact in a single park” the way Collins did. With his easygoing approach, Collins had a way of enabling listeners to see themselves in the Wrights’ story, but also to give them a reason to “care and cherish the monumental achievement,” Babinowich said.

After four years of experiments on the Outer Banks, the Wrights achieved the first powered and controlled manned flight on Dec. 17, 1903, at what today is Kill Devil Hills.

A video of a brief portion of a Flight Room talk played during the remembrance shows Collins, wearing white conservator gloves and dressed in his olive-green and tan park service uniform, standing next to a full-size model of the 1903 Wright Flyer. Speaking in a soft Southern accent, he demonstrates how the pitch of the plane was controlled with a stick, which he then starts moving back and forth, accompanied by rhythmic squeaking as parts in the front of the aircraft respond.

Much of Collins’ mastery of his presentation was in his understated style that both moderated and modulated his speech and body language, building from an even cadence and simple demonstrations with his hands to closing with an intensified voice, soaring language and dramatic, sweeping arm gestures. Like a natural storyteller, he never faltered as he spoke. He employed gentle humor. And he used space between words and sentences to create the rhythmic cadence of a preacher.

“The elevator controls the pitch,” he says on the video, pausing as he slowly raises his right arm, “of the machine.”

“Take off and landing.” He slowly drops his arm.

“This motion of an airplane in flight …” he pauses as he moves his arm up faster, “is controlled by the elevator.”

As part of his typical 20- to 30-minute talk, Collins would bring the audience, almost imperceptibly, to seeing the Wrights’ feat in the context of humanity: the men, their family and their country.

He would talk about the intense competitive nature of aviation and science at the turn of the 20th century; of the contributions from the Outer Banks community; of the brilliance, fortitude and ingenuity of the brothers; and of the loyalty the brothers had to one another and their family.

He attributed the Wrights’ success to their willingness to persist, even after numerous disappointments, as well as their high character and extraordinary dedication to solving the mystery of flight.

At this point, Collins would start speaking a bit louder and faster, telling of how dramatically the two publicity-shy brothers from Ohio changed the world that day in 1903 at the sandy outpost on the Outer Banks. Visitors in the Wright Brothers Flight Room could see the exact spot right outside the large windows where the Wrights’ plane first found lift.

Indeed, as Collins would say in closing, it took just 66 years from the brothers’ first 12-second flight until the Apollo landing on the moon. That fact alone makes the Wrights’ invention Earth-shattering. But that’s not all, Collins would remind his rapt audiences.

“Folks, just about everything that flies — satellites, missiles, rockets, space shuttles — use the same fundamental principles,” Collins said in the 2014 Flight Room talk.

“You see,” he would add emphatically, his voice rising, “this is the immortal legacy of the Wright brothers.”

Often, people in the audience would sit quietly for a moment after Collins finished, dabbing their eyes.

Dave Hallac, superintendent of the park service Outer Banks Group, recounted after the remembrance how he had been at an agency event out of the area shortly after arriving on the Outer Banks when he mentioned his connection to the Wright Brothers park. The person he was speaking to responded that she had heard a talk there that had left her in tears. Hallac, who had not yet seen Collins’ presentation, apologized for the ranger upsetting her. But he had misunderstood.

“She said, ‘It was one of the most inspiring talks I’ve ever heard,’” Hallac recalled, adding about Collins: “He’s a legend. His ability to tell the Wright brothers’ story was unparalleled.

A native of Manteo with family roots dating back to the 1863-1867 Roanoke Island Freedmen’s Colony, a community of formerly enslaved people and free Black people, Collins graduated from Elizabeth City State University with a bachelor’s in geology and history. In 1977, he started work as a seasonal park ranger on the Outer Banks and set his sights on securing a permanent position as a history interpreter.

Early on, Collins had told interviewers that he was influenced by Paul Garber and Charles Harvard Gibbs-Smith, both well-known aviation historians and celebrated speakers. Although Collins soon gained acclaim for his speaking skills and as an expert on Wright brothers history, his fame shot up to international levels in the lead-up to the Centennial of First Flight in 2003.

Collins’ secret was that he was just “doing what he loved,” his wife Tonya Collins said after the event.

“It was just his passion for the Wrights, for choosing this place when they did,” she said. “He had a sense of pride in this place and its people. He was proud of the people here and that he was part of these people.”

According to his obituary, Collins was considered as one of the top three Wright brothers historians in the world. Even after retiring in 2017, he continued traveling to give lectures on the Wrights for five years. He was also a regular speaker for 35 years at the “Speakers’ Showcase Series” at the Experimental Aircraft Association’s annual Oshkosh Fly-In in Wisconsin.

His many awards include the Experimental Aircraft Association’s President’s Award, the Freeman Tilden Award as the park service’s top interpretive ranger in 1990, and in 2003, both the Order of the Long Leaf Pine by the North Carolina governor, and the Paul Tissandier Diploma by the National Aeronautic Association.

Collins also served for 18 years on the Manteo Board of Commissioners, filling the same seat on the town board that his mother Dellerva had held for 26 years before her death in 2005. In addition, he was the founder and president of the Pea Island Preservation Society Inc., a nonprofit dedicated to the Pea Island Lifesaving Station, the only all-Black station in the nation.

Collins, who had family connections to Pea Island, had taught the story of Keeper Richard Etheridge and the Pea Island Lifesavers to Dare County fourth graders.

Tonya Collins, who was married to Darrell for 22 years, said that her husband’s modest and friendly demeanor was genuine. Similar to his mother Dellerva, he never got angry, she said.

“He was truly raised by a kind person,” she said. “He came by it quite honestly.”

COLUMBIA — The only wild red wolves in the world have been thrown a lifeline for Christmas.

The North Carolina Department of Transportation has been awarded $25 million to construct wildlife crossings that can provide safe passage for the critically endangered species, the U.S. Federal Highway Administration announced Dec. 20.

Only 17 to 19 of the red wolves are believed to remain within the designated 1.7 million-acre recovery area made up of public and private lands in six northeastern North Carolina counties.

Despite renewed success in recent years under U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service management, the wolves’ survival has been threatened by numerous vehicle collisions on a main route to the Outer Banks, a popular beach resort area.

“Red wolves are one of the most endangered animals on the planet, and for the last four years, vehicle strikes have been their number one source of mortality,” Ron Sutherland, chief scientist at the nonprofit Wildlands Network, said in an email. “Building the first set of wildlife road crossing structures on US 64 through Alligator River National Wildlife Refuge is a vital step towards pulling the red wolves back away from the edge of extinction in the wild.”

Habitat loss and overhunting in the 20th century had decimated the population of red wolves, which had once roamed much of the Southeastern U.S. In 1980, the red wolf, which is a separate species than its cousins the gray wolf and Mexican wolf, was declared extinct in the wild under the Endangered Species Act.

Seven years later, four pairs of captive-bred red wolf pups, offspring of a few wild red wolves captured earlier in Louisiana, were released at Alligator River National Wildlife Refuge.

Through a series of innovative management techniques, the population of red wolves in the recovery area rebounded to as many as 120 or so. But after 2010, the program lost much of its political and public support, and management measures were scaled back.

As a result, the wild population crashed to as few as seven known red wolves, as well as 20 or more un-collared red wolves. Numerous lawsuits by nonprofit conservation groups resulted in restoration of the program by 2022 and successful reintroduction of pups into the wild. Sadly, vehicles deaths have undone much of the population’s recovery momentum.

The grant from the Wildlife Crossings Pilot Program will provide funds to build 11 wildlife underpasses of various sizes along sections of the highway through the refuge, according to a Dec. 20 press release from the Defenders of Wildlife.

“We know the benefits wildlife corridors can provide to species traversing our state’s roadways, and perhaps none are in more need of safe passage than Red Wolves,” Ben Prater, Defenders’ Southeast program director, said in the release. “In the face of environmental changes that are increasingly transforming and fragmenting the landscape, this funding comes at a critical time, when we have the opportunity to make our roadways safer for motorists and wildlife alike.”

As part of the 2021 Bipartisan Infrastructure Law, the five-year program included $350 million for grants awarded competitively to states, tribes and federal agencies, the release said.

For 2024, Federal Highways awarded $125 million for 16 grants to design and build new wildlife crossings around the country. NCDOT applied in September for funds to build crossings and associated fencing to guide animals to the crossings on a key stretch of U.S. 64 that for years has been a hotspot for Red Wolves, bears and other species being struck by vehicles. 

Construction of the wildlife passages will also be supported by $4 million in private donations raised by the Center for Biological Diversity, Wildlands’ Network and an anonymous donor.

NCDOT applied in September for funds to build crossings and associated fencing that would guide animals to the crossings. The agency is contributing more than $6 million in matching funds for the project. The Volgenau Foundation, the Felburn Foundation, and the Animal Welfare Institute also provided a total of $305,000.

“Marissa Cox and her team at NCDOT prepared an excellent proposal, with help from Joe Madison at US Fish and Wildlife Service and Travis Wilson at NC Wildlife Resources Commission,” said Nikki Robinson, North Carolina project manager at Wildlands Network. “We’re also really thankful that NCDOT Secretary Joey Hopkins gave this effort his strong and enlightened support.”

As Sutherland added, not only will the project save numerous other animals from vehicular demise, it will also spare many humans the injuries and damages inflicted by striking the creatures.

“The wildlife road crossings that will be built with funding from Federal Highways will benefit not just red wolves but all kinds of other wildlife too. US 64 cuts right through the top end of the immense and biologically diverse Alligator River National Wildlife Refuge, and the combination of busy beach highway and high density of wildlife leads to carnage on the asphalt every year.”

As many as 22,000 collisions with large wildlife were reported annually between 2021-2023 in North Carolina, resulting in 20 human fatalities, 2,754 injuries and more than $200 million in damages.

Within the last five years, six red wolves have been struck and killed by vehicles on U.S. 64. A notably tragic loss happened in June 2024, when the death of a breeding male red wolf on the highway led to the deaths of his five young pups in the wild.

A daily roadkill survey conducted by Wildlands starting Aug. 1, 2024, counted to date more than 2,400 dead animals on U.S. 64, including bears, birds, bats, deer and, among others, more than 700 each of turtles and snakes and 600 frogs, Sutherland said.

A 2008-2011 study along U.S. 64, done for NCDOT by Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University, determined that 890 black bears, which can exceed 600 pounds, crossed the road from March 2009 to March 2011 in the 147,432-acre Alligator River refuge. In addition, the study found 15 GPS-collared black bears crossed the highway 99 times over three years.

“Providing wildlife with safe passage under US 64 will save thousands and thousands of animal lives each year,” Sutherland said.

NAGS HEAD — Imagine that a hurricane skirted the coast, causing the power to go out. You wait for the green light to blink on your backup power. Getting the all-clear, you flip on the switch connected to the community’s wave-powered alternate generator, and your refrigerator is humming again.

That creative concept is still a distant fantasy in 2024, but it’s the kind of need-inspired brainstorming that a new $3.6 million National Science Foundation community-oriented wave energy project encourages. Launched on Sept. 27, scientists at the Coastal Studies Institute on the East Carolina University Outer Banks Campus in Wanchese will be seeking input from folks around Nags Head to use toward developing and deploying practical wave-energy technology on the Outer Banks before the end of the five-year project.

“The goal is to present two or three potential technologies and get (community) inputs to really see whether or not this meets their need,” Eric Wade, assistant professor in the Department of Coastal Studies at East Carolina University, which includes the CSI campus, told Coastal Review recently.

Researchers from ECU will partner with the University of Michigan, University of North Carolina Chapel Hill and Virginia Tech on the project, with focal communities chosen in Michigan at Beaver Island and in North Carolina at Nags Head.

While Wade said it’s not yet likely that alternate sources of energy could be produced in Nags Head, other marine energy could be more conceivable for the Outer Banks at this stage. Some examples he cited were use in desalination, powering autonomous underwater vehicles and marine aquaculture.

“The introduction of this technology will not lower the electricity bill,” he said. “It will not have this massive transformation. It may be at a very small scale.”

In a substantive way, the new National Science Foundation project builds on two ongoing research projects that CSI is part of: the NC Renewable Ocean Energy Program and the Atlantic Marine Energy Center. The important difference, Wade explained, is that the main objective of the new project is to converge different components of the community — engineering, sociological and environmental — so they can “speak” with each other.

“The local context will drive the extent, and in my opinion, will drive the feasibility of convergence, because we need to be able to design technologies that meet the needs of communities,” he said.

“And so, what this project is trying to do is see how can we get them to be on the same page, to be able to move marine energy, and specifically wave energy, forward,” Wade said.

Each of the components communicate in different “languages” and have different requirements for their disciplines, he added. “The difficulty and what is unique for this project is that bringing those together requires a lot of work and a lot of intentional talk.”

Wade said the goal in the next two years is to have community sessions that will bring together representatives from different sectors of the communities to share their perspectives and priorities.

“We’ll then take all of that information, go back to the community, consolidate, do some analysis,” he said.

The building and deployment work on the selected technology will be done for remaining three years. The big picture, ultimately, is all part of the what marine energy scientists call “powering the blue economy.”

The blue economy is broadly defined as economic activity driven by or based on the world’s oceans. And as Wade noted, the U.S. is hustling to catch up with the more advanced blue technology of Europe.

Lindsay Dubbs, a UNC research associate professor based at the institute, is collaborating with Wade on the project. She is focused on environmental and ecological assessments. That work, she said, involves devising frameworks for analyzing environmental impacts of potential marine energy developments, as well as best practices for reducing negative impacts.

Dubbs, who also serves as associate director of the NC Renewable Ocean Energy Program and the Atlantic Marine Energy Center, said their project team includes student researchers, as well as colleagues from Virginia and Michigan.

“We’re also communicating a good deal with communities in Alaska who are already implementing wave energy technologies in their communities,” she said. “We have this community advisory group that is comprised of people from all of those different communities, and the two study sites that we’re focusing this convergent research on are Beaver Island and Nags Head.”

Waves on the Outer Banks are powerful, but they’re not as big as waves on the West Coast, Dubbs said. That’s mainly because of differences in the water depths approaching the coasts. “The power density of the wave resource — how much energy can be harnessed — within an area on the West Coast is much greater.”

But, she countered, a large area of the North Carolina coast has untapped wave energy resources that could at least provide energy for niche markets. And that could include backup power. But on the East Coast and the Outer Banks, generation would be more likely occur at a community scale, not at utility scale like on the West Coast.

The project team is just starting conversations with the community groups to understand their perspectives, wants and needs for a wave-energy source, Dubbs said. But rather than advocate for a particular technology, the team’s intent is to help the community decide on the type of technology that meets their needs. Part of that process has to consider trade-offs, she said, and whether it’s worth harnessing the available energy, and if it can be done “in a manner that our community supports” that poses the least environmental risk.

“It’s so abstract and theoretical that it’s sometimes hard to really imagine what’s possible,” she said. “The exciting thing about wave energy right now, is just about everything is being imagined. But as far as coming to convergence on something that will make it more economically viable and less abstract — that’s difficult.”

BUXTON — When the Cape Hatteras Lighthouse was rescued 25 years ago from the edge of the Atlantic, the nation’s tallest brick beacon was relocated with just an ordinary airport beacon in its lantern room.

It could be argued that return of the majestic first order Fresnel lens atop the 1870 lighthouse will be nearly as remarkable a feat as moving the 4,800-ton tower about a half-mile inland. But to the man crafting the replica, it’s the apex of a 40-year fascination with the unique lens that began with another lighthouse.

Dan Spinella, owner of Artworks Florida Classic Fresnel Lenses, has been meticulously replicating the design of the original Cape Hatteras Lighthouse lens as part of the current comprehensive lighthouse restoration project. The new prisms, made of a super-strong acrylic, are dyed to exactly match the sea foam green of the glass prisms they’re replacing.

Spinella is likely the only man in the nation, maybe the world, who knows about manufacturing those prisms. But when he visited the 1874 St. Augustine Lighthouse in the 1980s, it was the first time he had been even inside a lighthouse.

“And when I saw the lens, it’s like, ‘Whoa, what the heck is this?’” Spinnella recalled during a recent telephone interview. “I had no idea.”

St. Augustine’s Fresnel lens, the same impressive size as the Hatteras lens, immediately captivated him and set off an unusually productive obsession. Before he knew it, Spinella, who then was and still is employed as an engineer at Walt Disney World, offered to take dimensions and do some drawings to help in the lens restoration.

“Yeah, I went from volunteer to volunteer/business, and it just evolved over the years,” he told Coastal Review, speaking from his Orlando home. “Nothing that I planned; it just kind of worked out.”

The website of the nonprofit St. Augustine Lighthouse and Maritime Museum credits the efforts of the Junior Service League of St. Augustine and others, including Spinella and Joe Cocking, the lampist who had later saved the fixed Fresnel lens atop Bodie Island Lighthouse, for restoring its lens after being damaged by a vandal’s gunshots.

After working on the St. Augustine project for about a year, Spinella, a professed history lover, said he had learned a lot about how Fresnel lenses worked. He started with engineering books from the 1850s he had located that were written by Scottish lighthouse engineer Thomas Stevenson, the father of writer Robert Louis Stevenson.

He found optic formulas that explained the lenses’ ability to refract and reflect light, allowing him to design a cross-section of the lens “perfectly,” he recalled. And while he kept learning, he kept going. Next, he volunteered at Ponce Inlet, Florida, then continued the work by helping to replace parts at other lighthouses. All along, he was experimenting with cast acrylic, machined acrylic.

“I tried several different ways of getting these prisms made,” Spinella said. “Then in 2004, I started making reproductions.”

Around that time, John Havel, then a graphic designer at the Environmental Protection Agency’s campus in the Raleigh area, had developed a fascination with the Cape Hatteras Lighthouse. After focusing on its original blueprints and plans and collecting old photographs, Havel recounted in a recent interview, he was soon doggedly researching deep into historic lighthouse archives.

“When you study the lighthouse, you see that it is this magnificent, incredible, amazing example of American Victorian architecture,” said Havel, who is now retired from the EPA and the owner of Havel Research Associates in Salvo, a Hatteras Island village north of Buxton.

The Hatteras lens, as well, is an extraordinary piece of art.

“Every first order lens is different,” he said. “There are no other lenses identical to the Cape Hatteras lens, or to the Bodie Island lens, or to the Currituck Beach Lighthouse lens. Every single factor except the height and circumference of the lens is different.”

There are a total of six orders of Fresnels lens, with the smallest able to be slipped into a purse.

A couple of years into his research, Havel recalled, he was visiting the office of the historian with Cape Hatteras National Seashore and noticed a small prism on his desk.

“And he started telling me about this guy down in Florida who made these lenses and wanted to offer a replicas lens through the park service for Hatteras,” he said.

But it wasn’t until 2015, after speaking about the lighthouse restoration at the Outer Banks Lighthouse Society Keepers Weekend, that Havel flew to Florida meet Spinella.

To put it mildly, Havel was impressed. In the years since, as a member of the Lighthouse Society board, and as a dedicated volunteer, he encouraged the National Park Service to tap Spinella’s expertise. Today, Havel is employed as a historic preservation consultant for Massachusetts-based contractor Stone & Lime Historic Restoration Services Inc., as well as an assistant and consultant for Spinella.

The $19.2 million restoration project, of which Spinella is being paid about $1.25 million, began in early 2024 and is expected to be completed by late spring or early summer 2025.

“He’s doing this entire thing,” Havel said of the skilled lens maker. “He’s doing this by himself, while he has a full-time job at Disney … He’s a genius.”

Initially, the park service was considering the possibility of restoring the original 1853 lens, the remains of which are on loan to the Graveyard of the Atlantic Museum in Hatteras, a part of the North Carolina Maritime Museums system, which under the state’s Department of Natural and Cultural Resources.

“Yes, we did talk about the option of doing that, and consulted with lampist Jim Woodward,” said National Park Service Deputy Chief of Cultural Resources Jami Lanier in a recent interview. “It was determined that it would probably not be feasible to do that for a couple of reasons (including) some issues with the frame of the lens not being exactly aligned to be able to accept the new prisms. And so it was felt that there could be some potential damage to the frame, or the lens itself, if that was attempted.”

Then there was the cost of replacing all the prisms — only 268 of the 1,000 or so prisms were salvaged — which “would have been astronomical,” she said.

The lens had been removed from the 1853 lighthouse, which was a taller version added to the 1803 tower, and installed in the1870 lighthouse, Lanier said. The lens was removed again in 1949, and in 1953 the lighthouse became part of Cape Hatteras National Seashore. But in the years before and after World War II, the lighthouse was essentially abandoned and the lens was vandalized, she said.

Lanier explained that Woodward and his team had removed the original pedestal from the Cape Hatteras Lighthouse in 2006, put it together at the museum with the remains of the lens stored in a park facility on Roanoke Island.

Lanier said that the park service also discussed the potential of retrofitting the original lens with acrylic or glass replacements.

“You know, we went through all those discussions,” she said. “But in the end, it was just decided not to retrofit the original lens either way, and we knew if we were going with the replica that it would be acrylic.”

Indeed, it would cost four to seven times more to make the replica prisms in glass, Spinella said. Some prisms in glass restorations he has done cost $4,000 each, and some were as much as $20,000 each. And multiplied by 1,008 prisms, that could mean millions of dollars. Plus, glass is heavier and would put an additional load on the structure, he said. The original lens weighed 4,500 pounds, while the reproduction will weigh a mere 1,600 pounds.

A first order Fresnel lens, which is shaped like a beehive, is 8 1/2 feet high and 6 feet wide. Not only is the acrylic lighter, Spinella also used anodized aluminum frames that are a third the weight of bronze. Also, the aluminum will not deteriorate or tarnish, but it looks the same as brass except it’s not quite as shiny.

“Polished brass looks absolutely beautiful when I install them, but I can go back a couple months later and they look terrible just because of the humidity and condensation in the lantern room,” he said.

In 2009, Spinella worked with Woodward, who has worked on more than 400 lenses, to measure the lens, and he went back to his workshop and created a 3D model of it. During the intervening years while the park service mulled over having a replica lens, Spinella had continued his experiments, perfecting his acrylic prisms. The initial cast acrylic lacked the quality he wanted, and he eventually settled on optical acrylic.

“It’s a very high-quality acrylic,” he said. “I mean, they use it in fighter jet windows, and it’s UV stable, and it’s easy to machine, sand and polish and it can be tinted.”

Optical acrylic also is clearer than glass and transmits more light, he added. Although it’s strong and durable, it doesn’t last as long as glass.

Importantly, the reflective and refractive ability is nearly the same, with only slight differences.

“It actually bends light a little,” he said. “It’s got a slightly lower index of refraction, so … I’ve adjusted the formulas and adjusted the profile of each prism and shape of curvatures according to the refractive index of acrylic.”

A modern Fresnel-specific LED bulb, installed on a little stand on the pedestal, is hooked up to a sophisticated controller that, at $10,000, costs more than the $8,000 LED, Spinella said. But even with the light source now drastically different than the original kerosene oil lamp, the prisms are in the same arrangement around it.

“That lamp was a flame or omnidirectional light, so it spread 360 degrees spherically in all directions,” Spinella explained. “So that was the purpose of these lenses, to capture as much of that light as possible.”

As Havel noted, another engineering feat that Spinella accomplished was his replication of the lens’ clockwork mechanism, which was based on the 1853 original at the Graveyard museum. There are no known photographs or even descriptions of the lens and its machinery, he said.

“Dan has replicated that with all new gears, metals and whatever (mechanisms) rotated the lens so that it would flash out to sea,” Havel said.

The clockwork had been run by hemp rope, which was extremely strong but messy.

“Hemp sheds,” Havel said. “Dan found synthetic rope that looks the same but isn’t hairy like hemp.”

The rotating beacon’s original flash pattern of every 10 seconds, instead of the former 71/2-second burst, is being restored, and it will continue to be visible for up to 20 miles. As Spinella explained it, each minute the mechanism rotates a quarter turn, a full rotation takes four minutes, “And what that’ll give you is a 10-second flash interval,” he said.

Each lighthouse has its unique flashing characteristic and daymark, which are listed for mariners by the U.S. Coast Guard.

Once Spinella and Woodward reinstall the beacon — probably in June — there will be a day when people who climb to the top of the tower will be able to see for themselves the mesmerizing beauty of the Cape Hatteras Lighthouse’s First Order Fresnel Lens.

Spinella said he has modified the lens with modern elements, but he said it’s still correct to consider the lens a replica because it follows the original design. For instance, while the clockwork mechanism and chariot wheels that rotated the lens are still part of it, the real rotation will now come from a 1/3-horsepower electric motor operated by a controller.

“I’ve done some things that make it more durable and more modernized,” he said. “But you really won’t see any of it.”

HATTERAS ISLAND — With ongoing removal of petroleum-contaminated soil from Buxton Beach, along with a considerable amount of remnant building debris trucked away since September, a community meeting hosted Monday evening by U.S. Army Corps of Engineers representatives revealed notably less frustration and even a hint of a friendly partnership vibe.

“I expect them to do the very best they can,” said Jeff Dawson, a member of the Buxton Civic Association, speaking after the meeting at the Fessenden Center in Buxton in reference to the Corps’ current response.

That’s a big difference from the alarm bells the newly formed group of village residents had been ringing about the petroleum pollution and old building debris first exposed on the eroding beach by a series of storms about a year and a half earlier.

“It’s like ‘Yay!’” Dawson added. “But why did they take so long?”

Brief updates of the cleanup project were provided, but the main impetus for the meeting was to present an overview about creating a Restoration Advisory Board, or RAB in government-speak.

In a slide presentation, Alexandra Jangrell-Tackett, program manager with Dawson, the Corps’ public outreach contractor, explained that a RAB would provide an option for the community to share information about work at what is officially known as Buxton Naval Facility, a Formerly Used Defense Sites, or FUDS, as a way to keep residents updated on the actions taking place at the Buxton Naval Facility.

The 50-acre site is entirely located within the Cape Hatteras National Seashore.

While a RAB allows for “concerns, needs or values” of a community to be conveyed, similar to a public meeting, it is more formal, with two co-chairs who conduct regular meetings that have agendas and minutes. It serves as a liaison between the Corps and the affected community.

“It’s important to note that a RAB is not a decision-making body,” Jangrell-Tackett said. “However, it’s that avenue for communication exchange.”

RABs are established with “sustained and sufficient” interest from communities where active environmental restoration projects are being done at Department of Defense sites, Jangrell-Tackett said during her presentation.

But a community also has the option of just holding public meetings concerning the cleanup work, she said.

While a RAB allows for “concerns, needs or values” of a community to be conveyed similar to a public meeting, Jangrell-Tackett explained, it is more formal, with two co-chairs — one from the community, one from the defense department — who conduct regular meetings that are structured with agendas, a mission statement, operational procedures and minutes.

Each RAB could have up to 30 members, each with two-year terms in the role of liaisons.

A survey on the community’s interest in a RAB was provided by the Corps, which will evaluate it after the deadline in 30 days.

Brian Harris, a member of the Buxton Civic Association, said after the presentation that he was very pleased with the Corps’ latest cleanup efforts and willingness to communicate with the community.

“Everything’s great — we love it,” he said. “Obviously, we want the RAB.”

Harris added that either a member or the overall association would be willing to serve as the RAB community member, but they’ll know more after the results of the survey are completed and further discussion is held with the Corps.

Since the Corps’ FUDS office took responsibility in 1991 for environmental restoration at the former Naval base near today’s Buxton Beach, it had removed 50 storage tanks and 4,000 tons of petroleum-contaminated soil. It has also conducted groundwater remediation and continued monitoring.

After a series of summer storms in 2023 exposed huge chunks of concrete that was once bits of buried Navy buildings, surfers and other locals started noticing strong diesel odors at the beach and a sheen in the ocean.

FUDS investigators responded, but over the months they had had difficulty determining the source of the intermittent petroleum stench.

Then, in September, more storms left an even stronger petroleum odor on the beach, resulting in the current, more visibly aggressive FUDS response.

“It was really that event that was a catalyst to get us out to that site,” said Col. Ronald Sturgeon, the Corps’ Savannah District commander, while speaking with reporters after the meeting.

Sturgeon noted that severe erosion had complicated detection of the petroleum.

“There was 15 more feet of beach there … That Building 19, the major source of the infrastructure, was 2 to 300 meters away from the ocean,” he said. “Now it’s in the ocean.”

After being back and forth doing testing at the site for more than a year, the Corps finally saw the evidence before their eyes in September, and responded.

Related: Work gets underway to pinpoint Buxton pollution source

“The release of the petroleum out of the site was a shock,” he said. “My team really pulled together and got a contractor to the site in record time. It was under two weeks … for this type of thing, it’s actually really fast.

“And once we started digging up some of the soil, removed some of the infrastructure and started to take those readings, yeah, there was a lot of (petroleum) contamination there that we weren’t tracking.”

Sturgeon said that the contractor had removed a large amount of infrastructure in order to test and access the petroleum contaminated-soil underneath, but the Corps does not have the authority to remove any additional remnant infrastructure unless it is hampering the petroleum contamination removal.

The contractors also removed about 18,000 gallons of water from the site, which was put in a machine to sort out whatever contaminants it may contain, he said.

Excavations began Oct. 2, according to the Corps, and were expected to be completed in 60 days. To date, 505 cubic yards and 11,000 gallons of petroleum-impacted soil and water, as well as approximately 82,400 pounds of concrete, 1,133 feet of pipes and 1,030 feet of metal cables and wires have been removed, the Corps said.

A contract for comprehensive sampling is expected to be awarded by Nov. 15, Sturgeon said. The sampling will delineate the nature and extent of any petroleum contamination remaining at the FUDS property.

The cleanup will be considered completed after it falls within the state Department of Environmental Quality standards. The Corps is also working closely with the National Park Service.

“We have focused in on immediate action that was required in specific zones,” Sturgeon said. “We will continue to sample within the FUDS boundary.”

But, Sturgeon said, the source of the petroleum is still unknown.

“If I knew that, I tell you what, we’d solve the problem already,” he said, adding the mystery is why the Corps is doing further work. “We have plans to sample the entire site.”

KILL DEVIL HILLS — On Nov. 19, 1932, the striking, art deco-inspired granite monument overlooking the exact spot where the Wright brothers’ first flight lifted off 29 years earlier was dedicated at a 1,000-attendee gala that included notable military and political figures, with Orville Wright as the guest of honor.

Less than a month later, a government construction official noted that a “considerable” amount of water was leaking through the brand-new monument’s mortar joints into the Memorial Room during windy rainstorms, and condensation was evident in the damp interior.

More than nine decades later, the 60-foot-tall Wright Monument still stands tall above what is now Wright Brothers National Memorial. And the mortar joints are still leaking and the interior is still plagued by condensation. But now the National Park Service is armed with a new analysis of the structure done with cutting-edge technology that can provide insight into maintaining a monument that’s both high and dry.

As detailed in the recently released “Wright Brothers Monument and Powerhouse Historic Structure Report,” the monument’s excessive moisture problem has never been conquered and at best been temporarily alleviated, despite numerous repairs, anti-humidity mitigation and technical enhancements, as well as multiple restoration projects.

“It could be the way that is was designed,” said Jami Lanier, deputy chief of cultural resources at Wright Brothers National Memorial, in a recent interview with Coastal Review. “Maybe it was never intended to be watertight, but it has had persistent issues with leaking, and we think that the primary culprit are the mortar joints, between the granite veneer panels for the monument.”

But as detailed in the structural report, the monument pylon’s rapid deterioration from water infiltration evident in 1945 may have been created by being designed to be waterproof.

“Discoloration of the granite and mortar damage resulted from both rain and condensation on the pylon,” the report said, “and since the Monument was designed to be watertight and airtight, there was no ventilation.”

The walls were damp. Water accumulated on the floor. Rain came in from several locations, seeping through the walls, moving between the stone veneer and the concrete floor, and coming up through the floor.

At barely 13 years of age, the monument already had deterioration in the pointing of the stone work and discoloration inside the little rotunda and on the exterior of the monument, the report said. Different versions of the problem have been a challenge ever since, with salty air and constant condensation playing havoc on interior wiring, paint, concrete and metal infrastructure.

But now, with more advanced tools to work with, the Park Service is hopeful that recommendations in the report will help solve the dilemma.

“That’s what we’re working on right now,” Lanier said. “We’ll have a design for repair, and hopefully we can finally resolve this issue.”

Repointing the mortar joints will be a priority, she said. The sky-facing joints are especially vulnerable to water coming in, as well as areas of the roof and the beacon.

In addition to standard engineering and laboratory testing, a moisture-intrusion investigation in 2017 referenced by the historic structures report included scanning by surface-penetrating radar, pachometer testing to measure thickness, infrared thermography that creates images of surface heat variations, and videoscope investigations.

According the report, moisture appeared to be entering through delaminated mortar joints on the veneer, damaged areas of the roof and spaces behind the stone and electrical conduits.

More recent investigations have involved drone surveys and borescope inspections, which employs optical devices capable of remote visual examinations.

The rotating beacon on top, extinguished since World War II, was restored and turned back on in 1998. Lanier said the beacon is still operating well, but it needs some maintenance.

After a national competition with 36 entries, the eye-catching design for the Wright Monument was awarded in 1930 to New York architects Robert P. Rodgers and Alfred E. Poor, whose submission was unanimously selected by a jury chosen by the American Institute of Architects. In making its recommendation to U.S. Secretary of War Patrick Hurley, the jury applauded the architects’ vision.

“The design finally selected is one which stood out from all the rest by the reason of its extreme simplicity,” the jury said, as quoted in an article The New York Times published Feb. 19, 1930.

“The power of imagination manifested … strikes one at first sight and increases on acquaintance. It is not only most original and impressive as seen from land, but would also be extremely effective as seen from the air. It strongly manifests the dominant motive suggested in the program, namely, a memorial to the birth of human flight.”

According to the historic structures report, the winning design was described as “a masonry shaft and base of approximately sixty feet set on a star-shaped foundation,” which formed a terrace around the base. The shaft was triangular and “embellished with relief carvings” of wings on two sides.

“The design implied ancient Egyptian motifs, an important source for Art Deco designs,” the report said.

The report, done by Quinn Evans Architects, also includes an analysis of the powerhouse, a small building at the base of the monument that housed a generator to power the beacon atop the tower.

The National Park Service intends preservation work for the monument, and more comprehensive rehabilitation for the powerhouse, the report said.

The genesis for a memorial honoring the Wrights as the inventors of the first heavier-than-air powered airplane went back to 1926, when North Carolina Rep. Lindsay Warren cosponsored legislation that was passed the following year. It was decided that the commemorative site would be built on top of Big Kill Devil Hill, which was one of three sand dunes from which the brothers tested their gliders before building the Flyer.

Success was achieved on Dec. 17, 1903, at the base of hill, when their plane flew for 12 seconds and 120 feet, the first time in history that a controlled flight was achieved by a human onboard a powered aircraft.

Originally, the monument, which resembles pylons used as course markers in early airplane races, was going to be concrete, but Warren insisted that it be constructed of North Carolina granite. The 4,500-ton structure, set 35 feet deep, has a concrete core with a veneer ranging from 1 to 4 feet of Mount Airy granite.

On the 25th anniversary of the first flight in 1928, the monument cornerstone was laid atop Big Kill Devil Hill, kicking off the $213,000 construction project. Stabilization of the hill, which had moved 450 feet to the southwest, began in 1929, with plantings of grasses and native vegetation.

In August 1933, what was then known as the Kill Devil Hill Monument was transferred from the War Department to the National Park Service. During World War II, the name was changed to the Kill Devil Hill National Monument Memorial. In December 1953, in time for the 50th anniversary of the first flight, the park officially became Wright Brothers National Memorial.

Today, the monument towers 151 feet over the park’s 428 acres, a significant expansion from its earlier 314 acres. From the top of the 90-foot-tall hill, visitors are treated to a panoramic view of the site and the ocean and the surrounding town. But the interior has rarely been accessible for long to the public.

Inside, a four-story, windowless staircase winds up the midsection, narrowing as it climbs to a small observation platform at top. For those used to climbing the interiors of lighthouses, for instance, the experience inside the Wright Monument is comparably claustrophobic.

In recent decades, the agency has occasionally opened the interior to the public for a limited time, but the persistent challenge with water seepage and leaking has generally made climbing untenable.

A discussion in the report about a proposed monument restoration in the mid-2000s referenced a 1995 safety inspection discussion about the stairs.

“Elements noted in the safety inspection that wouldn’t be corrected in the restoration included the steep narrow steps, a lack of guard rails at the top to prevent visitors from falling over the edge, and the extreme difficulty in emergency personnel reaching and removing an injured visitor” in an emergency,” it said.

Despite the continual challenge from “moisture intrusion” inside the monument, the structure overall is in good condition. From the outside, the monument and its terrace are gleaming and well-maintained.

The rotating beacon, extinguished since World War II, was restored and turned back on in 1998.

Lanier said that Quinn Evans Architects firm, which wrote the report, is also contracted to do the design for the restoration work. The requested amount for the project is $2.7 million for the design and construction, which included $100,000 for the historic structure report. Costs for that report, which the park requested in 2019, have already been allocated.

“The historic structure report was part of the compliance for the project, so we wanted a historic structure report written first, so it would help guide the repair of the monument,” Lanier said.

Funding for the remaining costs is expected to be provided in the fiscal year 2025 budget, she said.

Featured Image

Aurora borealis, the result of an intense solar geomagnetic storm reaching Earth, lights up the skies over Jockey’s Ridge State Park in Nags Head late Thursday evening. Photo: Catherine Kozak

ROANOKE ISLAND — While immigration is a hot election-year topic, it’s perhaps notable that speculation continues unabated about the fate of America’s first English immigrants who vanished into the mists of history 437 years ago, with yet another twist in the saga of the real people who became known as the “Lost Colony.”

Could at least a group from the colony that briefly settled on the shores of today’s Roanoke Island, on North Carolina’s Outer Banks, have moved, not only 50 miles south or west, as many believe, but simply to the other side of the sound?

According to records, when the colony’s governor John White returned three years after he left for supplies in 1587, the only evidence of the colony’s whereabouts was the word “Croatoan” – once the home of the Croatan Indians on Hatteras Island – carved on a fort palisade, and the letters “CRO” carved in an oak tree. That has been widely interpreted as a signal from the colonists that they moved to Croatoan – that is, Hatteras.

Alternately, there were signs that could have meant they went 50 miles into the mainland, as White said was discussed with the colonists before he departed.

But in a recent research report, “Croatan: The Untold Story,” veteran archaeologist Eric Klingelhofer, vice president of research with the nonprofit First Colony Foundation, says that a review of historic maps indicates that the Croatan tribe who had befriended the Roanoke colonists did not actually live on Hatteras Island; they lived on land across from Roanoke Island at what is now mainland Dare County. So if at least some colonists went to live with the Croatan Indians, they may have had to merely cross the sound.

“Cartographic study therefore suggests that a broad territory was attributed in the historical period to the remnant Croatoans, and that the likely location for their core habitation and Dasemunkepeuc itself lay northwest of Roanoke in the vicinity of modern Mashoes,” Klingelhofer asserts in the report, published on the foundation’s website.

Dasemunkepeuc, an Algonquian village, was located at present-day Mann’s Harbor, near Mashoes. The Croatan and Roanoke were branches of Algonquian Indians.

What his research shows is that the Croatan had left Buxton on Hatteras Island at some point after the arrival of the English in the mid-1580s, and relocated to the mainland where they could grow crops, Klingelhofer, a retired professor of history at Mercer University, told Coastal Review in a recent interview.

“It looks like, from these maps, which were most of the official governmental maps, that the Mashoes area and south of that Manns Harbor area was the land of the Croatoans,” he said, using an alternate name for the Croatan. “The Roanokes, who probably had more problems with disease because they had greater contacts, they may have been there for a while. But then they moved south, maybe because of better resources, or there were more friendly natives that they had relations with, or something like that. And then they don’t know what happened to them beyond the fact that they were no longer in this area.”

Long catnip for charlatans, fabulists and conspiracy dabblers, the disappearance of Sir Walter Raleigh’s colony on Roanoke Island – England’s first attempted settlement in the New World – has been dubbed the “nation’s oldest mystery” for a reason: Only bits of evidence have been found that point to what may have happened to most of the 117 men, women and children who had sailed to Roanoke Island more than four centuries ago.

Perhaps because of its ephemeral intrigue, the Lost Colony, a precursor to Jamestown in 1607, the first permanent English settlement, has been the focus of numerous archaeological surveys and digs – both professional and amateur – for decades. It has sparked a beloved long-running local summer theater production. It has spawned magical fables of a White Doe and of large stones carved with cryptic writing, both linked to Virginia Dare, a colonist’s baby born in 1587. And it has inspired many books, some more authoritative than others, including Klingelhofer’s, “Excavating The Lost Colony Mystery, The Map, the Search the Discovery,” published in 2023 in association with the foundation, which features a collection he edited of research by historians, archaeologists and others.

The foundation has worked closely with pre-colonial experts who have conducted research at Williamsburg and Jamestown in Virginia, as well as at Fort Raleigh National Historic Site on Roanoke Island, which has yielded artifacts but no hints of the colonists’ settlement. In a recent archaeological exploration, the foundation had found evidence of first contact between the English explorers and Native Americans at Fort Raleigh, and also has unearthed artifacts that indicate some Lost Colonists may have lived for a time at riverfront sites in Bertie County, dubbed Site X and Site Y.

Despite the growing volume of information that has been collected over the years, and numerous Indian and English artifacts that have been unearthed, to date no pre-colonial smoking gun has been found that fills in the big blanks about the elusive Lost Colony.

“We don’t know where they started out from,” Charles Ewen, distinguished professor of anthropology at East Carolina University’s Thomas Harriot College of Arts and Sciences, told Coastal Review. “We don’t know where they went. We have sort of the general vicinity and it’s become this wonderful mystery that people are trying to figure out.”

Ewen, more cohort than rival of Klingelhofer, has also recently written a book, with co-author E. Thomson Shields Jr.: “Becoming the Lost Colony, The History, Lore and Popular Culture of the Roanoke Mystery,” published in 2024.

Whatever detritus the colonists left behind may have been lost to erosion along the shores of the Croatan Sound or to decay in the swamps. But there are also unanswered questions about 16^th century people’s choice of living conditions, and Ewen agreed that the mainland could have provided better shelter and more food.

“In fact, I think most archeologists think that the Outer Banks were just seasonally occupied,” Ewen said. “So when they said they were prepared to move 50 miles into the main, I think the Outer Banks during the winter would not have been a terribly hospitable place.”

Deciphering the clues of the Lost Colony, like a 400-year-old board game, is why the mystery of their fate continues to fascinate.

Klingelhofer, a founding member of the First Colony Foundation, a volunteer group of professional archaeologists established in 2003, has explained that their overall mission is finding evidence to fill in the gaps about the 1584-1587 Roanoke Voyages, which ultimately led to early American English colonization. Still, it’s always the Lost Colony story from the 1587 Roanoke Voyage that most ignites the public imagination and spurs continued investigations and research, such as Klingelhofer’s work.

Both Klingelhofer and the foundation, and Ewen and East Carolina University, have a close association with the late archaeologist David Phelps, professor emeritus of anthropology at ECU who died in 2009 at age 79.

An expert on prehistoric and Algonquian archaeology, Phelps was renowned for his work studying Tuscarora Indian sites at Neoheroka in Greene County and Jordan’s Landing in Bertie County. When Hurricane Emily in 1993 exposed vast amounts of pottery sherds and shell midden in Buxton, it was Phelps’ numerous excavations that determined the site had been the Croatan capital that stretched a half-mile from Cape Creek to Buxton village.

Phelps had dated what he called “the Hatteras site” from 1650 to 1720.

Manteo, who had befriended the colonists, had lived in Croatan, and his mother was the tribe’s leader. For that reason, some historians hypothesized that the colonists may have fled there, although most say the Croatan had inadequate food and space to accommodate more than a small number.

An archaeologist who had worked alongside Phelps as a young man, Clay Swindell, is now working with the foundation, Klingelhofer said.

Even though centuries separate our contemporary population from historic colonial explorers, human nature was likely as prone to boasting and deception then as it is now.

Hence, Klingelhofer said it’s worth noting that everyone is presuming what White, the governor who reported the “CRO” letters at the Lost Colony’s fort, actually knew and didn’t know.

“John White wasn’t always trustworthy,” he said. “He assumes a lot of things. He claims a lot of things that are not necessarily fully the truth. A lot of it is his interpretation of particular people and their motives behind the people that he has gotten angry with.”

In other words, White’s account may not be the only version of Lost Colony history to consider.

“But any good historian knows better than to trust a person who’s even an eyewitness to things,” Klingelhofer said. “You need corroboration. And sadly, there isn’t any except for in these maps.”

As Ewen sees the Lost Colony, all of the foundation’s hypotheses could be legitimate, but as he and Klingelhofer agree, it’s all pieces of a puzzle yet to be solved.

“I think it’s very difficult to say with any degree of certainty, until we find some more physical evidence, that we have an idea of what happened,” he said. “We need to find Christian burials from the 16th century, and I think that will really start putting us in the vicinity.”

English burials, he added, would be east-west, with the head at the west end. The clothing items would date to the 16th century, and skeletal analysis would indicate they were European. But archaeologists and historians are by no means ready to throw in the towel in pursuit of the Lost Colony.

“Honestly, I think it’s going to be an accidental discovery,” Ewen said. “Somebody will come across something while they’re developing … (and) stumble upon some of this stuff. And the archeologists will get involved, and then it will be, ‘Oh, OK!’”

Like a slow-rolling disaster, the third house in four days collapsed Tuesday afternoon into the surf along the village of Rodanthe, casting tons more construction debris into the Atlantic and onto the beaches for miles within Cape Hatteras National Seashore.

“We have 30 people that are out there right now,” Cape Hatteras National Seashore Superintendent Dave Hallac told Coastal Review Wednesday in an interview, referring to park service staff who are racing the wind and tide to pick up debris, working alongside dozens of contract workers and volunteers.

Hallac described the state of the beach after the house fell Tuesday as a “total mess.” The ocean claimed two houses on Friday.

“I would say the debris field was so dense and thick, for the first quarter-mile south of the house collapse site that it was difficult to actually walk,” he said. “And that debris field continued to be fairly significant, actually, past the Rodanthe Pier.”

The superintendent also observed a large amount of “extremely hazardous” debris in the surf being “thrown all over the place as the waves were breaking.”

According to a National Park Service press release, the park has temporarily closed the beach from G A Kohler Court to Wimble Shores North Court in Waves, including the Dare County beach access on N.C. Highway 12 in Rodanthe.

Swimmers and surfers have been warned to stay out the ocean in front of the villages of Rodanthe, Waves and Salvo, and pedestrians have been cautioned to wear hard-soled shoes in the vicinity of the beach and ocean.

The latest house collapse at 23039 G A Kohler Court follows one at 23001 G A Kohler Court that fell Friday morning and another to its south at 23009 G A Kohler that collapsed shortly after 9:15 that night.

Each of the wooden houses, built on tall pilings, were unoccupied at the time of their collapse.

In a frustrating twist, plans were in the works to proactively demolish the house that collapsed Tuesday.

Hallac said the house had been foreclosed on and the bank had hired a real estate agent, who in turn hired a local contractor to tear it down. The contractor, W.M. Dunn Construction in Powells Point, was ready to go, he said, but the work was delayed by the very same high tides and powerful currents — pumped up by a couple of offshore storm systems and the full moon — that ultimately took it down. The same house had already been damaged Friday when the nearby house at 23009 collapsed.

So instead of the demolition, the contractor will be doing the cleanup of the house debris, Hallac said.

“Trying to secure the bulk of debris between the tide cycles after the third house fell,” a Tuesday post said on the contractor’s website.

A total of 10 houses have collapsed in the last four years in the Cape Hatteras National Seashore, and W.M. Dunn and company owner Mike Dunn have been contracted to clean up most of them. 

Although homeowners are responsible for hiring the contractor to clean up the debris from their house, the situation is complicated not just by the fact that it doesn’t stay where it fell, but also that it is mixed with debris from other collapsed houses.

Homeowners are billed by the park service for the time that park service staff dedicates to cleaning debris, Hallac said. They are also asked to move or demolish houses on the eroded shoreline that are at risk of being destroyed by the ocean. But the agency, he said, is not out to punish homeowners, many of whom bought their houses when they were far back from the ocean.

“We’re focused on working with the homeowners and finding constructive solutions,” he said. “Many of these owners have owned these houses for a long period of time.”

In the first two recent collapses, remains of the structures and whatever they contained could be found 20 miles down the beach, Hallac said.

Once debris gets into the Atlantic, it’s nearly impossible, or certainly much more difficult, to retrieve. Huge boards with nails in them and pieces of fiberglass, strands of wire, broken windows — anything and everything found in a house — could bob around the ocean, be taken far away by currents or sink into the sandy bottom.

Although the ideal solution would be getting every house off the beach before it falls, the reality is that a combination of private property rights versus public safety concerns, coastal regulations and policies, insurance compensation, legal constraints, and multiple jurisdictional issues make efficient and effective responses to eroding shorelines and other climate change complexities extremely difficult.

A report released in August, “Managing Threatened Oceanfront Structures: Ideas From An Interagency Work Group,” was the culmination of multiple meetings the work group held over two years. The group was co-chaired by Hallac and Braxton Davis. During this time, Davis was the director of the Division of Coastal Management, under the North Carolina Department of Environmental Quality. Since February, Davis has been the executive director of the North Carolina Coastal Federation.

According to the report, in 2020 more than 750 of about 8,777 oceanfront structures on the North Carolina coast were at risk from oceanfront erosion, a term that was defined as lacking dunes or vegetation between the structure and ocean. It also noted that “the situation is anticipated to worsen with increasing sea level rise and coastal storms.”

The task force reviewed existing policies, laws, grant funds and coastal programs, and discussed tweaks or additions to them.

None of the numerous short-term or long-term proposals detailed in the report included simple or quick solutions. For instance, one idea was updating and revising the National Flood Insurance Program, but that could require an act of Congress. Still, the report broadly outlines options and goals.

With the recent collapses, Hallac said the report is getting more attention from their partners with the state and Dare County, among others.

“Definitely, our colleagues are reading the report, and we’re having a lot of discussions about certain options that are in the report,” he said.

For instance, there is more interest in scaling up a property-acquisition program, similar to a grant program the National Seashore used recently to acquire and demolish two other threatened oceanfront structures.

“So I think there’s a lot of momentum behind the report,” Hallac said. “I can’t say there’s a specific action that has come out of it, but it has definitely been a platform for having more discussions and working towards solutions. But I will continue to say that I’m not sure there’s going to be a silver bullet,” he added. “It’s a matter of, I think, all of the ideas that are in that (report) have merit. They’re worth further discussion.”

Meanwhile, two more houses remain standing — for now — in the surf near where the other three just fell.

BUXTON — As storm-roiled ocean surf continued to unbury noxious reminders of an old submarine surveillance base, aggressive action is finally being taken this week to address the ongoing blight of a Cape Hatteras National Seashore beach.

Contractors for the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers are scheduled to start work Friday near Old Lighthouse Beach in an intensified effort to locate the source of intermittent fuel odors and oily soil clumps first exposed more than a year ago by storm erosion.

“The overall objective of the response action is to remove visible petroleum-impacted soils from the beach and dunes,” said Cheri Pritchard, media operations chief at the Corps’ Savannah office, in a Sept. 18 email response to questions from Coastal Review. The specific amount of material that will be removed, Pritchard said in the email, was “yet to be determined.”

The Corps in 1991 designated the former Naval facility as a Formerly Used Defense Site, or FUDS property. The Corps has since taken responsibility for cleanup of petroleum infrastructure and spills and leaks in surrounding soil at the 50-acre site. But during numerous visits over recent months to the site, the FUDS teams said that the current source of the petroleum had been difficult to pinpoint due to increased erosion, ever-changing conditions and the passage of time.

Bay West, a St. Paul, Minnesota-based environmental services company, was recently awarded a contract by the Corps to remove contaminated soils at the site.

According the information the FUDS team provided to Pritchard in the email, the contractors will work in up to four quadrants of various sizes along the beach and dunes, likely using heavy equipment such as excavators and roll-off containers.

“The contractor will excavate and containerize the petroleum-impacted soils from these areas and then properly transport and dispose of the material at an offsite waste management facility,” according to the email.

Depths of excavations of oily soil will vary, but generally would be expected to go down to the water table.

After fielding numerous questions and concerns from the community during the Sept. 3 Dare County Board of Commissioners meeting, Col. Ronald Sturgeon, the Corps’ Savannah District commander, traveled down to Buxton with other Corps officials.

About a week later, the Corps announced that it would send a district-level team in response to the fuel sheen and odors to monitor the site. According to the FUDS email, the team, which will stay until the contractors are onsite, has performed test pits on the beach and west of the dunes to identify petroleum-impacted soils.

 “We are committed to the safety of the community. Together with our federal, state and local partners, we’re going to find the contamination, and we’re going to remove it,” Lt. Gen. Scott A. Spellmon, Corps of Engineers commanding general, said in a Sept. 9 press statement.

In September 2023, the National Park Service closed three-tenths of a mile of Buxton Beach after reports of oily peat clumps on the beach, a strong odor of diesel, and an oily sheen in the nearshore ocean.

In addition to the fuel issues, the beach was littered with remnants of Naval base infrastructure, including large chunks of concrete and rusted rebar and wiring.

In the year since, the debris has been covered or partially covered by sand, then reexposed, depending on storms, tides and winds. And the fuel smells and sheen have also come and gone, although their appearance is more mysterious. But as the ocean eats away at the shoreline, each exposure seems worse than the time before.

Related: ‘Strong petroleum smells’ lead to expanded beach closure

With strong northeast winds on Sept. 5 carrying powerful petroleum odors along the beach near the FUDS location, as well as exposing more debris, Cape Hatteras National Seashore announced in a press release that it was expanding the size of an already-closed beach area.

“The precautionary expansion, implemented in consultation with the Dare County Department of Health and Human Services, closes the beach from the southern end of the location of beachfront homes in the village of Buxton, located at the end of Old Lighthouse Road, to approximately 0.25 miles south of the old lighthouse jetties,” according to the statement.

“We are working with the Coast Guard Sector N.C. and the EPA’s Regional Response team to see if there is some way the saturated sections of petroleum soil that are being uncovered can be removed to mitigate the releases into the ocean,” Dave Hallac, the superintendent of National Parks of Eastern North Carolina, said in a Sept. 5 email.  “We are also asking if something can be done to prevent the sheens that are coming out of the sand/water interface from washing into the ocean.”

Hallac was unavailable to be interviewed for this report.

Although the Buxton Naval Facility, decommissioned in 1982, qualified as a FUDS property — a status for sites transferred outside Department of Defense control prior to Oct. 1986 — the Savannah district says it does not have the authority to remove the remnant infrastructure from the property.

Still, in the process of removing petroleum-impacted soil, if it is found under remaining infrastructure, the Corps will respond.

“The response action will include excavating, with the possible removal, of petroleum-impact soil beneath some of the remnant infrastructure which may require removal of limited amounts of infrastructure that is incidental to accessing the impacted soil,” the FUDS team said in the email.

The site cleanup is made more complicated by the fact that the Coast Guard most recently used the property as a base until 2010, and left behind its own hazards, which are currently being reviewed by the Coast Guard.

According to a portion of its special use permit issued in 1956 to the Navy that the Cape Hatteras National Seashore cited on its website, it appears that the Navy may have slipped out of town before meeting its part of the deal.

Condition 11 of the permit states that “The permittee shall remove all structures, foundations, and pavements, and clean up and restore the site prior to or immediately following termination of use.”

“The Navy concluded operations at NAVFAC Cape Hatteras in June 1982;” the park service website said, “however, all buildings and infrastructure remained at the site.”

But with the Navy long gone and the Corps saying it lacks authority to get rid of the growing amount of debris, all eyes are now focused on getting rid of the petroleum pollution that is washing into the Atlantic and coating the beach.

The debris cleanup will be for another day.

DUCK — For a few days this summer, three split-hull barges chugged south from Norfolk, Virginia, to deposit 6,500 cubic yards of olivine sand mined in Norway at a nearshore area of this small oceanfront town on the northern Outer Banks.

But with completion of the barge’s work in July, there’s no visible evidence that the trademarked Coastal Carbon Capture pilot research project is underway. The Vesta company project is to test whether olivine sand could permanently remove tons of carbon from the atmosphere and the ocean.

“So, I think ultimately, at the end of the day, it was a successful deployment in the sense that we’re set up for monitoring this project and getting the scientific results out of it,” Zach Cockrum, vice president of policy and partnerships with Vesta, told Coastal Review this week.

As the company’s website tells it, it’s taken decades of collaborative research to get to the point where data can be collected to support Vesta’s belief that plentiful and natural olivine could, if not outright save the planet, at least mitigate the problem.

“We could reverse climate change,” the company says on its website.

Vesta, which is permitted under the federal Clean Water Act and the state Coastal Area Management Act, has contracted with Hourglass Climate, a U.S-based nonprofit research organization, to monitor the site for two to three years. The site is a 300-foot-by-2,200-foot corridor situated 1,500 feet offshore of Duck’s beach in 25 feet of water.

Olivine, which has a light green tint, is a common magnesium silicate mineral similar to the quartz in Outer Banks sand. When it dissolves in seawater, it has the unique ability to remove carbon from the atmosphere and reduce acidity in the ocean.

Although olivine is not uncommon — there’s plenty in western North Carolina, for instance — Vesta’s coastal research is novel, including its two earlier projects testing olivine as part of shoreline replenishment and in a small area of marsh.

“But these pilot projects, using olivine in these coastal settings like this, is something that Vesta alone is doing, as far as we know, in the world,” Cockrum said.

According to company estimates, the Coastal Carbon Capture pilot project could remove at least 5,000 tons of carbon dioxide from the ocean and atmosphere. 

Eventually, the goal is that olivine, milled down to compatible grain size, could be integrated into beach nourishment projects, making the projects more affordable while helping to reduce carbon pollution. The olivine does lose its carbon removal ability over time, but further research is needed to determine how often it may need to be replenished.

As an alkaline material, olivine reacts with the carbonic acid, which contains carbon dioxide, as it weathers in the seawater. In the process, the acid is converted to bicarbonate, which provides long-term carbon storage.

Hourglass has a service agreement with the nearby Army Corps of Engineers Research and Development Center Field Research Facility, known locally as the Duck Pier, to use their equipment, vessels and amphibious vehicles at the site, Cockrum said.

“And then the researchers at the Army Corps are also looking at the sediment transport, how the olivine is moving in that ecosystem,” he added. “And that’s something that they’re interested in, outside of the carbon removal aspect of it, because olivine is a traceable mineral, so it’s helping them understand the dynamics of that coastal system.”

Hourglass is using “benthic flux chambers” that are placed on top of the sand for about a week to take consistent measurements of water over the sediment, Cockrum explained. There will also be sampling to look at benthic organisms in and around the olivine, as well as the surrounding ecosystem, and the carbon removal will be measured.

Since olivine is a natural mineral found on numerous locations, the issue is not its inherent safety; it’s what its impact would be to an ecosystem, as well as its carbon-removal ability, where it is not naturally occurring — hence, the testing at Duck. But not all olivine deposits react the same.

For instance, Papakolea Beach in Hawaii is notably green from its high olivine content. But it’s a different scenario, scientifically.

“I think the data on the naturally occurring beaches is complicated because of differences in grain size,” Cockrum said. “Like this gets way into the weeds of finer grain olivine dissolves more quickly, and therefore releases or captures carbon more efficiently. So, there are differences between the sort of existing beaches that are out there and what we’re hoping to do in these different settings. This is another thing that we’re looking at paying close attention to when I talk about how efficient is carbon removal.”

Part of the funding for research has been provided from the Coastal Carbon Capture Development Fund, a 501(c)(3) public charity. The project monitoring is also being supported by University of North Carolina Greensboro, UNC Wilmington, and the Coastal Studies Institute at East Carolina University Outer Banks Campus. 

Vesta is promising to share monitoring results publicly, including with regulatory agencies, and will be published in peer-reviewed journals.

Vesta’s monitoring partners are already starting to get some data back, Cockrum said.

“We’re in the process of basically analyzing that data and figuring out the best way to share it,” he said.

One of the most important goals of the pilot project is for data to establish how much carbon is being removed, and how quickly. And if it’s as the researchers are hoping to see, olivine could be elevated from its modest mineral status to a savior of the planet. Or at least a natural helper. 

“So, we go from here to really honing in on what is the coastal protection benefit,” he said. “Just in general, the coastal protection industry, whether it’s the Corps or any number of communities, they’re all looking for different sediment sources. And so, our hope is that we can be an affordable source of sand for any number of coastal protection projects.”

RODANTHE — It’s as awesome as it is awful to watch the ocean take down a house, as happened again last week on an eroded beach in Rodanthe.

Once again, the ocean’s power was pumped up by a storm, this time Hurricane Ernesto churning far offshore, and once again, the stunning image of the otherwise sturdy looking house swaying on its pilings before collapsing into the surf was caught on video and shared with national media.

It’s the seventh house within the Cape Hatteras National Seashore to be taken by the sea over the last four years. But it undoubtably will not be the last.

“I’m so disappointed in what happened,” Cape Hatteras National Seashore Superintendent Dave Hallac told Coastal Review Monday. “But I’m not the least bit surprised.”

Related: Cleanup continues after beach house collapses in Rodanthe

Hallac said he received a phone call at about 5:30 p.m. Friday informing him that the unoccupied house at 23214 Corbina Drive, which was teetering in the surf for days, had fallen.

State and federal laws currently seem powerless to prevent houses on eroded beaches from continuing to fall into the ocean and spreading debris for miles over public and private lands. Homeowners cannot collect on their National Flood Insurance Program policy until the house is destroyed, and even then, only up to a maximum of $250,000.

Last year, the National Park Service, through a pilot program, was able to buy out two threatened oceanfront homes that it later demolished, but the grant program is limited.

So for now, homeowners who can’t afford to move their houses from the ocean, or those who don’t have the land to move it to, have few if any options to get it off the beach.

In addition to correspondence from Dare County, the National Park Service had sent letters of concern to the owners on June 5 and again on Aug. 14, Hallac said.

After the collapse, the superintendent said, the owners hired contractor Mike Dunn of W.M. Dunn Construction, LLC, of Powells Point, who has handled numerous cleanup operations on seashore property. Even though the contractors were limited by the heavy surf conditions from doing the heaviest work, they began gathering large pieces on Saturday and making piles on the beach.

“We appreciate that the owners have moved quickly to begin cleanup,” Hallac said.

Typically, the longshore current carries everything to the south, but in this instance the hurricane swell was moving to the north, Hallac said. By Sunday, the chunks of wood and nails, siding, insulation, PVC piping and other construction debris had traveled about 11 miles to near the N.C. Highway 12 Canal Zone. The majority of debris washed up by the north entrance to the new Rodanthe Bridge.

Beaches are closed from the northern boundary of Rodanthe to the northern end of the Rodanthe Bridge, or “jug handle bridge.” The park service and officials at the Pea Island National Wildlife Refuge are also warning swimmers and beachgoers to avoid the beaches and stay out of the water around all areas of the beaches and surf in Rodanthe.

Purchased in 2019

According to Dare County records, the 1,516-square-foot house, which had four bedrooms and two bathrooms, was built in 1973. It was purchased in 2019 for $339,000 by David M. Kern and Teresa T. Kern of Hershey, Pennsylvania. The deed lists the lot at the time as 10,018 square feet.

Coincidentally, Hallac had displayed the rapid rate of erosion on the section of beach in front of the Corbina Drive house as part of a broader, more general presentation about the national seashore on Aug. 12 in Buxton.

In a photo dated July 30 included in the presentation, the house was shown up against a dune, with all its pilings in dry sand and numerous feet of beach between it and the ocean. But in another photo taken Aug. 12, the pilings were in the surf, the dune was gone and the house was listing toward the ocean.

“You can see how dramatic the change was,” Hallac told Coastal Review, referring to the photo comparison. “And just a few days later it collapsed.”

Five other houses in the area of GA Kohler Drive in Rodanthe are also now sometimes standing in surf, even at low tide, he said. Some have various damages, including pilings that sway back and forth, and broken pools, beach accesses, decks and stairs.

Dare County Planning Department Director Noah Gilliam said that two septic systems in Rodanthe and one in Buxton were at least partially compromised as a result of Ernesto. Also, he said, about 23 structures had minor damage from the storm. In addition, there were about a dozen houses that had previously been characterized as threatened oceanfront structures.

Gilliam said that ocean water sitting, or even surging, under a house is not in and of itself a rationale to suspend occupancy certificates — properties are decertified only if aspects of damage is covered in the North Carolina building code, such as nonfunctional septic systems, compromised electrical systems, and lack of egress and ingress.

The Corbina Drive house, he said, was decertified Aug. 8. The house was also decertified on April 1 after showing signs of structural failures of some pilings, stairs and the septic. The house was recertified July 16, he said.

Gilliam said that the owners had another lot across the road and he believed they had been investigating moving their house there at the time it collapsed. Although he has no details, Gilliam said he knows from permits for other houses that were moved that it is expensive to move a house even to the other side of a lot. Moving it across a road requires additional permits.

A larger house that was moved about 100 feet back from the ocean on the same lot, for instance, was estimated in its permit to cost about $350,000 to move, he said.

The owner of the house at 23214 Corbina Drive requested that his name not be used but told Coastal Review that marine engineers who were consulted before the house was purchased said it would be fine for a while, and the other lot was purchased as a contingency for later years.

“We really weren’t aware (then) of the erosion rate,” the owner said, adding that the real estate agent did not raise any concerns about the issue.

Although the house was damaged earlier this year, he was caught off guard with how fast the beach disappeared this month.

“This was just way unexpected,” he said.

Although the house is gone, he said he appreciated the help and kindness of the people of Rodanthe.

“It’s a beautiful community,” he said. “We enjoyed our time there — we enjoyed it very much. Unfortunately, the amount of beach erosion is far more than we ever considered.

“We’re heartbroken at the loss of our home,” he said.

EDENTON — No ribbon-cutting or silver shovels wielded by a few politicians would represent the scale of North Carolina’s second land-based wind energy operation. Instead, Apex Clean Energy invited hundreds of community members, landowners and government officials to join them Wednesday morning on Chowan County farmland to a sign a prone, 242-foot-long silver turbine blade to kick off Timbermill Wind, a project to generate 189 megawatts of electricity with 45 three-bladed turbines.

After being shuttled in buses to the 6,300-acre site from Edenton United Methodist Church, where a breakfast event was held, folks lined up, chatting amiably while waiting to scribble their names on the blade.

First up, a man in a slate-blue suit and green tie strode up to the blade with a fat blue marking pen in his right hand. Reaching up while contractors watched, he wrote his name in large, looping cursive letters: Roy Cooper. Then, under his name he added “governor” and turned to the crowd, grinning widely. Everyone cheered and the signing commenced. Before long, about 250 different signatures covered the length of the blade.

One name, Sadie B. Eure, stood out just to the right of Cooper’s signature. That’s his mother-in-law’s name, said Donald “Randy” Park, pointing at the blade.

Eure and her late husband, Garland, who had three daughters, operated Eure Seed Farms in Perquimans County, Park said. Sadie Eure owns 300 hundred acres at the Timbermill site and has a lease agreement with the company for the turbines on her land.

Park, a retired farmer who lives in Belhaven, said that most of the farmers who grow crops such as soybeans, corn, cotton or wheat at the site are pleased with the project because they can still farm around the turbines, while also collecting regular payments.

“The majority are,” he said. “There are a few that are unhappy.”

Some don’t like the way the turbines look, he said.

“I don’t think they’re an eyesore,” Park said. And the payments enable farmers to be profitable, especially when the weather is not cooperating.

Eure, who is 93, started leasing her land to Apex about 8 to 10 years ago, Park said, collecting $1,587 a month. He doesn’t know what the monthly rent will be once the facility is operational, “But it’ll be a whole lot more than that.”

“It helps to have an extra income,” he said. “She’ll be passing this on to her heirs, too.”

Chowan County has also benefited from the project and will continue to for its operational life, which is expected to be about 30 years.

“We are in effect greatly expanding our tax base in one fell swoop,” Gene Jordan, chair of the Chowan County Board of Education, told the audience at the earlier event at the Edenton church.

Jordan, who is a farmer, said that the wind energy helps diversify their resources while supporting the community and the landowners.

“My family will be able to host seven turbines,” he said. “I’m optimistic we will be able to farm for years to come.”

In addition to creating 200 jobs and generating about $25 million spent with North Carolina businesses during its construction, the project is expected to provide up to $33 million in tax revenue over its lifetime.

The project, delayed by numerous glitches including the COVID-19 pandemic, took 11 years to complete, which Apex CEO Ken Young said is about twice the time it typically takes to build a large wind farm.

“It’s coming back to life,” he said, comparing it to a cat’s nine lives.

Sprinkling his description of the project during his speech at the church with words like “fortitude” and “blood, sweat and tears,” Young credited his team and its partners. “That spirit and dedication is why we’re here today with a $500 million facility, fully developed, financed and well under construction,” he told the audience.

Apex will own and operate the facility when it is completed later this year, the company said in a press release. Last year, Timbermill announced a power-purchase agreement with Google, which will contribute to the clean energy needs to offset energy usage at its data centers.

“Google is buying the output from this project,” Young clarified in a later interview.

Most of the project’s difficulties, besides the pandemic, were to be expected, said Richard Bunch, Apex project representative and retired director of the Edenton-Chowan Chamber of Commerce. “It was all permitting issues,” he said, adding that there were lots of discussions with the Army Corps of Engineers and the U.S. military that were worked through.

But whatever the bumps in the road, Bunch said Timbermill Wind is an asset for the county.

“It’s tremendous,” he said in an interview after the signing. “The occupancy tax this year is probably going to its highest ever,” he said, citing revenue related to construction. “Fuel sales, rooms, food — it just goes on and on.”

Even after the project is completed, Bunch said there will six or seven full-time staff employed locally by Timbermill.

Dr. Ellis Lawrence, who has served on the Chowan County Board of Commissioners for 14 years, said after the signing that the revenue created by the project is already being reflected in the county’s plan to build a new high school. And the county’s tax base will continue to have an annual infusion of $1.3 million from the project.

“We have watched it go full circle,” he said. “We have dealt with the ups and downs.”

In the beginning, a lot of people were calling in opposition, he said. But now most residents seem to have come around to be in favor of it.

“I was there when it started. I’ve heard it all,” he said. “In the beginning, they were talking about the bird killings, the noise that it would make. This is nothing like that. And the science is behind it. It’s more efficient. This is an alternate source of energy and we need to take advantage of it.”

Cooper applauded local, state and federal efforts working together for the success of the project.

 “When you talk about clean energy, a lot of times people think about climate change,” he said at the church event. “But what it’s really about is great-paying jobs and a cleaner environment.”

Sometimes it’s a puzzle why people don’t ask more questions, such as, “Has the river that’s down your road ever flooded your house, the house I’m thinking of buying?”

The maxim “buyer beware” is wise advice no matter where a house is situated, but it’s good to have rules in place to cover homebuyers’ backs for the things they overlook or wrongly assume.

As of July 1, prospective real estate buyers in North Carolina must now be provided the required North Carolina Real Estate Commission residential disclosure form by the seller that for the first time includes questions related to a property’s flood risk.

The change in the form was requested in a petition for rulemaking filed by the Southern Environmental Law Center in December 2022 on behalf of the Natural Resources Defense Council, or NRDC, the North Carolina Justice Center, MDC Inc., the North Carolina Disaster Recovery and Resiliency School, Robeson County Church and Community Center, and NC Field.

“Most of those are small, local nonprofits that respond to disasters,” Brooks Rainey Pearson, senior attorney with the law center, told Coastal Review in an interview, referring to petitioners. “So we really wanted to give a voice to the people on the ground who deal with the fallout from flooding.”

Pearson said that the Real Estate Commission had quickly granted the petition at the time and agreed to add the questions proposed by petitioners. It was then delayed by mutual agreement, she said, to adjust the law to allow the commission to merely make changes in the form. That would avoid having to go through a lengthy rulemaking process.

“It was a longer journey than it should have been, but not because of any pushback,” she said. “I think everyone understands that homebuyers deserve to know if the property has flooded before.”

Questions about flooding that have been added to the disclosure statement include the following:

• Is the property located in a federal or other designated flood hazard zone?
• Has the property experienced damage due to flooding, water seepage or pooled water attributable to a natural event such as heavy rainfall, coastal storm surge, tidal inundation, or river overflow?
• Is there a current flood insurance policy covering the property?
• Is there a flood or Federal Emergency Management Agency elevation certificate for the property?
• Has (the property owner) ever filed a claim for flood damage to the property with any insurance provider, including the National Flood Insurance Program?

The form also notes that the requirement to obtain flood insurance passes down to all future owners for those properties that have received disaster assistance.

Joel Scata, senior attorney with the NRDC, a national environmental nonprofit organization that is one of the petitioners, said that in the past, the only flood information that had to be disclosed to homebuyers in North Carolina was whether the property was in a floodplain.

“Now with the changes, a buyer is going to have access to much more detailed information,” he told Coastal Review.

According to state law, residential property owners are required to complete the disclosure statement and provide it to a buyer before an offer is made to purchase the property.  New construction or never-occupied properties are exempted. Every question must be answered with “Y,” “N,” “NR” or “NA” for “Yes,” “No,” “No Representation,” and “Not Applicable,” respectively.

Despite stern language in the form about requirements, there is enough gray area to give pause to anyone with insight into human failings.

“An owner is not required to disclose any of the material facts that have a NR option, even if they have knowledge of them,” the statement says. Also: “If an owner selects NR, it could mean that the owner (1) has knowledge of an issue and chooses not to disclose it; or (2) simply does not know.”

The form does warn that failure to disclose hidden defects “may” result in civil liability. It also assures that if an owner selects “No,” it means that the owner is not aware of any problem. But if “the owner knows there is a problem or that the owner’s answer is not correct, the owner may be liable for making an intentional misstatement.”

If an owner selects NA, it means the property does not contain that particular item or feature.

Scata said that he believes that whatever remedies are available for enforcement are strictly civil, and do not include criminal charges in the case of fraud or misrepresentation.

“A buyer could file a civil suit, claim that the seller intentionally misled the buyer, make a fraud claim,” he said. But damages and other penalties would depend on the impact of what wasn’t disclosed, he added.

A buyer should take any “NR” answer as a cue to ask the owner about what they don’t want to disclose, Scata said, adding “it’s a good indication that something is wrong with the property.”

That choice could not be removed from the form unless it was done through a change in the legislation, he said.

“The buyer always has the right to go back and explicitly ask the seller the question,” he said. And don’t just push the question with the buyer, he said, but also go talk to neighbors about the situation with flooding episodes in the neighborhood.

Also, real estate brokers by law have a duty to disclose what they know, or reasonably should know, regardless of the seller’s response. “So if a seller says something like ‘No, there’s never been (flooding) on the property,’” Scata said, “but the Realtor knows that’s not true, there’s a duty on them to disclose. And they can be liable if they are complicit in that fraud.”

In that instance of potential fraud by a broker, the buyer can file a complaint with the Real Estate Commission.

According to an NRDC press release, homes in North Carolina with prior flood losses would be expected to average an annual loss of $1,211, compared to $61 for the average home. In 2021, there were 13,237 homes purchased that were estimated to have been previously flooded. The expected annual flood damage totals for those homes were estimated at about $16 million.

With climate change causing more intense rain and stronger storms, flooding is only going to become more of an issue, Pearson said.

“Before when you only had to disclose if the house was in a floodplain, well, that’s no longer a good indicator of whether your house might flood,” she said. “The best indicator of whether your house might flood is whether it’s flooded before. And so, we think, just for the sake of transparency, people deserve to know that. But they also deserve to know that because — I believe it’s called behavioral economics — when people have more information, they’ll make different and better decisions.”

Published jointly with Island Free Press

MANTEO — If there is a hurricane on the Outer Banks that renders Hatteras Island’s only highway impassable, the emergency channel between the island at Rodanthe to the Dare County mainland at Stumpy Point currently would not be accessible for ferries to provide supplies or evacuations.

“This needs to be very clear to our county commissioners,” said Ernie Foster, a Dare County Waterways Commission member, during the panel’s meeting Monday evening. “Emergency operations right now do not exist and (it’s) hurricane season.”

Foster, a Hatteras charter boat captain, made a motion to inform the Dare County Board of Commissioners that the emergency channel is not an option until a shoaled area in the Rodanthe Harbor basin is cleared. The commission approved the motion.

“There is no planned project right now with the Corps for Rodanthe,” said Catherine Peele, interim assistant director of marine asset management planning and development manager with the North Carolina Ferry Division, who spoke remotely to the commission.

The Army Corps of Engineers is responsible for maintenance of federal channels in the county’s inlets and waterways.

The Ferry Division is concerned that the shallow, shoaled area in the Rodanthe basin makes it too dangerous for ferry travel, creating risk of expensive damage to the vessels and danger to the operators and passengers. Although the remainder of the federal channel in the emergency route is navigable, that bad spot creates a controlling depth that renders the route inaccessible.

In a later interview, Peele said the Ferry Division and the county are working together “to see how we can overcome the challenge” of the Corps not being able to dredge in Rodanthe.

Meanwhile, she added, the division continues to do test runs with ferries at least twice a year in the state-owned Stumpy Point approach channel and basin and, so far, have been able to get in every year.

“So, we have been monitoring conditions,” she said. “We’re OK. We did a contract project in the basin a few years ago.”

Still, Peele added, the state is looking proactively at all its options to see if a project needs to be contracted, or if the division needs to schedule to do the project itself later this year. The division is also talking with the Corps and the county about the amount of available capacity for dredged material disposal in Stumpy Point.

A recent survey found that a relatively small area in the Rodanthe basin has only about 5 feet of water, Todd Horton, chief of the Corps’ waterways management section, speaking remotely, told the commissioners. Ferries require at least 5.5 feet of water.

A similar problem developed in 2018, when removal of shoaling was stymied because there was not adequate space available to dispose of the dredged material in Rodanthe. Dare County, which is responsible for maintaining dredged material disposal sites in the county, subsequently made repairs that addressed the capacity issue.

Fortunately, there has been no need in recent years for the backup evacuation route, but the channel is doing no one any good if some spots are too shallow for ferries to use when it is needed, said commission chairman Steve “Creature” Coulter.

“It’s a federal channel going into Rodanthe that we use for emergency operations,” he said, noting that the county does not have the authority to maintain it.

As another example of overlapping jurisdictional issues on the Outer Banks, clear passage through the emergency channel depends on the federal, state and county governments doing their respective parts, whether dredging the channel, building and repairing disposal areas, providing funds or doing channel surveys.

The state is responsible for the basin and an estimated 1,200-foot-long approach channel in Stumpy Point Harbor, and the federal government is responsible for the rest of the channel in Stumpy Point and all of the channel and the basin on the Rodanthe side. The county provides disposal sites for the dredged material, and a share of nonfederal funds to the Corps for projects.

An emergency transportation route was created in 2009 by the North Carolina Department of Transportation, which oversees the Ferry Division, to bypass washed-out N.C. Highway 12 in Mirlo Beach at Rodanthe’s north end. Ferry terminals were created in Rodanthe in 2001 and in Stumpy Point in 2002, and both were upgraded in 2013.

Emergency ferry service was implemented after Hurricane Irene in 2011 and Hurricane Sandy in 2012, as well as in 2013 when the aged Bonner Bridge was closed for safety reasons. Before the service was available, islanders were cut off from the world for weeks in November 2000 after a storm-tossed barge struck and severely damaged the bridge. And after Hurricane Isabel in 2003 destroyed part of N.C. 12 south of Frisco, ferries brought supplies to the island from Stumpy Point to Hatteras village.

Horton said that the Corps has $316,000 in nonfederal funds transferred by the county remaining from 2019, but he did not elaborate on when or if a project could be done in Rodanthe.

Joen Petersen, the Corps’ chief of floating plants, said in a later interview that the recent survey showed that 602 cubic yards would have to be removed from the shoaled area just outside the channel basin in Rodanthe to bring the channel to project depth of 6 feet.

Petersen said that the remainder of the channel on the Rodanthe side is sufficiently deep. Although he confirmed that there is no scheduled work at this time at the shoaled area in Rodanthe, he said that the Corps is in the process of planning a dredge project in the federal channel in Stumpy Point.

Information was not immediately available from the Corps, the state or the county to clarify when the Rodanthe channel was last dredged. But in general, the emergency channel has been dredged on an “as-needed” basis, Barton Grover, the Waterways Commission administrator, said in a later interview.  And in last year’s survey, it showed a 6-foot depth, which the Corps said did not require attention.

Considering that the most recent survey showed only 5 feet in Rodanthe — a foot shallower than the federally authorized depth of 6 feet — the Corps may change its assessment about doing a project, Grover said, adding that discussions are still in early stages.

While the agencies and the county continue to work toward a solution, the reality for the time being is that, with warnings of a potentially bad hurricane season swirling in the background, the just-in-case fallback for a transportation option on and off Hatteras Island is not going to be available.

The ferry service would still do its best to provide a workaround, Peele said.

“If there was an emergency,” she said, “we would do a test run from Hatteras to Stumpy Point to see if that’s a viable option for an emergency route.”

NAGS HEAD — Not unlike getting a vehicle tune-up before a risky cross-country trip, emergency responders and weather officials are reinforcing the messaging about ocean safety as hundreds of thousands of beach lovers head to the coast for the July Fourth holiday.

“In the Carolinas, rip currents are our biggest killer,” said Erik Heden, warning coordination meteorologist with the National Weather Service’s Newport/Morehead City office. Heden was speaking Thursday at the 2024 Eastern Carolinas Beach Hazards and Rip Currents Integrated Warning Team event held at Jennette’s Pier.

In addition to representatives from the National Weather Service, the team included input from local emergency and public safety officials and ocean rescue personnel, as well as government communication representatives to discuss current and future beach safety issues.

Since 2000, there have been 184 victims of rip current drownings in the Carolinas, 49% of whom were out-of-state residents, Heden said. Of them, 86% were male, most of them aged 41 to 50. Female victims were mostly between 31 and 40 years old.

“That’s four times the number of deaths from tornados, floods and wind combined,” Heden said.

The data didn’t include those who were caught in rips but their deaths were attributed to an associated cause such as a heart attack, he added. About 100 fatalities annually in the U.S. are estimated from rip currents, and as much as 80% of all ocean rescues are rip current-related.

But fortunately, there has been a lot of progress made in preventing the loss of life from rips, mostly by educating the public of the hazard, and by providing better tools to avoid the risk.

To stretch the road trip metaphor, staying safe can come down to commonsense measures such as checking road conditions and the weather report. Going to the ocean should be no different.

“Before we even get to the beach,” Heden said, “let’s talk about knowing some things.”

Those “things” include questions such as: Where are lifeguarded beaches? What are conditions that day at the beach location? Do you need a floatation device? What is the rip current risk?

Awareness can not only prevent drowning, it can also mean not having to be saved by lifeguards.

Recently, numerous news outlets reported that more than 150 beachgoers in New Hanover and Carteret counties and more than 80 at Carolina Beach alone were rescued from rip currents, which are channels of water typically formed at breaks in sand bars and that flow away from the beach.

People can sign up for alerts on beach conditions and daily rip current risks at North Carolina beaches from the National Weather Service. Dare County also offers a service that provides alerts from Dare County lifeguards about local beaches. 

Beachgoers also need to know about other hazards that include lightning, another big weather-related killer. Leave the beach immediately if you hear thunder. Lightning strikes can happen when a storm is as far as 10 miles away. Several strikes on the Outer Banks have happened when people were in the parking lot after exiting the beach.

Other risks ocean swimmers need to be aware of is shore break, that is, when a wave breaks forcefully in shallow water, and rogue waves that seemingly come out of nowhere and can throw a person into the surf.

“They can be deceptive and you don’t see them coming,” Hatteras Island Rescue Squad Supervisor Molly Greenwood said at a press briefing. “Never turn your back to the ocean.”

Even something as seemingly harmless as walking on the sand is dangerous when temperatures are high and the sun is strong. Ben Abe with Chicamacomico Banks Volunteer Fire Department water rescue said that one man suffered second-degree burns on the bottom of his feet from going barefoot on the beach and had to be transported to the hospital.

In recent years, the National Weather Service has produced numerous informational videos and pamphlets about beach safety that are available through its website, including the award-winning “Play it Safe” series.

The public information is geared to a fifth-grade education level, so it’s readily accessible for school-aged children, Heden said.

“We do a tremendous amount of public education,” he added.

Two important new infographics are focused on hazards that are related to rip currents, but had often been overlooked in risk assessments.

One provides advice to bystanders who want to help swimmers caught in a rip current or are struggling in the ocean, with a warning to call for help but not to enter the ocean without a floatation device.

According to the weather service, nearly 30% of rip current drownings in the Carolinas since 2011 were bystanders trying to save another person.

The other graphic illustrates the risk that far-offshore tropical storms create by intensifying the strength of currents, with a West Coast and East Coast version. Several videos and graphics are also offered in Spanish.

The weather service beach forecast webpage will soon be transformed into a GIS-based platform, compatible with mobile devices, said Melinda Bailey, NWS National Marine Services program manager, who attended the event remotely.

Web-based users will not have to download any proprietary software to access the platform, which is expected to be implemented by fall 2024, she added.

“It’s a long time coming but it’s very exciting,” Bailey said.

Bailey said the weather service has been working on predictive artificial intelligence models to improve accuracy of information on rip currents and other forecasting.

Heden said that he looks forward to continued progress in beach safety through advancement in communication and predictive modeling tools, including cutting edge technology.

“I’m intrigued by the virtual reality stuff,” he said. “It would be interesting to incorporate that.”

Learn more

• National Weather Service Rip current brochure

Second of two parts. Read Part 1.

EAST LAKE — Before guardrails were installed about 20 years ago along U.S. Highways 64 and 264 in rural northeastern North Carolina, residents avoided driving at night in fear of striking a large animal and then sliding unseen into the abyss of a roadside canal.

Even now, with the barriers in place, locals know to drive with caution through the dark wilds of Alligator River National Wildlife Refuge, scanning the edge of the forest for glowing eyes or sudden movements of creatures on night hunts — raccoon, possum, bobcat, fox, bear, deer, coyotes and red wolves.

Vehicle strikes are a serious hazard to humans and animals, but they can be especially devastating to the recovery of the endangered wolves that number only about 22 in the wild, 18 of which are collared and within the 1.7-million-acre management area encompassing public and private land in Beaufort, Dare, Hyde, Tyrrell and Washington counties.

When a wild red wolf is killed, the loss can destroy the cohesion of a pack, creating a negative impact on reproduction that is so critical to the species’ survival.

Last year, for example, in two separate instances, wolves from the same pack were struck and killed on U.S. 64, said wildlife biologist Joe Madison, manager for the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service’s Red Wolf Recovery Program.

Madison told Coastal Review that one of the males and one of the pups were killed. “So that family group kind of got messed up, and we ended up capturing and placing the female for that family group back in captivity.”

With the loss of her mate, Madison explained, the female had started wandering to a different area and creating issues, such as getting into chickens that made her no longer suitable for the wild. “But it was going well until that mortality of the male and one of the pups, and then it kind of went downhill from there.”

After years of study in the early 2000s, the North Carolina Department of Transportation had developed plans to construct numerous wildlife crossings along U.S. 64 in Dare and Tyrrell counties as part of a proposed 27.3-mile-long road widening and bridge-replacement project. The department has since dropped the widening project, but $110 million provided recently by the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law allowed NCDOT to replace the 60-year-old Lindsey C. Warren Bridge over Alligator River. That $270 million project, which began this spring, will include wildlife crossings and under-road tie-ins at both ends of the bridge.

But it’s not enough, conservation groups say. Granted, more wildlife crossings would be costly to build in Alligator River’s swampy land, but considering the enormous investment that’s been put into the life of each red wolf in the interest of restoration of a unique species, these groups contend they’re worth it.

“That’s why one of the things we’re stressing this year is trying to make progress on getting (assistance from) NCDOT, who’s making great strides in the wildlife road crossings department,” Ron Sutherland, chief scientist at the nonprofit Wildlands Network, told Coastal Review recently. “We want them to try to put in for federal grants to build wildlife crossings and fencing on 64 through the refuge in particular.”

Sutherland had connected with an anonymous donor who recently pledged $2 million in matching funds for a grant to fund wildlife crossings in the refuge to protect red wolves, and the nonprofit Center for Biological Diversity stepped in to help raise the match, he said in recent email.

“I’m working directly with NCDOT to try to bring a big proposal for U.S. 64 to Federal Highways, which can only happen if we have enough nonfederal matching funds to work with, he said, adding that the state would have to provide a 20% match to the Federal Highway Administration money.

Although the costs versus benefit of keeping red wolves away from vehicle tires is clear, he said, wildlife crossings through a refuge teeming with wildlife would provide plenty of benefits to every creature dashing, hopping, galumphing, scurrying, slithering or crawling across the highway.

“That stretch of Highway 64 through the refuge and through the Alligator River game lands, it’s got to be up there in terms of national priorities for reducing roadkill in terms of the sheer numbers of wildlife,” Sutherland said. “There were like tens of thousands of dead animals that they recorded in the DOT-funded study. And so it’s definitely not just the wolves, but bears and deer and bobcats and so many turtles, so many snakes … that I’ve seen dead on that road. Nobody wants to see that.”

According to the draft environmental impact statement for the then-proposed widening project, 36% of all crashes and 77% of night crashes on the two-lane road were because of animals. Five crashes occurred within a milelong stretch in Tyrrell County about a mile west of the bridge.

Between July 1996 to June 1999, the fatal crash rate for the project area was 4.13 crashes per 100 motor vehicle miles. After the guardrails were installed along the canals on U.S. 64, the fatal crash rate went down to 1.02 per 100 miles.

The proposed widening had called for about 11 overpasses or underpasses and dozens of smaller structures for amphibians, reptiles and small mammals. Four wildlife crossings that were installed decades ago off U.S. 64 between Columbia and Plymouth had been shown to be about 90% effective, a U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service biologist had said in 2013. Designed with 6- to 8-foot-high fences at the road edge and both sides of the opening, the fence corrals animals toward underpasses, culverts or a bridge.

Travis Wilson, a biologist with the North Carolina Wildlife Resources Commission Habitat Conservation Division, said that the east and west sides of the proposed 3.2-mile Alligator River bridge replacement will be lengthened to accommodate culverts for fencing and wildlife passage.

Based on his years of monitoring the commission’s wildlife crossings, Wilson said he expects that all species will use the passages, although white-tailed deer tend to be more skittish.

“I have documented most every large mammal, medium-sized mammal, in North Carolina using culverts fairly frequently, from black bear to coyotes, on down,” he told Coastal Review.

If funding is found for additional crossings beyond the bridge, he said they would be designed in different sizes for different species. Vegetation at the crossings, and the fencing would need to be maintained, and some areas in front of passages would need a timber pole “bridge” over a canal.

“That’s really what the crossings are there for,” he said.  “It’s not for a single species — it’s to reduce wildlife mortality by vehicles … to make the highway more permeable to all wildlife.”

While the recovery team would welcome wildlife crossings, the staff’s focus will remain on keeping wild-born and captive-bred wolves who have been introduced into the wild away from any human interactions and activity whatsoever. The less habituated wolves are to humans, the better for both species. The staff also takes pains to minimize contact as much as possible, Madison said, and when handling is necessary, it is done as gently as possible, with voices low and no petting.

In addition to using a hand-held antenna to keep track of the collared wolves, which wear lightweight GPS devices on reflective collars, or for some, smaller VHF radio devices, there are more than 55 remote sensing cameras to see who is where and when.

GPS collars, which cost about $2,000 and weigh 1.3 pounds, cannot exceed 4% of the animal’s body weight. The VHF collars are lighter but don’t send points from satellites.

A red wolf known as No. 2191 was recently sighted in the Milltail area of the Alligator River refuge. Madison said that the young male’s fear of people gives him a better chance to avoid becoming one of the unfortunate number of casualties suffered by red wolves from too-close encounters with people.

Madison held a small radio telemetry antenna during a visit to the Milltail area in late April. A steady beep revealed that the wolf — or more specifically his GPS collar — was close but too far away to see without field glasses. The wolf was born at Wolf Haven International in Washington state, one of the 50 zoological institutions and wildlife centers that participate in the captive-breeding program that is critical to repopulating the species in the wild.

When 2191 — the animals purposely are not named — was deemed ready for life in the wild, he was transferred to Alligator River.

“They did an excellent job,” Madison said, referring to Wolf Haven, “because he wants nothing to do with people.”

After his arrival, 2191 was placed in an acclimation pen before being released on Jan. 29 to meet a female who had come into heat, “in the hopes that they could become a pair,” said Madison.

The good news is that it appears that the handsome wolf is the father of a litter of eight pups born in the refuge in May. It’s the third year in a row that the Milltail pack has produced a litter, and this was the first sired by 2191. The previous breeding male that had sired two litters was killed by a vehicle last year.

Madison said he understands why zoos and conservation centers name the wolves, but it’s against the recovery team policy. The studbook number that is assigned to each animal identifies them in sequence that is vital management information.

American red wolves once had an enormous range in the Southeast and along the Gulf Coast. But because of habitat loss and hunting, the population collapsed. The red wolf was listed as endangered in 1973 and declared extinct in the wild in 1980. In 1987, four pairs of captive-bred wolves were released at Alligator River refuge.

Innovative management practices, such as pup fostering and coyote sterilization programs, grew the population, and by 2010, there were about 130 red wolves in the wild. But politics and funding shortages led to management cuts, and the population plummeted to seven before a federal judge ordered the program to resume in 2021.

Starting over has had its challenges. When 11 captive-born wolves were released in 2022, three wound up dead from gunshots and five were killed by vehicles. In the last year alone, four wolves have been killed by vehicles.

Still, the new litters provide hope, and the restored pup fostering practice — where a captive-born pup is slipped into a wolf den with a litter of pups about the same age — has been successful. So has the renewed coyote sterilization program, which allows hormonally-intact coyotes to hold territory, keep out fertile coyotes and prevent hybrids.

From November until March, the recovery team is kept busy doing captures to collar older pups, perform health check on the mature wolves and sterilize coyotes. There are 16 pens in the Sandy Ridge area, each double-fenced, but only 13 are currently usable. Interns and other staff enter the pen to water and feed the wolves and check on them. At that point, the wolves either go to the farthest distance and pace, or they go to their den box. The never try to escape.

“They don’t want to come near you,” Madison said. “They’re very nonaggressive.”

The pens are especially useful in letting wild wolves visit the captive wolves and start making friends. Recovery staff can watch with the remote-sensing cameras for signs that courtship may be blooming. Once they’re let free, all bets are off.

“We’ve had bonded pairs that came from captivity,” Madison recalled. “They were bonded in captivity, had had previous litters together, they had a litter in the pen, and they still left each other when we opened it up. It was like, ‘Now that I have options, you ain’t it!’”

Sutherland said that he is encouraged that the red wolf population is rebounding and that wildlife crossings are a critical component in its recovery. Healthy numbers of red wolf packs also would go far in pushing out a lot of the opportunistic coyotes and raccoons that swooped into vacated wolf territories, he said.

As they’ve done out west, he said, wolves can keep other species in check not just by eating them, but also by creating a climate of fear that works for the good of the entire ecosystem.

“So that’s the value of having the wolves back,” he said. “Not only are they the only thing that seems to control coyotes, but they also do kill the raccoons and we think that’s important from the standpoint of bird populations.”

“The red wolf was a success story of the Endangered Species Act, and it’s been saved from extinction,” Sutherland said. Now the question is whether the program can rebuild, without the apex predator being plowed down on a strip of asphalt.

Note: Coastal Review will not publish Wednesday in observance of Juneteenth National Independence Day, a federal holiday.

First of two parts.

EAST LAKE — From a half-mile away, the red wolf was a blur on the flat farmland within Alligator River National Wildlife Refuge. Through binoculars, the young male was strikingly muscular, striding with confidence on the dirt access road, seemingly unperturbed by the spying humans.

“He’s a big guy — yeah, he’s close to 80 pounds,” said Joe Madison, manager for the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service’s Red Wolf Recovery Program, while peering through his field glasses in late April from the cab of his truck. “If we got closer, he’d definitely start running, but I don’t want to do that.”

Madison, a wildlife biologist who has had earlier stints with grizzly bear and gray wolf management, is keenly focused on conservation and protection of the only wild red wolves in the world. He knows that the wolves’ instinctual fear of people is critical to their survival. The two biggest contributors to wild red wolf mortalities are directly related to interactions with humans: The first is intentional killing by gunshot or poisoning, the second is vehicle strikes.

After establishing cooperative programs with landowners and others in the community to prevent wolf shootings, officials with the refuge are now working with the North Carolina Wildlife Resources Commission and the North Carolina Department of Transportation on constructing wildlife crossings at both ends of the planned replacement bridge over the Alligator River on U.S. Highway 64 between Tyrrell and Dare counties.

The hope is that, beyond the bridge project, funding also will be available to build numerous crossings along U.S. 64, said Travis Wilson, a biologist with the North Carolina Wildlife Resources Commission Habitat Conservation Division.

“It’s kind of a standalone discussion on wildlife improvements in highway permeability improvements,” Wilson told Coastal Review. “It’s outside the scope of a highway project.”

The Center for Biological Diversity announced last week that an anonymous donor had pledged a $2 million match of other donations toward wildlife crossings across U.S. 64, which bisects the Alligator River and Pocosin Lakes wildlife refuges. If the additional $2 million can be raised by the nonprofit center and its supporters by the target date of Aug. 1, it could leverage an additional $16 million in federal funds.

Funding for $350 million in grants was provided in the Wildlife Crossings Program, established in the 2021 Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act.

A million wildlife-vehicle collisions occur in the U.S. annually, costing more than $8 billion and resulting in thousands of injuries and hundreds of fatalities, according to the Federal Highway Administration website.

A second round of Highway Administration discretionary grants will be opened this summer under the Wildlife Crossing Pilot Program with the stated mission of reducing wildlife-vehicle collisions while improving habitat connectivity for terrestrial and aquatic species.

Marissa Cox, the Western Regional Team lead with NCDOT’s Environmental Policy Unit, said that her team intends to apply for a grant, but it does not know yet what the total cost of the project would be. NCDOT is using information from the proposed — and since dropped — U.S. 64 widening project design plans to try to estimate costs for the structures, she said in an interview.

“It’s very competitive, and there’s not a lot of funding,” Cox said about the grant program.

During the first round, she recalled, the amount of project applications far exceeded the available funds.

Although Cox said there are about 26 wildlife crossings in North Carolina, Wilson said that when standalone structures are included, there are “dozens and dozens” of crossings.

As part of a wildlife stewardship memorandum of understanding signed in March 2023 with Wildlife Resources, NCDOT is currently compiling information and Global Positioning System data on all the crossings that it has committed to, designed and constructed, she said. The agencies are also finalizing a joint Wildlife Crossing Guidance document to be made available online.

With U.S. 64 and other less-traveled highways cutting through the 1.7 million-acre management area encompassing public and private land in Beaufort, Dare, Hyde, Tyrrell and Washington counties, the wildlife crossings could benefit not only the survival of the red wolves, but also the taxpayer who is supporting the recovery program.

A recently updated red wolf management plan estimated costs of $328 million over 50 years, and that does not include the millions spent over the decades since the wolf conservation program began.

The red wolf had once roamed much of the Southeast, but overhunting and habitat loss decimated its population. In 1973, the species was listed as endangered under the Endangered Species Act. Fish and Wildlife, the agency charged with implementing the Endangered Species Act, first listed the red wolf as endangered in 1967, and it was declared extinct in the wild in 1980.

As part of an effort in 1987 to restore the species in the wild, four pairs of captive-bred red wolf pups, offspring of the few remaining from the wild population captured earlier in Louisiana, were released at Alligator River National Wildlife Refuge.

After a series of setbacks beginning around 2010 — with the wild population plummeting from as much as 130 to seven — the recovery program has been renewed and reinvigorated since 2022.

Currently, there are 18 known and collared red wolves and a total of about 20 to 22 wolves in the wild and 263 in the captive-breeding population.

Wildlife crossings have been studied, planned and – sometimes – built along roadways in northeastern North Carolina, but in coming years they are to be a more significant part of the focus on conservation of the fragile population.

“Wildlife crossings along one of North Carolina’s most dangerous highways are crucial to protecting the world’s most endangered wolf,” stated Will Harlan, southeast director the Center for Biological Diversity.

In a study done for NCDOT by the Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University and completed in 2011, hair samples caught on a barbed fence were from 890 black bear crossings from March 2009 to March 2011 in the 147,432-acre Alligator River Refuge. The Virginia Tech study also found that 15 GPS-collared bears crossed the highway 99 times. In addition, 170 white-tailed deer, 200 bobcats and raccoons, and an additional 260 bear were caught on camera.

Surveys of roadkill from November 2008 to July 2011 showed eight deer killed. Between January 1993 and July 2011, factoring in historical data, there were 63 bear, 75 bats, 82 small mammals, 134 mid-sized mammals, 1,153 birds, 4,014 reptiles and 7,498 amphibians killed on the road. And in 2012, refuge biologists reported that 11 bear were hit by vehicles, not including those who ran off into the woods after being struck.

Data from the Virginia Tech study will be used to guide project estimates for crossings through the refuge, Cox said.

The Fish and Wildlife Service, in its February red wolf recovery program five-year status review, said that between 1987 and 2013, vehicle-wildlife collisions resulted in 34% of all mortalities related to humans; and there were 11 vehicle-related mortalities between 2019 and 2023.

“This mortality level would be expected to increase as habitat becomes more fragmented by roads and with increasing human traffic that would be expected with increased development,” the report said. “Additionally, this threat would also likely increase with increases in the population size of red wolf.”

Madison said that there is now orange reflective material on the GPS collars placed on the wild wolves to increase their visibility at night. There are also roadside mobile electronic message signs to warn drivers on all the highways.

Any wildlife crossings that are proposed separately from an NCDOT project, which would absorb some of the costs, will “not be inexpensive,” Wilson said.

“We have been successful in putting underpasses in coastal North Carolina in various places,” he said. Swampy Alligator River, with its numerous roadside canals, “has its own unique features and soil conditions,” Wilson said.

“That’s a big part of the conversation, building in the soil types that are out there, the fill and the engineering that have to go in place there. And as you know, anything that becomes more complex, the dollar figures begin to increase with that complexity,” he said.

“When it comes to the mammals that we’re talking about, if your structure is designed correctly and located correctly, and you have appropriate fencing, then you’re going to have mammals find those crossings and use those crossings,” he said. “And once they start, they’ll keep using them.”

The crossings provide habitat connectivity, as Wilson explained it.

After the New York Times recently published an article about wildlife crossings that included video of wildlife using an overpass, public interest in wildlife passages nationally increased dramatically.

“My phone blew up with reporters and the public wondering when is North Carolina going to do these things. And it felt like I spent a year on the phone every other day explaining to people that North Carolina has been doing it for two decades,” Wilson said. “The documents are memorializing a lot of what we’ve done but also will be good tools to give to people who have interest.”

Next in the series: Wildlife crossings dovetail with red wolf conservation science.

HATTERAS — Following last week’s private tours and state officials doing the honors at a ribbon-cutting ceremony, the Graveyard of the Atlantic Museum reopened to the public Monday with a brand-new exhibit gallery that artfully illustrates the sweep of four centuries of some of the most dramatic maritime history in the world.

“I have a question for you,” said North Carolina Department of Natural and Cultural Resources Secretary Reid Wilson during his remarks Thursday. “The last five letters of the word history — what do those letters spell? Story.”

And that is the value of museums: telling the human story, he told a large crowd gathered for the ribbon-cutting ceremony. Understanding where we were, he added, is the only way we move forward.

“We should not be scared of our history,” he said. “We should learn from it.”

For the island community, the celebration is more than the museum reopening; the celebration is that it is completed. It took 38 years of persistence from stubborn Hatteras Villagers to get there. But that’s another story.

“Goodness gracious, I hardly know where to begin to thank the hundreds of individuals and entities who this important cultural facility would not be possible without them and their sacrifices both personal and in their livelihoods,” said Danny Couch, president of the nonprofit Friends of the Graveyard of the Atlantic Museum, in his remarks Thursday.

Couch, a Hatteras Island native, is one of those who stuck it out for decades, never letting go of the idea that Hatteras had to have a maritime museum.

“Raleigh (officials) said it should be in Manteo or Nags Head,” he told Coastal Review in a later interview. “Which is the last thing you want to tell a Hatterasman.”

Standing at the entrance in front of a huge digital measuring stick showing current weather conditions and past hurricane details, Wilson applauded the new state-of-the-art exhibits that include features such as touchscreens, holographic historic people and a huge dynamic sculpture of lifesavers rowing a surfboat through a stormy sea.

The Graveyard of the Atlantic Museum harbors a motherlode of maritime stories unique to the Outer Banks, from colonial exploration to piracy to heroic lifesaving service rescues to vicious U-boat attacks to premier boatbuilding.

Situated off the treacherous Diamond Shoals, which squeezed vessels transiting the Atlantic shipping lane close to Cape Hatteras, the Outer Banks has the largest number of the 2,000 shipwrecks scattered along the North Carolina coast.

Today, shipwrecks are only part of subject at the museum, but their significant role on the Outer Banks was the spark that ignited the idea for the museum in Hatteras Village and villagers’ minds. Some islanders have compared a shipwreck off the beach in the old days to a Walmart store spilling its contents today.

Couch remembers the seed first germinating, back in 1973 when a team on the Research Vessel Eastward from Duke University’s Marine Laboratory in Beaufort discovered the long-sought Civil War-era ironclad U.S.S. Monitor 16 miles off the Hatteras coast, where it sank in a storm on New Year’s Eve, 1862.

“Literally, when the Eastward was over top, we saw it as a tremendous opportunity,” he said. “We thought it was a great way to bring in people and a great way to tell our history here.”

There was no place to house even a few artifacts, but villagers wanted to find funding to build a museum. The Monitor was designated as a National Marine Sanctuary, the nation’s first, in 1975. It was to be managed by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. In 1987, The Mariners’ Museum in Newport News, Virginia, was chosen as the principal repository for more than 210 tons of artifacts recovered from the wreck site.

Villagers were disappointed, but they knew they were up against strong competition.

“A lot of it is the isolation out here,” Couch said about being passed over.

But a year before the Virginia museum was selected, local representatives from the National Park Service and Congress encouraged the nonprofit Hatteras Village Civic Association to compete for the artifacts. Thanks largely to Rep. Walter Jones Sr., a Democrat who represented the Outer Banks at the time, Congress in 1988 passed a bill that funded a feasibility and design-development plan. Jones also made sure that any future Hatteras museum would get a share of Monitor artifacts.

The museum was formally incorporated the next year and designated a nonprofit educational organization in 1991. The National Park Service agreed for a nominal fee to lease the museum 7 acres near the Hatteras docks.

Cathy Parsons, one of the original museum board members, during a chat in the gallery after the ribbon-cutting, remembered the then-Cape Hatteras National Seashore superintendent’s excitement.

“Tom Hartman came running up to us and said, ‘Hey, we’ve got a plan!’” she recounted about the superintendent, who was especially supportive of the museum idea. “He said, ‘Y’all should pull something together and put a bid in for the artifacts.’ We did that.”

Along with Belinda Willis and Katie Oden, Parsons is one of the original group of villagers who somehow pulled together the support and money to build the museum.

“It was a group effort,” she said. “They did all the work. All I did was the money part.”

Willis said that the museum originally was going to be small — about 6,500 square feet — and would look like an old Coast Guard station. She described interviewing to find a director, a fundraiser and the architect. Money started coming in: $1 million from NOAA, $800,000 from the state.

Before long, the museum building and its concept expanded.

“It just was mushrooming and mushrooming until we realized that we had a tiger by the tail,” Couch said.

From 1995 to December 1999, additional state and federal support rolled in, and construction began Dec. 10, 1999. The nearly 19,000-square-foot museum, with its imposing ship-like exterior, opened in 2002, with its interior partially completed.

Joseph Schwarzer, who retired in March, was hired as the museum’s executive director in 1995, and he later became director of all three state maritime museums.

Along with Schwarzer’s yeoman work at the helm, the three women who still live in Hatteras also gave credit to their late fellow board member Dale Burrus, who mastered dealing with the political aspects and reveled in talking about the island’s maritime history and the importance of the museum in its telling. Then there was dedication of other late advocates, Richard Jones with the Hatteras Monitor and the late Irene Nolan, then-editor of the Island Breeze and later the founder and editor of the Island Free Press, who volunteered for the museum and kept the islanders informed about the project.

Over the years, continued contributions of charitable funds and grants, including from the Outer Banks Visitors Bureau, allowed slow progress on the museum, which had been transferred to the state in 2007.

The museum proved to be a popular public attraction, despite its limited exhibits. But to the frustration of the island community — and Schwarzer — funding always seemed to fall short of finishing the gallery and the exhibits.

There were plenty of times they wanted to give up, the women agreed.

“Lots of times,” Willis said. “Then something would happen and we’d get a little push forward.

“We wrote many a letter.”

Meanwhile, as Willis put it, “the community lost faith in us.” Added Oden: “For 20 years, they’d keep hearing how close we’re getting, how close we’re getting. When we finally opened up, none of this was here. They would be shocked.”

In 2021, money was provided for renovations, and in 2022, contractor Riggs Ward Design started work on the exhibit design.

In addition to the Monomoy surf boat in the center of the gallery area, a first-order Fresnel lens that had once been atop the Cape Hatteras Lighthouse dominates the exhibits, which include numerous artifacts ranging from Native Americans here, early English settlements, wars and shipwrecks, including U-boats.

As visitors step into the museum, they’re greeted with a huge video screen with scenes that thrust them into the ocean with lifesavers and fishers and sailors and that carries them over the barrier islands for a bird’s-eye view. All doors open automatically in the middle like those on Star Trek to ensure temperature control. And the Meekins Chandlery Gift Shop now has entrances from the lobby and the museum.

“This is where the state of North Carolina — as a colony — began to develop, to lead us where we are today,” North Carolina Office of Archives and History Deputy Secretary Darin Waters told attendees before the ribbon-cutting. “And I’m so proud of the fact that you are going to see all of that told within this museum.”

North Carolina Maritime Museums System Interim Director Maria Vann, who joined the project in 2023, said the gallery “has been re-imaged as a treasure chest filled with this region’s unique tales of tragedy and triumph.”

Vann said in a later interview that the selection of a new director is underway, but she is not involved.

“The department will make the decision,” she said. “That decision is not mine.”

Now that the Graveyard of the Atlantic Museum is actually completed, the former board members said they believe that villagers will be more supportive and start pulling out their old shipwreck artifacts from under the bed to donate to the museum.

“Finally — after all these years!” the women exclaimed in unison.

“This is our vision: a world-class museum that can be enjoyed by everyone,” Willis added.

“It’s a national museum. It’s a peoples’ museum.”

BUXTON  — Two Army Corps of Engineers officials who oversee environmental pollution cleanup at a former Navy base at Cape Hatteras met Tuesday evening with area residents to address their frustration about intermittent petroleum odors and exposed infrastructure debris on the eroded beach near the site.

“Sometimes you see things there, and a day later they’re covered up,” Col. Ronald Sturgeon, the Corps’ Savannah District commander, told attendees at Dare County’s Fessenden Center. “It is certainly a complex site, a very unique situation down here.”   

As part of Sturgeon’s duties with the Corps, he is in charge of the Savannah District’s Formerly Used Defense Site, or FUDS, program in the Southeast that has previously removed storage tanks and 4,000 tons of petroleum-contaminated soil at the former submarine survey operation in Buxton, as well as groundwater remediation and continued monitoring. The Corps was designated in 1991 to take responsibility for environmental restoration of the site.

Although the area is part of the Cape Hatteras National Seashore — the landowner — the debris and apparent contamination are remnants of two military bases that operated from 1956 to 2010, first by the Navy and then the Coast Guard. Increasingly severe coastal erosion has unburied remains of base structures, including septic systems and pipes sticking out of dunes where there’s been escarpment.

Since a series of late summer storms, there have been periodic reports from the public of a strong diesel smell at Buxton Beach, as well as evidence of petroleum-contaminated soil, an oily sheen on the nearshore ocean waters, and expanding amounts of concrete, rebar and pipes exposed on the shoreline. In September, the National Park Service closed 0.3 miles of beach near the end of Old Lighthouse Road.

Sturgeon said a FUDS team has come to the site repeatedly since September. Most recently on Monday, May 13, when contractors removed a suspect pipe from the beach and collected samples from surrounding soil. Results were expected within 10 days.

If the sampling shows contamination, he said, additional funds will be requested.

Glenn Marks, chief of reimbursable programs and project management at the Corps’ Savannah District, said about 70 to 80 feet of pipe was removed as part of the $525,000 project.

When asked by an attendee about who “the onus falls on” to remove from the beach the chunks of foundation and other remains of the Navy base, Sturgeon said that the FUDS regulation does not provide the authority or funding.

“If there is not environmental hazards out there, how are we as a collective group going to take care of this?” he responded. “The U.S. Corps of Engineers has never received direct funding for that. The (Corps) would have a hand in that if funding was provided by the landowners.”

According to the National Park Service, its permit issued to the Navy in 1956 required that all structures, including foundations, be removed and that the 50-acre site would be cleaned up when the Navy ceased operations in 1982. In addition, its 1991 agreement with the Coast Guard, the agency said, obligated the Coast Guard to remove structures, restore the landscape, conduct a hazardous materials survey and take responsibility for any necessary mitigation and/or cleanup. Coast Guard Group Cape Hatteras was operating in Buxton from 1984 through 2010, when the base relocated to Fort Macon.

But as far as current cleanup obligations and responsibilities, details about who, what and when have become a bureaucratic muddle. There are also the complications created by the remove of decades and quickly changing conditions from rising sea levels and increased coastal erosion.  

The Coast Guard and the Corps, however, have worked closely with Cape Hatteras National Seashore officials to resolve the issues and determine appropriate funding and authorization options, said Superintendent David Hallac.

“We are looking forward to a complete remediation of this site,” he told the community members. “I am proud we have good partners.”

Even though all three parties are part of the federal government, each bumps up against the other’s rigid regulatory strictures, tight budgets and staff shortages, and legal fuzziness. The old Navy base, for instance, is no longer part of the Navy, but its cleanup is still managed under the Department of Defense, and it is now the Corps’ FUDS baby.

The Coast Guard, however, while military-adjacent, is part of the Department of Homeland Security, not the Defense Department. And the National Park Service is part of the U.S. Department of the Interior, a huge federal agency with management concerns centered on conservation of natural resources and recreational areas, such as Cape Hatteras National Seashore.

To complicate matters further, Hallac said some Coast Guard structures are actually on top of Navy building foundations.

“I think the most important thing is we’re not going to stop working till we get all this debris off the beach,” he said. “The take-home message is there’s a lot of debris under the sand and it all has to be removed.”

Related: Park Service urges public to avoid debris on Rodanthe beach

The Coast Guard had completed an environmental site assessment in 2008 and a soil assessment for the onsite wastewater facility in 2010, according to the National Park Service.

Although polychlorinated biphenyls, or PCBs, metals, pesticides and other contaminants above acceptable Environmental Protection Agency standards were found in the soil, remediation through the Comprehensive Environmental Response Compensation, and Liabilities Act, or CERCLA, process was not done at the two affected drain fields, according to the Park Service said.

In 2021, Hallac reached out to the Coast Guard, which restarted the survey work, taking numerous water and soil samples across 32 acres at the site, said Joseph Lambert, an environmental engineer with the Coast Guard’s Cleveland Engineering Unit, during a brief interview after the meeting. A report on the findings is currently being reviewed and is expected to be finalized this summer.

Coast Guard Sector North Carolina Capt. Timothy List, who also participated in Tuesday’s information session, said that the scope of contamination is not yet clearly defined, but that the Coast Guard intends to do its part, while also working with its partners, to clean up the site.

“We’re here to continue for the long haul,” he told attendees.

It remains unclear why the cleanup and removal work required under the Navy and Coast Guard permits was not completed.

Marks said that his understanding is that the Navy permit is expired, although he didn’t explain what effect that would have on the conditions that had been stipulated.

“I cannot speak for what the Navy signed up for or did not sign up for,” he said.

Julie Youngman, senior attorney with Southern Environmental Law Center, noted during the public comment portion of the meeting that any similar pollution or debris sullying a more prominent national park such as Yellowstone “wouldn’t be there a week.”

Referring to a provision in the Department of Defense manual, “Defense Environmental Restoration Program (DERP) Management,” Youngman asked the Corps’ representatives whether they had asked their bosses about trying to qualify the unique Cape Hatteras situation for special consideration.

According to the “Petition for Eligibility” on page 18 of the manual, “… in exceptional cases, a DoD Component may petition the … Environmental Management Directorate … for clarification or approval to consider a specific activity as an eligible environmental restoration activity.”

Responded Marks: “I’ll commit to looking into it and having me and the lawyers look into it and see if that holds water.”

In an April 30 letter from Kyle Lewis, an environmental attorney for the Corps’ Savannah District, answering an inquiry from Youngman and North Carolina Coastal Federation Executive Director Braxton Davis said that the Corps’ authority to remove the “remnant” and unsafe structures is limited to what existed at the time the Navy left the site. 

“The infrastructure that is currently being exposed by erosion was sound when transferred out of DoD control in 1982; therefore such structures are not eligible to be addressed under the FUDS Program,” Lewis wrote.

The state Department of Environmental Quality and Dare County Department of Health and Human Services also have been working with the agency partners to urge action on the cleanup and to keep the public informed.

Meanwhile, as residents reminded the officials, whether because of regulatory or funding constraints, the public beach in their community — a favorite spot to surf and swim and stroll at Cape Hatteras National Seashore — is still littered with ugly and dangerous chunks of concrete and rebar and stinks of diesel, and it’s all because of the infrastructure and contaminants that the Navy and the Coast Guard left behind.

One man named Michael who owns a vacation house near the closed beach lamented that his rental income is now “nonexistent.”

“So we can’t rent the house, we can’t sell the house, we can’t live in the house,” he said.

Trip Forman, co-founder of REAL Watersports in Waves on Hatteras Island, said during the public comment period that the negative message about the situation has become a blight on tourism.

“Something needs to be done to resolve this,” Forman said “There’s a lot of cancellations. There’s a lot of negative press. It’s spinning out of control.”

The Corps will establish a restoration advisory board, a public forum for sharing information with the community, for the Buxton site within a year, Marks, with the Corps, said. 

Dare County officials also promised to stay involved and keep the public informed about the situation.

“We’re committed to see this through,” said Dare County Board of Commissioners Chair Bob Woodard.

MANTEO — In an effort to address objections from the commission that last year nulled 30 state rules, including the environmental designation for Jockey’s Ridge, and to maintain temporary rule protections, the North Carolina Coastal Resources Commission unanimously voted Thursday to send an amended rule and findings from the state geologist back to the state Rules Review Commission.

“We’re trying, but there’s no guarantee that the Rules Review (Commission) will in any way change their mind,” CRC Chair Renee Cahoon said after the vote during the second day of the two-day meeting at the Dare County Administration Building. “We hope that the supplemental findings and the fact that we’re fighting so hard will make a difference.”

The findings, she said, are based on a letter received this week from State Geologist Kenneth Taylor affirming that Jockey’s Ridge meets the qualifications that define an Area of Environmental Concern, including being a unique geologic formation.

The CRC is seeking to restore the AEC designation to Jockey’s Ridge State Park in a permanent rule to replace the one tossed by the 10-member Rules Review Commission, which is appointed by the leaders of each chamber of the North Carolina General Assembly.

Jockey’s Ridge in Dare County is the tallest living sand dune on the East Coast, according to the nonprofit Friends of Jockey’s Ridge organization that supports the state park created in 1975 at the site once targeted by developers.

The Division of Coastal Management staff is proposing an amended rule to redesignate Jockey’s Ridge as an Area of Environmental Concern, along with a set of use standards to protect the AEC from incompatible development and loss of sand.

The proposed amended rule would include protective-use standards for the AEC to prevent incompatible development and sand loss, according to division staff. At the same time, the CRC intends the revised rule to alleviate the Rules Review Commission’s stated objections by limiting rule content to the Jockey’s Ridge AEC designation and its particular use standards.

The Rules Review Commission had objected to 30 existing CRC rules. Last year, new legislation prevented the CRC from responding to the objections and the state codifier removed them from the N.C. Administrative Code. The CRC then reinstated 16 of those rules through emergency rulemaking and proposed temporary rules, to which the rules commission objected.

“This is unchartered territory for us,” Cahoon explained. “In the past, any rule that came up for periodic review, we worked with the Rules Review Commission.”

The Coastal Resources Commission was caught off guard during last year’s state legislative session, she said, when the General Assembly gave the rules codifier the ability to eliminate existing rules. Objections were also issued against numerous other state agencies’ rules.

“No more notification — just absolutely unfettered power to drop the rules,” Cahoon said of the change.

Area residents and Jockey’s Ridge supporters have come out in force in favor of the AEC redesignation, which in part ensures that sand will not be removed from the dune and protects it from unsuitable development.

“You can’t get this back,” resident Taylor Conyers told Coastal Resource Commission members during the public comment portion of the meeting Thursday, adding that she was speaking on behalf of other younger residents. “You can’t get Jockey’s Ridge back once it’s encroached upon. Like, it’s gone.”

As Daniel Govoni, policy analyst and federal consistency coordinator with the Division of Coastal Management, detailed in his presentation Thursday, the proposed rule is divided into three areas: description, boundary and use standards.  

“If we approach this rule as a brand-new rule and, instead of going into all the other processes, it would have three sections,” Govoni said.

Commission member Jordan Hennessy had previously requested staff to prepare proposed rule language for the panel to review.

Hennessy, who has attracted attention for, among other actions, attempting to oust Cahoon as chair at the start of his first commission meeting, spoke out in support of the AEC for Jockey’s Ridge. 

“It’s a gem, a treasure to the state,” said Hennessy.

The commission, during the meeting, also approved starting the permanent rulemaking process, which takes about a year, to replace six other rules that were deleted over Rules Review Commission objections.

The process would require additional public comment periods and public hearings.

NAGS HEAD — What was lacking in Oregon Inlet Fishing Center’s unadorned functionality was made up for in its singular location at the edge of Outer Banks’ premier fishing grounds.

For decades, fishers, campers and folks just watching the fleet come back through the ocean bar after a day offshore stopped at the marina on the northwest side of the inlet, which provides passage between the Pamlico Sound to the Atlantic under the high span of the Basnight Bridge.

Now, the 70-year-old fishing center’s retail tackle shop and charter reservation business will relocate to a new, two-story, climate-resilient building that is elevated 11 feet above ground and topped by a metal roof that can withstand 150 mph winds. Inside, a restaurant run by award-winning chefs and a full retail area on the first floor, and offices and an event room with a deck on the second floor.

“At the end of the day here, we have the best charter fleet up and down the East Coast, if not the country,” Russ King, managing operator of Oregon Inlet Fishing Marina LLC, said before a ceremonial ribbon-cutting Monday morning. “And we now are going to have facilities that match. So, with that, we’re really hoping to make a true destination for the family, for the customer experience, for people coming to the national seashore.”

For the majority of the time the 1950s fishing center has been at Oregon Inlet, it was operated by a group of stockholders that was originally 22 of the who’s who of famed Outer Banks’ fishing boat captains, including Omie Tillett, Billy Brown, Warren O’Neal, Buddy Canady, Lee Perry, Arvin Midgett, Rudolph Peele and Tony Tillett.

In earlier days, the captains had moored in a ditch near the current Pirate’s Cove Marina before establishing a small outpost at the Oregon Inlet location. After Cape Hatteras National Seashore, which encompasses the Oregon Inlet area, was established in 1953, the Oregon Inlet Fishing Center, LLC, partners operated the marina under a concession agreement with the National Park Service.

But the partnership, stressed by changes over the decades, eventually failed to reach terms to renew the agreement with the park service. In December 2018, the agency announced that it had executed a lease with Oregon Inlet Marinas, LLC to operate and maintain the fishing center.

In an open letter after the announcement, Capt. Kenneth Brown, president of Oregon Inlet Fishing Center Inc., recalled the joy the center provided to the many visitors who came to see the catch of the day or admire the custom vessels at the docks.

“Regardless of the reason, Oregon Inlet Fishing Center has offered family and friends the opportunity to spend time together and make lasting memories,” the letter said. “We have seen our customers return year after year and measure success in their patronage. For that we say thank you.” 

At the time of the transfer, according to a park service press release, Oregon Inlet Fishing Center was comprised of a 60-slip marina, seven buildings totaling 7,369 square feet, around 7.4 acres of land, a parking lot with about 220 spaces, six vessel fuel pumps, one vehicle fuel pump, and associated fuel system and storage. A public boat ramp and the parking lot were managed by the park service. 

The center’s annual gross receipts were $3.38 million in 2014, $3 million in 2015, and $2.93 million in 2016, according to the park service.

“The Oregon Inlet Fishing Center and the talented captains docking at the marina have put Oregon Inlet on the map as one of the best offshore fishing destinations in the world,” David Hallac, superintendent of National Parks of Eastern North Carolina, said in the statement.

The park service’s request for proposals required the lessee, managed by Russell King, to create “a safe, sustainable, environmentally sound and resilient marina bulkhead” for operations.

According to terms of the 20-year lease, the company will pay 5% of gross receipts and an annual fixed fee of $40,000 to the park service.

In turn, Oregon Inlet Marinas would be authorized to continue the fishing center operations, including renting slips to charter fishing vessels, headboats, tour boats and dive boats, as well as large commercial and government vessels. Sales of food and alcoholic and nonalcoholic beverages, and special events associated with the use of the marina are also permitted.

Replacement of the bulkheads along the 1,700-linear-foot marina began in 2019, King said in a media tour before the ribbon-cutting. The marina, which is expected to open in early May, will offer in-slip fueling with nonethanol gas or diesel at the 60 slips, and a reinforced 17-foot bulkhead.

A 60-foot-long test section of the boardwalk is made of Titan decking, a resilient composite material that allows drainage. A 90-foot-long transient dock, which along with a dock walkway, is built with marine treated wood and reinforced with multiple pilings to protect the marina from vessel strikes.

““This dock is not going anywhere,” King said. “What we wanted to do was create a more safe experience for the charter boats.”

In addition, the park service will replace the asphalt in the parking lot and add improved stormwater drainage.

Construction of the nearly 10,000-square-foot building started in June 2022 where the original center had once stood, before it was severely damaged by the infamous Ash Wednesday Storm in 1962.

The old building was renovated by the new operators so customers could still be served in the interim. That building, which was expanded at its current site across from the U.S. Coast Guard Station, will be demolished and an open-air pavilion, owned by the King family, will be installed.

The new fishing center, designed by Beacon Architects of Kill Devil Hills, is notably more expansive than the modest former fishing center. On the 5,600 square-foot first floor, there’s a retail store, operated by Oceans East Bait and Tackle, a dedicated charter reservation area and a restaurant that offers counter service and provides takeout food and “tackle box” meals.

The restaurant, Sea Chef Dockside Kitchen is already open, serving its all-day menu from 11 a.m. to 8 p.m. six days a week, said Mac Buben, half of the father-son chef team running the eatery.

Jeff Buben, a 45-year veteran of the restaurant business, is an award-winning chef who worked in New York City and Washington, D.C., restaurants before moving last year to the Outer Banks. 

His son, Mac Buben, who most recently worked at Blue Point restaurant in Duck, said the building will be open early for pre-dawn fishing trip departures, when “tackle box” breakfasts and sandwiches will be available.

Hours of operation, he said, will be adjusted and expanded as time goes on.

“It’s a soft landing, if you will,” Buben said.

On the 4,000-square-foot second floor, along with administrative offices, there is a conference/event room with a capacity of 50, that opens to a large open-air deck.

“And what I consider the best view on the Outer Banks,” King added, as he stepped outside and pointed to each part of the panoramic view. “You see the ocean here, you see the sound here, you see the lighthouse right here.”

And soon, visitors will be seeing many a glorious sunrise and sunset from those decks.

Second in a series.

Maybe one North Carolina insurance provider should join the industry trend and advertise: “Hello Beach Plan policyholders! Do you need a new roof? Want to save on your property insurance? How about we help you out with as much as $8,000 toward a much stronger roof that is fortified to withstand storms? And don’t worry — we’re not asking you to pay it back.”

Even with those selling points, the North Carolina Insurance Underwriting Association, or NCIUA, which runs the Beach Plan, has yet to reach the number of property owners who could benefit from the Strengthen Your Roof grant program it offers to its policyholders.

“The question was, how do we incentivize consumers so that they desire a new roof as much as they desire a beautiful countertop?” Gina Hardy, general manager and chief executive officer of N.C. Insurance Underwriting Association and N.C. Joint Underwriting Association, said in an interview.

“We had given credits to policyholders who installed fortified roofs, but in 2016, we started running pilot programs to motivate them to engage in mitigation,” Hardy said.

To be clear, that motivation is money in the form of a grant. To fund the grant program, Hardy said the insurance provider made a business case that the grants would help homeowners build more wind-resistant roofs, which would result in savings on future claims and reinsurance costs.

The North Carolina Joint Underwriting Association administers the Fair Access to Insurance Requirements, or FAIR, Plan is a tax-exempt organization of insurance companies that do property insurance in the state. The North Carolina Insurance Underwriting Association, or Beach Plan, is similar but is specifically for providing essential coverage in coastal and beach zones.

At a time when North Carolina’s coastal homeowners are more immediately worried about rising costs of property insurance and its availability than rising seas, insurance providers are looking askance at growing risks from climate change-related impacts and the ballooning costs of disaster claims.

Meanwhile, forecasters are predicting a very active hurricane season in 2024.

Proactive resilience measures such as N.C. Insurance Underwriting Association’s Strengthen Your Roof program, which provides the grants to install the trademarked Insurance Institute for Business and Home Safety, or IBHS, Fortified Roof are helping to decrease a significant part of that risk.

Data from IBHS, the South Carolina-based research nonprofit that developed the roof, shows that up to 90% of insured catastrophic residential property losses are related to roof failures.

As described by IBHS, Fortified is a voluntary re-roofing program, designed to be stronger in winds, hail and hurricanes based on field research of real houses after storms. Installation of a fortified roof involves removing the existing roof to the decking, sealing the deck, and using stronger nails and nail attachments, and roof mounted vents.

Recent research on the effectiveness of IBHS roofs by N.C. State University’s School of Data Analytics found a reduction of about 35% in reported claims and 23% in the amount of payment in filed claims for hurricanes Matthew in 2016, Florence in 2018, Dorian in 2019, and Isaias in 2020.

When the pilot program first launched, only four houses on the coast out of over 400,000 policyholders had participated in the program by December 2016, Hardy said. Still, it was innovative enough to inspire invitations to both the White House and the World Bank in late 2016.

But Strengthen Your Roof has grown steadily since its underwhelming start. In April 2019, 274 eligible houses had fortified roofs. As of September 2023, the grant program’s completed roofs and applications totaled 5,928.

“This is a great program!” 2023 grant participant Joseph Connolly Ely of New Bern said in feedback provided on the program’s website. “Homeowners get a cash grant, a reduction on their wind and hail insurance premium AND peace of mind from the reduced likelihood that their roof will fail in a hurricane.

“The NCIUA, in turn, has a reduced likelihood that they will have to pay a large claim due to such a roof failure,” he added, “so it really is a win-win program.”

Who is this program for?

Billed as one of the first efforts in the nation to help policyholders in hurricane zones to better protect their homes from the storms, the IBHS program is offered to its eligible policyholders on the Outer Banks and barrier islands.

The grants are available on a first-come, first-served basis until the end of this year, or when all funds are awarded. The program also expanded two years ago to the other 18 coastal counties the Insurance Underwriting Association serves.

Part of the slow response from the public to the program may be confusion about the requirements, which includes having an evaluator ensure qualification for the IBHS designation, and a contractor who is trained to build a fortified roof.

“So, it was definitely an uphill battle trying to get everyone to understand IBHS was doing fantastic science, but we were not getting that science implemented for the benefit of our coastal residents and our policyholders,” Hardy said.

Now known officially as the Coastal Property Insurance Pool, the Beach Plan, also referred to as the market of last resort, was created in 1969 by the North Carolina General Assembly to provide adequate property insurance for homeowners in the state who could not otherwise obtain coverage in the private market.

About 70% of homeowner policies in coastal North Carolina counties are insured for wind and other hazards under the Beach Plan. Separate flood insurance policies, required for mortgaged properties in flood zones, are provided by a Federal Emergency Management Agency program.

What is IBHS?

IBHS, which researches mitigation and resiliency across the country, is funded by insurers and re-insurers. First established in 1977 as the National Committee on Property Insurance, it has since changed its name and expanded its focus numerous times.

In 2010, the IBHS Research Center was created in South Carolina “to advance the scientific understanding of severe weather perils and their interaction with the homes and businesses at full scale,” according to its website, referring to wind, hail, rain and wildfire.

“We study those four primary perils as we conduct that research and we gain understanding of how buildings are interacting and how different systems like the roof, like windows and doors resist flying projectiles . . . how they interact with the wind,” said Fred Malik, managing director of Fortified. “We are charged by our member companies to reduce avoidable losses and financial hardship for their clients and our customers.”

Besides its roofs, IBHS offers Fortified construction techniques to strengthen the overall structure of a house as options for property owners.

In general, the institute claims that Fortified methods reduce emergency management and disaster recovery costs, decrease insurance losses, increase availability and affordability of insurance, and minimize disruptions and uninsured losses to homeowners.

The argument for fortified roofs

Data shows that fortified roofs work better than standard roofs, said Donald Hornstein. He is chair of the N.C. Insurance Underwriting Association board of director’s mitigation committee and a professor at the University of North Carolina School of Law who, among other subjects, specializes in insurance law, regulatory law and environmental law.

“It’s just a matter of whether or not the relatively modest additional costs of requiring fortified roofs should be adopted,” Hornstein told Coastal Review. “So that’s a straight-up political fight — it’s not an expertise fight.”

Hornstein explained that the insurance provider has spent $50 million of its own funds for the roof program “because we make money.” Estimates show that for every $50 million invested, within 10 years $65 million in avoided claims will be saved, as well as reduced reinsurance costs.

“These fortified roofs are definitely cost effective,” Hornstein said.

That’s why some states, like Alabama, require them, and others pay homeowners the additional cost, which averages about $2,300, to install a fortified roof when they’re re-roofing.

“So basically, if you don’t compel people to do it,” he said, “you bribe them to do it.”

Other states offer grants, and although the North Carolina legislature has provided funds, much of Strengthen Your Roof grant program has been paid for out of the N.C. Insurance Underwriting Association surplus fund.

With the average cost of roof replacement at least $12,000 or more, depending on factors such as location and home size, people often put it off until the last minute. But the hope is that by offering policyholders the $8,000 grant, Hornstein said, they will see the advantage of applying for the stronger roof.

Using the fortified program, for instance, could make homeowners property insurance eligible for mitigation credits, according to the state Department of Insurance.

How is it funded?

The General Assembly allocated $7 million to match the N.C. Insurance Underwriting Association’s allocation for grants for the expanded program. The 2023 Strengthen Your Roof Program was launched with a $20 million allocation from the insurance provider, which then increased the grant amount from $6,000 to $8,000 for the Outer Banks and Barrier Islands.

Legislators provided only $2 million of the $20 million requested last year for matching funds, but the spell of relatively minor hurricane seasons for North Carolina in recent years has allowed N.C. Insurance Underwriting Association to contribute more to the grant program than it would have if it had been paying high-damage claims for disasters.

Hornstein said that while the insurance provider appreciates the support from the legislature, it knows that the state’s funding — like the insurance provider’s surplus — is not guaranteed indefinitely into the future.

“So, we’re trying to make hay while the sun shines,” he said.

Legislative setbacks

One of the reasons the building method has become distinctive is because its standards go beyond building codes to strengthen structures against destructive winds and other storm damages.

Fortified roofs, in some way, are going in the opposite direction of North Carolina’s current regulatory approach.

A controversial bill, House Bill 488, that became law in North Carolina last year, froze old residential building and energy efficiency codes, and banned inspections of roof sheathing in areas exposed to winds 140 mph or below.

The North Carolina Home Builders Association objected to the upfront costs to meet standards in proposed new building codes, as well as the time builders say it would take for homebuyers to get a return on the investment, Tim Minton, executive vice president of North Carolina Home Builders Association, said in an interview.

Minton said the association went to the legislature and asked to pause implementation of the new proposed codes until 2031, or until a new residential code council is installed in 2025 and can look at, or possibly phase-in, potential updates and changes.

In a couple of years, he said, the costs for items such as insulation may cost less. Also, Minton said, the legislation included inspection for roof sheathing on the coast, where winds are typically highest.

“First and foremost,” Minton explained, “we have not seen any data that shows that houses are blowing down in North Carolina. Second, when you look at damage from a hurricane, the damage is not occurring from wind is actually occurring from water.”

Minton also disputed that the value of government grants related to resilient building and updated building codes outweighed what the association said would be an additional average $20,000 cost per house.

“So, you know, adding additional requirements just to make people feel good is not really a reason to do that,” he said. “Yeah, there’s the balance, and how do you create that balance that’s a reasonable balance? And the policy makers will decide the future in the sense of what happens next.”

One of the main sponsors of HB 488, Rep. Mark Brody, R-Anson, who is a construction contractor, defended the need to create separate code councils.

“The reason is that commercial construction in particular has become so complex, and there’s so many new products, methods, and designs that are coming forth that we felt that they needed their own council because they needed a certain expertise,” he said in an interview. While the councils do its work reviewing codes before the mandated 2031 update, he said, nothing is stopping home owners or contractors from building to stricter standards than the existing codes call for.

Brody also strongly disagreed with estimates from a research lab with the U.S. Department of Energy that estimated that the proposed code updates that HB 488 stopped from going into effect would have added only $4,700 to $6,000 to the average home cost, and that the energy savings would pay off the cost in a few years.

But Brody said that those estimates did not take into account the extra labor and cost of materials to install energy efficiency requirements such as specific insulation. He also said that the homeowner would not see the return on those costs during the life of a 30-year mortgage.

“They’re misleading people,” he said of the Energy Department.

In Malik’s observation over the last 15 years, he said it can take years to incorporate the latest science into building codes, which he called a “consensus process.” For that reason, he said that volunteer programs such as Fortified can help get the word out to homeowners and builders about new construction practices that can influence policy,

“And there are plenty of builders and roofing contractors who like the opportunity to offer to their customers something that goes beyond whatever the current building codes are,” he said.

More hurricane-prone states are responding to the risk with stricter codes. For instance, Alabama’s building codes require new and replacement roofs to be Fortified, and Florida in 2020 adopted a code requirement for sealed roof decks. But sometimes, an epiphany will happen only after a disaster, Malik said.

“People may see the value of resiliency when they’re paying for hotel rooms or see the costs from flood damage to their home,” he said.

“You know, what we’re starting to see is consumers really paying attention and saying that they want to see resilience,” Malik added. “And the more they do that, the more that will be an opportunity for builders to respond to that demand.”

First of two parts.

When Insurance Commissioner Mike Causey met last month in Manteo for a brief overview and Q&A with community members worried about property insurance issues, he stressed that his office had limited power over building code changes and insurance company business decisions in North Carolina that have unnerved homeowners.

First of all, he said, billion-dollar losses from storms, wildfires, floods and other disasters are worldwide challenges. But the property insurance industry in the U.S., where population numbers and real estate values are often highest in the highest-risk areas, is approaching its own survival crisis.

“It’s a very hard market right now across the United States,” Causey said. “Companies just don’t want to write homeowners policies.”

Confronted with looming policy price hikes and feeling powerless to stop their insurance companies from pulling out of the state, frustrated homeowners are turning to the government for solutions.

“People say, ‘Why don’t you change the system?’” Causey said, responding to the audience’s questions about future insurance affordability and access. “The only group that can change that system is the legislature.”

Whether Causey, a Republican who is seeking reelection to the post he’s held since 2017, is shifting blame may be debatable, but it is evident from the last legislative session that focus on property insurance viability in the state was not a priority for the North Carolina General Assembly.

Rather than modernizing the state’s 15-year-old residential building codes, a step incentivized by lower property insurance costs, millions in government grants, and more resilient and efficient construction, North Carolina legislators passed a law, House Bill 488, that in much of the state banned inspection of exterior sheathing in structures exposed to winds of 140 mph or less.

The bill also removed authority from the North Carolina Building Code Council, a panel of industry specialists that had been working for months on updating codes, froze the old energy-efficiency standards until 2031 and directed creation in 2025 of a new separate residential council.

While the legislation is certain to deprive the state of available funds for climate resilience, it is also locking homebuyers into new housing that is built to outdated standards and thus more vulnerable to climate hazards. As a result, homebuyers will have increasingly higher utility bills, as well as structures more prone to damage in weather events, ultimately making their home more expensive to own.

“Everybody’s going to be paying quite a bit more for homeowners’ insurance because …  our building codes are hopelessly out of date when it comes to residential construction in some areas,” said Kim Wooten, a member of the Building Code Council and the chair of the council’s ad hoc energy committee. “The other piece of this is that North Carolina is now going to lose hundreds of millions of dollars in grant money from the federal government to increase our ability to withstand flooding from flood events, storm events, weather disaster events.”

The bill also allocated about $500,000 for staff members for the new residential council, which had been part of the existing Building Code Council, she said. Wooten, who was on the panel from 2008 to 2013 before rejoining about five years ago, is an engineer.

Anti-regulation sentiment in the legislature as well as persistent climate change skepticism, Wooten said, has contributed to lawmakers’ resistance to updating codes. The North Carolina Home Builders Association, which lobbied for the bill, had said that sheath inspection is unneeded and, along with energy-efficiency updates, would add an average of about $20,000 in costs to a new home.

But in an independent analysis Wooten conducted as part of her role with the energy committee while reaching out to green homebuilders, industry insiders and researchers, said that energy efficiency was consistently one of the five top things homebuyers want in a home — and the costs were “nowhere near” what the homebuilders claim.

“They just pulled a number out of a hat, which is the same number they pulled out of their hat five years ago, 10 years ago, 15 years ago,” Wooten said. “Yeah, it’s always $20,000.”

Zach Amittay, a Southeast advocate for E2, also known as Environmental Entrepreneurs, told Coastal Review that it’s understandable that the homebuilders’ group would want to protect their bottom line, but ultimately, the consumer and the taxpayer will be paying the piper.

“It’s going to become more and more financially untenable for folks to be able to have insurance, and then you’re dealing with more uninsured homes and then what happens after storm damage,” he said.

Less resilient construction often translates to more severe damage to both the interior and exterior, Amittay added. That leaves underinsured property owners unable to afford repairs or replacement of their home.

“That’s also the kind of thing that, in my opinion, the government should be taking steps to try and protect residents from these sort of outcomes,” Amittay said.

On its website, the North Carolina Home Builders Association said that “viable” code changes would have to be supported by data and follow proper processes.

“We work to develop and support cost-effective and affordable building codes, standards, regulations and state legislation in the construction area,” according to the website. “While safety is our priority, proposals also have to be examined for their cost-benefit and practicality.”

Typically, cities and towns in the U.S. base their building codes on recommendations that are updated every three years from the International Code Council, a Washington, D.C.-based nonprofit.

According to a Feb. 28 Swiss Re Institute report, at $97 billion, or 0.38% of gross domestic product, the U.S. suffers the highest economic cost “in absolute terms” from weather events in the world, mostly related to hurricanes. The Swiss Re Group is a leading global provider of reinsurance and insurance.

“The first step towards cutting losses is to reduce the loss potential through adaptation measures,” the report found. “Examples of adaptation actions include enforcing building codes, increasing flood protection, while keeping an eye on settlement in areas prone to natural perils.”

Each dollar invested in new building codes designed for construction that can better withstand storms can save $6 to $10 later, according to the report.

“Ultimately,” the report said, “losses as a share of GDP of each country will depend on future adaptation, loss reduction and prevention.”

Property owners on the Outer Banks and elsewhere on the North Carolina coast were shaken earlier this year by eye-popping proposed rate increases for homeowners insurance, averaging 42% statewide and as high as 99.4% in some coastal counties.

Rates in the state are set by the North Carolina Rate Bureau, which was established as a separate entity to represent insurance companies in the state, and operates independently of the insurance commissioner.

“It’s the largest rate request I’ve ever seen, (since 2017 when he took office) 42% state average, 99.4% in some counties. 25,000 letters and comments, including from associations and county boards, congressional delegations,” said Causey, who has challenged the Rate Bureau. But barring a negotiated agreement, Causey said he expects the rates will be adjudicated in court on Oct. 7.

“I haven’t seen the evidence to justify such a drastic rate increase on North Carolina consumers,” Causey said in a Feb. 6 press release.

Other insurance impacts weren’t as broad, but they can factor into future costs.

In February 2023, Nationwide insurance had notified the state that it would not be renewing 10,525 policies in North Carolina, about half of which were related to hurricane risk, spurring homeowners’ fears of more companies fleeing.

Then, in August, the legislature overturned Gov. Roy Cooper’s veto of H.B. 488, allowing the building code bans to go into effect.

Causey’s office had opposed the bill, and he said that his office “weighs in” on insurance company actions in the state such as Nationwide’s decision.

At the same time, a volatile property insurance market can spook real estate investors, and eventually, economic stability.

“It’s not going to be, ‘Can you afford it?’” Tanner Coltrain, agency manager at Farm Bureau Insurance in Swan Quarter, told Causey at the Manteo meeting, referring to insurance availability. “It’ll be, ‘Can you even buy it?’”

There may be some comfort in that North Carolina has what many consider one of the most innovative programs in the nation that encompasses resilience, insurance and consumer incentives and costs in one fell swoop.

The North Carolina Insurance Underwriting Association, or NCIUA, offers grants up to $8,000 for eligible homeowners toward roof replacement with what’s known as a fortified roof through its Strengthen Your Roof pilot program.

Studies have shown that as much as 90% of catastrophic insurance claims from storm damage are related to roof failures, and the NCIUA program has shown the effectiveness of fortifying roof construction.

But despite its proven track record, funds for the program were decreased during the General Assembly’s last session.

“We’re looking for the legislature to put more money into resilience,” Causey said.

BUXTON — Scaffolding soon will completely encircle the swirling black and white bands of the Cape Hatteras Lighthouse as contractors start construction of the first comprehensive project to restore the 1870 tower inside and out, top to bottom, including numerous historic features lost to time.

Replicas of the Victorian-style iron fence that once circled the tower’s base, and the majestic first-order Fresnel lens that once filled the lantern room at its top, will be crafted with historic accuracy to replace the long-gone originals.

“We do projects up and down the East Coast,” Christopher Dabek, vice president of North Brookfield, Massachusetts-based contractor Stone & Lime Masonry Restoration Services Inc. told a small group of media Feb. 14 during a groundbreaking ceremony. “But I think this is the most iconic.”

The $19.2 million contract includes new paint, replacement or repair of cast iron, mortar, granite, metal and concrete, as well as replacement of an estimated 40,000 bricks, about 15% of the 1.25 million bricks used to build the beacon.

“Everything here is going to be custom made, the cast iron, the bricks,” Dabek said, adding that parts of the granite foundation and marble tile floors also will be rehabilitated with materials close as possible to the original.

In addition to the structural repairs of the beacon, the walking paths and landscaping leading into and around the light station will be updated to improve connectivity for visitors and prevent degradation of the landscape.

“Within these new pathways, the contoured landscape will be filled with native vegetation to encourage visitors to stay on the paths and promote resiliency of the grounds,” subcontractor VHB Engineering NC states on its website.

The 36 lighthouse foundation stones, which had been left behind on the beach until 2015, have been removed from their repurposed amphitheater arrangement, created to honor the light keepers, that had been outside the entrance.

Currently, the design plan calls for the lightkeeper stones to be relocated inside the grounds and placed in an alternating pattern along the pathway, Cape Hatteras National Seashore Superintendent Dave Hallac told the media. The concrete path, he added, will be the color of sand to blend with the surrounding landscape, winding from the parking lot past the two light keeper buildings and around the lighthouse, with interpretive signage along the way.

“This is really going to facilitate that visit and that experience,” Hallac said.

Although the bookstore and portions of the grounds at the light station will remain open during the day, he said, the lighthouse will remain closed for the extent of the 18-month project.

“It’ll be worth it,” Hallac affirmed.

Looking up at the 4,830-ton tower, the tallest brick lighthouse in the nation, it’s hard to believe that 25 years earlier, different contractors were preparing to move the lighthouse, which began its roll 2,900 feet southwest on June 17, 1999, away from the encroaching surf threatening its foundation.

Pegged as “the move of the century,” the slow-motion relocation ended 23 days later, successfully landing the lighthouse at its current location.

 Simply put, the project, which had begun earlier that year with the less-involved relocation of the light station’s two keepers quarters buildings and other infrastructure, involved the tower being separated from and lifted off its foundation, placing it on rails, hooking it up to special sensors and moving it hydraulically, inch-by-inch along steel mats placed ahead on the pathway before installing it on the new foundation.

The project cost $12 million.

Contractor International Chimney Corp. of Buffalo, New York, assisted most prominently by subcontractor Expert House Movers of Maryland, were treated like celebrities by national and international media, and in turn charmed hordes of visitors who crowded behind temporary fences to watch the spectacle.

John Havel, who retired from the Environmental Protection Agency, now owns Havel Research Associates in Salvo and is a board member with Outer Banks Lighthouse Society, has been researching the Cape Hatteras Lighthouse as a volunteer for many years. For that reason, besides his respect for the “amazing monument” to America, Havel is pleased that the project restores four important “character defining features” of the extraordinary architecture of the 1870 lighthouse.

“This is the first restoration in 154 years that they’ve ever had, top to bottom,” he said in a recent phone interview. “I could go on and talk about many repair projects and smaller things they’ve had over the years but there’s never been anything this large.”

Restoration of the features that most people didn’t even know were gone adds immeasurable value to the historic integrity of the lighthouse, he believes. And they meaningly illustrate the architectural beauty and engineering skill of the era.

There were cast-iron pediments, ornamental Victorian elements, above the windows, which disappeared around 1964, Havel said. From about 1871 to 1920, there used to be the Victorian iron fence around the base, similar to the one that’s at the U.S. Treasury Building in Washington, D.C.

There used to be two sets of glass and wooden doors at different areas in the lighthouse that disappeared over the years, Havel said. And there used to be a 12-foot-tall, pineapple-shaped Fresnel lens, holding 1,000 seafoam-green glass prisms, sitting in the lantern room like a crown atop the Guardian of the Atlantic.

At least some of those character features were unearthed by Havel’s persistence in tracking down original documentation in government archives, and bringing his findings to the Park Service or the contractors.

Much to his delight, Havel said he also traced documents that determined that the checkerboard flooring, rather than made of linoleum or soapstone as described in at least one document, is instead made of Belgian black marble. The white tile is Carrera marble, which happens to be the same kind of marble from which Michelangelo carved the famous statue David.

“My slogan is that I have a secret weapon and this is very true and it is a secret weapon that nobody else has . . . . time,” he said. “I’ve been studying this lighthouse for 17 to 20 years. Nobody else has time to do that.”

Before the contractors start removing the interior and exterior paint — the method has not yet been nailed down, they said — the existing rotating airport light will be removed from the top, and a temporary beacon will be installed, leaving the sky dark in April and May, Hallac said.

The replica Fresnel lens is expected to be installed in the restored lighthouse in June to July 2025, again darkening the sky. Since the Hatteras light is still considered an aid to navigation, the Coast Guard will issue notices to mariners at the appropriate times to warn about the light being off.

Dan Spinella at Artworks Florida is doing the replica work. According to Havel, Spinella, who was unavailable for comment, has built and repaired more than 200 lenses for lighthouses and museums around the U.S.

Around 2009, he and another Fresnel lens expert, Jim Woodward, closely studied the remnants of the lighthouse’s original Fresnel lens, complete with 268 salvaged prisms, on loan by the Park Service for a display at the state Graveyard of the Atlantic Museum in Hatteras.

“He and Jim measured that, millimeter by millimeter,” Havel recalled, “and he built a perfect reproduction of that in his computer.”

Once the lighthouse reopens, with regular maintenance, it will be good for another century or so without needing another major project to save it.

“The restoration of the lighthouse and its grounds presents an excellent chance to educate future generations of visitors,” wrote Stephen Talley, Landscape Architect and Project Manager at VHB in its website article. “By improving the flow of pedestrians and increasing resiliency of the grounds and Lighthouse, this landmark will be able to withstand heavy visitation and frequent storms for another century.”

BUXTON — Surfers catching waves off a Hatteras Island beach last week had reported a sheen on the water, burning in their eyes and a noxious coating on their wetsuits. Numerous people noticed a powerful stench of diesel on the shoreline by the popular surfing spot in Cape Hatteras National Seashore.

Although a similar strong odor was evident after an October storm at the same beach in washed-up clumps of peat, the source of the pollutant is still a mystery.

“We cannot address contamination if we don’t know where the contamination is,” Carl Dokter, program manager of the Army Corps of Engineers Savannah District’s Formerly Used Defense Sites, or FUDS, told Coastal Review on Thursday. “And every attempt we’ve made to drill some holes and find it reveals no peat, no organic layers, no diesel — just clean samples.”

Back in the fall, Dokter said in an interview, that since there had been fuel spills at the nearby former Buxton Naval Base that FUDS has remediated, in addition to removing tanks and contaminated soil in the early 2000s, the office had agreed in recent months to remove any remaining petroleum contamination. But with the ever-changing conditions at the beach, and the intermittent recurrence of the diesel odor, its origin has so far evaded detection by the team’s instruments.

In fact, Dokter said, when his team had gone to Buxton to investigate, the only place that tested positive for petroleum was washed-up sediment on the beach.

“Then our geologists looked for the peat layer,” he recounted in the interview last week. “And they explained to me that the beach has eroded about 30 feet vertically and 150 feet horizontally over the decades. So the peat layer, which you can see at the base of the dunes, has long since eroded away.”

During a visit on Wednesday at the Buxton beach, Cape Hatteras National Seashore Superintendent Dave Hallac noted that the diesel odor was clearly most powerful in the vicinity of a slab of concrete debris exposed in the surf zone. Even with breezy conditions that day at the oceanfront, the smell was potent and offensive.

Pointing to a pipe protruding from a nearby eroded dune, Hallac said that the odor was also discernible from whatever had been in the pipe. He later added that results received on Friday from an independent laboratory indicate evidence of the fuel. The test, commissioned by the park, detected TPH (total petroleum hydrocarbons) and DRO (diesel range organics) above “state action” levels, Hallac said.

Soil samples the Coast Guard took in Buxton in September revealed weathered light fuel oil, a small amount of lubricating oil, petroleum hydrocarbons, and nonpetroleum contamination, according to a press release.

Looking back: Navy base’s wretched reminders not just petroleum in soils

Before the Cape Hatteras Lighthouse was relocated from the surf in 1999, the nation’s tallest brick tower had stood guard since 1870 from the same beach. From 1956 to 1982, just to the north, the Navy had operated a secret submarine surveillance base, which the Coast Guard acquired in 1986. When Group Cape Hatteras relocated in 2005 to Fort Macon in Carteret County, the Coast Guard was required to remove infrastructure on the base before returning the property to the National Park Service.

As has become more apparent as erosion increases and unpleasant surprises are unburied, lots of stuff was left behind: building debris, toxins from dumped pesticides, and contaminants from spilled and leaking fuel containers.

The Coast Guard was still in the process of responding to questions from Coastal Review about its current and past responsibilities and activities in Buxton, according to an email Thursday from Jonathan Lally, with Coast Guard 5th District public affairs.

Chunks of concrete with wires sticking through, various sizes of pipes and portions of concrete foundation from what was once the Driftwood Club, where sailors gathered to drink and socialize, and Building 19, the terminal “T” building where the listening cable was believed to be, now litter the beach. Just off the sand in the nearshore, surfers have to evade metal parts of several deteriorating jetties the Navy built that stick up in the water. And the Coast Guard and FUDS are still monitoring groundwater, conducting tests and/or working to remove contaminated soils related to operations at the bases.

“Every time there’s a storm, more stuff gets exposed,” said Russell Blackwood, a surfer and free diver who has lived by what is known locally as Lighthouse Beach for 50 years. “Then in a day or two or three after a storm, it covers it right back up.”

Blackwood also worked at the Navy base in the 1970s. He theorized in a recent interview that the military had redundant diesel tanks under the T building, and the fuel is pushed up during storms.

“It only comes out of the tanks when there’s ocean water over them,” he said. “You’d go there when there’s no swell, at low tide, and you’d barely smell it.”

But around Feb. 7, after heavy weather, in addition to the seawater-fuel mix looking “milky-gray” and the sheen on top of the water, he said, “you couldn’t even breathe.”

Despite beach nourishment projects in 2017 and 2022, Blackwood said, severe erosion in the last 18 months has undone much of it, especially by Lighthouse Beach.

“It’s gone,” he said. “There is no dune.”

According to the Corps’ December 2023 Buxton Naval Facility report and proposed soil survey map, seven above-ground storage tanks, 27 underground storage tanks, an oil change ramp, a pipeline between a building and a tank, and soil in several areas were removed in the 1990s and 2000s. In addition, groundwater had been sampled repeatedly and monitoring wells were installed.

The Corps’ FUDS offices are responsible for environmental liabilities at sites that were owned, operated or controlled by the U.S. Department of Defense before Oct. 17, 1986.

Dokter, with FUDS, said that his office is continuing to work with the National Park Service and the state Department of Environmental Quality on how to tackle the problem. A team went to the site last week, and a field report on the December work is due within weeks.

“We’re trying to look into every possible source for where this is coming from,” Dokter said. “But the dilemma I’m facing the most is, I can’t remove something I can’t find. And that’s where our big frustration lies right now.”

The Corps team is even considering whether the fuel is coming from prior spills offshore. If the problem continues, he added, “at that point, I have to sit down with my with my technical team and probably reach out to our center of expertise and discuss options.”

But Dokter said the pipe to which Hallac is referring is an unlikely source because it wouldn’t account for the volume of fuel that has been reported.

Hallac also said that the National Seashore is asking the Corps to follow through on the cleanup that was supposed to have been wrapped up years ago.

“And so the concern is that the project was not completed and we continue to request that the Army Corps of Engineers remove the building foundations consistent with the plans that were provided to us in 1985 and 1986,” he said.

Dokter, however, said his “hands are tied,” at least for now.

“Because our program and policy states that we address things that were a hazard at the time, hazards that arise after it was transferred out of Department of Defense control are not eligible for FUDS funding,” Dokter said. “And so each erosion creating that hazard over time, since it was transferred out of DOD control, I’m just legally not allowed to pay to fix that.”

Despite the challenges, Hallac said that he is confident that the situation will be addressed, preferably sooner rather than later.

No matter, as Blackwood sees it, the fuel will just keep coming back to remind everyone that nothing is being done.

“I guarantee you, next time we get a north swell, it’ll be back,” Blackwood said. “When the surf gets to 6 feet, that’s when they need to come here. They need to camp here.”

WANCHESE — Started as a small business 88 years ago by a native Outer Banks fisherman, the Wanchese Fish Co., now a global behemoth, is closing the doors of its production fish offloading and packing operations here.

The fish operation on Mill Landing Road in this historic fishing village on the south end of Roanoke Island will be shuttered March 29, confirmed Vice President of Public Relations Joel Richardson at Suffolk, Virginia-based Cooke Inc. in an email Tuesday to Coastal Review.

Wanchese Fish Co., located along the wharf in Wanchese Marine Industrial Park, was purchased by Cooke Seafood USA in 2015, part of the Cooke family’s international aquaculture and seafood company. The Wanchese company had maintained its family-owned operation after the sale. 

Wanchese Trawl & Supply Co., a marine and fishing equipment retail store that Wanchese Fish Co. started in 1976, will remain open, Richardson said. Also, Shoreland Transport USA, an associated cargo and freight company based in Suffolk, will continue to operate its Outer Banks route.

“We will be providing support and services to our employees as part of our transition package,” Richardson said in the email.

Further information on the number of employees who will be affected and other details about the closure were unavailable Tuesday, but one employee who declined to be identified said it was about 10.

But the loss of jobs is much smaller than the implications of downsizing one of the most iconic and historically significant businesses on the Outer Banks.

From its start in 1936 as a fish processing plant established by W.R. Etheridge, a Wanchese fisherman from a centuries-old Outer Banks family, Wanchese Fish Co. was considered groundbreaking at the time, according to the company’s website.

In 1946, Etheridge’s new son-in-law, Malcolm Daniels, a member of another old Outer Banks family, was put in charge of the company. Daniels and his wife Maude had 15 children, all of whom contributed in different ways to building the company into an international seafood supply powerhouse.

For generations, the Etheridge and Daniels families were renowned not just for their reputation as innovators in the fish production, packing and shipping business but also for their dominance in the seafood industry culture on the Outer Banks.

The already successful business really took off in the late 1990s, when it developed scallop “medallions” by binding small sea scallops with natural protein into larger scallop shapes, the website said. The new product proved to be extremely popular and profitable.

The company subsequently opened a 300,000-square-foot facility in Suffolk with a processing plant, cold storage and corporate offices. Fishing operations and offices were also opened in Europe and South America.

Describing itself as a “vertically integrated seafood harvester, processor, and distributor,” Wanchese Fish Co. said it has harvested more than “4,000 tons of wild scallops, shrimp, oysters, southern king crab, and other seafood products each year.”

Cooke Inc., headquartered in New Brunswick, Canada, is a “family-owned, vertically integrated sea farming and wild fishery corporation” that ships its products to 65 countries, according to its website. It operates salmon farming operations in Atlantic Canada, Maine, Washington, Chile and Scotland.

COLUMBIA — In a coastal North Carolina county that has more wildlife — by far — than people, as well as vast amounts of public lands, U.S. Department of the Interior Secretary Deb Haaland’s visit to Tyrrell County Thursday afternoon was especially significant. 

“Coming here is important,” Tyrrell County Manager David Clegg told Haaland during a media event with the secretary at the Pocosin Lakes National Wildlife Refuge visitor center.

Haaland was in Tyrrell County to announce that $1.4 million has been awarded to the refuge from the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law to replace 1,000 feet of the badly weathered Scuppernong River Boardwalk.

“And we saw how dilapidated it is,” said Haaland, referring to a stroll she had taken earlier on the boardwalk behind the visitor center, which stretches along the river and through woods and marshlands. “Now we’ll really be ready to make it right for future visits by so many people.”

In a later interview, Clegg said he really appreciated the secretary’s openness and willingness to discuss Tyrrell and the value of Pocosin Lakes to the county.   

“She has an on-the-ground understanding of what it is now,” he said. “It’s not some concept to her.”

Although the boardwalk is still safe to use, it has the warped and blackened wood commonly seen in aging decks and docks in the region.

North Carolina Wildlife Federation CEO Tim Gestwicki recalled during his remarks the reaction he had when producers of a documentary about the area asked to take some footage outside the refuge headquarters.

“They said, ‘Let’s go out on the boardwalk,’” he recalled. “I said, ‘Oh, lord, I don’t know about that.’”

Gestwicki said he is “delighted” with the infrastructure work that is being done at Pocosin and other refuges because it will allow more access for people to enjoy being outside in nature.

The project is part of President Biden’s $157 million Investing in America agenda to restore our nation’s lands and waters through locally led, landscape-scale restoration projects, according to a Department of the Interior press release. The funding from the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law will support 206 ecosystem restoration projects in 48 states, Washington, D.C., and the U.S. territories.

Projects will focus on a restoration and resilience framework that builds climate resilience and addresses impacts, restores lands and waters, and enhances the quality of life for communities.

“What I love is the framework serves as a roadmap to where we can make the greatest difference,” Haaland said. “By grounding the framework in landscape-level projects like this here at Pocosin Lakes, it will supercharge our efforts to foster biodiversity and restore the habitats we all depend on.” 

Tyrrell fits the program’s target as a rural, historically underserved community.

With about 43% of its 735 square miles owned by state and federal governments, much of the county’s economy is still based in agriculture and forestry. But the tax base is shrinking, along with the population, which is currently 3,200 people, compared with 3,645 in 2016. The county is also considered one of the most vulnerable per capita to sea level rise impacts.

Clegg, the county manager, emphasized in his remarks that while Tyrrell might be remote and economically disadvantaged, its diverse ecosystems have outsize value to the natural world, replete with estuarine shorelines, pocosin wetlands, and agricultural vistas. For that reason, the county is primed to grow its ecotourism economy. 

“You can find bear, wolves, deer, wildcats, swan, duck, eagles, egret, beaver, otters, alligators, foxes, turtles, crabs, fish, quails, snakes, salamanders and raccoons,” he recited in one long breath, ending to applause.  

But Tyrrell County, despite its riches and challenges, is often lost in the shuffle when it comes to helpful government attention — making an important national official such as Haaland especially welcomed. 

“They say you don’t care about us,” said 1^st District Congressman Don Davis, a Democrat from Snow Hill, when addressing Haaland. “Well guess what? You’re here.”

Davis said his office works closely with the Interior Department and other agencies to assist local communities in meeting criteria so projects such as the Pocosin boardwalk can be completed.

“This is an awesome federal investment,” he said.

The Investing in America project also will partner with states and other recipients to address drought and wildfire resilience, recreational access, legacy pollution from former mines, invasive species management, and restoration of native plants and ecosystems.

More than half of the projects will also benefit historically underserved communities, as part of Biden’s Justice40 Initiative, an environmental justice effort that aims to direct 40% of certain federal benefits to “disadvantaged communities that are marginalized, underserved, and overburdened by pollution,” according to the White House.

During a brief Q&A with media before she left, Haaland expressed appreciation for the Pocosin Lakes refuge and its staff, and she made a promise that Tyrrell no doubt hopes come true. 

“I never pass up an opportunity to tell the staff how much they mean to us,” Haaland said. “I couldn’t be prouder to stand here today and I’ll come back again.”

SWAN QUARTER — Nearly a quarter-century after historic Mattamuskeet Lodge shut its doors, an enterprising new plan is underway to reopen a reimagined version of Hyde County’s community gathering spot.

Efforts in the last 16 years to determine a sustainable plan to operate the 109-year-old state-owned lodge have confounded the county, despite assistance from nonprofits, private businesses and model business plans created at two state universities.

“We’ve been trying to crack the code for so long to find how we can open it and how it can be sustainable,” Hyde County Manager Kris Noble told Coastal Review late last week.

As it turns out, the answer to reviving Mattamuskeet Lodge was right under her nose — or more accurately, in the same government center building where she works: the Hyde County Cooperative Extension.

When Noble took a closer look at the University of North Carolina’s and East Carolina University’s respective business plans, it became apparent that what was missing was economies of scale.

“I started realizing that the number one issue of being sustainable was really the staff cost to operate the facility,” she said. “I started brainstorming, and I came up with this idea that we would house Hyde County’s Cooperative Extension agency within the lodge, and they will operate the lodge.”

Not only could the Cooperative Extension readily relocate to the lodge that’s about 10 miles away, Noble said it would be a perfect fit with its model. The extension provides rural community support, services and programming that is focused on the same inherent features as Mattamuskeet Lodge: agriculture, fishing, hunting, history, water and the natural environment.

The North Carolina Cooperative Extension is a state agency, and county cooperative extensions are partnerships with the state. Operating framework and procedures come from the state, but program costs for the counties are split with the state.

Hyde’s Cooperative Extension is enthusiastically onboard with the move to the lodge, Noble said.

With the go-ahead from all stakeholders, the county led development of the proposed restoration plan, and presented it to state lawmakers. In early January, the Council of State agreed to lease the building for 30 years to the county for $1. The North Carolina Wildlife Resources Commission would continue to oversee the site and partner with the county. A new nonprofit partner, the Mattamuskeet Lodge Society, has been created to support the restoration and develop public awareness of the lodge’s natural and cultural heritage.

Meanwhile, the county is in the process of reviewing a draft lease from the state, Noble said. Once that is finalized, $6.5 million in state funds are in hand for Phase I of the restoration, with the goal of transforming the lodge into an educational and event center, with a museum and gift shop on the ground level.

“And after we complete that design and engineering, we’ll be able to provide a better cost estimate for completion of the entire project and a better timeline,” Noble said.

What is already known, she added, is that the 14 bedrooms available in the past are not going to be part of the building’s future.

“There will not be lodging in the lodge,” Noble said.

According to the plan, “The Mattamuskeet Lodge, proposed restoration initiative,” the project’s final phase is estimated to cost $14.4 million and include installation of electrical, mechanical and wastewater systems, as well as landscaping and parking improvements. Furnishings, fixtures, and equipment are estimated to cost an additional $2.15 million.

While recognizable statewide thanks to an iconic photograph often used in North Carolina tourism brochures, Mattamuskeet Lodge never has been a major visitor attraction. Still, its cultural and historic value makes it a significant asset to the state, and a cherished place in the rural community.

“The Lodge will be the center of Hyde County’s natural heritage celebration, highlighting over 400 years of history as well as the living natural heritage,” the plan said.

“Local farmers, commercial fishermen, wildlife guides, Civil Rights and Native American experts, and artists will keep this natural heritage alive through their use of the Lodge.”

An engineering feat

Located within the 50,000-acre Mattamuskeet National Wildlife Refuge, the lodge was originally built in 1915 as a pumping station to drain Lake Mattamuskeet, the state’s largest natural lake, to use its richly organic bed as farmland. At the time, the facility was acclaimed as an engineering feat and the world’s largest pumping station. Despite its razzle-dazzle, the operation was unsuccessful and eventually abandoned.

Ownership of the 40,000-acre lake and the three-story pumphouse were eventually transferred to the federal government, which in 1934 established the refuge to protect migratory wildfowl and the lake’s environment.

The refuge and the Civil Conservation Corps remodeled the nearly 15,000-square-foot pumphouse into a 38-room hunting lodge and refuge headquarters, according to Mattamuskeet Lodge’s 1980 listing on the National Register of Historic Places. The plant’s tall chimney, the listing said, was transformed into a 120-foot observation tower with a stairway.

Opened in 1937, the hunting lodge operated until 1974. But the building was still used for numerous special community events, local weddings and school proms until it was closed in 2000 because of structural concerns.

By 2006, the lodge was in disrepair, and the federal government handed it and its 6.25-acre footprint over to the state Department of Cultural Resources with the idea that the agency would be able to restore and renovate the lodge.

Between 2008 and 2010, $5.7 million was appropriated for projects that included demolition and removal of hazardous materials, replacement of concrete and waterproofing on the lower level, installation of new steel building columns, replacement of windows, repair and re-coating of the exterior, augmenting floor joists and installation of additional wind-bracing components.

In 2016, the lodge was transferred, as planned, to the Wildlife Resources Commission. Four years later, a $300,000 roof restoration was completed, including removal of all the original clay tiles, partial replacement of the wood decking, installation of a water shield, and replacement of the tiles.

Currently, repair and restoration of the 100-year-old observation tower, originally the smokestack on the coal-fired pumphouse, is being planned, with funding from a $1 million appropriation in 2022.

“That observation cab on top has a lot of corrosion,” said Brad Kleinmaier, capital projects coordinator with the Wildlife Resources Commission. Windows have also been damaged.

“We will reinforce the tower so it’s more wind-resistant,” Kleinmaier said.

While the two university studies and discussions of possible public-private partnerships couldn’t make the operation’s math work, the new plan solved the elusive sustainability equation by tapping existing budgets and resources to cover costs. It also added various new pots of money, including profits from the gift shop.

“The business model incorporates county in-kind contributions supported by revenue generated by county programs and … event rentals, programs, shop sales, and fundraisers to fund operational expenses and program expansion,” ad detailed in the plan. “Additional revenue is anticipated through philanthropy and grants earmarked for the preservation and operation of National Historic Sites.”

Once the renovated lodge is reopened, it’s expected to add $8 million to $24 million annually to the Hyde County, the plan said.

Although Lake Mattamuskeet has suffered from water quality issues in recent years, scientists are in the process of implementing a comprehensive restoration plan at the lake. But the lake and its surrounding landscape have maintained its serene magic and unique natural beauty. The refuge is home to large populations of black bear and deer, thousands of waterfowl and other wildlife.

Proposed cooperative extension programming at the lodge, such as storytelling, art classes, and local displays on farming and history, and potential Wildlife Resources Commission educational programs involving hunting, fishing and conservation, could dovetail with refuge activities such as kayaking, hiking, bicycling and birdwatching.

To Noble, a Hyde County native, restoration of the lodge will not only restore what was the beloved centerpiece of community life, it will also reinvigorate the rural county.

“We want this to enhance and promote all of our local businesses,” she said.

With a population of 4,589, according to the 2020 census, Hyde County is second least populated and one of the poorest of North Carolina’s 100 counties.

“Of course, our number one goal is to restore and reopen the lodge,” Noble said.

“Our very strong secondary goal was the economic stimulus that this will create for our communities.”

Enviva, a wood pellet producer with a huge economic and environmental footprint in North Carolina, is teetering on the edge of financial collapse.

In a continuation of months of bad financial news for the multinational corporation, Fitch Ratings, a global credit-rating agency, last week downgraded Enviva Inc.’s default rating and unsecured debt rating, reflecting a missed interest payment on Jan. 16 of $24.4 million.

“This development follows worsening operating losses and Enviva’s announcement last fall of substantial doubt regarding its ability to continue as a going concern,” Fitch said in its Jan. 19 report. “Considerable uncertainty exists regarding Enviva’s ability to renegotiate uneconomic customer contracts entered into 4Q22 and the company’s related $300 million liability.”

Enviva is now in a 30-day grace period, the report said. If the interest is not “cured” next month, it said, the company is at risk of default and also is vulnerable to further rating downgrades. 

“Obviously, they are in dire straits,” Scot Quaranda, communications director with Dogwood Alliance, an Asheville-based environmental group and major critic of Enviva, said in a recent interview. “They bet on their own future in the futures market and they failed.”

But it’s not yet known what the impact of the Maryland-based company’s fiscal woes could be to the state and the rural communities where thousands of workers are employed.

Bryant Buck, executive director of the Mid-East Commission, which provides support to local governments in Hertford, Bertie, Martin, Beaufort and Pitt counties, said he had not heard that Enviva was having financial difficulty, but he said the potential of job cuts or operation downsizing is a concern.

“Any business loss in Hertford County certainly sparks my interest,” he said. “We want to do everything we can from our role in helping them. We really want to keep our economy going in all of our regions.”

An Enviva spokeswoman declined to elaborate on the company’s situation.

“At this time, we have no further comment beyond the information that is already publicly available on our IR website,” Maria Moreno, Enviva’s vice president of communications and public affairs, said in an emailed response to Coastal Review.

According to Enviva’s website, manufacturing plants in North Carolina, which are operated around the clock, seven days a week, are located in Ahoskie, Hertford County, where the permitted annual production capacity is 410,000 metric tons; in Garysburg, Northampton County, with 750,000 metric tons of permitted capacity per year; and in Faison, Sampson County, with 600,000 metrics tons permitted per year. Each of those sites store and ship the wood pellets from the Port of Chesapeake, Virginia.

An additional site in Hamlet, Richmond County, is permitted to produce 600,000 metric tons per year, but those pellets are stored and shipped from the Port of Wilmington.

Other Enviva plants in the Southeast are in Georgia, Mississippi, Florida, South Carolina and Virginia.

Elly Cosgrove, communications manager at North Carolina Ports, redirected questions about the business’s shipping to the company.

“Enviva has been a long-standing tenant at the Port of Wilmington and remains current on all their payments,” she said in an email response to Coastal Review. “We can only speak to the lease as we are the lease holder.”

As a result of the European Union’s Renewable Energy Directive issued in 2009, biomass — such as wood pellets — was classified as a renewable energy. That decision spurred rapid growth of the pellet industry in the U.S., largely in the Southeast.

Enviva describes itself as “the world’s largest producer of sustainable wood pellets, a renewable alternative to coal,” and a “global energy company specializing in sustainable wood bioenergy.” It also characterizes burning wood pellets as “a low-carbon alternative to fossil fuels.”

But the global environmental community contends the industry is, if anything, a prime example of greenwashing, with its practice of clearcutting forests and creating air pollution.

“I can’t think of anything that harms nature more than cutting down trees and burning them,” William Moomaw, professor emeritus of international environmental policy at Tufts University, said in a July 2021 CNN article.

A November 2022 class action lawsuit against Enviva filed in U.S. District Court in Maryland by stockholders accuses the company of misrepresenting the environmental impact of its business as well as its financial integrity.

“Specifically, Defendants made false and/or misleading statements and/or failed to disclose that: (i) Enviva had misrepresented the environmental sustainability of its wood pellet production and procurement; (ii) Enviva had similarly overstated the true measure of cash flow generated by the Company’s platform; (iii) accordingly, Enviva had misrepresented its business model and the Company’s ability to achieve the level of growth that Defendants had represented to investors; and (iv) as a result, the Company’s public statements were materially false and misleading at all relevant times.”

Despite the legal challenge, the company had around the same time announced plans to expand its footprint in the Southeast.

In 2022, Enviva applied to the state to expand production at its Ahoskie site by a third, to 630,000 tons a year.

Environmental justice advocates fought the proposal, saying that the facility was already polluting the air of the small community, which has a large population of Black residents.

In Feb. 2023, the state Department of Environmental Quality issued a modified permit to the facility that made expansion dependent on installation of new air pollution control devices to “substantially reduce emissions of volatile organic compounds, or VOCs, and hazardous air pollutants, or HAPs. This equipment includes a regenerative thermal oxidizer and a regenerative catalytic/thermal oxidizer.

Ahoskie, which was Enviva’s flagship site, has been operating since 2011. Over the years, the state has provided incentive funds, including grants, to several of the sites.

The most recent report Enviva filed in 2022 with the North Carolina Department of Commerce, a requirement of businesses that receive incentive funds, did not reveal any compliance issues, said communications director David Rhoades.

Still, the department is concerned, he said, with “any employer” and its workers in the state.

“We’re aware of the press reports and we monitor performance on a regular basis,” Rhoades said about Enviva.

Kevin Patterson, interim Hertford County manager, said that the county had not received a required notification of any layoffs at the Ahoskie plant, making it difficult to anticipate potential impacts to the community.

“Until we have an idea of what may or may not happen, it’s hard to know what a projection would be,” he said.

But for the time-being, Enviva’s standing, is on shaky ground.

According to a recent USA Today Network article, the company’s stock price has plummeted from about $87 a share in April 2022 to about 80 cents a share in January 2024. Quaranda, with Dogwood Alliance, said it’s possible that Enviva could completely shut down, or the company could find a way to renegotiate its contracts, among other adjustments.

“Without any kind of regulatory pressure to do things right, it’s hard to believe that they’ll not do whatever it takes to remain solvent,” he said.

But the industry has always been “a house of cards,” Quaranda said.

“It’s a false premise to cut down a bunch of trees, burn it, and call it renewable energy,” he said.

SWAN QUARTER — With a lot of nets, some electric stunning, and help from a few “Judas” fish with transmitters, contractors this month are about to launch a roundup to remove a million pounds of invasive common carp from the impaired waters of Lake Mattamuskeet.

The $1 million project, funded by a Bipartisan Infrastructure Law grant, is a critical phase of the ongoing and multifaceted conservation effort to restore the state’s largest freshwater lake. But with an estimated 1 million carp in the lake, weighing an average 4 pounds each, the removal will leave about 75% of the carp to continue its destructive dominance of the ecosystem, at least until another project can be approved and funded.

“This is going to be a continual issue that we have to address through maintenance efforts once this large-scale removal takes place,” Mattamuskeet National Wildlife Refuge Manager Kendall Smith recently told Coastal Review. “But our goal here is to crash the population of carp. They’re already stressed living in the environment that they do.”

The draft environmental assessment for the carp removal project released in March 2021 had called for removal of 99% of the carp. Although that is not possible yet, Smith said, the refuge fully intends to follow through with carp control.

Situated in the center of rural mainland Hyde County, Lake Mattamuskeet, totaling 63 square miles, is 18 miles long and 7 miles wide. At 40,276 acres, it spans the majority of the 50,180-acre refuge and is remarkably shallow — just 2 to 3 feet deep. Since the 1990s, the condition of the lake has declined precipitously, and the overabundance of carp, which create turbidity in the water, is one of the major contributors to the problem.

“So as bottom feeders, they’re constantly moving along the bottom, sort of filtering through that muck,” Smith said about the carp. “It keeps it suspended in the water column.”

Today, the lake, once a major overwintering destination for thousands of waterfowl, is devoid of submerged aquatic vegetation, lacks water clarity and is plagued with algal blooms from high nutrient levels. Once plentiful largemouth bass, crappie, catfish, sunfish and striped bass have been crowded out by carp or depleted by poor water conditions and lack of food. Many of the waterfowl now visit nearby bird impoundments to feed rather than stopping at the lake.

Minnesota-based contractor WSB came to the refuge in early December to develop a plan and to catch some of the fish to implant transmitters, Smith said.

“The idea there is carp congregate in the wintertime,” he explained. “And by inserting some transmitters and releasing those fish back into the lake, we can track them later to locate those congregations.” Thus, the fish with transmitters serve as a kind of “Judas” by betraying the location of the other carp.

Smith said that most of the carp will be caught in large-haul seine nets that capture fish from top to bottom in the water column. Other species trapped in the net will be released, and the carp will be loaded onto boats and trucks.

Carp removal had been identified in the Lake Mattamuskeet Watershed Restoration Plan as an important part of an interconnected process to restore water quality at the lake. The 2018 plan, a partnership between the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, the North Carolina Wildlife Resources Commission, Hyde County, the North Carolina Coastal Federation and local stakeholders, also recommended science-based approaches to reduction of nutrients in the lake and submerged vegetation restoration.

A similar removal effort in the 1940s and 1950s successfully restored water clarity by removing significant numbers of carp with large-haul seines, baited traps and pound nets, according to a Nov. 13 U.S. Fish and Wildlife press release. More recent efforts employed in other water bodies have used what is known as the modified unified method, which herds fish into large seines. “Once netted, carp are extracted from the lake,” the release said. “WSB will utilize a combination of these removal methods.”

About three years ago, the refuge installed barriers on the tide gates in the four canals connecting the sound to the lake, Smith said. The barriers, vertical slats spaced 2 inches apart, keep adult carp from coming into the lake to breed, but allow other fish and crabs to get through.

Although Lake Mattamuskeet possesses a serene, even mystical beauty, it has not been a pristine environment for a century or more.

“Unlike most naturally formed shallow lakes, Lake Mattamuskeet has been anthropogenically manipulated multiple times throughout its history, resulting in a highly altered morphology and hydrology,” April Dawn Lamb wrote in her 2020 thesis for her graduate degree at North Carolina State University, Informing Common Carp Removal and Submerged Aquatic Vegetation Restoration in Lake Mattamuskeet. “Specifically, repeated attempts to drain the lake for agricultural use reduced its original surface area significantly, the dredging of four outfall canals connected the lake to the estuarine Pamlico Sound, and the construction of Highway 94 in 1940 split the lake into two distinct basins.

“Cumulatively, these events have increased nutrient availability to the main lake, contributed to historical shifts in the primary producer community, and facilitated the development of alternative stable states which persisted until the 1990’s,” she wrote.

Lamb’s research, which provided the carp population estimates for the refuge, found that despite their large numbers, the fish are not thriving. “Broadly, we find that carp in Lake Mattamuskeet are young, fast-growing, and short-lived,” she said.

Most fish were less than 4 pounds and survive about four years; healthy populations of common carp weigh up to 8 pounds and live as long as 20 years. The lake’s high temperatures and pH levels in the summer likely contribute to their relatively puny size and high mortality rate, she added. 

Along with a team of subcontractors, WSB, after obtaining the proper permits, is to track the fish, set up various nets, catch the fish, sort the fish, find different markets for the fish, pack and transport the fish, help dispose of unusable fish, among numerous other tasks, all within 18 months.

“We have to surgically implant high-frequency radio tags in the carp, then construct a series of receivers across Mattamuskeet, so we can track those radio-type fish in real time using satellites,” Tony Havranek, WSB’s project manager, said.

So far, the team has inserted 39 fish radio tags, with one kept out to determine the range of detection, deployed seine nets and removed about 900 carp. Havranek had also led operations for the fish logistics company, Erie, Michigan-based FisH20, a subcontractor tasked with transporting the fish to the markets.

Other subcontractors include Four Peaks Environmental Science & Data Solutions, based in Wenatchee, Washington, which will assist with radio telemetry and tracking and Wabasha, Minnesota-based Adams Boat Service, which has worked on several similar state and federal projects in the Midwest.

The tags are about the size of an AA battery in diameter and length, Havranek said. 

“We physically push that tag into the carp, and then we thread a wire antenna through the side of the fish and suture the fish up,” he said. The sutures dissolve, and the flexible wire antenna doesn’t inhibit the fish. The battery power source has a tiny circuit board on top. The contractors have handheld receivers to the stationary receivers.

 “And then based on the amplitude of the signal or the strength of it, the receiver can can tell approximately where that radio-tagged fish is at in the lake, and then the receiver itself uses a cell modem to send that information back to us,” he said.

Even though “cell service is brutal” at Mattamuskeet, Havranek said, the amount of data is small enough to transmit.

“So I can see it in St. Paul and my partners at Four Peaks in Washington State can see it together in real time,” he said.

A limited seasonal market is available for live carp in New York and Detroit, he said, adding that contractors will also investigate more potential markets along the East Coast. But the bony, somewhat undersized fish is not a popular menu item. They will also be looking for markets for fresh or dead carp, such as for animal feed, fish meal or fertilizer.

“But to be able to even sell carp on that market, especially when you start thinking about the freight costs involved, yeah, it’s really tough,” Havranek said. “We’ve got both live trucks and refrigerated trucks that we can utilize to move fish. But again, the more local places that I can bring those — I thought about crab bait or other types of bait that could be made out of the carp — it’d be really beneficial for a project like this because it can reduce the overall cost based on shipping.”

Fish carcasses could potentially also be used by farmers here, he said. Whatever can’t be marketed would be composted at suitable sites, potentially including uplands on the refuge. 

Even though the contract is just for removal of the fish, Havranek said he couldn’t “in good conscience” not help the refuge understand the current carp population by providing updated information, such as the current average weight and length. For instance, he said that from recent sampling it appears that the carp are larger and heavier than what old data had shown. 

There is an ecological tipping point — a management threshold — of about 89 pounds per acre of carp, Havranek said. And based on the old data, that would be about 140 pounds of carp per acre in Lake Mattamuskeet.

Smith, the refuge manager, agreed that the contractor’s work will be invaluable in making more effective management decisions, especially with their updated data and their years of experience.

“I think that with this trapping effort we’ll learn a lot more about the population levels and that’s something that this contractor typically does on other lakes and projects,” Smith said, adding that he expects that WSB will make multiple visits during the 18-month contract period. “It’ll be a very adaptive process as they see how successful they are with the initial efforts … and certainly learning what works best and what locations are most productive as they go.”

In recommendations made in her thesis, Lamb suggested that a “suite” of management tactics should be employed at various life stages of the carp, including the canal gate barriers that the refuge has already installed. Other measures to limit repopulation Lamb recommended would be to address potential nursery areas in impoundments and irrigation canals surrounding the lake, add predator fish like bluegill that eat the hundreds of thousands of eggs the carp produce every breeding season, which the refuge has already started doing, and potentially create and manage permanent barriers in canals to trap carp for easier removal.

“To decrease the biomass of adult fish in the lake,” she added, “we recommend conducting yearly carp removals.”

The biological rub is that carp — like another famously resilient species, the coyote — may compensate for reduced population numbers by stepping up their reproduction.

But Havranek said that if their removal project is successful and the refuge implements the other management tactics, the population cycle may be able to be stretched out over a number of years.

“All things being equal, I think it’d be really wise to at least be out on that water body just doing some simple surveys maybe once every three years, something like that,” he said. “That way you can be somewhat proactive in the management piece.”

Whether or not carp actually reproduce more after removal is not necessarily evident to Havranek. But it is clear, he said, that “they can take a beating” by managing to survive stressors in Mattamuskeet that many fish could not — low oxygen, high temperatures, high algae content.

“And they’re still going to be able to find food in some way, shape or form (although) some of them out there look pretty scrawny,” Havranek said. “So I’m sure that they’re somewhat being impacted, but they’ll always just keep coming back.”

RALEIGH — While the need to manage water in the Albemarle-Pamlico peninsula is a centuries-old endeavor, rising sea levels and increasing impacts from climate change have been overwhelming prior flood-mitigation methods in the sprawling lowlands within the nation’s second-largest estuarine system.

“The Scuppernong River Basin in the heart of the Albemarle-Pamlico region in eastern North Carolina faces significant water management challenges due to factors such as changing precipitation patterns, manipulated land-use, and increasing water demand,” the Albemarle-Pamlico National Estuary Partnership, or APNEP, explained in a recent newsletter.

Piecemeal efforts to address the challenges are now starting to be stitched together in a regional approach, spurred by a $50,000 grant for community engagement from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration Office for Coastal Management Digital Coast and the National Estuarine Research Reserve Association, followed by a $200,000 grant from the state Department of Environmental Quality and a $200,000 in-kind matching grant for the recently launched Scuppernong Water Management Study.

“The goal was to have that community engagement and local input shape the study and inform, so it’s not just a desktop exercise, an engineering exercise,” Stacey Feken, APNEP project manager, recently told Coastal Review.

Origins of the study go back to plans to update a water-management plan for Lake Phelps, which had not been updated since the early 1980s. Pettigrew State Park was trying to figure out how to do the update, Feken recalled and, in the process, park officials decided that since water knew no boundaries, it would make sense to look at its management on a regional basis.

“We wanted to do this in collaboration with partners in the area, other land-conservation managers and the landowners and the communities,” she said, recounting what Pettigrew officials had conveyed.

Pettigrew had approached APNEP about five years ago for help, Feken said, and the partnership has since taken the helm in developing the study. 

“They brought us in to serve as a neutral, science-based partner,” she said. “So, we’re serving as a convener, doing everything from technical assistance and grant writing to the community engagement associated with the study.”

Grant applications for state parks were able to be broadened beyond park boundaries, and a funding request was made for the planning and engineering feasibility study through DEQ’s Water Resources Division.

Although the focus was initially on Washington County, where most of the 5,830-acre Pettigrew State Park and Lake Phelps are located, it was soon discovered that nearby local governments in Tyrrell County and organizations representing the counties and communities had been long asking for state assistance to cope with flooding issues.

Then, the COVID-19 pandemic interrupted the planning. Once the crisis passed, APNEP contacted the Albemarle Commission, a regional government council, to help in the effort. Other partners that have joined are Buckridge Coastal Reserve, Washington County, Tyrrell County, Washington County Soil and Water, Tyrrell County Soil and Water, Pettigrew State Park, Pocosin Lakes National Wildlife Refuge, and the North Carolina State University Cooperative Extension.  

A steering committee comprised of local stakeholders was created to serve as a liaison to the communities, ensure effectiveness and to advise the engagement team, which, in addition to APNEP, includes representatives from the North Carolina Coastal Reserve, North Carolina Sea Grant and The Nature Conservancy.

Cary-based contractor Kris Bass Engineering, through models, mapping and other tools, is to identify flood-prone areas, enhance understanding of water movement throughout the region and identify potential solutions to flooding.

“The study will help inform development of a comprehensive plan to address water management issues on both private and public lands inter-connected by an extensive drainage network on the northern portion of the Albemarle-Pamlico Peninsula,” the APNEP newsletter said.

As part of the comprehensive study, organizers are asking the public to share observations of how flooding impacts these communities by Jan. 15 through an online survey.

Results from the study could be used to inform other more localized studies, such as the Pettigrew State Park water management plan update, Feken said.

“My understanding with the engineers, they’re developing the modeling for the study so that it can be easily replicated in other areas of the region,” she said.

Feken said that she expects that another study would be done in the near future for the southern portion of the Albemarle-Pamlico region, which includes Mattamuskeet National Wildlife Refuge in Hyde County and the Pungo River area.

Located within some of the most rural and economically distressed counties in the state, communities in the Albemarle-Pamlico region have often felt forgotten as surrounding beach communities and urban areas with fat tax bases were thriving. 

But the uniqueness and ecological importance of the region have lately brought remarkable amounts of attention from conservation groups, nonprofits and government agencies, as reflected in efforts of groups including the North Carolina’s Natural and Working Lands initiative, North Carolina Office of Recovery and Resiliency, Coastal Resilience Community of Practice and the Audubon Society’s community-driven projects, among others.

The ecosystem is extraordinarily rich, and situated just feet above sea level, vulnerable, with pocosin peatlands, forests, sounds, bays and lakes that provide habitat for wildlife that includes endangered red wolves, black bears and numerous other mammals, plus thousands of waterfowl and other birds, as well as countless amphibians, fish and reptiles.

“It’s just such an amazing landscape in different ways,” Feken said.

A team of North Carolina scientists and researchers have less than two years to develop a proposal that will convince the National Science Foundation that eastern North Carolina is ripe to become an engine of innovative ecosystem technology that could advance a new workforce and a resilient and sustainable economy.

If the North Carolina Ecosystem Technology, or NCET, project is chosen, an infusion of $160 million will pour into the region over the next 10 years, potentially igniting a transformative science-based zeitgeist, similar to the launch in 1958 of the acclaimed research institute in the Raleigh area that merged science, academics, government, business and technology.  

“What we want to do is to create something analogous to Research Triangle Park,” said Reide Corbett, executive director of the Coastal Studies Institute and the dean of Integrated Coastal Programs at East Carolina University.

After the National Science Foundation announced an opportunity to compete for funds in a new program, the team submitted a letter of intent. In May, they learned they would be awarded $1 million to write a full proposal.

What’s different about the proposed ecosystem technology, or eco-tech, project is that the work concepts would be generated where people live and work in eastern North Carolina, driving economies from the ground up, Corbett said. 

By providing multiple connections with the community, as well as infrastructure and resources, he continued, the goal would be to build “an innovation hub that allows for use-inspired development … to support individuals who are trying to solve problems for the East, in the East.”

The National Science Foundation program as a whole, he added, is focused on reaching folks in less populated, remote communities, many of which are vulnerable to climate change impacts or economic decline.

“This is really about building opportunity for rural North Carolina, building opportunity for these areas that are outside of these regions that typically have plenty of workforce, plenty of innovation,” Corbett said. “It’s trying to move the capability and the opportunity beyond Raleigh Durham and that area.”

Eco-tech, defined as solutions-based applied science that uses living eco-systems to produce and enhance products, is billed as the next bio-tech, which studies biological attributes of organisms to use in products. If true, that would bode well for the potential growth of eco-tech.

Biological technology evolved over the centuries from modest techniques such as beer-brewing to today’s groundbreaking work on human genomes, proving the value of collective, collaborative and cooperative science research.

Research Triangle Park, as a business incubator and a hub of creative energy and scientific brainpower, is credited with propelling the explosive growth of bio-tech. It also helped revitalize the Raleigh-Durham-Chapel Hill area into one of the nation’s most dynamic regions. 

Corbett is one of 11 principal investigators working on the NCET project, in addition to Brian Silliman, a marine conservation biology professor at the Nicholas School of the Environment at Duke University, and Kenneth Halanych, executive director of the Center of Marine Science at the University of North Carolina Wilmington and who also serves as the director of the NCET consortium and grant administration.

As Halanych puts it, NCET is “a multi-institutional” project, that is equal parts Duke, Cape Fear Community College, Carteret Community College, ECU, North Carolina State University, North Carolina Agricultural and Technical State University, and the Research Triangle Institute.

According to a brochure about the prospective National Science Foundation engine award, the NCET concept would initially focus on renewable energy, aquaculture and infrastructure as vehicles to translate what people (“users”) see as a need into marketable, planet-friendly products.

The work would network across universities and partner with businesses, nonprofits and other community entities to conduct research and bottom-up innovation. As a result, communities would be more resilient, workforces diversified and engaged and regional economies strengthened.

Halanych explained that the eco-tech grant is a byproduct of the National Science Foundation’s new directive expanding basic science and discovery to applied science, economic and workforce development. Called the NSF Engines Program, he said, its goal is to drive workforce development by “use-inspired” innovations.

“What that means is, instead of scientists sitting in the lab trying to think about what they want to do, it’s really about looking to the community and looking to the context of the community —‘What do you need?’ ‘Are there innovations that we can help develop that will push community needs forward, municipal needs forward, individual needs forward?’” he said.

“And so, it’s sort of bringing science out of the ivory tower a little bit with the hope that it will drive economic development.”

If the prospective NCET team’s plan makes the cut for the $160 million award, he said, it would have 10 years “to jump-start innovation” within the whole region east of the Interstate 95 corridor.

With a mix of coastal and rural areas that depend on land — whether for eco-tourism, farming or forestry — the region is ripe with opportunities for eco-tech, Halanych said. The approach is to use technology to work with, not against, the environment to build in a more sustainable way.

For instance, NCET could help with building jobs to mitigate climate change impacts with innovative technology, such as installation of living shorelines made with 3D printed oyster reefs, he said. 

Markets could be created for new kinds of adaptive wastewater disposal systems, which would require trained engineers, contractors and installers. Or in the case of flooding, whether from water bodies or rain deluges, building more affordable — therefore, more accessible — water sensors could radically improve a community’s ability to respond and react in real time to flooding events. “That’s workforce development,” Halanych said. “That’s new job opportunities.”

In a competitive process that started off with more than 950 proposals before being pared down to 30, the NCET team has about 18 months remaining before the proposal is due for submission to the science foundation, Silliman said. “Maybe five or six teams among 30 proposals will be selected for the $160 million. We’ve made it to the final round.”

Silliman, who expressed optimism about eastern North Carolina’s prospects for the final award, said that NCET would be divided into three place-based hubs where businesses, academics and community leaders congregate, with the potential to expand further into smaller hubs. The National Science Foundation, he said, is encouraging scientists to be nimble and responsive.

“This is an innovation hub that’s doing science, innovative science on topics that the people of eastern North Carolina want to see covered,” he said. “Then, we foster small business development around these hubs that hires people who were born in these areas, so they can stay there.”

The team is already working with existing networks and tapping into existing community surveys, Silliman said. The project would include community meetings, and public input would be coupled with data to provide a picture of risk and vulnerability, as well as what the community’s is worried about in the next decade.  

“And then we would have discussions about how innovative science that fuels business development can help address those issues,” he said, “and whether they are interested in something like that.”

The value of eco-tech is not just inventions of new products to use in the environment, but also in utilizing, enhancing and adapting existing products. Ecosystem technology, like biotechnology, can interact with any sector, he said.

“One of the things we want to help with in eastern North Carolina is the technology is to monitor the performance of really important infrastructure that we have in the coast,” Silliman said. “That would be our hybrid and hardened shorelines as well as as well as our septic systems. So right now, we don’t have a good handle on either one.” 

Eco-tech can be taken from the imagination to the research lab to the market with a collaborative like NCET, Corbett said. It can provide the linkage.

“A lot of what’s missing is that connection between somebody that has an idea, or maybe even has developed a product,” he said.

“It’s how they take it to the next level and a lot of times it’s the understanding of how to do that,” Corbett said. “It’s the capacity of being able to create.”

RODANTHE — Two excavators, some thick steel cables and seven determined men did Wednesday afternoon what the Atlantic Ocean was aiming to do: destroy a once-handsome house sitting dangerously close to the swirling surf.

“When we got here this morning, the tide was past the front of the house,” Mike Dunn, owner of W.M. Dunn Construction of Powells Point, told a small group of media at the site, where workers on the beach behind him were preparing the house at 23292 East Beacon Drive for its imminent demise.

After the larger excavator gingerly began nipping at the stairs, its operator soon began pulling at the planking under the house, followed by its monster-like chomps of the upper decks.

Meanwhile, the smaller excavator was hooked up to a steel line that encircled the house. Most of the crew, who were wielding various sizes of saws, started cutting into the crossbeams under the house with the intent of weakening the structure, while Dunn kept a close eye.

The destruction of a house when done by careful professionals is a compelling sight and it went quickly. Once the house’s support structure was sufficiently compromised by the cuts, the signal was given to the smaller excavator operator to start pulling away from the ocean. After a tentative sway of resistance, the house fell flat on the ground. At that, the larger excavator started pounding at the exterior, exposing the structure’s guts. It would be crushed and splintered, and removed within hours, while National Park Service personnel stood by, ready to scoop up any stray debris on the beach.

In recent years, Dunn had been hired to remove scattered debris from some houses that had collapsed farther south on Rodanthe beaches. But he said it’s a lot easier — and rewarding — to demolish a house before it falls onto the beach.

“We enjoy it, because it’s a pretty high-profile project,” Dunn said.  

Four houses have fallen on the Cape Hatteras National Seashore since February 2022, and numerous others on the beach remain threatened.

In a pilot program that made it possible for the National Park Service to buy the two houses, about $700,000 had been provided by the Land and Water Conservation Fund, which uses no tax dollars and is instead funded by income from oil and gas leases.

The valuation of the houses was done by specialists at the U.S. Department of Interior, Cape Hatteras National Seashore Superintendent Dave Hallac told journalists. 

“The fair market value was determined by a government appraiser,” he said.

The 30-day contract to demolish the two houses cost about $72,000, including removal of septic tanks and the debris, Hallac said. That cost is not covered by the grant.

Dunn said that he expects to remove five or six truckloads of debris from each house after they’re demolished. He added that the second house will be done when the tide and weather conditions allow. Pilings and numerous septic tanks will also be removed.

Although some of the wood may have still been reuseable, Dunn said it wouldn’t be practical to try to save it when you’re racing against high tide.  

“You could salvage some of this if it wasn’t on the ocean, but this is a speed process,” he said.

Once the houses are gone, and the beaches are cleaned up, the land will be returned to public use, Hallac said. Installation of a bike rack is under consideration, he added, but there won’t be any parking provided.

Meanwhile, the park service is continuing to evaluate whether the pilot program can be scaled up to allow additional removals of houses on the national seashore.

Until now, it has been difficult for property owners to afford costs of relocating or demolishing their threatened homes on the beach. Some owners said they had no choice but to wait for the houses to collapse before they could collect from their flood insurance policy. Currently, government laws and regulations are limited in requiring owners to take proactive action.

But Hallac said that Dunn’s work showed the sense in taking a house down in a controlled manner before the ocean destroys it and scatters the debris for miles. 

“In this case,” Hallac said, “the collapse is on his terms.” 

BUXTON — Petroleum spilled and partially cleaned up at a long-abandoned U.S. Navy base at Cape Hatteras recently reemerged in clumps of peat soil after a storm. Last month, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers stepped up to take responsibility for the cleanup, even though its source is technically uncertain.

But the diesel smell and oily mudballs, now temporarily reburied, are only one of the wretched souvenirs left behind on the Cape Hatteras National Seashore beach by the Navy and later, the Coast Guard, including chunks of building debris, metal shards from deteriorated jetties and possibly other soil contaminants. 

“Looking at the historical evidence and knowing that the Navy had a release, we’ve decided that we are going to address any petroleum contamination that may still be present,” Carl Dokter, manager of the Corps’ Formerly Used Defense Sites, or FUDS, program based in Savannah, told Coastal Review.

The Corps responds to environmental liabilities at sites that were owned, operated or controlled by the U.S. Department of Defense before Oct. 17, 1986, he said. The Navy had operated a submarine surveillance operation in Buxton under a special-use permit from the National Park Service from 1956 to 1982. The Coast Guard acquired the site, near the original location of the Cape Hatteras Lighthouse, in 1986, operating as Group Cape Hatteras until the base relocated in 2005 to Fort Macon in Carteret County.

According to a 1999 Corps site assessment, the state Department of Natural and Environmental Resources had issued a notice of violation to the Buxton facility in 1997, citing at the time groundwater samples containing chemicals 1,2,3,4 trimethylbenzene and naphthalene.

After discovering that the petroleum storage tanks on the base had apparently leaked, Dokter said, the Corps in the early 2000s removed the tanks and a significant portion of contaminated soil.

The stink after the storm

Cape Hatteras National Seashore Superintendent Dave Hallac got a call Sept. 1, after Tropical Storm Idalia, from a Hatteras Island resident concerning a strong diesel smell coming from the old Navy base, as well as a sheen in the ocean waters.

When staff arrived at the site, they didn’t see any sheen on the water, but they did note a slight smell of diesel, Hallac told Coastal Review. After Hallac reported the problem, Coast Guard members from Sector North Carolina came to the site and took soil samples that showed contamination from petroleum. The park service then closed that section of beach, which remains closed.

Hallac said the odor had followed strong swells from the offshore storms that caused erosion and uncovered the polluted soil. But about two weeks later, the situation worsened, with surfers in the area reporting headaches and rashes. On Sept. 26, the Dare County Department of Health and Human Services and other agencies issued a public alert to avoid swimming, fishing or wading in the area. Big clumps of oily peat soil, also called mudballs, were scattered over the beach.

“It was obvious that the odors were coming from those soils,” Hallac said. “I mean, it was very strong.” 

The Coast Guard then made another visit and took more samples, finding “weathered light fuel oil, a small amount of lubricating oil, petroleum hydrocarbons, and non-petroleum contamination,” according to the county’s news release.

“Totally coincidentally,” Hallac added, the Army Corps happened to be at the site when the odor was strongest, doing the groundwater remediation it has been conducting here on and off for years. The Corps also took a soil sample, which confirmed petroleum contamination.

Dokter, with the Corps, said that the agency has been addressing residual contamination in groundwater since it removed the tanks years ago. The Savannah district has been working with the North Carolina Department of Environmental Quality to reduce the amount of methylnapthalene to acceptable levels.

“We have a series of injection wells and monitoring wells and we have been injecting a proprietary product … (that) binds with the petroleum and petroleum byproducts for neutralizing, but it doesn’t happen quickly,” he said. The last injection was done about 18 months ago, he added, and the Corps has continued sampling and monitoring on a quarterly basis. After the results are below regulatory levels, the site will be closed.

When the mudballs started washing up, it was clear that the petroleum contamination in the area was broader than previously understood. But Dokter said certainty as to its providence was close to impossible, especially since the oily peat clumps had already been reburied, and the beach has likely eroded 150 feet or more in recent years.

“We briefly considered trying to do what we call fingerprinting to establish, is it older petroleum or is it ’90s or later-type petroleum?” he said. “And there’s a marker that can tell you the difference. The problem is saltwater complicates everything, and the results are likely to be inconclusive if we even managed to get a sample of the (peat) product.”

Coordinated effort to determine corrective actions

The Savannah district announced Oct. 23 its intention to coordinate efforts with NCDEQ to determine corrective actions.

“While tremendous progress in technologies and techniques addressing environmental contamination have been made throughout the years, currently, there isn’t a fail-proof method that will provide a 100 percent certainty all environmental concerns are discovered and can be completely addressed,” the statement said. “The Corps does everything it can to ensure when its work is complete, human health and the environment are protected.”

Meanwhile, according to Hallac, the Coast Guard is in the process of implementing a Phase II environmental assessment of potential contaminants at the site. 

The Coast Guard has not responded to multiple phone calls and emails from Coastal Review seeking information. 

According to an online report, the Coast Guard was scheduled to start a $500,000 Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation and Liability Act, or CERCLA, investigation at the old U.S. Coast Guard Group Cape Hatteras site around June 15. “The contractor shall provide professional architectural and engineering services to perform continued CERCLA investigation in order to determine the extent of groundwater and soil contamination,” the posting said. “The contractor shall provide recommendations for additional remediation where applicable at the USCG Group Cape Hatteras (decommissioned) in Buxton, NC.”

In a Coastal Review report published July 1, 2013, a Coast Guard environmental engineer said that preliminary testing at the Buxton site detected evidence of chemicals that include benzanthracene, benzopyrene, chlordane, dieldrin, and endrin, as well as traces of heavy metals arsenic, chromium and mercury.

At the time, the Coast Guard was seeking $200,000 for remediation costs. No further information about the proposed cleanup has been provided.

Visible remnants

Far more visible remnants of the military’s former presence at Cape Hatteras’ oceanfront have become an increasingly obnoxious eyesore and hazard to beachgoers and surfers, including sharp shards from three concrete and steel groins the Navy installed in 1970 to stem beach erosion.

Although there had been previous discussion about repairing or removing the structures, which locals call jetties, no agency claimed responsibility, and they were left to further deteriorate after the Cape Hatteras Lighthouse was moved from the beach in 1999.

“There’s stuff that’s sticking out of the sand now,” said Carol Busbey, an owner of Natural Art Surf Shop in Buxton.

The “first jetty,” a favorite surf spot at Lighthouse Beach, has fallen apart to the extent that Busbey now has a piece of it standing in her shop’s parking lot.

“We’re actually going to sink it into the ground,” she said. “People have been cut by it. I wish they would do something about it. The surf break isn’t there anyway.”

Busbey blames the jetties’ demise and accompanying changes in the sandbar for ruining surfing at the spot. “It changed it completely,” she said. “It used to be such a great surf break. But the beach’s reputation keeps surfers coming anyway to catch what they can. Unfortunately, sometimes the jetties can be dangerous.

“The third jetty — the north jetty — it’s got horrible spikes sticking up,” she said. “At high tide you can’t see those pieces sticking up.”

In addition to litter on the beach from the oil-soaked peat clumps, which probably originated from the salt marsh, there are also chunks of debris from the old bases being exposed by erosion, much of it since September.

“There is a historic wastewater tank that is essentially on the beach — the foundation of it — that has been exposed,” Hallac said. “The building upon which the listening cables that we believe the Navy used, the foundation of that building, pipes leading into that building, chunks of concrete — and I mean very large chunks of concrete — all of that is now exposed, septic drain field pipes, PVC pipes.

“It’s to the point where it’s not safe,” he said. “There’s too much concrete, rebar, metal pipes along the beach section here that’s it’s really not safe to walk up and down the beach.”

Hallac has been discussing his concerns with both the Coast Guard and the Corps. He said he will likely reach out to the Navy soon. But, he said, the Corps is not optimistic that it could help with the problem.

As it is, the Corps has plenty of concerns with Buxton on its plate. After its risk assessment on the petroleum in the peat is completed, Dokter said the Corps will consult with NCDEQ about how to move forward, since it’s yet to be determined whether it’s even possible to remove a layer of contaminated peat soil.

“We haven’t really established a feasible way to do that,” he said. “Essentially, to remove a subsurface layer involves some level of dewatering. It’s not impossible to dewater a beach, but the costs would be astronomical.

“This is a challenge,” Dokter added. “We’ve included some of our chemists, geologists and environmental engineers, what we call our center of expertise within the Corps, because it’s a little more challenging of a problem than my typical project sites.”

RODANTHE — Early in the last virtual meeting of the Threatened Oceanfront Structures Interagency Task Force Oct. 12, Cape Hatteras National Seashore Superintendent David Hallac provided details about a pilot program in which the agency recently used nonprofit conservation trust funds to purchase two endangered oceanfront houses in Rodanthe.

The plan sounded like it could be the kind of solution the task force had long been seeking: The owners agreed to the deal, and the National Park Service is keeping tons of debris from another inevitable house collapse from scattering into the Atlantic and for miles on the public trust seashore and nearby private property.

But comments on an Oct. 16 article in the Washington Post illustrate why the task force was assembled in the first place: to remedy government paralysis and address overlapping rights and inadequate regulations to protect public resources that affect private property, a contentious and complicated consequence of climate change involving money, power and unequal misfortune. 

Since an oceanfront house in Rodanthe fell Feb. 9, 2022, three others nearby have collapsed onto the national seashore, where numerous structures still standing on 2 miles of eroded shoreline are also threatened. 

“They knew the risks, now pay the piper,” commenter “cat whisker” wrote in response to the article. “Declare eminent domain and pull those houses down, no buyouts. Why should tax payers subsidize greed and stupidity?”

Others expressed similar sentiments.

“Your insurance is subsidized by the insurance of others, who do not live in high-risk areas,” “doggone 1” wrote. “Many of us who put a lot of thought into buying our homes resent those who obviously did not, and who now expect a bail-out of some sort.”

While Rodanthe is hardly the only beachfront community in the U.S., it is an early — and dramatic — illustration of the impacts of climate change on coastlines as sea levels continue to rise.

Much of the response and planning for climate impacts is being done on a local and state level, while integrating with federal programs and funding. Rodanthe is unusual in that it’s a blend of local, state, federal and private interests in one concentrated area that affects many thousands of visitors to a national park with vital natural resources and popular attractions.

Although Rodanthe has one of the highest erosion rates on the Outer Banks, the beach in front of the problem houses had been relatively wide and stable until recent years, when the beach erosion rate accelerated over a short span of time. Soon, it became evident that no level of government was equipped with the clear authorities or incentives to get people to remove their threatened houses before the ocean took them.

In two previous meetings held since March, the task force has discussed issues with federal flood insurance, private insurance, septic systems and grant programs, among others. The focus of the most recent workshop was on government’s role, its potential actions and limitations and its effects on private property protections and rights. 

“We collectively found that few if any federal funding programs were available for property owners voluntarily or local governments to address erosion-threatened structures, through removal of the structure or relocation of the structures, especially where those structures were second homes or investment properties,” North Carolina Division of Coastal Management Director Braxton Davis told the task force.

The authority of the National Park Service “is very limited,” said Trish Cortelyou-Hamilton, an attorney with the U.S. Department of the Interior.

The ambulatory boundaries between mean low and mean high water are difficult to nail down precisely, making them difficult to enforce, she said.

“So there’s no rules or federal statutes related to requiring these folks to relocate,” Corelyou-Hamilton said.

And some houses were originally built much farther back from the beach, Hallac added. 

“But for those 2 miles of Rodanthe, there’s this collision of private properties and our seashore boundary,” he said.

Corelyou-Hamilton said that litigation by conservative law groups like the Pacific Legal Foundation represent plaintiffs suing over regulatory takings under the Fifth Amendment at little to no cost to the homeowner. Often the goal is to further national case law, making potential resolutions or settlements more difficult. 

To Corelyou-Hamilton’s point, Nags Head’s town manager Andy Garman said that the town has the authority to condemn an oceanfront structure and require repairs that make it safe. But the dilemma the town has faced is when the owners do the required repair, “many” have let the house sit on the beach.

“And we’ve had some for more than 15 years on the beach that are essentially uninhabitable the entire time,” he said.

Part of the reason the town’s hands are tied is because of a lawsuit that the town lost over its attempt to have an owner remove their house from the beach.

Even if there was additional authority, Garman said he would expect lawsuits to test it, meaning additional litigation over takings claims.

“So a lot of the burden has been put on local government to deal with these issues,” he said. “And having some sort of coordinated statewide approach — I know that’s the purpose of this group — would be much appreciated from our perspective.”

Other states have been grappling with houses collapsing on the beach, including in California where they fall off cliffs undermined by erosion. Some states have stricter measures in place than North Carolina when it comes to owner responsibilities for cleanup.

For instance, Hawaii, which experienced similar house collapses around the same time as Rodanthe, just passed new statutes that address debris removal and other concerns, North Carolina Coastal Federation Coastal Advocate Alyson Flynn told the task force. The Coastal Federation publishes Coastal Review.

In addition to setting up penalties, she said, the new laws also grant authority for the state to tap the private property value to cover costs of removal of illegal objects on public land, and provide drones to view the subject area. 

Overall, the panel agreed that more innovation, collaboration and cooperation will be needed going forward.

“Local governments been given a lot of authority, but it’s basically been very piecemeal,” said Webb Fuller, a former Nags Head official and a member of the state Coastal Resources Advisory Committee. “And when local governments requested the state to come in and help us on stuff, the state has always been very reluctant to do that.”

Hallac said that the working group will provide a report summarizing the ideas, challenges and recommendations by year’s end.

Whatever the recommendations, private property and public resources, they will not be a one-size-fits-all solution, he said. Nor is there a bad guy to blame when a house collapses in the surf. 

“Whether or not you end up in the ocean within a week, a month or five years, it’s just going to happen on beaches where there is a long-term trend of erosion — it’s going to happen,” he said. “And so to me, that has to be some level of threshold in government’s work, hopefully collaboratively with owners to find a solution.”

BUXTON — Probably never before would “Aloha, y’all!” be such a culturally apt greeting for a vessel pulling up to an Outer Banks dock.

But that changed this month when a sleek six-paddler, ocean-blue, outrigger canoe, notable for the long, skinny extension off its left side that looks somewhat like a floating sidecar, arrived at Swell Motel in Buxton on a late Saturday afternoon, making for a novel scene even for boat-centric Hatteras Island.

The traditional oceangoing Polynesian canoe, widely used in Hawaii, Tahiti and Samoa, turned out to be a perfect vessel to bring attention to the goals of We the Water, a collaborative clean water awareness campaign.

“It’s the first time an outrigger canoe has been out here,” Bernadette Burton, president of the Wrightsville Beach Outrigger Canoe Club, said in an interview after paddlers completed a three-day, 125-mile journey from Swansboro to Cape Hatteras on Sept. 16.

“We felt so lucky and so blessed, we almost forgot how tired we were.”

Twenty-four paddlers in the 92-member club, the first of its kind in North Carolina, joined the second leg of the three-year plan to paddle up the entire 325-mile coast to talk with coastal folks about water quality issues. Last year, the club’s We the Water team paddled 120 miles from Sunset Beach to Ocean in Carteret County.

We the Water evolved during club brainstorming sessions, when member Kerri Allen, who works as the North Carolina Coastal Federation’s coastal advocate at its Wrightsville Beach office, realized the natural link between the two nonprofits.

Allen, who joined the canoe club in 2019, suggested that the paddling community’s culture of “mālama” — a Hawaiian word that means “to take care” — was a perfect fit with the Coastal Federation’s clean water advocacy and coastal stewardship.

The Coastal Federation publishes the Coastal Review, an editorially independent online newspaper.

In the interest of taking a positive approach to coastal water quality, Allen said, the We the Water initiative was born to foster connecting with the people who actually live and work along those waters, while at the same time raising funds to support the Coastal Federation’s work.

It was decided that a contingent of club members would paddle up the entire North Carolina coast, divided in three parts over three years. By stopping along the way and meeting with folks for some friendly conversation, the hope was that the paddlers could raise awareness about risks to clean water and empower communities to protect water quality.

“It can be doom and gloom, frequently, so we wanted to focus more on the good,” Allen told Coastal Review. With its striking appearance, the canoe served as a human magnet, drawing curious folks over to docks and shorelines.

“People were fantastic,” she said. “They were very surprised. Most of them, this is the first time they’d ever seen an outrigger canoe. Most people didn’t know what it was.”

Even those who did recognize the vessel had only seen them in Hawaii, or on the closing credits of the old TV crime drama series “Hawaii Five-O.” People would come up to chat with the paddlers, Allen said; sometimes they’d sit in the boat.

“We had some really great conversations, everyone from commercial fishermen, oyster farmers, local businesses hoteliers, and just folks out enjoying the water,” Allen said.

Long popular on the mainland West Coast, where there are about 70 clubs, outrigger canoes started showing up more on the U.S. East Coast after the founding in 1997 of the East Coast Outrigger Racing Association, which includes clubs in Canada and about 16 in the U.S.

The lighter version of the canoe, known as a va’a, was employed for We the Water. Typically described with Hawaiian words, the vessel is 44 feet long and 16.5 inches wide with two arms known as iakos attached to the outrigger, or ama, which provides stability in the ocean surf.

The carbon fiber Unlimited Class six-person outrigger canoe weighs just 145 pounds, versus some models that weigh about 400 pounds.

Compared to a regular canoe, which has a flat hull for navigating shallow waters, the outrigger canoe’s hull is narrow and aerodynamic, although it can still manage in shallow waters.

“It can take on a lot of swell,” Burton said. “This vessel 100% has its origins in the ocean.”

Originally from Winston-Salem, Burton has participated in numerous outrigger races in Hawaii and California, where she began paddling in 2007 with the Dana Point Outrigger Canoe Club.

After returning in 2013 to North Carolina, she became one of the co-founders of the Wrightsville club in 2016. At the time, Reggie Barnes, the owner of Eastern Skateboard Supply in Wilmington, had purchased two outrigger canoes.

“From there, he kind of put the word out, and a group of us — about 15 — came together,” she said about the club.

Members regard the club as their family on the water, or their ohana. Each leg of the We the Water paddles provided opportunities to meet so many coastal residents, she said, reinforced the shared love of the water and appreciation for the need to keep it clean.

“Blood is not family,” Burton, who serves as the club’s long-distance coach, wrote in an email response to Coastal Review. “Ohana is built from those who come into your life and make it more fulfilling … We may have started out with the purpose to bring awareness, but I believe in the end we now have become more aware, more fulfilled, and more in tune with those who truly need the water as a way of life.”

In addition to mahalo — gratitude — for the warmth and kindness extended by the folks they met, the team also delighted in educating them about the outrigger sport and culture, Burton added, as well as being together for a worthy adventure.

“We spent five days together ‘talking story,’” Burton said. “That’s pretty important in the Hawaiian culture.”

Videos of the outrigger underway show it zipping through the sound at a surprising speed, with six paddlers using synchronized, powerful strokes, as if they’re shoving the water away. Each position has a specific role, with the stroker at the front setting the pace, the steersman in the back in charge of navigating, the mid seats calling when to change sides: “hut” for switch, “hoe” to paddle.

“Remember, we have no motor,” Burton said. “We have to rely on human power, ocean power and wind power.”

With Hurricane Lee churning miles offshore, the conditions were rough, but the tide worked in their favor, at one point propelling the boat to about 11 mph.

“The swell was amazing,” Burton said. “When we hit that tide, it helped us along — it’s like an invisible paddler.”

Things really amped up on Day 2, after leaving Harkers Island that morning in the dark, Burton recounted. By the time they hit Drum Inlet, the wind was “brutal,” with a crosswind blowing steady at around 18 mph, with 25 to 30 mph gusts. But the team toughed it out, countering the wind by zigzagging across. The last day was easier, with none of the “crazy” wind or swell, she said.

Teams of six paddlers traded off in the morning and afternoon, which each run covering about 20 to 25 miles, depending on conditions. They were joined by a North Carolina Wildlife Resources Commission boat for the 24-mile leg in Drum Inlet, and Cedar Island hunting and fishing guide Buddy Goodwin served as their escort vessel for the remainder of the trip, sharing his local insights.

Crew changes between those on the escort boat and the canoe were done in the water so paddlers could switch in and out of the canoe without it having to stop.

To Allen, it was especially rewarding to be together with her teammates in a different environment, with the vast openness of the Pamlico Sound, and seemingly endless estuarine marshes. At one point, they saw many hundreds of stingrays while paddling through seagrass beds behind Ocracoke.

The adventure was also rewarding for the Coastal Federation, which between a silent auction, sponsorships and donations for the event, she said, raised about $10,000.

Allen said she looks forward to the final leg of We the Water next year, when the Wrightsville Beach team will paddle from Buxton to Carova and once again “use the outrigger to tell the story of that coast and highlight all the good work that’s being done coastwise.”

By then, maybe Outer Bankers will be working to establish their own outrigger canoe club.

“An outrigger is truly a connection to the water like no other,” Allen said. You might start out looking for a fun way to exercise, she added, but it’s easy to get hooked.

“Because it is a culture, it’s a community, it’s a sport, it’s an activity,” she said. “It’s been in and on the ocean. And conditions that you don’t get to experience otherwise. So, it truly is extraordinary. And something that I think everyone should try to get the chance to do in their life.”

Update Oct. 3: U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service officials announced Monday that they are extending the public comment period from Oct. 15 to Oct. 30 for the draft environmental assessment for cyanobacteria treatment in Lake Mattamuskeet. Comments may be emailed to mattamuskeet@fws.gov.

Original story:

SWAN QUARTER — Officials at Mattamuskeet National Wildlife Refuge are considering permitting a relatively new pesticide in a trial project to study its effect on blue-green algae that has plagued the state’s largest freshwater lake.

A draft environmental assessment of the proposed treatment on Lake Mattamuskeet was released earlier this month. Public comments are due by Oct. 15 and may be emailed to mattamuskeet@fws.gov or mailed to Mattamuskeet NWR, 85 Mattamuskeet Rd, Swan Quarter, NC 27885.

Based on the product’s warning label, there are concerns that it could be a risk to the migrating waterfowl and other birds that visit and breed at the refuge, which in large part was created to be a sanctuary for those birds. Added to that worry, the algae, also known as cyanobacteria, is a symptom of numerous unhealthy factors plaguing the lake’s ecosystem, including excess nutrients and loss of submerged aquatic vegetation, which officials call SAV, that requires more complex remedies than merely ridding it of an algal bloom.

“This is not seen by us as the solution for restoration of the lake, or restoration of SAV in and of itself,” Mattamuskeet Refuge Manager Kendall Smith told Coastal Review. “It’s a trial treatment. We’re learning a lot, but it’s an opportunity to evaluate a technique that may be helpful to the overall strategy of restoring SAV in the lake.”

Smith also said that while the algaecide may be dangerous to birds in its pellet form, it is safe once dissolved. And there would be no shoreline or land areas, he said, where the birds would be exposed to the pellets.

Still, the undissolved pellets can remain on the water’s surface before that happens, said Ramona McGee, staff attorney for the Southern Environmental Law Center in Chapel Hill.

“It’s hard to see that this can be considered compatible use if this is toxic to birds,” she told Coastal Review.

Before the refuge would be able to implement the trial cyanobacteria treatment, it would have to secure permits from the North Carolina Department of Water Resources and agency approval from the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service’s pesticide use proposal system. The earliest the work would begin is this winter, Smith said.

According to the Fish and Wildlife Service proposal, a sodium percarbonate-based algaecide, Lake Guard Oxy, would be used over approximately 600 acres, isolated in several areas around the lake’s perimeter. The agency agreed to pursue the pilot study after the refuge was approached in 2022 by the University of North Carolina Institute of Marine Sciences and Pittsburgh-based contractor BlueGreen Water Technologies, which was seeking to evaluate the cyanobacteria treatment in a North Carolina water body. Project funding includes $5 million appropriated by the North Carolina General Assembly in 2021. 

“This treatment is intended to reduce the cyanobacteria populations to allow for the re- establishment of beneficial algae and phytoplankton communities and to increase water clarity in Lake Mattamuskeet,” an agency document said.

Online information about Lake Guard Oxy on the Environmental Protection Agency website dated March states under the “environmental hazards” heading: “This pesticide is toxic to birds. Do not apply this product or allow it to drift to blooming crops or weeds while pollinating insects are actively visiting the area.”

Information on BlueGreen’s website, however, states that the product’s formulations are Environmental Protection Agency- and National Science Foundation-certified, “and are made from ingredients that have been safety-approved causing no harm to human, animal, or plant life.”

McGee, with the law center, also said that under the National Environmental Policy Act, federal agencies are required to do an informed analysis before issuing an environmental assessment.

By definition, a pilot project is inherently experimental, she said. But the refuge had already issued a special use permit in January to BlueGreen, which has installed solar-powered probes to monitor parts of the lake, in addition to independent monitoring by UNC.

Monitoring environmental impacts would also continue during and after treatment.

“Those are the sort of questions the Fish and Wildlife Service should’ve considered,” she said. “This is being done backwards, in terms of analyzing the effects.”

McGee said the law center had been coordinating with environmental groups and planned to submit comments. 

The North Carolina Coastal Federation, which publishes Coastal Review, also plans to submit comments about its concerns, said Alyson Flynn, the nonprofit’s coastal advocate in its Wanchese office.

“The use of experimental chemicals is not going to solve the water quality and flooding problems at Lake Mattamuskeet,” Flynn said.

Once the bustling centerpiece of Hyde County’s rural mainland communities, Lake Mattamuskeet experienced rapid degradation in its water quality and overall environmental health over recent decades. Despite that, the 40,000-acre lake, 6 miles wide, 18 miles long and an average of 2 feet deep, maintains its otherworldly beauty, surrounded by swamp forests, marshes and upland forests.

The refuge, which totals about 50,000 acres, includes a boardwalk near the lake that winds through wetlands filled with old cypress knees and craggy old trees where visitors might half-expect to see gnomes. Most famously, the refuge attracts thousands of wintering tundra swan and other migratory waterbirds, as well as numerous species of resident duck. It is also home to numerous mammals, including black bear, bobcat and endangered red wolves.

“Unfortunately, due to excessive nutrients, reduced flow to Pamlico Sound, and an overabundance of invasive common carp, the lake conditions began to decline in the early 1990s in both water quality and clarity,” according to the document. “During this period of decline, water quality monitoring documented increases in nutrients, harmful algae blooms, and turbidity in the lake.”

Carp have contributed to the lake’s problems by not only eating the submerged grasses, but also by creating more suspended sediments that block sunlight from reaching the vegetation.

Smith said that the refuge is working on finalizing a contract to have most of the carp removed in the near future.

With the depletion of the underwater vegetation, waterfowl lost a vital source of nutrients. Although the birds still come to the refuge in large numbers, they go to the duck impoundments on and around the refuge for food and use the lake for a rest stop.

Drainage into the lake from surrounding farmland and bird impoundments has been associated with the increased level of nutrients, which contributed to eutrophication that led to dominance of phytoplankton.

In 2016, the lake was listed by the North Carolina Department of Environmental Quality’s Division of Water Resources as impaired waters, based on high alkalinity and levels of chlorophyll-a, both indicators for cyanobacterial harmful algal blooms that produce cyanotoxins. The refuge has posted warning signs at the lake since 2019 to inform the public about the danger of the blooms, which can cause skin rashes and itchy or sore eyes, ears or noses.

Described as photosynthetic, single-celled aquatic organisms by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, cyanobacteria are prone to quickly multiply in warm, quiet waters that have high amounts of nutrients.

The slimy green coating recognized as algal blooms in water bodies is not present at Lake Mattamuskeet, Smith said. Rather, it appears as a cloudiness in the water. 

Confronted with the wipeout of lake grasses and compromised ecosystem in 2017, refuge officials seeking a holistic approach to addressing issues on a watershed scale reached out to stakeholders to plan a collective effort to improve water quality. Led by the Coastal Federation, the Lake Mattamuskeet Watershed Restoration Plan, released in 2018, established best management practices and cooperative strategies to improve drainage and restore submerged grasses.

Smith said that the treatment could be one of the tools used to restore water quality, but it won’t solve all the lake’s problems.

“We do think that reestablishing SAV somewhere in the lake is a step in the right direction,” he said.

COLUMBIA — In a land where fire and water dominate and bountiful natural landscapes have a history of unnatural manipulation, a recently released water management plan for Pocosin Lakes National Wildlife Refuge is seeking to restore and protect a unique environment in North Carolina’s vast coastal plain that is at the frontlines of a rapidly changing climate.

“This place is really, really a special place,” Wendy Stanton, the refuge’s manager, told Coastal Review. “We’re all facing these climate change, sea level rise issues on this peninsula. It’s a very vulnerable area.”

The refuge’s water management plan and environmental assessment released Aug. 8 is intended as a dynamic working document to serve as a guide for the next 15 years. In Pocosin Lakes, which is crisscrossed with drainage ditches on flat land barely above sea level, where water comes only from the sky — sometimes in deluges, sometimes barely at all — and where desiccated peatlands had become fuel for fires, water management is a conservation balancing act upon which the entire ecosystem depends.

Ongoing success with rewetting pocosin shows hope that restoration is a critical component of management that produces results, with recent wildfires controlled before they were able to spread like previous fires that had burned deep into the peat. As had become evident, pumping water from the canals won’t decrease flooding, but it could increase fire hazard.

“By draining the peat we’re increasing the risk for catastrophic ground fire,” Stanton said. “You know, we’ve had so many fires over the years since the ’80s, before it was even refuge land. We’ve learned a lot of lessons from those fires. So we just we just can’t do that.”

Healthy peat soils in restored areas hold moisture longer than peat soils in an open drainage system, and saturating the soil inhibits intense ground fires in peat, according to the plan. At the same time, the surface vegetation is allowed to burn, which is good for peat ecosystems.

As scientists urgently seek ways to mitigate climate change, the refuge’s peat soil also has gained much attention for its ability to hold tons of carbon, the main pollutant causing global warming. But when dried-out pocosin burns, it releases that stored carbon into the atmosphere.

Established in 1990, Pocosin Lakes National Wildlife Refuge was named for the spongy peatlands known as pocosin — an Algonquian word meaning “swamp on a hill” — that make up much of the region’s soil. Although dominated by the shrubby vegetation of pocosin habitat, the refuge also contains hardwood forests, Atlantic white cedar, farmlands, lakes, ponds, bird impoundments and cypress gum swamp, according to its website.

The refuge is situated within the Albemarle-Pamlico Peninsula, the second largest estuarine system in the continental U.S. Spanning Washington, Hyde and Tyrrell counties, the 110,106-acre refuge hosts huge numbers, about 100,000 a year, of migrating and resident waterfowl, most notably tundra swans that arrive by the thousands every November.

Wintering snow geese also visit every year, as well as numerous duck species. Managed waterfowl habitat encompasses about 8,300 acres within the refuge, including Pungo Lake and part of New Lake.

“And wintertime is a real special time to come to the Pungo unit because we have these absolutely spectacular fly-outs of waterfowl from Pungo Lake,” Stanton said.

Numerous other neotropical migratory and land birds also stop over or breed at the refuge. And the endangered eastern red wolf and red-cockaded woodpecker, both listed as protected under the Endangered Species Act, use the refuge as habitat. The diverse wildlife populations also include white-tailed deer, black bear, reptiles, amphibians and fish.

Land is only 20 feet to a few feet above sea level, and the flood-prone region has lost population since the early 20th century. Hunting, fishing, forestry and farming are major sources of employment, with ecotourism a new source of income, but the counties remain some of the poorest in the state.

With such a complex ecosystem, Pocosin Lakes’ water plan is by necessity flexible and adaptable, Stanton said.

Funding has been provided through the 2022 Inflation Reduction Act, which awarded $27.25 million, about $5 million of which is going toward nature-based solutions to support the North Carolina Wildlife Resources Commission game lands. Another portion will be used to maintain the more than 37,000 acres of restored coastal wetlands, which make up 86% of the highly altered peatlands.

The remainder of the money, she said, will be used for Pocosin Lakes to complete the infrastructure for a second restoration area between Evans Road and Harvester Road, southeast of Lake Phelps, which is currently only partially restored.

Some areas of the refuge will raise water levels using a system of gates, pumps and culverts in canals, Stanton explained. But in other areas, water levels will be decreased, or nature will be allowed to take its course with sea level rise.

Four U.S. Geological Survey continuous groundwater monitoring wells help provide a glimpse of what is going on below the surface, which is helpful during the fire season, she said. In addition, the refuge is testing improved water level monitoring equipment — a task now done by hand.

“We have people go out there and they just use a yardstick to measure the water levels at the different structures,” Stanton said.

The new water management plan incorporates information from a 1994 hydraulic and hydrologic study that developed strategies to restore the pocosin by raising water levels, a water inventory assessment in 2016 that evaluated long-term water management needs and threats, and management documents for the endangered red wolf and red-cockaded woodpecker, as well as protection guidelines for the bald eagle.

“Fortunately, the artificial drainage level in the extensive drainage/ditch systems can be managed with relatively simple infrastructure, allowing the Service to eliminate excessive artificial drainage of water via the ditches from the refuge’s peat soils,” according to the plan. “This allows rainfall to be captured and held in the peat soils, returning their natural sponge-like qualities. Therefore, while evapotranspiration can cause the water table to drop, peat soils in restored areas will retain moisture longer than peat soils in an open drainage system.”

In the late 1960s and early 1970s, the land was cleared and the existing drainage system was installed by First Colony Farms, according to documents. In small demonstration areas, the upper part of the peat layer was skimmed off to make land preparation easier, although ultimately very little land was actually farmed. Between regulatory restrictions and high costs, peat mining was also not possible.

Eventually the land was sold and then later donated to the federal government.

Today, there’s active farming in the Pungo unit, Stanton said, with about 1,200 acres of cooperative farm lands. The refuge contracts with some local farmers to leave about 20% of standing corn and winter wheat as cover crop.

“That not only helps conserve the farm soil, but it provides winter browse or green browse for the wintering tundra swans,” Stanton said. “The corn provides a ‘hot’ food. It’s actually high in carbohydrates for the wintering waterfowl.”

The refuge has held several meetings with the surrounding community, Stanton said. The sessions focused on smaller areas around the refuge, on what the refuge “is trying to accomplish, and also hear their concerns and how we can work together.”

There was a period in recent years when area farmers angrily blamed Pocosin Lakes’ peat restoration for flooding their land, although refuge officials said that the flooding problem was nearly all due to repeated extreme rainfall, some associated with tropical storms.

During the process of developing the water management plan, the refuge stepped up communication and its outreach to the community, Stanton said.

“I think relationships have improved tremendously,” she said.

Stanton said that a lot of the agricultural lands are family run farms, some for generations, and they’ve been having increasing challenges with drainage because of sea level rise. But if there’s a problem around the refuge that they want to address, Stanton said, she is “happy to go out and meet with them, or we can talk about it and let’s see what we can do.”

Stanton said that the refuge can sometimes help mitigate impacts of heavy rain on crops by manipulating their drainage structures to slow down water flow or hold the extra water until harvesting in done in an area.

In general, water-control structures — flat board risers — hold back or release water that flows in canals to rewet the pocosin, she said. But they also can hold back water produced by storms — up to a point.

“During hurricanes, sometimes we’ll get 20 inches, and nor’easters also can dump a lot of rain,” Stanton said. “We’re getting a lot more rain bombs.”

But the refuge cannot empty the canals in anticipation of a storm, a question she often hears. The idea is that the refuge would then be able to act as retention pond — except it wouldn’t, she said, because there’s only a certain amount of capacity in the canals. The risk is that rather than protecting the farmlands, draining them would either increase the risk of wildfires by exposing the pocosin to drying — they’re very difficult to rewet —  or the water will land right on top of the pocosin and sheet flow out.

Vegetation in pocosin is “fire-dependent,” according to refuge documents. With its high organic content, peat burns readily, but the severity of ground fire is related to the water table level. Before people began altering the landscape, pocosin fires were typically contained above ground, refuge officials said. But altered land or peat affected by severe drought, will lose its protective moisture, and peat fires could burn extremely deeply and for a long time.

After starting in 1923, a logging slash fire known as “the Great Conflagration” burned until extinguished in 1926, torching about 150 square miles and smothering nearby communities in yellow peat smoke for entire summers, according to the refuge document.

The first of two catastrophic fires in Pocosin Lakes was ignited on Allen Road by an escaped debris fire during a drought in spring 1985 in the Pungo unit, which was then state land. It burned through 100,000 acres and as deeply as 3 feet, destroying 26 homes before stopping at the banks of the Alligator River. During the eight weeks it burned, an estimated 1 million to 3.8 million metric tons of carbon were emitted into the air.

The second one, the Evans Road wildfire, was started by lightning on nearby private land on June 1, 2008. After burning 40,740 acres at average depths ranging from 6 to 24 inches, the fire was finally extinguished in January 2009. In areas on private land with the driest conditions, the fire smoldered 5 feet deep into the peat. Less was lost in the refuge because of an ongoing hydrology project that was completed in 2010. By the time the Evans Road fire was completely out, an estimated 10 tons of carbon had been emitted.

Two smaller wildfires in the refuge and the nearby area have occurred within the past year, Stanton said. One was in July 2022, followed by another in March.

The March fire, which began on private land by a debris fire spread by wind, became a ground fire. By then, the refuge knew the fire had to be quickly saturated before getting a chance to go deeper.

“You’ve got to flood it,” she said. “We learned that from Allen Road and Evans Road fires.”

In the short term, Stanton said, the refuge is focusing on completion of the infrastructure in the pocosin restoration area. Also, the refuge will continue work with stakeholders and adjacent landowners to help address drainage issues and other concerns they may want to discuss “to understand more about what we’re doing and the values of pocosin wetlands.”

But the changing climate presents challenges for the future. Pocosin Lakes is part of the Atlantic coastal plain that is subject to some of the highest sea level rise on the coast. Plus, the land accretes vertically unlike most wetlands and is not influenced by tides or sediment travel.

The ability of the pocosin coastal wetlands to adjust to rising seas may be limited, according to the plan.

“If the rate of sea level rise exceeds the vertical accumulation rate of peat in these wetlands,” the document said, “extensive areas could be submerged within a relatively short time.”

KILL DEVIL HILLS — Murray Bridges, the visionary Outer Banks fisherman who remade tiny Colington Island into a behemoth of the soft-shell crab industry in North Carolina, died Tuesday morning after being infected by the Vibrio bacteria two days earlier while tending his crab shedders.

Bridges, who owned and operated Endurance Seafood Co. off Colington Road since 1976, was 89.

“One week ago, he was setting peeler pots and fishing them,” Willy Phillips, a close friend and a fellow crabber, told Coastal Review Wednesday. “So, he fished to the end. That was Murray — his work ethic was incredible.”

A native of Wanchese, Bridges was instrumental in establishing soft-shell crab as a profitable shellfish product in North Carolina, while also insisting on the highest standards.

“There’s people that come along and transform the industry, and he was one of them,” Phillips said. “He was really kindhearted and hardworking. His example should be a guiding star because of the dedication to his work, his family and his industry.”

Bridges had woken up at about 2 a.m. Aug. 20 with a scratch that he had assumed was from a spider bite, his granddaughter Heather Bridges told Coastal Review by phone.

At about 3:30 a.m., he went out to check the crab shedders, she said, which were filled with water pumped from the nearby sound, and his family noticed the scratch on his arm.

“It was a little swollen place on his wrist,” Bridges said. “We didn’t think much of it.”

But by noon, when his daughter checked on him, he was delirious, and she immediately took him to the health clinic, Bridges said. He was then taken to Outer Banks Hospital and quickly transferred to Norfolk General Hospital. But by evening Aug. 21, the infection had spread to his elbow, then to his shoulder. It was too much for his heart, and Murray Bridges died the next morning.

“It really was amazing how quickly it progressed,” his granddaughter said.

The bacteria, Vibrio vulnificus, is naturally occurring in warm, brackish waters, but people with liver disease, diabetes, or compromised immune systems, or who are older than age 60 or men over age 40, are more at risk of getting infected. It is known as one of the fastest-growing bacteria in the world.

Bridges’ case is the second confirmed Vibrio death in Dare County since July.

According to the North Carolina Department of Health and Human Services, prior to Bridges, a total of three people in the state had died of Vibrio infections in July. Dare County health officials reported a total of nine confirmed and two probable cases of Vibrio in Dare County since 2018, not including Bridges. Of them, three cases were reported in July, one of them a confirmed fatality of a Nags Head man who was cut by a crab pot in Buzzard’s Bay in Colington.

Heather Bridges said that the doctors had told the family that by all indications, her grandfather had a Vibrio infection, but she said she was not aware whether it had been confirmed.

Phillips, 73, former owner of Full Circle Crab Co. in Columbia, in Tyrrell County, said that Bridges was proud of his service in his younger years as a merchant marine and then as a chief engineer on tugboats, when he “sailed,” as he called it, before he moved back home to his native Wanchese and started commercial fishing.

But his major contribution was how he built the lucrative soft-crab industry from the ground up in Colington, seizing on the opportunity after learning about peelers from a North Carolina Sea Grant program, and seeing how Virginia and Maryland fishermen were making money with soft-shell crabs.

Then through dint of his energy, innovative intelligence, and strict quality control, Bridges and Endurance Seafood Co. had birthed an economically viable industry during the traditional fishing off-season on the Outer Banks.

“The mark of a good fisherman is to be aware, to be able to move when you get that gut feeling that there’s something afoot,” Phillips said.

At the time, there was a small soft-shell crab industry on Core Sound, but on the Outer Banks, the peelers were only sold to a few local eateries. But Bridges recognized an untapped source of income, and eventually developed the techniques to produce a high-quality product, scale up the volume and create demand for it at the largest fish market in the U.S., earning a reputation along the way as a sharp businessman.

“The soft-shell crab industry is relatively new, within the last generation,” Phillips said. “Murray was able to hook into the markets in New York. He began shipping to New York as soon as he had the volume to do it.”

Buyers would show up every year at Ensurance Seafood, and start wrangling with Murray, and later also with his daughter Kristina, better known as Kissy. Whether or not Murray Bridge’s folksy Outer Banks brogue caught them off guard, New York buyers soon learned that Bridges was a steely, albeit honest, negotiator.

“You didn’t cross him,” Phillips said. “He had a long memory.”

But dealers appreciated that Bridges could be counted on to provide a quality product.

“It was still the case that they’d come down and pay homage to Murray,” Phillips said.

Initially, Bridges would ship live crabs packed in seaweed gathered locally, Phillips said. But he took the time to learn from other fishermen in Virginia, and, through trial and error, how to pack, how to set up shedders, how to sort the crabs by size and sex.

Soft-shell operations are intensive, seasonal operations that require around-the-clock work when the crabs start molting their shells. But done well, they can be quite profitable. Also, when there’s a bumper season, peeler crabs can be fresh frozen and shipped later.

“The crabbers really jumped on it because it provided an additional source of income early in the year,” Phillips said. Even such a short season could produce 25% or so of a fisherman’s annual income. But the workload is like a nightmare version of finals week, requiring the crabs be checked every three hours for about 10 days straight during the molting period. They then have to be packed alive and shipped.

“It’s incredibly intense,” said Phillips, who had run his own shedding operations for more than 40 years.

“There’s many a relationship that’s been busted apart because of the soft-crab industry.” But for Murray Bridges, his family operation has maintained the pace for 45 years and stayed together.

Over time, Bridges perfected the shedding operations, changing shedding tanks from the water to the land, and setting up elaborate systems with lights and pumps, according to “The Crabfather of Colington,” published in 2018 by Southern Cultures, a product of the University of North Carolina Press Center for the Study of the American South. He learned how to pack the live crabs in waxed cardboard cartons, between layers of parchment paper and covered in ice to keep them as fresh as possible when they’re shipped, the article said.

As the business grew, Bridges started buying peelers from other crabbers in Dare County, but he continued to set his own crab pots. The crabs are put in the tanks until they molt. And at the height of the season in the spring, six members of his family worked on the operation, according to the article, keeping an eagle eye on water temperature and the condition of each crab, waiting for the brief time it sheds its shell, handling up to 5,000 dozen crabs a day.

Heather Bridges, who is the daughter of Otto Bridges, Murray’s son who died in 1987, said she always will remember her grandfather constantly working or busy doing one task or another. No one should be surprised that when he died, he still had pots in the water — he fished pots every day. Whatever vacations he took, she said, “they were few and far between.”

“I’m 37,” she said. “It was hard to keep up with him.”

Phillips said that Murray’s family provided his “ace backup team” that kept his business humming. Bridges was a generous man, who shared information he’d learned with other fishermen without hesitation, Phillips said.

Today, thanks largely to Murray Bridges, soft-shell crabs, whether fried or sautéed, are one of the most popular offerings at Outer Banks restaurants, and Outer Banks peelers are renown along the East Coast for their quality.

“He had a great life,” Phillips said. “He did what he wanted. He left a trail of good will and happy folks.”

In a steamy hot summer of freak storms and horrific wildfires, recent cases of infections from vicious, flesh-eating bacteria that can kill within 48 hours of exposure in warm, brackish water has only added to a sense of foreboding.

It’s not that our sounds and marshes are dirty or disease-ridden, says a veteran microbiologist; it’s that warm estuarine waters can be dangerous to people with vulnerable immune systems who have fresh wounds or who have eaten raw oysters. 

“The last thing I want to do is scare people away from the beach, when it’s a very rare, rare situation,” James D. Oliver, professor emeritus at University of North Carolina Charlotte, Department of Biological Sciences, said in a recent interview. “But if you’re a susceptible person, you’re at risk.”

Although Vibrio vulnificus, a genus that’s one of the fastest growing bacteria known, has long been present in the Gulf of Mexico and South Atlantic coastal estuarine waters, infections from the pathogen have been becoming more prevalent in northern waters as the climate becomes increasingly warmer.

Of the 100 or so Vibrio bacteria, including one that causes cholera, vulnificus can be the most lethal.

State health officials reported that three people from North Carolina — including one case in Nags Head — died in July from Vibrio infections.

Three people in the New York City metropolitan area also have died since July 1 of Vibrio infections, and another person was hospitalized and released, the New York governor’s office reported. 

But Vibrio vulnificus, unlike the familiar water-borne contaminants from animal feces or septic spills, are naturally occurring in marine waters.

“They’re there all the time,” Oliver explained. “But when the water is cold, they go into a dormant stage and you won’t get infections in the winter. So all the infections are from like May until October.”

Typically, people who get infected are those who have liver diseases, including hepatitis, are older than age 60, or have suppressed immune system diseases such as diabetes, Oliver said. And for reasons scientists don’t completely understand, 85% to 90% of infection cases are in men over age 40.

Oliver, who began researching Vibrio vulnificus about 45 years ago, said the reason for the gender differences may be related to protective factors of estrogen in females, or because nearly all cases of liver cirrhosis are in males, he said. Unfortunately, he added, a large percentage of those with cirrhosis, which is not a young man’s disease, are unaware of it until it has progressed.

“And that is the No. 1 risk factor for coming down with it after eating raw oysters, or after getting a cut, for that matter,” Oliver said.

The bacteria activates when the water temperature reaches about 68 to 70 degrees, and does fine at hotter temperatures. Once they start dividing, their numbers can increase rapidly. It’s a matter of having the right combination of salinity and temperature, Oliver said. The higher the saltiness, the less the bacteria thrives. 

“They like relatively low salinity water,” Oliver said. “You won’t find this out in the open ocean.”

Salinity levels in estuarine waters typically range between 2 to 25 parts per 1,000, he said. The ocean is about 35 parts per 1,000. In severe droughts, brackish waterways sometimes become too salty for the bacteria’s liking, he said, but that has been unusual. 

Warming coastal waters from climate change impacts have resulted in a northerly spread along the U.S. East Coast of Vibrio wound infections, according to a March 2023 article in Scientific Reports, “Climate warming and increasing Vibrio vulnificus infections in North America,” authored by Oliver and eight other scientists.

Between 1998 and 2018, the report said, the number of cases increased eightfold, from 10 to 80 a year, and shifted northward about 30 miles.

By 2041 to 2060, the range for infections would be expected to encompass the New York City region and double in numbers, the report said. By the end of the century, unless carbon emissions are reduced, it could be found in every state.

Currently, Vibrio wound infections are about 20% fatal, Oliver said. Those with cuts who don’t have underlying health conditions could still get an infection, but it wouldn’t be life-threatening. People also can get infected by ingesting raw oysters, and that is extremely dangerous to people with the risk factors. Of those cases, 100% result in hospitalization and 50% are fatal.

“So it is the by far the most fatal foodborne disease in the world,” Oliver said.

In fact, 95% of all seafood-related deaths in the U.S. are due to eating raw or undercooked oysters, the report said. Ingestion also accounts for 93% of Vibrio infections from raw or undercooked seafood consumption. The pathogen is not a risk to pets or other animals, Oliver said.

“While the concentration of V. vulnificus in estuarine waters is typically quite low,” the report said, “it becomes concentrated in such molluscan shellfish as oysters and clams due to their efficient use of filter-feeding to obtain food.”

Most ingestion cases — about 100 to 200 cases a year in the U.S — are from Gulf oysters because of their habitat’s warmer waters and lower salinity, Oliver said, adding that he is not aware of any cases from North Carolina oysters.

“Ours are very safe, actually,” he said.

Since 2019, eight of 47 reported Vibrio cases among North Carolina residents have been fatal, according to a July 28 press release from the North Carolina Department of Health and Human Services. Of the three most recent fatalities in July 2023, the release said, all were exposed to brackish waters. Two of the victims had scratches and the third had consumed personally caught seafood that was not shared or distributed.

In an email responding to an inquiry from Coastal Review about two recent local cases, the Dare County health department said that one case, which was a fatality, was reported on July 20 in Buzzard Bay in Albemarle Sound south of Colington Island on the Outer Banks, and another confirmed case was reported on July 25 to have been acquired in the ocean in Nags Head. That person was a visitor, and there are no updates on a condition.

A third case was confirmed from a person who ate raw oysters on July 19 from a facility in Dare, the email said. The oysters were from Virginia, according to the New Jersey Department of Health. As of the last update on July 25, the person was reported to be recovering at home. 

There have been a total of nine confirmed and two probable cases of Vibrio in Dare County since 2018, the health department said.

An infection is diagnosed when tests find the bacteria in the stool, wound or blood of a patient, the email said.

Privacy regulations limit health officials from providing certain details and names, but numerous reports on social media and news outlets identified a recent fatality as a 71-year-old man from Nags Head, who died on July 21 after being cut by a crab pot in Buzzard’s Bay.

Hospitalizations related to Vibrio can require intensive treatment, especially for ingestion cases, and can be very costly, Oliver said.

As its apt “flesh-eating” epithet describes, the bacteria can inflict gruesome damage on the human body with stunning speed. Victims can suffer sepsis and horrific oozing wounds, sometimes requiring amputations to save their lives.

Major symptoms of wound infections include fever, with edema and cellulitis at the site. The incubation period is rapid, averaging only 16 hours.

The bacterium, which can start dividing in less than 15 minutes, is very sensitive to antibiotics, Oliver said, but effective treatment is a matter of timing. Dabbing a cut with peroxide is unlikely to prevent it from getting into the bloodstream, so those with health risks should be vigilant about seeing a doctor.

“By the time it gets in, it’s almost too late,” Oliver said. “And people dying within hours of admission to a hospital is not uncommon.”

In a paper Oliver wrote with a colleague, it detailed the progression of a Gulf Coast fisherman admitted to the hospital with a small wound that looked like a swollen spider bite, and within four hours it became a large lesion, and then it spread to multiple fluid-filled lesions on his body. Despite treatment with several antibiotics, he died 28 hours after he was admitted. 

In cases of infections from raw oyster ingestion, symptoms are fever, chills, nausea, abdominal pain, hypotension and development of secondary lesions, according to a paper Oliver wrote. The incubation period averages only 26 hours after ingestion. Again, time is of the essence for antibiotic treatment. Those who wait three days have a 100% fatality rate.

The “flesh-eating” quality of the bacteria is caused by very powerful enzymes that begin to degrade human tissue, Oliver said. In ingestion, it goes through the stomach down to the intestines, and then goes through the intestinal wall into the blood. It then begins to spread throughout the body and come out at the skin in multiple lesions.

But wound infections are typically more contained to the site of the cut or bite, which explains why they’re less lethal.

Oliver recommended that people with any health risks who were in brackish water and have any cuts, scratches, recent tattoos or unhealed bug bites need to be proactive and act as soon as a cut shows any sign of infection. Or if they recently ate raw oysters and start feeling unwell, they need to see a doctor as soon as possible. What is important is telling the health care provider of the exposure or ingestion, and any immune system issues. 

As the climate warming report emphasizes, the challenge to pubic health is likely to increase with warming seas, and more public awareness programs are called for.

“The northward V. vulnificus infection expansion stresses the need for increased individual and public health V. vulnificus awareness in these areas,” it said. “This is crucial as prompt action when symptoms occur is necessary to prevent major health outcomes.”

COLUMBIA — Whether red wolves will end up thriving in the wild is still a conservation conundrum, but now the critically endangered species is officially back in the game.

Wildlife conservation groups announced Wednesday a court settlement with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service that ensures continuation of successful management strategies and public engagement to restore the world’s only population of wild red wolves in northeastern North Carolina.

“These wolves and other endangered species across the South are a living testament to the fragile balance of our ecosystems and a symbol of the urgent need for conservation,” Southern Environmental Law Center Senior Attorney Ramona McGee and the group’s leader of its wildlife program, said in a prepared statement.

The agreement settles a 2020 lawsuit filed against the Wildlife Service in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of North Carolina by the law center on behalf of the Red Wolf Coalition, Defenders of Wildlife and the Animal Welfare Institute, contending the agency had violated provisions of the Endangered Species Act in its red wolf management.

In acknowledging the importance of the Eastern North Carolina red wolf population to the conservation and recovery of the species, the Wildlife Service confirmed in the seven-page settlement its commitment to manage the population “in a manner consistent with the ESA.”

In order to comply, the agency agreed to implement adaptive management strategies that include coyote sterilization and programs to release captive wolves and foster captive wolf pups into the wild population. Public engagement would be increased with stakeholders and property owners within the 1.7 million-acre recovery area that spans public and private land in Beaufort, Dare, Tyrrell, Hyde, and Washington counties.

“For more than 30 years, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and its partners have worked to conserve and recover the red wolf,” the agency said in a prepared statement, adding that increased transparency is a focus of improved communication. “The Service has been undertaking a concerted effort to reengage with the local community of eastern North Carolina regarding red wolf management and recovery. The success of the Eastern North Carolina Red Wolf Population sets the stage for the Service’s ability to fulfill our responsibility to recover the species – which we cannot do without the local community and our conservation partners.”

The settlement requires the Wildlife Service to continue the specified conservation strategies for eight years, but makes no mention of actions beyond that period.

Although McGee declined in an interview to go into how terms of the settlement were reached, or details of the negotiations, she said that Fish and Wildlife may choose to continue to publish release plans, or take another approach.

“Eight years is a long time — it’s roughly two generations of red wolves,” she said. “That will go a long way in getting the red wolf on the right path.”

As one of the earliest listings on the brand-new Endangered Species Act in 1973, the red wolf has been on a conservation roller coaster from the beginning.

By the time the canid was listed as endangered, its once-expansion population in the Southeastern U.S. had been depleted by loss of habitat and overhunting to a handful wandering in an isolated area of Louisiana. Not long after, the red wolf was declared extinct in the wild. But in 1987, four pairs of captive-bred offspring of wild wolves from captures in Louisiana were transferred by Fish and Wildlife to the Alligator River National Wildlife Refuge in Manteo, and the animals were designated as “nonessential experimental population of wild red wolves.”

Through innovative conservation strategies, the population increased steadily to as many as 130 by 2015, leading to confidence that the species had a chance to recover. But at the same time, political support and public anger over species conflicts turned against the wolves, and conservation efforts declined while mortality from vehicle strikes, poisonings and gunshots increased. Before releases of captive wolves into the recovery area resumed after the Southern Environmental Law Center filed suit in 2020, the known red wolf population had been reduced to as few as seven, with only a total of 20 or so wild red wolves remaining in North Carolina.

Fish and Wildlife announced in February 2022 that it would restore the prior effective management tactics and work with community members to protect red wolves so the animals can co-exist safely on the land.

Since 2021, 20 captive adults and sub-adults were released, three were transferred from the St. Vincent National Wildlife Refuge, a barrier island area where paired red wolves can roam free and breed, and five captive-bred pups were fostered by wild wolf mothers with newborn litters.

Emily Weller, the agency’s red wolf program coordinator, said that the current known population of wolves — those wearing a digital collar — in the recovery area is 13, with an estimated total population of 23 to 25 wolves in the wild. Those numbers take into account recent mortalities, including one found dead May 18 in Washington County with a gunshot wound in its torso, and a female found dead on July 20; but also pups born in the wild or captive-bred pups snuck into newborn litters.

There are also a total of 26 sterilized coyotes within the Eastern North Carolina red wolf population, Weller said. One of the successful management techniques is to sterilize coyotes, but leave them hormonally intact. When they’re released, they continue to instinctively hold territory, but they can’t breed with the wolves. The result is they serve as placeholders, while limiting the number of coyotes. Also, captured hybrids are euthanized to limit interbreeding. 

Of a number of red wolves released into the recovery area in the spring, some adjusted well, including a a captive-born family group comprised of a breeding pair and a yearling, Weller said in an interview. But unfortunately, a breeding male and a pup from that group have since died, she said, adding that the causes were still under investigation. Also, one of the captive-bred males that were released had to be recaptured and removed because of persistent visits to populated areas.

The settlement calls for the agency to submit a release plan every Dec. 1 for the next eight years. The final red wolf recovery plan is expected to be completed by late September 2023, the Weller said. That plan will incorporate the findings of the Population Viability Analysis, a draft of which is currently under review. Both plans will include details of what needs to happen for the species to recover, what they would look like, and what actions are required.

Although Weller said the specifics won’t be available until the plans are released, she said that the draft recovery plan estimated that recovery of the red wolf species could be reached in 50 years. Once the recovery plan is completed, she added, the agency will start working on the recovery implementation strategy, which will be a flexible plan that addresses the on-the-ground work and action needed to carry out recovery efforts.

Weller said that communication with community members and property owners is an important component of the success of the recovery program. To that end, earlier this year the agency signed a three-year contract with Francine Madden of Conservation Conflict, LLC., who will assist with transforming destructive energy in conflict to collaboration and progress.

“I think it’s going to help us engage better with the community and stakeholders, and help us build a better working relationship,” she said.

At a public information held in May, Weller said that increased population numbers depend on genetic diversity and decreased threats to the both captive and wild wolves. But true success will be evident when the red wolves don’t just need people not to hurt them, but also don’t need people to help them.

“For red wolf populations to ultimately be viable or successful, they must not be reliant on extensive human interventions, which we define as annual or frequent releases, fostering, translocations, and placeholder management,” she said at the meeting.

And the conservation effort must be collaborative.

“For any species, but particularly this one, effective recovery will require participation and involvement of all parties,” Weller said.

This report has been corrected to note that only one of the released captive-born male wolves had to be removed, rather than two as originally reported.

RODANTHE — Dare County commissioners voted last month to provide about $1.5 million to the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers to study the feasibility of a beach nourishment project in Rodanthe, where five oceanfront houses since 2020 have succumbed to the sea, with more still at risk.  

North Carolina 3^rd District Republican Rep. Greg Murphy told the county that the three-year study is required to obtain any congressional funds for a beach nourishment project, and the county must pick up half the tab.   

“I am delighted to work with Dare County to provide the funding necessary to advance beach nourishment for Rodanthe,” Murphy said in a prepared statement dated July 27. “Preservation of the Outer Banks and its vibrant communities is one of my top priorities in Congress, and I’m grateful to work on delivering the resources necessary to do so.”  

Although commissioners expressed uncertainty about how the study would proceed, Murphy said through a spokesman that the study has been authorized since 1990 and the Corps has assured that it is committed to conduct the study if it is funded.    

The Corps would be able to begin work once the first increments of the study are funded, Murphy’s spokesman Alexander Crane said in a July 29 email response to Coastal Review. The county’s share would be expected after the Corps has the federal funds in hand, he explained. 

“Yes, the study is a precursor to requesting federal funding for beach nourishment,” Crane wrote. “The amount of federal funding for beach nourishment will be determined later on by Congress and the results of the feasibility study.” 

Crane said that the next step in the process would be an appropriations request by Murphy in the February-March time frame of next year, to be included in the fiscal 2025 budget. Those dollars would fund the federal portion of the feasibility study. 

Property owners along the severely eroded shoreline on the north end of Hatteras Island started asking for the project years ago and with dramatically increased urgency as erosion worsened, especially at Mirlo Beach, the village’s northernmost subdivision. Even before the $145 million “jug-handle” bridge opened last summer, bypassing Mirlo and the section of N.C. Highway 12 that was frequently damaged by ocean and sound storm tide, the houses located farther south near the Rodanthe pier started collapsing into the ocean.  

For months, federal, state and local officials have struggled to address a multitude of issues exposed by the tenuous and ongoing situation — property insurance, private property rights and liabilities, public safety and health, governments’ roles and responsibilities to protect public shorelines and accelerating climate change hazards — with few answers.  

For numerous reasons, nourishment has not been considered a viable option for Rodanthe. Some coastal geologists have long argued that with Rodanthe’s extraordinary erosion rates on both ocean and sound sides, the village had no business being developed in the first place. 

 “An aerial view shows that Rodanthe is actually on a small, deteriorating cape extending out to sea,” according to a description in “The North Carolina Shore and Its Barrier Islands, Restless Ribbons of Sand.” “Rodanthe is an extremely high-risk community.” 

The book’s six authors, coastal scientists who included Orrin Pilkey from Duke University and Stan Riggs from East Carolina University, now both semi-retired, warned that Rodanthe was rapidly narrowing, with an average annual erosion rate of 5 to 22 feet, and was at risk of becoming an inlet.   

“THIS AREA IS EXTREMELY DANGEROUS AND SHOULD BE AVOIDED!” the authors wrote, emphasizing the statement with an unusual use of bold, uppercase letters.  

And that was the assessment of coastal scientists 25 years ago, when the book was published in 1998. Since then, the average annual erosion rate in Rodanthe has not only increased, it seems as if it has worsened faster in some areas, such as where the houses are falling.  

In May, Columbia, South Carolina-based Coastal Science and Engineering released an updated report requested by Dare County on a sand analysis it had done in 2014 for the county at Rodanthe. According to the report, a 5.7-mile-long critically eroded area between the south end of Pea Island and the north end of the village of Waves, has a baseline deficit of 2.3 million cubic yards of sand, and it’s losing about 300,000 cubic yards a year. At that rate, it would require about 3.8 million cubic yards of sand at today’s cost of about $40 million to offset five years of erosion.  

Patrick Barrineau, coastal scientist and project manager for Coastal Science and Engineering, said the report, which compared the condition and the location of the beach in 2023 to that of 2014, was intended as an initial step toward a more comprehensive analysis.  

For instance, he said, if the Corps does its study, it will likely include an economic cost-benefit analysis, a sea level and climate analysis and analysis of more physical surveys. Also, the report looked qualitatively at what to expect with different sea levels.  

“A more complete modeling analysis would put quantitative measure on those predictions,” he told Coastal Review.    

In looking at the changes in volume of sand, which is measured from the beach out into surf, there was still some sand remaining — “Probably not very much,” he added — from an emergency nourishment project the Corps had done in 2014 to protect N.C. 12 until the new Rodanthe bridge was built.   

The volumetric changes were measured out into 40 to 50 feet of water, which details “sort of a three-dimensional change in the beach surface,” he said. Horizontal changes are just looking at the high-water line. Most people would describe the erosion rate with the horizontal measurement. Today, the annual erosion rate in the critical area ranges from 14 feet to about 20 feet.   

According to the report, the variations in volume can be attributed to the coastal dynamics: Overwash at Pea Island draws sand from the beach system and stores it, reducing it in Rodanthe; and the most eroded shorelines are situated near closed breaches, such as at Mirlo, making them vulnerable to again becoming inlets. 

Bottom line, it would take a lot of sand and frequent nourishment to keep a wide beach in Rodanthe, Barrineau agreed.

“Yes, definitely,” he said. “I mean it’s going to take on the order of millions of yards of sand to maintain the shoreline in a place where it’s naturally eroding at the rate that we see at Mirlo Beach just to accommodate for that and year-to-year change in the sand volume on the beach.”  

Adding the impacts of sea level rise, especially where there is minimal dune, could exacerbate the issue with storm-cut channels and overwash, he said. But unlike for some beaches along the southern North Carolina coast, Barrineau said he doesn’t think there’d be a problem finding sand borrow areas to keep up with the nourishment demand.  

“There’s a lot of sand out there,” he said.   

If a groin — a wall that traps sand — were to be added to the project, it would cost about $15 million and could prolong the length of time the beach would stay put. Over a 30-year period, the report said, a nourishment-only management strategy would cost about $40 million more than a strategy using groins as well as nourishment. 

“We’ve seen that in other sites where the groins can slow erosion along a project site and in doing so, they can extend the project lifetime,” Barrineau said. “And so, while it’s more expensive up front, it may be cheaper over a 30-year time horizon to have those in place.” 

Hardened structures like groins and jetties, however, are not permitted in North Carolina. They were included in the analysis to “have in the tool box,” he said.   

But barring a change in state law, groins aren’t going to be an option if a beach nourishment project ever does get approved and funded for Rodanthe. Barrineau said that the best chance for such geologically vulnerable locations to keep its beach is more substantial dunes that are taller and wider to be able to withstand pounding waves.  

“It’s pretty unlikely that an entire project would be removed from a site in one storm,” he said. “Now, that being said, major Category 5-type storms do strange things. And it can be difficult to predict.” 

Corps projects are not eligible for emergency federal funds for renourishment after storms, he added.  

Dare County Manager Bobby Outten said that the county has about $8 to $10 million available for a new project from money set aside for beach nourishment done in the county and its oceanfront towns.  

The county’s beach nourishment fund is restricted by state law to use a 2% share of Dare County’s occupancy tax, which totals 6%, for the placement of sand and planting of vegetation to widen the beach. In addition to the county fund, beach nourishment projects may also be funded by property and municipal service district taxes, and state and federal public assistance program funds.  

“In our preliminary modeling, if we had a $40 million project, then in three to five years, we would have enough money to build the project and maintain it,” he said, calculating on the fund’s current rate of growth.  

Outten said the county did not specifically ask consultant Coastal Science and Engineering to include data about the potential impact of sand-trapping groins on a beach nourishment project. 

“They know we can’t do groins,” he said, referring to the fact that “hardened structures” on shorelines are not permitted in North Carolina. But he doesn’t rule out asking in the future.  

If the feasibility study or a federally funded beach nourishment project do not move forward, then Outten said that the county would continue to look for other funding sources.  

Along with other coastal counties in North Carolina, he said, Dare County has asked the state to update the Beach Inlet Management Plan to help pay for shoreline-widening projects.  

“The idea is, we need a state fund for beach nourishment,” Outten said.  

ROANOKE ISLAND — For five years during and after the Civil War there was a vibrant community of formerly enslaved people living on the north end of Roanoke Island, with houses, churches, a sawmill, a hospital, schools and stores.

Virtually no evidence of the little community remains — or has yet to be discovered — other than oral history and some written records.

With the new Freedom Interpretive Trail being installed along a 1.25-mile wooded path at Fort Raleigh Historic Site, near the site of the island’s former Freedmen’s Colony, a vital, officials say, but under-recognized part of Outer Banks and Black American history will now be vivified by life-sized silhouettes and interpretive signs with biographical details of some residents of the colony, describing hardships they risked reaching Roanoke and explore why the island was considered a haven. The installation is expected to be completed by the end of the year.

“There will be a narrative that includes different quotes that we have from these different folks, so that will be tied into the silhouette that we’re looking at as we walk the trail,” Fort Raleigh lead park ranger Josh Nelson told Coastal Review recently. “And then we have some information in the narrative from that person, quotes that have been put together to give us a sense of who they were and what they were doing here.”

Established in April 1941, the Fort Raleigh National Historic Site was expanded in 1990 from its original 178 acres. Of the total 513 acres that currently make up the park, 355 are actively managed. As Nelson explained, the trail reflects Fort Raleigh’s expanded focus beyond 16th century English settlements that Congress authorized in 1990, including the significant Black American, Native American and Civil War history of Roanoke Island.

“So it’s not an immediate thing that’s happened, but it’s been something that the park has been working toward since that change and that I see this trail project is really just a continuation of our attempt at trying to better share that history of the Civil War,” he said. “And in this case, specifically the Freedmen’s Colony and the Underground Railroad history that the site has.”

The seven exhibits along the Freedom Trail will interpret various aspects of the Black experience on Roanoke Island, Nelson explained in an email.

“The African American Freedmen’s Colony is still, thirty years later, an under-represented story at the park and this project will offer visitors a greater understanding of the significance Roanoke Island played in the Underground Railroad network,” he wrote. “Building from the site significance — identified in foundation documents — diverse audiences visiting today will identify with the greater history at Fort Raleigh through the experience of the interpretive trail. The current national dialogue around social justice is rooted in stories incorporated within Fort Raleigh and the project will connect that conversation to the park purpose.”

It wasn’t until a granite monument, the First Light of Freedom, was dedicated at the park on Sept. 14, 2001, that Fort Raleigh included significant recognition of the Freedmen’s Colony.

After the Union Army won the Battle of Roanoke Island in February 1862, formerly enslaved people poured onto the island seeking freedom. Within a year, there were nearly 1,000 refugees, according to Patricia Click’s book, “Time Full of Trial.” By 1865, she wrote, the colony had grown to about 3,500 people.

Although the U.S. government had initially supported Roanoke Island’s Freedmen’s Colony as a model permanent colony of freed Black people, Click wrote, it ultimately was abandoned by the Union and ended March 1867.

“We haven’t identified precisely where the Freedmen’s Colony was, but we do know the area,” Nelson said. “We know that is was in the area where the airport is today on Roanoke Island, and it extended north underneath where the North Carolina Aquarium sits. The heart of it, where a lot of activity was taking place, was just north of that on Sunnyside Road.”

From there, Nelson said, the colony continued north, with three major streets running northwest to southeast following the direction of the island. Recently, the park was “excited” to learn, he said, that the northern boundary of the colony was at Fort Raleigh where the Freedom Trail runs today.

Numerous residents of contemporary Manteo, including the late Virginia Tillett, a longtime public servant in the community, are descendants of the Freedmen’s Colony.

Constructed of half-inch-thick steel, the life-sized silhouettes on the Freedom Trail will be weathered rather than painted, Nelson said. Accounts of the people from the colony were gathered from published accounts, and from newly unearthed documents found during research at the National Archives and the Outer Banks History Center by park volunteer Cathy Steever and Fort Raleigh park ranger Mike Zatarga.

“We’ve been working on this project since August of last year, and that’s including applying for grants … the research, the transcribing,” Nelson said. All told, 350 pages of handwritten documents were transcribed, in-house and by volunteers. Grants were awarded by the Underground Network to Freedom, (about $7,500); the National Park Foundation, (about $42,000); and Outer Banks Forever, ($2,500.)

As described by Nelson in the email, one exhibit will incorporate history of pre-Civil War enslavement in eastern North Carolina, and attempts to seek freedom, interpreted through three silhouettes of Annice Jackson and her two daughters.

The second one, with the silhouette of Thomas Robinson, will discuss the Union army on Roanoke Island and how local enslaved African Americans assisted in the 1862 Union victory on the island.

A third exhibit will highlight education at the Freedmen’s Colony with a silhouette of student Londen Ferebee.

For the fourth exhibit, the role of missionaries in the colony will be highlighted with a silhouette of missionary teacher Sarah Freeman.

The fifth exhibit, with a silhouette of soldier Spencer Gallop, will represent the 220 men from the Freedmen’s Colony who joined the Union army and navy.

The sixth exhibit, with a silhouette of Fanny Whitney, will demonstrate the hard work done alone by the women of colony.

And the seventh exhibit covers the end of the Freedmen’s Colony and the current community’s connection, depicting Orphan Jim facing the sound and the direction that so many traveled to unknown futures.

Nelson said that the silhouettes are based on what people of that age and era were known to wear and look like, but there are no photographs or paintings of the people in the exhibit. The power is in the actual words, of actual people.

“I belonged to a man by the name of Hodges Gallop at Currituck before the war and worked on a farm,” Spencer Gallop, 19, is quoted in his exhibit. “I escaped to Roanoke Island and cut wood and helped build forts for the Yankees. In 1864, my regiment was assigned as guards at a POW camp containing close to 14,000 Confederate soldiers in Point Lookout, Maryland. Then, in the fall, we fought with distinction in the Battle of New Market Heights, Va.”

Even with the might of government, it can be difficult to force people to remove their houses that are at risk of falling into the ocean.

More and more, it’s also proving to be difficult for homeowners to find property insurance that would adequately cover, or proactively prevent, that risk.

But a Federal Insurance Office report, “Insurance Supervision and Regulation of Climate-Related Risks,” released in June shows that the insurance industry is lagging in addressing the wide range of escalating climate hazards far beyond covering oceanfront coastal development.

“More work is needed by state and federal regulators and policymakers, as well as by the private sector and the climate science and research communities,” the report said, “to better understand the nature of climate-related risks for the insurance industry, their implications for insurance regulation and supervision, and for the stability of the financial system — including for real estate markets and the banking sector.”

With alarming spikes in recent years in flood, storm and wildfire disasters, and with property insurers fleeing Louisiana, Florida and California, homeowners are increasingly paying more for less insurance, having policies canceled with no warning, or searching in vain for coverage.

“I think we’re definitely at an inflection point where insurers are pricing themselves out of doing what they’ve been counted on to do for generations,” said Amy Bach, executive director of United Policyholders, a San Francisco-based nonprofit information resource for insurance consumers in all 50 states and the District of Columbia. “This is clearly a national matter.”

One dramatic climate risk, in the form of severe beach erosion, has been on full display in Rodanthe, an Outer Banks village on the northern end of Hatteras Island where, since 2020, five oceanfront houses have collapsed into the Atlantic, scattering debris for miles in the water and on beaches along Cape Hatteras National Seashore.

Related: Federation, law center call for enforcement of existing law

Government-subsidized flood insurance policies won’t pay policyholders until the house is destroyed, nor will they cover proactive removal or cleanup costs for debris.

Although property owners in Rodanthe want Dare County to pay for a beach nourishment project, which could protect houses and restore flood insurance coverage, the county has said that the high rate of erosion — an annual average of about 14 feet — and the relatively small number of affected properties would make it prohibitively expensive.

A recently released engineering report completed for the county estimated that for a project covering 5.7 miles of beach, it would take about 3.8 million cubic yards of sand to offset five years’ worth of erosion, with a one-time cost of about $40 million.

Dare County Board Chairman Bob Woodard said during the commission’s June 5 meeting that U.S. Rep. Greg Murphy, R-N.C., indicated that it may be possible to secure federal nourishment funds.

“There are some folks in Rodanthe that appear to have some pretty strong ties to representatives in D.C. that are trying to help (the congressman) make this happen,” Woodward said. Commissioners agreed to send a letter to Murphy requesting $40 million for the nourishment project.

In a June 16 response to Woodard, Murphy wrote that a feasibility study would have to be performed by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers that was estimated to cost “a minimum” of $3 million, before a funding request could be made.

A spokesman for Murphy, responding to an inquiry from Coastal Review in a June 26 email, said that the congressman and his team had been in touch with commissioners prior to their request, and he is continuing to discuss “a plan of action and the best way ahead” as the situation evolves.

“Congressman Murphy has been closely monitoring the conditions in Rodanthe and has witnessed the erosion firsthand,” the spokesman wrote.

Starting in the late 1980s, there had been a provision in the National Flood Insurance Program known as the Upton-Jones Act that had provided funds to demolish or relocate houses threatened by encroaching surf on an eroding beach. It lasted less than eight years.

Revival of Upton-Jones or a similar measure is currently being reconsidered by government officials and policymakers as one remedy for the Rodanthe problem. The Upton-Jones Amendment had funded up to 40% of the policy to move houses and up to 110% to demolish them. The maximum payout was $185,000 for the structure and $60,000 for its contents.

But as federal and state laws so far appear toothless to thwart houses from falling onto public beaches, escalating threats created by rising seas, intensifying rainfall and raging wildfires are exposing looming deficiencies not just in the National Flood Insurance Program, but in property insurance overall.

Climate-related risks categorized broadly as physical, transition and litigation, the report found, “present new and increasingly significant challenges for the insurance industry that warrant careful monitoring by financial regulators, policymakers, and insurance companies. The oversight of climate-related risks is also an emerging and increasingly critical topic for state insurance regulators.”

Potential revival of the Upton-Jones Act, which was repealed by Congress in 1994, was part of a broader discussion on insurance options for properties on the vulnerable Atlantic shoreline during the second virtual video meeting of the Threatened Oceanfront Structures Interagency Work Group.

Established jointly in August 2022 by the National Park Service and the North Carolina Division of Coastal Management to seek solutions for the problem in Rodanthe, the group appeared to view the flood program as a concern most relevant to the bottom line.

“And that is the question of the house is going to collapse,” Cape Hatteras National Seashore Superintendent Dave Hallac said to the online group, which included about 24 panelists and 25 attendees. “There’s not only going to be the cost of the payout … but now there is also going to be environmental damage potentially and the cost of cleanup. It is hard to image that that is going to be more than an orderly move.”

During two hours of discussion, the panel agreed that there are gaps in qualifications meeting the need for available grants, and government codes and regulations need to be updated, as well as information on erosion rates. Considering the lack of available private insurance coverage, the recently updated NFIP Risk Rating 2.0 seems to provide the best option for flood coverage. But there were questions whether a new Upton-Jones program would be more appropriate as a hazard mitigation program, rather than insurance.

Even with the updated program that is gradually increasing rates, flood insurance premiums are 50% below what they need to be, said Spencer Rogers, a retired North Carolina Sea Grant coastal engineer and geologist.

“And that’s a major issue for the program,” he said, “that any analysis that’s going to … cost additional money for the flood insurance program needs to address the money.”

As Bach, with the consumer insurance group, explained, recent rate increases have been influenced by inflation and supply-chain issues, but a primary driver is reinsurance, essentially transferring risk to another insurer to protect the primary insurer. But the newest drivers, she said, are insurance technology rating tools that provide much more detail on the risks.

With those analytic tools, California and other states have realized that calculating risks with models that are predicting the future based on the past has greatly underestimated the actual risks.

Bach said the situation currently is reminiscent to what happened in the 1960s, when property insurance for flooding became essentially unaffordable and unavailable, resulting in the federal government creating the subsidized National Flood Insurance Program, or NFIP. For a large number of homeowners, options today for property insurance could mean going into more debt by financing the insurance; paying higher rates year over year; having bare minimum insurance; or having no insurance. Insurers, she said, are “running away from catastrophic risk at the same time that they have been raising their rates.”

All Federal Deposit Insurance Corp.-backed mortgages require homeowners insurance, but even uninsured property owners without mortgages often need federal assistance after disasters.

“I think there are increasingly loud cries for there to be a version of the NFIP, basically an American disaster insurance program … in the sense that it’s an insurer of last resort for people who can’t get coverage elsewhere,” Bach said. “But I think that’s what we’re going to be seeing more (demand) for because insurers are a powerful lobby, but so our Realtors and so our builders and so our voters. So at some point a solution is going to have to be found here, but it’s increasingly looking like it’s not going to be the private property insurance system as we’ve known it.”

Bach said that the questions going forward are, what insurance program are elected officials going to come up, and what will the recipe look like? As Bach sees it, people are going to continue to want to live near beautiful coasts and forests, or stay where their family has been rooted for generations for as long as possible.

“They didn’t come to the risk,” she said. “The risk came to them while they were there.”

CHAPEL HILL — The torpidity of government bureaucracy could be illustrated with the picture of abandoned wooden houses on a Cape Hatteras National Seashore beach, akimbo in the surf, beaten, weathered and left to the mercy of the ocean.

After more than a year since the first of five houses fell into the surf without significant action to mitigate the continued threat to the public resources at the eroded shoreline in Rodanthe, the Southern Environmental Law Center, a nonprofit environmental legal advocacy group, has sent letters on behalf of the North Carolina Coastal Federation to two relevant government agencies pressing for enforcement of existing law. The Coastal Federation publishes Coastal Review.

“Allowing the cycle of collapse and contamination to continue contradicts various laws and policies that govern the National Park Service’s management of its units, including the Organic Act, the Service’s mission statement, several federal regulations, and the National Park Service Management Policies 2006,” the group wrote in a letter dated May 25 to seashore superintendent David Hallac.

Related: Climate peril, insurance, sand costs: No easy fix in Rodanthe

In addition to the hazard created by construction debris scattered into the ocean and over miles of beach, the law center said that destroyed waste treatment structures can leak untreated human waste.

“NPS must act immediately to abate the exposed or abandoned septic tanks that can endanger the health of the public and the environment in Rodanthe before thousands of beachgoers are exposed to raw sewage,” the letter said. 

At the same time, the law center sent a similar letter to Secretary Kody Kinsley at the North Carolina Department of Health and Human Services, asking the department to use its authorities to address the imminent dangers and to enforce its existing septic regulations to protect the public. 

“This untenable situation poses unacceptable health and safety risks to residents of Rodanthe and visitors alike, and the Department of Health and Human Services has an obligation to safeguard the public health and welfare of all persons in the affected area,” the center wrote.

Julie Furr Youngman, senior attorney at the law center, said in an email that the issues are complex and both agencies have committed to respond to the concerns.

“We (the law center and Coastal Federation) have already been working with the National Park Service and the state Division of Coastal Management in particular to grapple with the problem of collapsing houses and failing septic systems at the coast, to understand the causes, and to brainstorm solutions,” Youngman wrote. “We look forward to working with DHHS too, as well as other government bodies with responsibilities for safeguarding people at the coast.”

A spokesperson with the state Department of Health and Human Services said in an email that the department remains available to assist Dare County to address damaged septic systems and correct the issues as quickly as possible.

“(The department’s) mission is to provide essential services to improve the health, safety and well-being of all North Carolinians, including working with local health departments to address any impact on health from septic systems,” the spokesperson wrote. “NCDHHS is aware of the septic systems that are damaged and/or malfunctioning in Rodanthe, and Dare County’s Health Department has taken action to address the issues.”  

The National Park Service is also continuing to work with the state and local officials to address the situation, Hallac, the Cape Hatteras park superintendent, told Coastal Review.

“We appreciate the time that SELC took to analyze the challenges,” Hallac said, “and we look forward to reviewing their letter in detail.”

ROANOKE ISLAND — Archaeologists have unearthed artifacts that appear to confirm the site of the Algonquian village on Roanoke Island, where Native Americans shared their dinner with the first English explorers.

“This is firm evidence that this locality was Roanoac, the village of first contact,” Eric Klingelhofer, vice president for research of the nonprofit First Colony Foundation, told a small group of reporters Friday during a briefing at the excavation site. “We’ve known about the village because that’s the place where English explorers sent by Raleigh first came.”

Pointing to broken pieces of pottery laid out on a makeshift table — a sample of the finds — the veteran archaeologist explained that the sherds came from Algonquian Colington ware and burnished ware pottery, both found during a recent excavation of the 16^th century strata. 

“Now that’s not the full story,” Klingelhofer added with a sly grin as he reached for small plastic bag. ‘’We found something else.”

He then gently pulled out a thread of copper that was bent into a ring shape, and was buried about 3 feet down in the top layer. Copper was much sought-after by Natives in the Southeast, but it was rare in the region and was nearly all acquired through trade.

“I was extremely pleased because I knew what it meant,” said Klingelhofer, referring to English contact. As he spoke, the waters of Roanoke Sound could be heard lapping at the shoreline behind the dig site, hidden by lush trees and bushes at the privately owned Elizabethan Gardens adjacent to Fort Raleigh National Historic Site.

Copper was a known currency for the first generation of American colonization, Klingelhofer said, adding that the copper strand most likely was a trade item that may have been worn by a Native as a ring. 

“There’s no other reason it would be here,” he said. “It must have come from the colonists.”

The Foundation team has asked conservators at Jamestown to analyze the copper, he said.

English explorers Phillip Amadas and Arthur Barlowe visited Roanoac in 1584 as part of a reconnaissance mission planned by Sir Walter Raleigh. The men were welcomed by the Algonquians, who invited them to dine and exchanged gifts with them. The Englishmen later described Roanoac as having nine cedar houses fortified in a round of “sharp trees.”

The following year, Ralph Lane, who was part of a larger Raleigh expedition, had been sent to Roanoke Island with about 100 soldiers to establish a fort and a settlement. Lane abandoned the island in 1586 because of hostilities — much apparently provoked by him — between the Native population and the English. Nonetheless, about 117 men, women and children from England arrived on Roanoke Island in 1587 to establish a permanent settlement. Known today as the “Lost Colony,” it disappeared without a trace and is often called the oldest mystery in American history.

Founded in 2003 by Klingelhofer and other professional archaeologists, the First Colony Foundation has conducted numerous archaeological explorations in and around Fort Raleigh National Historic Site on the north end of Roanoke Island, which is where the Lost Colony settlement is likely to have been built, as well as sites in Bertie County at the headwaters of the Albemarle Sound where, artifacts show, a small number of colonists likely had fled.

Findings over the years from Foundation digs have ranged from remnants of early wells, sherds from olive jars and pottery, a Cashie-type Indian pot, tobacco pipes, French ceramic flasks, glass trade beads, and an entire necklace of cut diamond-shaped copper sheets that the team believes may have been presented to a Roanoac noble. Advancements with remote-sensing technology have enabled First Colony researchers to eliminate some sites while homing in on other areas.

Klingelhofer and Foundation Co-Vice President Nick Luccketti had been part of late archaeologist Ivor Noel Hume’s Virginia Company Foundation team in the 1990s that determined that an area presumed to be associated with the reconstructed “Fort Raleigh” earthworks was instead the 1585-1586 workshop used by scientist Thomas Harriot and the metallurgist Joachim Gans — a notable discovery.

Further tests revealed evidence nearby of charcoal making and a brick kiln and led to other digs to the north and west that found 16th century artifacts. The work with Hume directly influenced establishing the First Colony group to create a partnership agreement with the National Park Service so that Elizabethan-era explorations could continue.

Although the Foundation, which includes academics and historians with expertise in precolonial and early colonial American activity and Native American culture, would welcome finding evidence of the Lost Colony, its focus has always been the broader story of the 1584-1590 Roanoke Voyages, which served as the playbook for English colonization and ultimately, for what became America.

Klingelhofer said that the team is up against time, as increased shoreline erosion consumes places to explore, and storms reconfigure potential historic areas.

Going back as far as the Great Chesapeake Hurricane in 1769, sand had buried the 16^th century site where archaeologists have recently dug. So far, Klingelhofer said, about 100 feet of shoreline has been lost on the north end of Roanoke Island, and water in the Albemarle Sound is about 3 feet higher than it was in the 1580s.

For the time being, he said, work on Roanoke Island is done. Meanwhile, he said he was looking forward to publication in November of a book detailing archaeology and historic research done by the Foundation and its predecessors, “Excavating the Lost Colony Mystery, The Map, the Search, the Discovery,” which is edited by Klingelhofer.

But the team plans to resume explorations soon at other sites in and around Fort Raleigh and Bertie County. They will also expand beyond the Native American village excavation to see how far it goes, now that the location has been nailed down to their satisfaction.

“So it’s been a good little dig,” Klingelhofer said. “We are very happy to bring our search for Roanoac to a conclusion.”

OCRACOKE VILLAGE — As islanders and National Park Service personnel have been busy in recent weeks preparing to celebrate Thursday the 200^th anniversary of the Ocracoke Lighthouse, the beacon stands as a stoic symbol of the very island itself: sturdy, enduring and vulnerable.

For those not already on the island, the Ocracoke Light Station 200^th anniversary event set for 1-2 p.m. Thursday will be livestreamed on Facebook by Outer Banks Forever, the Cape Hatteras National Seashore’s official philanthropic partner.

The nation’s second oldest continually operated lighthouse, a cherished centerpiece of the village, was damaged when an astounding 7-foot surge of water from the Pamlico Sound was blasted ashore by Hurricane Dorian Sept. 6, 2019. Villagers called it the worst flooding in memory, 2 feet higher than ever before.

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After two years of planning by Cape Hatteras National Seashore, including community meetings, discussions and review, the Ocracoke Light Station Preservation Project has been approved and funded. A contractor to work on the chosen alternative, which involves mostly elevation of the keepers’ quarters and repair of the lighthouse, is expected to be selected later this year.

Congress appropriated $2 million to the National Park Service in September to renovate and repair the Ocracoke Light Station.

“Most everybody, like 98%, thinks they’re doing what the community wants them to do, as a whole,” John Simpson, an 11^th generation Ocracoker, told Coastal Review.

The station’s 75-foot-tall Ocracoke Lighthouse, oil house, keepers’ quarters and ancillary buildings were completed in 1823.

An early option to relocate the lighthouse station — an idea Simpson said was more rumor than an actual consideration — was immediately tossed.

“I don’t think, personally, that was ever brought to a meaningful discussion,” he said. “You talk about a rebellion — the lighthouse means a lot to the folks that live there.”

When Simpson was in high school, his father retired from the Coast Guard and his family moved into the house his mother had inherited that was situated “due north along the creek on the Silver Lake side.”

Nearly every night, unless it was foggy, the beam of the lighthouse shined into his window, he recalled fondly.

“It was like a nightlight,” he said.

Many people on the island have their own personal connections to the lighthouse.

For Simpson, he is proud that his great-grandfather Joseph M. Burrus, known as “Cap’n Joe,” served there as a light keeper from 1929 to 1946. A Hatteras native, he decided to build a house on Ocracoke Island after retiring from 45 years in the U.S. Lifesaving Service. For a while when his father was young, Simpson said that his father and his family had lived in the keepers’ quarters with Cap’n Joe.

Simpson recalled a story his father had told him about the Great Atlantic Hurricane in September 1944, which until Dorian, he said, was the “benchmark storm for Ocracoke.”

“My dad said, ‘Son, I would never have believed it if I hadn’t seen it with my own eyes,’” he recounted. “Across the street was a wooden skiff with a pig and three adults in it. The water picked up that wooden boat, brought it over the (lighthouse station) fence, put it in the yard and left them there high and dry.”

Dorian’s tide was 11 inches higher than that devastating 1944 storm.

Along with nearly every vehicle and building in the village, the entire light station was flooded. The grounds and walkways were completely submerged, and the base of the lighthouse, the double keepers’ quarters and five outbuildings were inundated with as much as 24 inches of brackish water.

“There was 18 inches of floodwater in the old keepers’ quarters,” Cape Hatteras National Seashore Superintendent Dave Hallac said in March 2021, months after Hurricane Dorian. “The shed got lifted up and floated off from the foundation.”

But the Ocracoke Light Station, which was added in 1977 to the National Register of Historic Places, is barely above sea level and situated next to a marsh. Its water table is so high that it is technically considered a wetland. Unless there is a dry spell, the station’s lawn is mushy and often impossible to walk on without getting wet feet.

“I’ve only been superintendent for six years and it’s flooded or practically flooded three times,” Hallac added.

With Dorian, the water roared through the station at a height of 6.7 feet above mean sea level.

“It came up super fast and it went down super fast,” the superintendent said while showing the damage at the site in February 2022. “But the damage was done.”

The power and water pedestals were all destroyed, requiring replacements of everything. The interior of the structure had to be cleaned of mold and dried out. Floorboards had to be removed. The wallboard had to be ripped out. Heating and air conditioning units were flooded; the new ones were installed higher. Thirteen park service vehicles were flooded.

“Nothing escaped the flood from Dorian,” Hallac said.

In addition to the chosen alternative from the environmental assessment approved in August, the park service had proposed simply following the existing management plan to repair storm damage, or removing the double keepers’ quarters and replacing it with a ghost structure that mimicked the existing building.

Regardless of the alternative chosen, the shotcrete on the lighthouse’s exterior bricks was slated to be replaced with a breathable coating; damaged masonry would be replaced; existing windows would be repaired or replaced with historically appropriate windows; leaks at the top of the lantern would be fixed; the interior would be repainted or recoated; and the original stone foundation would be exposed.

As Hallac noted during public presentations and discussions, the situation with ongoing and increasing sea level rise will increase flood risks on the island, including at the light station. 

Recent data from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration indicates that the mid-range rate of sea level rise in Ocracoke is 1.14 feet in 2030, 1.8 feet in 2040 and 2.5 feet in 2050.

“This is not storms, this is not king tides, this is just everyday tides,” Hallac said.

In discussions about sea level rise, he added, people often focus on what is going to happen in the future. “And I say, ‘No — it’s happening now.’”

Simpson said he and most other folks on the island understand that the environment is changing, but preserving what they can is important. “Still, Ocracokers are used to doing the best they can with what they’ve got,” he said.

Going back centuries, adaptation is built into the mindset of islanders.

As he sees it, the Ocracoke Lighthouse embodies the heritage and deep roots of the island community. With the stout white tower still keeping watch over the village after two centuries of wars and storms while blinking its welcome to boats coming into Silver Lake Harbor, islanders have to believe that they — and the lighthouse — will continue to survive.

“You hope and pray you never get that one shot that devastates everything,” Simpson said. “This is our little cubicle of life. We live and die by the weather conditions.”

Reprinted from Island Free Press

With crisis conditions in Hatteras Inlet becalmed for the time being, members of the Dare County Waterways Commission are keeping a keen eye on the horizon to forestall planning kinks while turning its attention elsewhere to long-discussed projects in Avon Harbor and the Stumpy Point emergency ferry harbor.

During a low-key commission meeting Monday in Manteo, Commission Chair Steve “Creature” Coulter took note of the good work done in the spring by Dare County’s new hopper dredge Miss Katie in the inlet’s troublesome Connector Channel, leaving the only immediate concern being buoy placement.

“The Miss Katie has the (channel) as good as its been in five or six years,” Coulter told Jordan Hennessy, EJE Dredging Service vice president. On the Sloop Channel side, Coulter added, “it’s creeping up on us a little bit, but everywhere else, it’s beautiful.”

EJE is the owner of the dredge and is operating in Hatteras and Oregon inlets under an agreement with the county.

Coulter asked Coast Guard Chief Petty Officer John Ahlen, commanding officer of aids to navigation, if buoys 13 and 14 in the Hatteras Inlet gorge could be moved away from an encroaching shoal with its new 14-foot vessel before the start of the Hatteras Village Offshore Open this week. Also, the Big Rock tournament based in Morehead City starts on June 9, when the larger boats will be transiting the inlet.

“That is our main goal for the next two weeks,” Ahlen responded, speaking remotely via video.

Meanwhile, Dare County plans to submit permit applications soon for authorization for the Miss Katie to dredge the entire recently realigned federal channel as well as the nonfederal bar in Hatteras Inlet, Dare County Grants and Waterways Administrator Barton Grover told the panel. The review is expected to take about five months, he added.

Grover said that the county-based dredge is expected to replace work in the inlet that had been done by the Army Corps of Engineers under a memorandum of agreement, or MOA, with the state and county. The county also plans to determine new spots to dump dredge material closer to where the dredge is working.

“We’re essentially copying what the Corps does,” he said. “The main thing we’re doing is changing the disposal areas.”

In an almost comical illustration of bureaucratic rigidity, Grover detailed the required steps for about $155,000 to be returned to the county coffers. As he explained, that was Dare’s cost share of unused funds that had been transferred to the Corps for additional work in the Connector Channel. But after the Hatteras Channel realignment was approved in December, that channel effectively became part of the authorized federal channel, meaning it no longer would be maintained under the prior MOA.

In order for the total $217,000 to be returned, the process would have to be done in reverse, step-by-step; that is, the Corps transfers the money to the state, then the state transfers Dare’s share back to the county. At the same time, the county is planning to seek a different long-term MOA that would expand flexibility with the partners.

In another update, Grover reported that vibracore samples taken at heavily-shoaled Avon Harbor had been collected last week to be examined for heavy metals and petroleum, with results due by Friday. If the results are good, he said, the Corps is expected to start work clearing the harbor, basin and channel this winter, likely early 2024. Since there is no room for a bermed containment area, the project will be “bucket and barge,” with about 20,000 cubic yards of material removed, and transferred by truck to the Canadian Hole in Buxton.

Dare County is paying the $160,000 tab for trucking and core samples, Grover said, but the Corps’ cost for dredging is not yet available. The state Department of Transportation is handling the permitting and providing technical assistance, as well as taking the lead on beach placement of the sand. Since the bucket and barge work is slower than pipeline dredging, the project is expected to take at least a couple of months and will be more expensive, Grover estimated.

Over at Stumpy Point, where the emergency ferry channel from Rodanthe ends, work has begun on the initial design and engineering phase for enlarging the berm where about 200,000 cubic yards of dredged sand is expected to be deposited.

“We have to elevate the berm to handle the dredge material,” Grover explained in a later interview.

Although the Corps is slated to do the dredging project in the federal portion of the channel, for which it has been allocated $1.6 million, he said, the county is responsible for providing a disposal site — but the site near the state’s emergency ferry dock is currently at capacity. The original estimate for the berm expansion engineering and construction is $835,000, he said, with the state covering 75% of the cost, and county responsible for the remainder.

The emergency channel has been used several times after storms and road and bridge closures to ferry residents, tourists and workers off Hatteras Island.

Back to Hatteras Inlet, Cat Peele, planning and development manager with NCDOT Ferry Division, told commissioners that the division is seeking to modify its permit to allow use of a hopper dredge for the north end of Sloop Channel, which is part of the ferry channel —-along with nearby Barney Slough — that has been plagued with shoaling on and off in the last year. Also, Peele said the division is looking at modifying the permitted area for their channel to make it straighter, a potential improvement that has been identified by the Coast Guard.

Todd Horton, chief of the waterways management section at the Corps’ Wilmington district, speaking remotely, had earlier informed the panel that the Corps’ $1.5 million Rollinson Channel project funds used for the ferry channel maintenance are gone for fiscal year 2023, which ends on Sept. 30.

With Sloop Channel needing additional attention, Hyde County on May 1 submitted an application to the state for shallow draft navigational funds to dredge the north end. As a Tier 1 county, Hyde qualifies for a 0% match for funding from the state shallow draft fund for ferry channel projects. Typically, the funds would be available in 30 days.

Horton said the Corps still plans to do the Rollinson pipeline dredge project this fall or winter, between the Oct. 1 to March 31 window. Placement of dredge material will be at Cora June Island or on a National Park Service beach parallel to Pole Road in Hatteras village, or on Ocracoke Island, whichever site is closest. The project will also include dredging the entrance between the breakwaters at Hatteras Harbor Marina.

But there was concern from several members of the Waterways Commission that the breakwater area would be dangerously shoaled by winter. At the suggestion of Peele, the panel agreed to request that Dare County declare an emergency in order to have the Dredge Murden stop by earlier in Hatteras on its way down to New Jersey for a scheduled project.

By next month’s meeting in Buxton, the Waterways Commission may see two new faces.

Ahlen, with the Coast Guard, is heading to the West Coast, and he said he hopes to be able to introduce his replacement in person before he leaves. Also, member Kermit Skinner has submitted his resignation. John Berquist, a Kitty Hawk resident who runs an outboard business, threw his hat in the ring, and the commission voted unanimously to recommend his appointment.

“I used to run a restaurant in Southern Shores,” he told commissioners, referring to the Pizza Stop that he owned for eight years. “I sold it to fish.

“I know y’all are from Hatteras, but there’s nobody here from up the beach.”

This story is provided courtesy of the Island Free Press, a digital newspaper covering Hatteras and Ocracoke islands. Coastal Review is partnering with the Free Press to provide readers with more environmental and lifestyle stories of interest along our coast. 

MANTEO – Advocates say would-be homebuyers and current oceanfront property owners in North Carolina have long needed clearer rules and updated information as climate change increases the risks of damage and flooding.

Two unrelated, but long-sought actions taken last week by the North Carolina Coastal Resources Commission seek to clarify two persistent issues: septic systems on the public beach, and residential flooding.

With two dozen or so septic tanks and their various parts scattered on the beaches of Cape Hatteras National Seashore last year after the collapse of three large beach houses into the ocean in the village of Rodanthe, gaps in regulations and enforcement became glaringly self-evident. Concerns also were renewed that some owners of the damaged or destroyed properties seemed to be uninformed about the risk of beach erosion, storm tides and flood damage.

The commission, which met Thursday in Manteo, voted unanimously to approve an amended septic rule. Although the changes did not address all the complexities of ocean shoreline septic issues, they specify what is allowed in repairing or moving septic systems on an eroding ocean beach, and are the first update since the recent spate of beach house collapses.

According to the updated rule, if a septic system on the oceanfront is battered by storm tide, repairs can be done in place without a permit. Otherwise, the replacement or relocation of any septic system seaward of the vegetation line needs a permit.

“The idea here is we’re trying to get them off the public beach,” Division of Coastal Management Deputy Director Mike Lopazanski said during a presentation at the Coastal Resources Advisory Committee meeting Wednesday in Manteo. The panel advises the commission on local government matters.

Ocean beaches from the foreshore to the low-tide line are in the public trust in North Carolina. That part of the beach within the Cape Hatteras National Seashore is also public land, National Park Service property. The relevant state statute defines the public trust beach as the wet sand area that “is subject to regular flooding by tides and the dry sand area of the beach that is subject to occasional flooding by tides, including wind tides other than those resulting from a hurricane or tropical storm.”

Lopazanski said the amended septic rule also directs the Division of Coastal Management to make allowances for areas impacted by hurricanes and tropical storms, where septic systems may be damaged by overwash or burial of the vegetation line. The systems, which the general statute defines as the septic tank, the pump tank and the ground absorption field, can still be repaired or relocated to restore their function and avoid impacts to the public trust beach, he said.

In decisions to repair or relocate, components are considered separate structures. If they cannot be repaired in place, they would be subject to erosion-rate-based setbacks that apply to other oceanfront structures. Septic systems will not be permitted separately when an owner seeks a permit to build in a coastal zone.

Also, National Flood Insurance Program staff clarified that public funds are not available for moving septic systems, Lopazanski said. Flood insurance payouts are not considered public funds.

A public hearing on the amended rule is expected to be held in early fall.

Flood history disclosure

After another presentation by Department of Environmental Quality Assistant General Counsel Christine A. Goebel about a petition for rulemaking with the N.C. Real Estate Commission that is proposing to add information about a property’s flood history and flood risk to the real estate disclosure form, the commission agreed to send a letter in support of the changes to the Real Estate Commission.

Outer Banks Association of Realtors Government Affairs Director Donna Creef said that the Outer Banks agents were concerned about access to flood information, some of which may be available only to engineers. Flood history also may not be available to a broker, or be limited by privacy strictures. She noted that buyers should be advised of the value of having a flood insurance policy, no matter the requirement in the designated flood zone.

Coastal Resources Advisory Committee member Spencer Rogers, a coastal erosion specialist who retired last year after 40 years with N.C. Sea Grant, recommended including the beach erosion rate in disclosures. He suggested including information about a provision in state law that requires a builder to move a property that is imminently threatened for a period of eight years. The threat could be mitigated by beach protections such as sandbags or beach nourishment. Rogers said that to his knowledge, the requirement had never been applied.

The commission agreed to add the additional information to the letter of support for the disclosure requirement changes.

The rulemaking petition was filed in January by the Southern Environmental Law Center on behalf of five nonprofit organizations and asks the Real Estate Commission to update the disclosure form with five additional questions that would require a seller or the seller’s agent to disclose the flood information.

As it’s now written, the Real Estate Commission’s disclosure statement — the sole required disclosure document by sellers to prospective buyers — does not include information about flooding.

“The current Disclosure Statement does not solicit adequate information related to a property’s flood history and flood risk,” the proposed rule amendment said. “A home that has flooded once is likely to flood again. Providing homebuyers with information about the potential flood risk that comes with a home will enable buyers to take appropriate steps to mitigate damages, including by purchasing flood insurance.”

According to the petition, North Carolina experienced 4,382 flooding events between 1996 and 2021, resulting in 72 deaths and nearly $1.7 billion in property and crop damage.

“Many North Carolina counties have experienced increased catastrophic flooding in recent years, with some experiencing multiple major flooding disasters,” according to the document. “Since 1977, North Carolina has seen 29 major federal disasters declared for events that caused major flood damage in one or more counties.”

In her presentation, Goebel said that a study in 2021, “North Carolina Coastal Hazards Disclosures in Real Estate Transactions,” by then-third-year University of North Carolina law student Anderson Tran, recommended that North Carolina build on the disclosure form used by Texas, which was called one of the best in the country.

The proposed rule changes were published in the March 15 North Carolina Register. Comments will be accepted through May 15, and the proposed effective date is July 1.

ROANOKE ISLAND — At first take, it was as dull as watching someone mow a lawn. But the man pushing an odd, three-wheeled cart back and forth over an open, grassy area at the Elizabethan Gardens on Wednesday could help archaeologists find one of the most significant locations in Colonial American history: the place where Native Americans had their first contact with the English.

“He’s looking for anomalies below 9 feet,” explained Eric Klingelhofer, a veteran archaeologist and founding member of the nonprofit First Colony Foundation, who was observing nearby.

Robert Chartrand, owner of Chartrand Geoarchaeological Solutions of Williamsburg, Virginia, was using GPS technology to survey about a fifth of an acre within the gardens that archaeologists believe could potentially contain artifacts from the Algonquian village of Roanoac, whose members interacted with English explorers in 1584.

Klingelhofer, one of the foundation’s vice presidents for research, said that reexamination of a previous 1953 exploration done by National Park Service archaeologist Jean C. Harrington indicated that there may be more to find.

During a dig that year at the Elizabethan Gardens, which is owned by the Roanoke Island Historical Association and is supported as a subsidiary of the Garden Club of North Carolina Inc., Harrington had unearthed a portion of a Colington Ware pot that was likely from the 1500s, according to a 2022 paper by Klingelhofer and Eric Deetz, “Searching for Roanoac, Archaeology in the Elizabethan Gardens 1953-2022.”

But in the foundation’s recent review of Harrington’s field notes, which were provided by the National Park Service, it appears that Harrington’s digs stopped at about 6 feet, rather than the 9-foot depth where circa-1600s artifacts would be, Klingelhofer recently explained to Coastal Review.

“So, we’re going to get a much better picture,” he said, watching as Chartrand worked. “About 90% of the grassy area here is untouched.” That means when the archaeologists reach the Native American ground surface level and go below it, they would have a better chance of finding evidence, such as post holes, food storage pits, or midden, than if the area had been disturbed.  

Chartrand, who is an archaeo-geophysicist, had also worked with archaeologists at Jamestown Island from 2015 to 2019. Although it looks like he’s simply pushing a cart with a small box in the middle, the description of his work is complex and highly technical.

“I’m systematically collecting data at certain intervals,” he explained in the simplest terms.

Every foot or so, working to the east, then to the west, from the center line he marked out on the grassy area on the north end of the gardens, the attached GPS device takes an image 1.5 to 3 meters, or about 5 to 10 feet, below the surface.

Once the data is collected, Chartrand will use software with a standard ground-penetrating radar program to interpret it.

“I can look at the cross section and then I’ll be able to create a 3D image based on all the lines (of data) I’ve collected,” he said, adding that the image is a bird’s-eye view.

“I can change the elevation so I can see the progression of what’s beneath the surface.”

Chartrand said that, in essence, the algorithm defines “unknown space based on known space” on the landscape. The program uses standard coordinates, which he defines, so that any ground-penetrating radar operator can later find them.

“So if an archaeologist wants to go back to excavate a subsurface anomaly, they can relocate it with the GPS,” he said.

The final report will take about a month to complete. At that point, the First Colony Foundation will determine whether excavation is warranted, Klingenhofer said. If so, it would have to be conducted with the cooperation of the Elizabethan Gardens, and the funds for the dig would have to be raised by the foundation.

“The Elizabethan Gardens is a memorial to the lost colonists and will forever be a part of that mystery,” said Elizabethan Gardens Executive Director Theresa Armendarez in an April 11 foundation press release. “To find artifacts from that time in America’s early history would be an exciting addition to our unique history.”

As the first of the 1584-1590 Roanoke Voyages, Sir Walter Raleigh sent explorers Philip Amadas and Arthur Barlowe on two ships to Roanoke Island with a mission to investigate land west of the barrier islands.

When the explorers landed on the island, Algonquian leaders greeted them. The Natives later shared food and clothing with the English strangers and invited them to warm over their fire at their village, which the explorers described as “nine houses, built of cedar, and fortified round with sharp trees.”

“This notable moment of hospitality, where Englishmen first entered the home of an Algonquian noblewoman, and were treated with such respect and kindness, is the true First Contact between the cultures,” according to the paper.

Those first English visitors were dazzled by the Natives. “We found the people most gentle, loving, and faithful, void of all guile and treason, and such as lived after the manner of the golden age,” the explorers wrote.

Unfortunately, the good feelings did not last long, with later Roanoke voyages marked by attacks on tribes and retaliation by the Native Americans, perhaps leading to the failure of the 1587 settlement of 117 men, women and children which disappeared without a trace.

While the so-called “Lost Colony” that was last seen in August 1587 gets the most attention, the foundation, from its beginning in 2003, has been focused as much on the earliest English explorations on Roanoke Island. They served as a lesson plan for later colonization in 1607 at Jamestown.

Whether or not there are anomalies found by Chartrand’s technology, the work will lead to an answer of where — or where not — to look for Roanoac and the “Point of First Contact,” Klingelhofer said.

But with accelerated erosion of the Roanoke Sound shoreline along the border of the Elizabethan Gardens, there is a sense of urgency for the foundation. Much of the land that may have revealed secrets has already been lost.

“Since the 1800s, the shoreline here has receded more than a hundred yards, with numerous Indian artifacts found in the water and beach,” the 2022 paper said. “It must be watched carefully for archaeological artifacts and features being destroyed by coastal erosion.”

DUCK — Two women scientists, longtime remote co-workers, recently met on the Outer Banks to celebrate the new annex at the renowned U.S. Army Corps of Engineers’ Field Research Facility, better known as the Duck Pier.

But their roles and rank among the nation’s premier military and civilian scientists is a notable achievement in their own right.

“We are now 50-50 men and women,” Katherine “Kate” Brodie, senior technical manager and senior research oceanographer at the facility’s Coastal and Hydraulics Laboratory, said during a tour of the annex in January, referring to the pier’s science and engineering staff. “Which I think is a really great accomplishment for women.”

The $4.3-million annex consists of laboratory and research administrative spaces in support of the organization’s expanded military research mission.

Standing alongside Brodie in the annex’s secure room, Mihan McKenna Taylor, senior scientist at the U.S. Army Engineer Research and Development Center in Vicksburg, Mississippi, noted pointedly that the nearby lactation room illustrates progress women have made in the workforce. “The closets are no fun,” she said, recalling the only quiet spaces once available for staff to nurse babies. 

As fellow scientists employed by ERDC, Brodie and McKenna Taylor’s careers exemplify not only how women can excel as engineers, software technicians and physicists, but also the importance of science, technology, engineering and mathematics, or STEM, role models for girls.

Only about 11% of teen girls plan to pursue STEM careers, compared with 35% of boys, according to the American Association of University Women. Although women make up about 28% of the STEM workforce, the gender gap is widest in the fastest-growing and most highly paid fields: 16.5% in engineering and architects and 25.2% in computer and math, according to the National Girls Collaborative Project.

Brodie, who graduated from Dartmouth College before earning her doctorate from William and Mary School of Marine Science at the Virginia Institute of Marine Science, focused on geological or geophysical oceanography. In her role today as technical manager at the Duck Pier, she helps develop and manage ongoing and future research, as well as mentor early career researchers.

A National Science Foundation fellowship in the summer before her senior year at Dartmouth changed her interest from Earth science to marine science. One of the projects involved working on a model that used current data from radar antenna in Chesapeake Bay to forecast where a person who fell in the water would be located, based on the currents. That was when she learned to code and to see the relationship between math and the dynamics of physics.

“I left that internship feeling really excited and saying, ‘I want to go to graduate school and do oceanography.’” Ultimately, Brodie learned the coding skills that gave her a big leg up in the field of marine sciences, which don’t typically require strong math and computer science or programming skill sets. 

“And I think they 100% should be because in the job that I do today, that is all I am doing,” she said. “You need to understand the physics, you need to understand the oceanography, but to do anything with that data, you need to be able to code and you need to understand the math.”

Early on, Brodie, whose expertise is in using remote-sensing observation equipment to collect real-time data in the surf zone, said she was inspired by McKenna Taylor.

“When I started at the FRF (Field Research Facility) itself, I was one of two women on the science and engineering staff, and the only other woman at the facility was our administrative support at the time,” Brodie said in a recent interview, recalling when she began her job right out of graduate school in June 2010. “I was the youngest by probably about 10 years. And so, I think, at that time, there was not a lot of equality.”

Brodie’s collaborative work often required her to visit ERDC’s main laboratories in Vicksburg.

“I would walk into many rooms where I was the only woman and I think the exception to that was probably the first time I met Mihan,” she recalled. Even back then, before McKenna Taylor was a senior scientist, Brodie said, she was presenting her research with “such a presence and with such personality.”

“I just thought it was so cool that there was this really accomplished woman scientist who was commanding the room — it was definitely male-dominated,” Brodie said. “That really, really struck me as a young woman scientist … particularly in the field of coastal science and engineering.”

Still, over the years, Brodie said, the number of women coastal scientists has grown, and she has met numerous accomplished women researchers, engineers and academics at numerous conferences and events where she has attended.

In time, Brodie, too, was considered one of those very accomplished female scientists. Slender, with blond hair and a casual style, Brodie could be mistaken for a college student. Although she’s not flashy about her brain power, her ease and clarity in explaining the technology and science at the Duck Pier makes it clear why she has a senior position.

Young women graduate students started approaching her at conferences, which led to those young women doing internships at the Duck Pier, and later being hired there. So before long, the pier’s technical staff was half women.

“You know, I didn’t actively have the goal of creating a science staff here at the FRF that was 50-50 split, women and men,” Brodie said. “And so, I think in some ways that’s also impressive that we ended up there without actively selecting for it.”

The 176-acre Duck Pier, which opened in 1977, is ERDC’s only coastal field observation facility. With its 1,840-foot steel and concrete pier and 140-foot-high observation tower, it is ERDC’s only location that conducts continuous observations and collects extensive and detailed data on coastal processes.

In collaboration with the Army’s Maneuver Center of Excellence, the new 4,008-square-foot annex is focused on research in developing methods to protect and inform military forces, especially operations in the littoral, or nearshore, coastal areas.

As Brodie put it during the Duck Pier tour: “I want to digitalize a surfer’s brain.”

Surfers are experts at reading real-time beach conditions and figuring out how to navigate them safely to achieve their goal, which is wave riding. For the military, the goal is getting personnel and vessels through the surf zone without tipping or other mishaps.

One of Brodie’s first assignments at the Field Research Facility was a more military-funded project that studied how remote-sensing technology could be used to assess a coastline. In other words, how can technology replicate in real time the information a surfer collects and interprets when looking at the waves and currents?

It turns out that the years of civil works research at the Duck Pier as well as its unique instrumentation and techniques developed for its observations and models, Brodie said, were assets to the evolving needs of the military.

“We were well-poised to transition those to help the warfighter with their recent focus and shift toward littoral environments,” she said in the later interview.

Starting with imagery collected from unmanned aerial systems and using Duck Pier instruments, over time Brodie and the ERDC team developed integrated sensing. The technology incorporated relevant data collected from LiDAR scans of a beach, satellites, buoys and towers that recorded information about waves, currents, winds and other factors that influenced the nearshore. Now the software is being readied to make the leap from the research and development pipeline to production.

With the success of the “surfers’ brain” software, funding for the research grew, and the Department of Defense mission expanded to support not only the Army but also Navy and Marine operations. 

“So I would say that that initial project, we’ve been able to grow that and show the value of the technology that we were developing,” Brodie elaborated. “I think if you think about the current sort of climate that we are in, in the world right now, and thinking about where some of the next future conflicts may be, a lot of those locations may involve needing to cross through the littorals or through coasts in some capacity. And so I think there’s been a shift DoD-wide to focus back on the littorals, away from desert environments where the Army has really been focused for the last 20 years.”

Over at ERDC headquarters in Vicksburg, McKenna Taylor oversees a scientific discipline called “near service phenomenology,” or the study of the interface of air, land and sea with the human domain, and a specialty in terrain assessment and manipulation. If it’s a tunnel, a bridge, a building or other things that humans manipulate within the Army’s research domain in the water, the air and the land, it’s probably part of Taylor’s expertise. That would include sensing technologies, most geophysically based, such as infrasound, hydroacoustics and seismology. 

“We’re considered long-term strategic thinkers. It takes 15 to 17 years to field any technology that started from embryonic conception, all the way out to warfighter usage in the way our acquisition and fielding works in the Army now,” she said in a later interview. “I’ve taken a wild and crazy idea from basic research in 2005, and it was fielded with engineers or fighters in 2021.”

Like Brodie, McKenna Taylor started at ERDC right out of graduate school, except she began as a research geophysicist in 2005. With an undergraduate degree from Georgetown University in Washington — a major in physics, a minor in chemistry and an unofficial minor in music — she earned her doctorate in geophysics from Southern Methodist University in Dallas.

Her visit to the Duck Pier was her first in a professional capacity, but she had often come with her family to the Outer Banks from Greensboro, where she grew up. 

McKenna Taylor said she was always good at math, but a seventh grade National Science Foundation physics camp had a big impact on her future career choice. At Georgetown, she said, there were typically “two women and 12 dudes.” But the year she studied physics, it was the opposite. Turns out that other women had also attended summer physics camp.

After earning her doctorate, she resisted the siren song of the oil and gas industry, a job many with her education were offered.

“It was super not for me,” she said. “I wanted to make a difference, not make money. And the bottom line in oil and gas is the bottom line.”

The Corps’ research and development branch, which is funded by sponsors and not by Congress, offered her a flexibility to be creative and have a family life, while still being part of a team focused on the national good. 

“And that kind of combination really appealed to me,” she said. “It’s fun. You know, you can change what you do five times a week or every five years. Depending on what you are investing your time in. And if you’re the sort of researcher that loves the challenge and likes to create your own vision, it’s phenomenal.”

If there is a stereotype of a woman scientist, McKenna Taylor is not it. She acknowledges being opinionated and assertive: “There’s a lot of blowback to it. I fundamentally don’t care.” When she attended the event at the Duck Pier, she was dressed in a full-length purple, pink and lime-green Scottish kilt, a gift from her husband. She talks exceptionally quickly, barely pausing while explaining complex science and head-spinning levels of government within ERDC and the DoD. At the same time, she is open, self-depreciating and funny.

She also plays viola, violin and string bass.

“Right now, I play in a band, I play in an orchestra, I play in a wedding quartet,” she said, matter-of-factly. “I like to think of it this way: Physics is just the music the universe makes. The music the universe makes that we can write down in a different language is the mathematics of physics, or geophysics, specifically. So to me, they’re not different. They’re just a different expression of the same language and feeling and perspective on the world.”

As a mother of two boys, McKenna Taylor has had to navigate the same stressors as other women around childcare and the demands of parenting, especially prior to when federal parental leave was provided. But as a team leader at ERDC, with her supervisors’ support, she deliberately approached work with the belief that fathers and mothers deserve a “whole life balance” that supports family life as well as work.

“It’s important to have a whole life,” she said. “And what that means to each person is very different. But if you have someone who feels satisfied with their whole life balance, they work their tails off. They feel invested.

“I firmly do not believe you can have it all,” she continued. “But you can make choices to have the parts of you that need to be satisfied to exist as a human. Those choices should be yours to make and they should be options.”

But there’s a lot more than that balance that will bring more women physicists and engineers into the workforce,” McKenna Taylor said. The education system needs to be more hands-on. It needs to allow girls to experience the adventure in research. It needs to empower students to have the freedom to fail — “It’s how we learn,” she said — and it needs to let students blow things up.

“I think we need a revitalization of the importance of good, solid, critical thinking and scientific education, from starting people in prekindergarten all the way up through advanced degrees, the respect that science needs to regain,” she said. “You get talking heads that denigrate expertise, and that handicaps us as a country, because if you can’t strive for excellence, what do you become?”

SUFFOLK, Va. – William Byrd, a Colonial-era surveyor and satirist who in 1728 established the dividing line between southeast Virginia and northeast North Carolina, is credited with blessing the Great Dismal Swamp with its evocative and ominous name.

The million or so acres, he wrote, had air “infected by malignant vapours” rising from “mire and filthiness.” It was, he declared, a “miserable morass” of spongey land, twisted vines and thick undergrowth.

“They started at the Atlantic Ocean and ran into an impenetrable wall of vegetation,” Chris Lowie, the manager of the Great Dismal Swamp National Wildlife Refuge, related in a recent interview. “And he didn’t even go through it. He told the crew it was the most god-awful dismal place, not fit for anybody.”

Byrd, who died in 1744 at 70, wrote several publications, the “Dividing Line Histories,” “Description of the Dismal, with the Proposal to drain the swamp,” and the somewhat satirical “The Secret History of the Line, “providing in-depth details of his impressions, as well as insights about early 18th-century history.

But three centuries later, Byrd’s vivid assessment of the Colonial-era swamplands, though a nonstarter for today’s tourism brochures, fortunately is part of the reason the Dismal Swamp is currently being considered for designation as a National Heritage Area.

The legislation that directs the secretary of interior to conduct a feasibility study has been passed in Congress and added to the study list, Lowie said. A report with recommendations is due to Congress within three years.

National Heritage Areas, which are administered by the National Park Service, engage communities in collaborative heritage preservation activities that are relevant to its needs and interests. Programs are community-driven and focused on conservation, preservation and economic development.

It is also a unique ecosystem, deserving of appreciation as well as protection.

The Great Dismal Swamp can boast of a cypress and cedar forest where at least 47 species of mammals and more than 200 species of birds breed or stop by during their migration, according to a February 2021 blog on The Wilderness Society website.

In addition to its prolific populations of biting insects, it also attracts dozens of species of butterfly. The swamp also harbors venomous snakes like rattlesnakes and water moccasins, but the same tannic acid from the cypress and gum trees that darkens the water also makes the water exceptionally pure. And its mucky peat soil holds tons of carbon dioxide, helping to mitigate carbon emissions in the atmosphere, a prime cause of climate change.

“National Heritage Areas are places where historic, cultural, and natural resources combine to form cohesive, nationally important landscapes,” according to its website. “Unlike national parks, National Heritage Areas are large lived-in landscapes.”

At about 113,000 acres, the refuge is the largest remaining intact area of the once-vast Dismal Swamp.

Historically, the swamp ranged from the James River to the Albemarle Sound, over to the North Landing River and North River. In North Carolina, it stretched over Currituck, Camden, Pasquotank and Gates counties. And in Virginia, it encompassed Chesapeake, Suffolk, Isle of Wight County, Portsmouth and Norfolk.

As it turns out, the swamp, despite and because of its unique peatland ecosystem, was a hub of activity from the earliest years of our nation. The Dismal, as it was known informally, was a place that reflected the best and worst of an evolving America, a place of refuge, forced labor, entrepreneurship, commerce.

“Thousands of African-American Maroons, Indigenous Americans, and enslaved African-American laborers lived there in a variety of communities and, in the process, created their own social and economic world between 1607 and 1860,” American University anthropology professor Daniel Sayers was quoted as saying in the March/April 2015 edition of Humanities, a publication of the National Endowment for the Humanities.

Maroons were enslaved people who escaped and created small townships within the swamp, taking advantage of the swamp’s undesirable conditions that hid them from Europeans. Historians estimate that as many as 50,000 freedom-seekers lived in the swamp. Later, the Dismal became one of the few water stops along the Underground Railroad that helped the enslaved to escape to free northern states. The refuge was the first to be named to the Underground Railroad Network to Freedom Program in 2003.

And George Washington slept there — numerous times. As one of 12 wealthy Virginians to form the Great Dismal Swamp Co. in 1763, he was instrumental in building the nation’s first canal, now the oldest operating canal, to drain the land for farming and real estate investment.

“During a time of soil depletion and scarcity of seaboard land, the Dismal Swamp — one of the last and largest expanses on the East Coast to resist settlement — promised the advantages of fertility and easy access to navigable water,” according to an article about the company published at mountvernon.org.

Washington, one of three managers for the company, was charged with securing titles and buying the enslaved people who dug the ditches and produced cedar shingles through the 1770s, according to the website. But goals of draining the swamp and growing hemp to export had failed.

After the War for Independence, Washington helped reconvene the partners. Despite the lack of success on engineering drainage, the effort eventually led to Washington devising a plan with Patrick Henry and others for the Dismal Swamp Co. to build a canal through the swamp to link the Chesapeake Bay and Albemarle Sound. Construction began in 1793 and was completed in 1805, more than five years after Washington’s death in December 1799.

Meanwhile, the company gave up on plans to drain the swamp and turned its focus to timber, leading to its first profitable year in 1810. Four years later, it was in business as the Dismal Swamp Land Co.

On Washington’s birthday in 1973, the Union Camp Corp., a forest products company, donated 49,097 acres of swamp to The Nature Conservancy, which then donated the land to the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. The refuge was officially established Aug. 30, 1974.  But timber businesses are still thriving; International Paper operates its plant about 30 miles from the refuge headquarters in Suffolk, Lowie said.

As far as national wildlife refuges go, the Dismal Swamp is rather low-key. It has no fancy visitor center; but its 75,000 annual visitors can do self-guided tours with the help of interpretive signs and kiosks, including at the five different trailheads. The refuge is crisscrossed by 150 miles of ditches and road, of which about 60 miles are open for public use.

The popular annual bird festival, which is planned for April 29, attracts birders from all over the world, Lowie said. Planned activities include guided bird walks, bus tours and nature walks, as well as numerous family and educational offerings.

Not far from the refuge, the Suffolk Visitor Center has a Dismal Swamp exhibit, he said. And Chesapeake is currently building the Great Dismal Swamp Historic Village. It’s going to be a city park, with a visitor center there. The first Black school in Chesapeake has been moved to the site, he said, and they’ll have mockups of what a maroon camp looked like.

In addition, the refuge is starting to make plans for its 50th anniversary Aug. 30, 2024. But that date is inconveniently during the height of the swamp’s notoriously vicious bug population.

“So we’ll probably call all our events next year an anniversary event,” Lowrie said.  “Yellow flies are the biggest issue — unless you’re out on the lake.”

Lowie said he believes it would beneficial to all stakeholders to have the Dismal Swamp join the other 62 designated National Heritage Areas that have been designated from 1984 through 2023. The first were National Heritage Area Illinois and the Michigan Canal National Heritage Area.

“I think it’ll bring more visitation here,” he said. “It will bring light to the significance of this landscape here of a dismal swamp.”

But it would also bring more attention to the profound cultural and historical significance of the Dismal Swamp, Lowie said.

“That may bring a different user group to say, ‘Oh wow, let me check this out,’” he said. “It should benefit the area by bringing more education, more outreach and hopefully more stewardship and protection.”

And the Dismal Swamp National Wildlife Refuge would be right in the thick of it, serving as a hub.

“Maybe we’ll have a visitor center one day,” Lowie added.

RODANTHE — It’s been more than a year since the first oceanfront house, standing on an eroded beach within Cape Hatteras National Seashore, collapsed into the ocean in the early morning on Feb. 9.

Two more nearby houses fell in May. Each time, tons of construction debris — jagged, sharp, toxic, ugly — were carried for miles by wind and surf into the sea and along the beach.

Although the privately owned houses in Rodanthe, a small Hatteras Island village, were left by erosion teetering on the public beach, local, state and federal officials have been stymied by gaps in laws and a lack of funding options to prevent other houses from being swallowed by the Atlantic.

Special Report: Houses on the Edge

“I don’t believe that anyone really wants to see structures end up all the way out on the public beach, including the property owners,” Braxton Davis, director of the North Carolina Division of Coastal Management, told 46 attendees during a virtual workshop held Monday to share information and discuss solutions on threatened oceanfront houses, some of which obstruct the surf zone with their damaged decks and exposed septic tanks.

“They’re creating some impacts to aquatic species and shorebirds and their habitats, and they’re interfering with public use of the beach,” Davis said. “And unfortunately, in some cases, really no action is taken or available until after a house collapses and results in significant marine debris and additional impacts and costs.”

Hosted by Cape Hatteras National Seashore, and the division, which is part of the state Department of Environmental Quality, six members of the interagency work group, including co-chairs Davis and Hallac, addressed the topic “Property Acquisition and Financial Assistance.”

In the first of the four workshops planned for the year, other participants were Bill Holman, North Carolina director of The Conservation Fund; Bobby Outten, Dare County manager and attorney; Gavin Smith, professor at North Carolina State University’s Department of Landscape, Architecture and Environmental Planning; Tancred Miller, sections chief for the division’s policy and planning; and Heidi Stiller, South regional director for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration Office for Coastal Management.

The group was established in August 2022 to determine, along with partners and stakeholders, policies and programs to “establish a proactive, holistic, predictable, and coordinated approach to erosion-threatened structures and to ensure that appropriate regulatory, legal, insurance, and financial mechanisms exist,” according to a division press release. The meeting Monday was its first open to the public and press.

But Dave Hallac, superintendent of the Cape Hatteras National Seashore, cautioned that the task force’s initial discussion is part of a process to determine what questions to ask and where to direct them, rather than resolve every issue.

“We need better answers and we need to develop better programs,” he said.

In his opening remarks, Davis noted that the coastal benefits of North Carolina’s “fairly conservative” oceanfront construction setbacks, as well as numerous beach nourishment projects, have been offset by constraints such as septic rules and private-versus-public property rights that can limit options to address impacts of beach erosion.

“And while sometimes you’ll have permitting conflicts, and legal disputes that linger for those properties while they’re out on the beach,” he continued, “they are, over the time period where that’s happening, posing significant risks to public health and safety.”

The following four questions were posed by the co-chairs:

• What programs are currently available to acquire, relocate or “deconstruct” threatened ocean structures?
• What is involved for beach communities that are considering a buyout, relocation or removal program?
• What options, if any, may be available through nonprofit organizations?
• What may be “out of the box” options worth investigating or pursuing?

As Hallac had forewarned, there weren’t many clear answers to be had.

For instance, Holman named a few programs that are in place, including the Resilient Communities Program and the Public Beach and Coastal Waterfront Access Program, but as they’re currently set up, neither would fund relocation or removal of threatened oceanfront structures.

Still, they could potentially be expanded or amended to allow those structures to be eligible, he said. And over the next four years, he added, there is potential for project funding from the $1 trillion 2021 Bipartisan Infrastructure Law.

Although climate change has finally gotten the attention of policymakers, government programs haven’t provided for more proactive measures such as relocation, retreat or removal. And assistance for owners of second homes or investment properties is anathema in proposals that involve public dollars.

Stiller with NOAA said that, in general, help for getting out of harm’s way is less available than help for repairs after the fact.

“I think the bottom line is there just isn’t a lot of funding out there for this,” she said. “And particularly, there isn’t funding for this in the predisaster context.”

But Stiller encouraged the panel to look at innovative programs that have been implemented or proposed in other states that incentivize property owners to work with local governments on solutions for their threatened properties that may buy them time or offer reasonable alternatives.

Buyouts are a concern not just to homeowners who are looking at losing their home, but also to municipalities that are facing loss of their tax base, Smith said.

One solution his department at N.C. State studied was looking at suitable land within the town’s extraterritorial jurisdiction that would maintain access to the municipal infrastructure while finding suitable locations to build replacement housing. But he conceded that there are unique challenges for barrier islands such as the Outer Banks.

“We’re looking at developing a series of managed-retreat options but also protect and accommodate strategies for coastal communities, both oceanfront and soundside,” he said, adding that he hopes to elaborate on them in a later discussion.

Holman said that nonprofits typically are not set up to support moving or buying private properties.

“It’s more challenging with these structures because it’s much harder to get both public and private support for buyouts,” he said.

Outten said that Rodanthe, which has a high rate of beach erosion, presents a quandary because its population is relatively small, but costs to fix the threats are relatively high. The county is currently seeking an estimate from a coastal engineering firm on costs for a beach nourishment project that would widen the shoreline in front of the threatened houses.

“You start talking about managed retreat, we do not have a mainland to retreat to,” he said. “And we’re essentially almost built out on the Outer Banks, and so retreat basically means abandonment for us.”

Meanwhile, as engineers and coastal managers work on long-term solutions, Outten suggested that it would make sense for national flood insurance policies administered by the Federal Emergency Management Agency to pay before a threatened house falls, rather than forcing homeowners to wait for collapse.

“If FEMA is going to pay for that, if that is something that is insurable and is a recoverable claim, then where it’s inevitable, as it is in Rodanthe, do a buyout ahead of the disaster to avoid all the problems that would come with it,” he said. “Let’s pay them out now and let’s get rid of them.”

Another improvement in government response, Stiller said, would be to require that people who buy property in vulnerable areas to buy an insurance policy that pays for removal and cleanup. Also, she said, paying for buyouts could provide the benefit of freeing up land to do nature-based solutions such as dune restoration.

Much of government is structured to protect roads and public infrastructure, Stiller said, citing a 2019 research paper, “Roads to Nowhere in Four States: State and Local Governments in the Atlantic Southeast Facing Sea-Level Rise.” But that posture overlooks current challenges, suggesting, she said, that “we need some new legal structures for this because we haven’t had to deal with these things before.”

Davis said that the next meeting planned for May will focus on legal and insurance issues.

At that, Miller said that private sector input will also be needed “to define where the answers are,” to address vulnerable beachfront houses on the eroding shoreline, considering that the risks and benefits of actions — or inactions — will be shared.

“But the clock is ticking,” he said. “… the impacts are being felt by all of us, whether they are before they collapse, and then after they collapse, certainly.”

Comments may be submitted by email to DCMcomments@ncdenr.gov. The subject line should reference “threatened oceanfront structures.”

JARVISBURG — Lewis Wescott was a Black man who was born in North Carolina just before the Civil War and died just before World War II. Little has been known about his life except that he was a surfman, a Coast Guard captain and a hero who participated in one of the most daring ocean rescues in Outer Banks history.

But thanks to the serendipitous discovery of his gravesite by a retired Coast Guard commander, we now know that Wescott, a member of the famed all-Black crew at Pea Island Life-Saving Station, lived two weeks short of 83 years, and he is buried next to his wife in Jarvisburg, a community on the Currituck County mainland.

“I didn’t really need to do much research,” Gavin Wente, the property owner, recently told Coastal Review. “I spent almost 30 years in the Coast Guard, so I was familiar with the lifesaving service on the Outer Banks, specifically the story behind Pea Island … and I was familiar with some of the names like Etheridge and Wescott.”

Richard Etheridge, the first Black appointed keeper in the U.S. Life-Saving Service, led his six all-Black crewmen — including Wescott — into a seething, stormy sea at night during an October 1896 hurricane to rescue terrified passengers and crew on the wrecked schooner E.S. Newman. With just a rope tying two surfmen together, the crew took turns plunging 10 times into the water, eventually rescuing every single person.

With the end of Reconstruction the next year, followed by decades of Jim Crow, the amazing feat — and the heroism of the Pea Island crew — soon faded from history.

When Wente and his wife Renee moved in April 2022 to their new home on 31 acres along the Currituck Sound, they were aware of two fenced-in cemeteries on the land.  But it wasn’t until around Thanksgiving, when the overgrowth of poison ivy and Virginia creeper had died off, that the couple and their children and grandchildren were able to investigate.

“We’re out there starting to clean off some of the gravestones, and they started in the back corner where Wescott’s grave was,” Gavin Wente said. “And there must have been a foot of pine straw and overgrowth on top of that crypt.”

But before long, Wente recalled, his daughter announced that she had found a gravestone engraved with the words “Capt. L.S. Wescott.” After looking at the grave, he went online, checked the records, and was thrilled to confirm what he suspected.

“Yeah it was him,” Wente said. “So, we think that was one of the signs that this is where we were supposed to be.”

Not only did the couple find it significant that Wente knew who Wescott was, his grave was also the first one the family cleared.

“We don’t know why they went back to that righthand corner and started there,” said Renee Wente. “They said they just felt something under their feet and there it was.”

The Wentes said that the county shows no record of Wescott being buried on their property, and she is not aware of any record of his life in Currituck.

Wescott’s grave, a large crypt with engravings on top of it, is within the larger cemetery at the rear of the property, which appears to contain about 15 to 20 graves, Gavin Wente said. Near Wescott’s grave are two gravestones, one marked William Wescott and the other, Henry Wescott.

There are also small gravestones with initials, ending in “W.”

Another small cemetery with about 10 graves is at the front of the property.

After Wente, 61 and a former Coast Guard commander, discovered Wescott’s burial site, he contacted Coast Guard Atlantic area historian Bill Thiesen about finding the grave.

“I think it’s extremely significant,” Thiesen told Coastal Review. “I would have assumed that all of the final resting places for the Pea Island lifesavers would have been known, if not recognized. And then I learned that actually, Wescott’s was kind of lost and forgotten.”

In general, he said, Coast Guard personnel burial sites don’t get the attention that those in other military branches do, partly because it was not an official military organization until 1915, when it also absorbed the lifesaving service. Also, the lifesaving service had been regarded as more of a federal humanitarian service.

All other members of the Pea Island crew have some sort of marker or monument, except for William Irving, who may be interred in a family cemetery that has been forgotten, which was likely the case with Wescott.

Thiesen said that records prior to 1915 are slim, especially for Black individuals and other minorities. Even the “tremendous and remarkable achievement” of the Pea Island crew in the E.S. Newman rescue was not honored, or even noted by the Coast Guard for 100 years, when members were posthumously awarded the Gold Lifesaving metal in 1996.

Before the Civil War, some of the Black members of the U.S. Lifesaving Service were enslaved, but there were also free men who served, Thiesen said.

“The military agencies were officially desegregated by Truman in 1948, but the Coast Guard had already integrated African Americans into the service during World War II,” Thiesen said.

Even earlier, some Black men served under the same rating system as white men, including at Pea Island. “Not very frequently,” he added,” but far earlier than other military organizations.”

Starting in 1880, Richard Etheridge was the first African American to command a base of operations in the U.S., as keeper of the Pea Island Life-Saving Station on Hatteras Island. After Etheridge’s death, Wescott was appointed keeper in September 1900 and served until 1916.

Significantly, he was the officer in charge of Pea Island when the U.S. Life Saving Service merged with the Revenue Cutter Service to form the modern-day Coast Guard.

The Coast Guard also had Black officers in charge of cutters — Coast Guard vessels longer than 65 feet —  one in 1928, Thiesen said, and there was also an all-Black cutter crew in 1920.

“And then the Coast Guard really was the trailblazer for desegregation, starting in 1942, when some Coast Guard cutters were used as kind of experiments for desegregation to see how it worked out before they introduced it to the Navy.”

Thiesen said that the Coast Guard plans to acknowledge the Wescott burial site with photographs and writings, but otherwise it is limited from doing anything more formal, especially on private property.

“The Coast Guard doesn’t have the funding to recognize all of the Coasties that have been interred over the years,” he said.

But the Wentes’ plan to try to get assistance in clearing and cleaning the cemeteries, and continue to investigate Wescott’s history, as well as the other graves.

“When we look at it, I just can’t help but think to myself ‘My word! This graveyard has been here when our nation was in its infancy,’” Renee Wente said. “It’s just remarkable.”

Wente added that the family feels so honored to have the burial site on their property and wants to make sure that the Pea Island hero gets the recognition he deserves.

Although the nonprofit Pea Island Preservation Society has not been directly involved in anything to do with the Wescott burial site, the group is pleased about the increased attention on the Pea Island story.

“I think this discovery is a great reminder to do the research of this ‘uncovered history,’” said Joan Collins, the group’s director of outreach and education. “Because this history hasn’t been told.”

Gavin Wente still can’t get over that such a historically important Coast Guardsman has his resting place on his land.

“It’s sad that Capt. Wescott’s legacy was lost from years of neglect in this grave yard,” Gavin Wente wrote on a Facebook post. “It will be this old, retired Coast Guardsman’s privilege to ensure this is corrected and I will maintain this grave yard as long as I’m able.”

Second in a series. Read Part 1.

PONSER — While thousands of acres in Hyde County have produced lucrative crops for centuries, the uncultivated peatland in the county with one of the lowest population densities in the state has the potential to offer a new kind of profitable produce: carbon credits.

Sequestration of carbon dioxide, or CO2, on agricultural and forest lands has become more urgent as atmospheric levels of the potent greenhouse gas continue to rise. And Hyde’s pocosin soil, a unique type of peat, can hold enormous amounts of carbon — peatlands are one of the largest carbon stores on Earth. That means that landowners could be paid for the amount of carbon that is locked into their soil.

According to a recent State of the Voluntary Carbon Markets Briefing by nonprofit Ecosystem Marketplace, the voluntary carbon market in 2022 topped $2 billion. But joining the carbon market is far more complex and arcane than buying stocks.

“There’s a tremendous amount of opportunity,” Eric Soderholm, the Albemarle-Pamlico restoration specialist with The Nature Conservancy, recently told Coastal Review. “There’s 250,000 acres of private peatland in North Carolina alone.”

Blacklands, as pocosin is broadly known in Hyde and neighboring northeastern North Carolina coastal counties, refer to rich, black, organic matter that has accumulated for millennia in swampy fields and forests. Starting in the 1700s, the land was ditched and drained for agriculture and timber, but now scientists are studying how to rewet and restore pocosin as a way to mitigate climate change.

Carolina Ranch, a privately owned, 15,000-acre site adjacent to Pocosin Lakes National Wildlife Refuge in Hyde County, is currently working with several academic and engineering partners on restoration of 10,000 acres at the ranch with a goal of qualifying for carbon farming, which would be valued based on measurements of the level of CO2 that the soil holds.

Carbon credits, or offsets, represent the amount of greenhouse gases removed from the atmosphere, or the amount of reduced emissions. Those credits can be sold or traded to buyers, such as large corporations, seeking to offset their carbon emissions.

Accessing the fairly new market, however, is a rigorous and expensive process that is nearly incomprehensible to most people, even those who understand the complexities of Wall Street or cryptocurrency trading.

Soderholm, who had done extensive hydraulic restoration work for The Nature Conservancy in Pocosin Lakes National Wildlife Refuge in Hyde County, boiled down the following requirements:

• A greenhouse gas project plan is submitted to the American Carbon Registry, which determines whether the proposal aligns with its standards and methodology.
• Next, a third-party auditor examines the proposal.
• Then, site data is analyzed.

“It’s sort of a step-by-step process,” he explained. “Some edits may have to be added before it’s validated.” 

Pocosin and wetland restoration is part of The Nature Conservancy’s climate change work in the Albemarle peninsula, including reducing saltwater intrusion and mitigating flood and stormwater impacts.

Of the 110,106 acres in the Pocosin Lakes refuge, which spans land in Washington, Hyde and Tyrrell counties, about 101,600 acres are pocosin, an Algonquin term meaning “swamp on a hill.” With about 44,000 acres of the pocosin ditched and drained, over time the peat had become dried. The refuge’s natural water system is dependent on rainfall, and periods of drought had severely degraded habitat and made the land susceptible to wildfires.

Working with The Nature Conservancy and other partners, refuge officials have restored more than 37,000 acres of pocosin, making it one of the largest peat wetland restoration projects in the country, according to the refuge’s website. Restoration involved rewetting the pocosin by raising and maintaining water levels using risers and other structures in the canals to allow water to be absorbed.

“Healthy pocosins are foundational to healthy ecological and human communities,” the website explained. “The restoration is benefiting wildlife and people by maintaining high quality wetland habitat. When pocosins function as nature intended, seasonal water level fluctuations moisten the soils, protecting against catastrophic fire, easing the impacts of storm flows, and repelling the ever increasing threat of salt water intrusion in surrounding lands.”

Pocosin, described as “nutrient-poor, freshwater evergreen shrub bogs,” had developed over the last 10,000 years and had once covered nearly 1 million hectares on the state’s coastal plain, according to Curtis J. Richardson, director of the Duke University Wetland Center. By 1980, after years of drainage and peat mining, the natural wetlands were reduced to 281,000 acres.

“This development has resulted in a shift of hydrologic output from evapotranspiration to runoff,” he wrote in a research paper.   “… and a reduction in habitat for rare and endangered biota, while dramatically increasing the economic value of these lands.”

In a document about the conservancy’s work, Soderholm said the restoration of the Clayton Blocks area of Pocosin Lakes served as a valuable model. Located south of Phelps Lake, bordering private land and a shared drainage canal, the project involved creating a new canal and a separation berm to control floodwaters. Water-control structures were installed that allow the refuge to manage wetland hydrology and prevent wildfires. The conservancy also worked to monitor the project’s greenhouse gas flux, which is the amount of carbon exchanged and is typically measured in gigatons per year, in carbon pools such as atmosphere, living plants or roots, land and the ocean.

TerraCarbon, an advisory firm that helps develop carbon offset projects to fund natural climate solutions, worked with The Nature Conservancy at Pocosin Lakes to develop the first peatland carbon accounting methodology that is applicable to any peat-restoration project in the Southeast coastal plain.

In its healthy state, peat that is inundated with water lacks oxygen, so microbial activity is limited. But when peatlands are drained, they’re exposed to air, the microbes kick in, consumes the peat, which is then emitted as carbon dioxide. Over the years, the drained peatlands have created an ongoing emission of CO2.

TerraCarbon’s technical director David Shoch said that the methodology he developed serves as a standardized accounting framework for tracking greenhouse gas emission benefits from restoring coastal wetlands.

“These projects are all about stopping that ongoing mission by raising water tables to where they had historically been before under natural conditions,” he told Coastal Review. “And so the water table should be much closer to the surface.”

By raising the water levels, as was done at Pocosin Lakes and is underway at Carolina Ranch, he said, the natural hydrology can be restored and emission of CO2 into the atmosphere can be stopped.

Prior to TerraCarbon, Shoch had worked for The Nature Conservancy and Winrock International.

Roughly estimated, Shoch said that raising the water tables at Pocosin Lakes would prevent about 5 to 6 metric tons of CO2 equivalent per acre, per year. A metric ton equals 1,000 kilograms or about 2,205 pounds.

But the actual amount, he said, is dependent on determining the level of emissions from the pre-drained state and those water tables and comparing the numbers to reduction of emissions achieved by raising water tables and restoring the natural hydrology. TerraCarbon has leveraged research done by East Carolina University, the U.S. Geological Survey and the Duke University wetlands lab.

Sonderholm, with The Nature Conservancy, said that the nonprofit is interested in working with private landowners not only for habitat- and ecosystem-restoration purposes but also to help them reach goals in mutually beneficial climate projects.

Private property owners own about 40% of U.S. forestland, which includes forested pocosin in northeastern North Carolina, but the process of enrolling in the carbon market has been cost-prohibitive, requiring much time and expertise.

The Family Forest Carbon Program, developed by The Nature Conservancy and the American Forest Foundation, partners with family and individual owners to manage their forests in ways that increase their health while also fostering their ability to sequester and store carbon. The program then provides income to owners by selling verified carbon credits to companies seeking to confront climate change.

“We’re doing the work on the front end, laying out these practices … (with) models and quantifications specific to that region,” Aimee Tomcho, senior forestry manager for the Southern region of the American Forest Foundation, or AFF, explained for Coastal Review.

Although the foundation has focused on hardwood forests adjacent to peatland, she said, it has not yet delved into conservation of pocosin and has limited engagement in the region.

“I do anticipate that AFF will be community-based in the South, so that may happen organically.” she said, adding that the foundation knows how to reach out to landowners of small acreage.

“I’m really excited about the research about pocosin.” she added.

Erin Swails, postdoctoral fellow at the Center for International Forestry Research, said that until recently she had worked with Shoch at TerraCarbon on the technical carbon aspects of developing a documentation and monitoring system for qualifying the climate benefits of the restoration project and applying David’s methodology to that project.

Swails said she plans to publish new research that will provide more accurate emissions data generated by projects such as those at Pocosin Lakes.

“The main idea is that to get a relationship between the CO2 emissions from peat and easily measurable parameters in the field,” she told Coastal Review.

In other words, more data from different studies covering a broader range of environmental and climate conditions was needed, she said, to fill knowledge gaps and “to get a sufficiently robust relationship to apply the methodology.”

Even for those who may have taken some college-level science classes, it’s difficult to comprehend the concepts involved in measuring carbon levels in soil. As Swails explained it, in addition to figuring out carbon levels in pocosin before and after rewetting, it involves measuring the contribution of living plants, root respiration and total CO2 flux.

Scientists also have to create cushions in carbon offset calculations to account for carbon released if there is a fire. And if there’s prolonged flooding, that won’t affect the carbon releases, but it could create methane emissions, another greenhouse gas.

“I think something else that is important is restoring the vegetation of these ecosystems because it’s one thing to raise the water table level to stop the microbial decomposition of the peat, but to build the (land), to increase the carbon storage of peat, you need carbon inputs from vegetation,” Swails said. “So besides the many environmental benefits that restoring native vegetation would bring one of them is to help restore the natural function of the peat by promoting carbon storage.”

If pocosin land in northeastern North Carolina finds its place in the burgeoning carbon market, much of it will depend on the integrity of the science that has been done at Pocosin Lakes and Carolina Ranch.

The largely unregulated voluntary carbon market can play an important role in finding funds for sequestration projects and helping the world achieve net zero carbon goals, according to a Nov. 10, 2022, blog on the nonprofit Environmental Defense Fund website.

“But the voluntary carbon market can only thrive if it is backed by standards that ensure high integrity of emissions reductions,” according to the blog. “That’s because companies will only invest in forest carbon credits to meet their net zero goals if they’re confident in the credit’s integrity.

“They don’t want to risk greenwashing.”

RODANTHE — A new bridge has bypassed a dangerous and persistent ocean overwash problem on the roadway on the north end of Hatteras Island. Now residents of this tiny village are looking for beach nourishment to protect their homes from washing into the ocean.

The reason that Rodanthe is at risk is the same reason that a shoreline protection project would be very difficult: the unmanageable forces of geology, erosion and sea level rise.

“Look at the shape of the coast from Rodanthe down to Waves and Salvo, a broad convex to the shoreline,” Tim Kana, owner of Columbia, South Carolina-based Coastal Science & Engineering and a professional geologist, explained to Coastal Review. “You’re eroding at Rodanthe and accreting at Waves and Salvo. This crescent moon is just shifting down the coast.”

Averaging 14 feet per year and as much as 20 feet at times in some sections of beach, Rodanthe has one of the highest erosion rates on the East Coast, and in recent years it’s been accelerating. Homes that had many yards of beach out front when purchased are now sitting at the edge of the surf. Last year, three of them collapsed into the sea, and others now must be relocated back from the shoreline to prevent the same fate.

Special Report: Houses on the Edge

Without an infusion of lots of state or federal money, or enormous amounts of local tax revenue, the prospect of a new shoreline protection project for privately owned properties would be impossible.

At a standing-room-only community meeting held by Dare County Jan. 18 in Rodanthe, county manager Bobby Outten told residents that the first step in looking at beach nourishment is getting an update on the erosion rate provided in a 2013 study done by Kana’s firm that estimated a $20 million cost to widen Rodanthe’s beaches.

“We know that’s not going to be enough,” he said.

In a slide presentation, Outten gave an overview of beach nourishment projects in the county, starting with Nags Head in 2011. After the federal government declined to fund a planned project, the county stepped in and paid half the costs out of a special fund it created with 2% of its annual occupancy tax revenue. Since then, the county has continued sharing costs with numerous other town projects in the county, as well as its own in the unincorporated villages of Avon and Buxton.

Today, there is about $6 million available in the fund, he said, and to fund just the prior $20 million estimate for Rodanthe nourishment, the county would need $30 million.

“The question is, ‘how are we going to pay for this?’” he said. “That fund is not going to grow fast enough.”

The tax value generated from the combined 81 or so properties in Rodanthe would also fall woefully short.

Outten added that Dare County and other coastal communities in North Carolina have been asking the state to establish a recurring fund to help pay for nourishment projects.

“I’ll tell you, it’s not just us,” he said. “We’re all working all angles we can.”

In Dare County alone, two other areas — the “canal zone” on N.C. Highway 12 south of the Basnight Bridge and the Isabel Inlet area on N.C. 12 in Buxton — are subject to severe erosion. But those areas are part of a critical public transportation route. Rodanthe’s oceanfront area, on the other hand, is unlikely to be eligible for public funds because, although the beaches are part of Cape Hatteras National Seashore, the affected property is mostly vacation homes that are privately owned.

During the public comment period, Jett Ferebee, who owns a campground in Rodanthe, said that because the National Park Service owns the public beach, the situation is different than the other areas of the county.

“If we lose the entire beach in Rodanthe, I would declare that’s an impairment of the our National Park system,” he said. “Rodanthe, we’re sitting here, an unincorporated village, we really don’t have much representation. We need some federal help.”

Dave Hallac, superintendent of Cape Hatteras National Seashore, said that National Park Service policy does not permit spending public funds to protect private property. Not only are hundreds of parks competing for slim funds, there are numerous park needs and projects on the Outer Banks, including severe erosion on Ocracoke Island, that is threatening the National Seashore and N.C. 12.

Dare County, one of the most popular tourist destinations in the state, is not a poor or underserved county, so it does not qualify for government funds that are intended to help less wealthy populations and communities. That was part of the reason that Rodanthe was largely unsuited for a recent state grant program to buy out at-risk homes, Outten said.

Outten said he is trying to see what the options are, and the first step is finding out what the current erosion rate is and how much cubic yardage of sand would be required to do a nourishment project. The $35,000 update, which would provide a “rough estimate” of the extent of the project, would likely take 90-120 days to complete.

Kana, who said that work had not yet begun, explained that Rodanthe is not only challenging because of the high erosion rate, but also because it doesn’t have much naturally deposited sand available near shore, so it would have to be found farther offshore.

But it’s hard to know what to expect before doing the updated engineering work.

“Rodanthe is more exposed with the curvature of the shoreline right there,” Kana said. “The only way you can address that is with sand-retaining structures.”

But those structures are not permitted on ocean shorelines in North Carolina.

With so much erosion and storm damage happening nationwide, finding enough public money is at best extremely competitive.

“What I heard from that meeting is that new beach nourishment in Dare County is basically dead,” said Rob Young, director of the Program for the Study of Developed Shorelines at Western Carolina University. “It was a very straightforward presentation.”

Young said he appreciated Outten’s frankness with Rodanthe residents about the situation. “That’s certainly not what they wanted to hear,” Young said.

Young, who attended the meeting, said he was disappointed to not hear a discussion of future buyouts. “What threatens the beach is development,” he said. “It’s not the park service’s job to hold the beach because there’s development there.”

Young said that with enough money, beach nourishment could buy time in Rodanthe to establish a buyout program, he said.

“It’s the best long-term solution,” he said of buyouts.

First of two parts.

BELHAVEN — Fourteen years separate two lightning strikes that sparked wildfires in nearly the same spot of private land near Pocosin Lakes National Wildlife Refuge.

The first blaze in 2008 consumed about 50,000 acres and took more than six months to extinguish. The second, in June 2022, burned just under 2,000 acres and was out in 10 days.

To Angie Tooley, manager of Carolina Ranch, the 10,000-acre site where both fires ignited, those contrasts illustrate the critical difference between toasty dry pocosin and spongy wet pocosin. Tooley credits the ranch’s work that rewetted the pocosin by raising water levels in the canals for suppressing the June fire.

But moist pocosin can also translate to income, she is quick to add. When peatlands are restored to their naturally boggy health, their thick mats of decayed plants sequester many tons of carbon. Carbon dioxide is the greenhouse gas that is threatening to destroy our planet. 

It’s an opportunity for ecosystem restoration that kills two birds with one stone — wildfire prevention and climate change mitigation — and Tooley intends to seize the ring. In recent years, she has reached out to environmental nonprofit group The Nature Conservancy, or TNC, and Charlottesville, Virginia, consulting firm TerraCarbon for expertise to help Carolina Ranch — and possibly neighboring properties — meet strict criteria to qualify for the burgeoning carbon credit market.

Carbon credits, or offsets, refer to the amount of greenhouse gas removed from the atmosphere, or the reduction of carbon emissions. Carbon farming creates credits based on the carbon dioxide, or CO2, held or drawn down into the soil.

“We are all looking for ways to work together in showcasing the private landowner use of the pocosin carbon offsets methodology funded by TNC and written in part by TerraCarbon,” she said in a text message after representatives of the groups had visited the site Jan. 11.

Wetland research

The Duke University Wetland Center, which is led by founding director Curtis J. Richardson, had conducted a three-year research project on pocosin in Carolina Ranch and, earlier, at the Pocosin Lakes refuge. In a paper released in September, the research data showed that rewetting and restoring 250,000 acres of previously drained peatlands could prevent 4.3 million tons of CO2 from being released into the atmosphere – equaling 2.4% of the total annual reductions in carbon dioxide emissions needed for the U.S. to be carbon neutral by 2050.

“Thus, management of hydrology and fire intensity in natural and degraded shrub/tree peatlands will be principal to maintaining peat/litter quality (phenolic/black carbon), enhancing long-term carbon accumulation, and preventing downstream (dissolved organic carbon) losses to coastal waters,” according to the paper.

In September, Richardson told Coastal Review that the Duke center is no longer working with anyone at Carolina Ranch. Although he noted “there’s a million steps that have to be done,” he hopes they move forward with carbon farming.

“I wish the project to be a success,” he said.

‘Hottest of the hot’

During a mid-September tour of the canal system within the project site, Tooley and ranch assistant Bill Ogburn of Ponser showed how the dark water sat just under the top edge of the canals that crisscrossed miles of flat grassy and wooded land.

“This is the worst part of the fire,” Tooley said, nodding towards charred vegetation off the access road on the property. “This was the hottest of the hot.”

Abutting the refuge and situated among vast farms of Hyde County’s coastal plain, Carolina Ranch totals 15,000 acres, some of which is still farmed or used for other purposes. Bumping along in an open all-terrain vehicle, views off the unpaved road showed off nature at its lovely best, mostly untouched by fire. The air had an earthy scent, with an occasional whiff of charred wood. Off the road, palm pine, wild asters, Carolina bay trees, maple, wild dogwood, wax myrtle, fern, scrub bushes and white pines grew with abandon. Wild blackberries, blueberries, gall berry, and wild Scuppernong grapes dotted the landscape in their late summer version. When the vehicle was stopped, it was quiet enough for black bear families to amble across the road. In one large section, there were patches of blackened earth and numerous downed trees.

We arrived at the fire scar.

“Look at the pine – it’s coming back,” Tooley exclaimed, pleased with the signs of recovery.

The property, today owned by Gus Schad of Albemarle, had once been part of the sprawling First Colony Farms, established in 1973 and comprised of 376,000 acres in Washington, Tyrrell, Hyde, and Dare counties. At the time, plans included clearing land for farming, forestry, raising livestock and peat mining. Much of the land was ditched and drained.

But concerns about loss of wetlands and harm to water quality, combined with economic questions, led to the project being dropped. A conservation group eventually bought much of the land at a bankruptcy proceeding, and a large portion became part of Pocosin Lakes National Wildlife Refuge.

After Schad, as Hyde County Partners LLC, purchased the 15,000 acres, he asked Tooley, an old friend, to help manage it and find a way to make a return on the investment. Tooley, an Elizabeth City native whose previous work includes serving as Hyde County planner and county manager, researched options for the land and realized it was a perfect fit for carbon farming. Much work, she knew, would be required to restore the pocosin, which had been dried out by the ditching and draining and periods of drought.

‘What we’re doing is working’

Ambitions for Carolina Ranch, which was incorporated in Sept. 2020, are big, according to its website: “Dedicated 10,000 acres to carbon offsets development in order to strengthen upland conservation, manage rainwater runoff using the peat to absorb and protect adjacent landowners, and enhance the natural environment for new biodiversity industrial job creation all while protecting the land from future peat fires.”

It would be one of the largest coastal resiliency projects in the U.S, continues the writeup on the site. TerraCarbon, which designed the American Carbon Registry methodology for restoration of pocosin wetlands, is directing development of the carbon project, along with East Carolina University and assistance from engineering firm Quible and Associates.

In addition to the prospect for carbon farming, Tooley said that scientists have discovered “never seen before” fungi deep in the peat. The ranch operation is working to continue onsite research into the find, with a goal of developing small business incubators for biodiversity jobs. At the same time, the operation is working to expand use of the property, which has 52 miles of roads, frontage on New Lake and diverse populations of flora and fauna, as a nature-tourism destination.

But without rewetting and restoring the pocosin, the biodiversity and health of the ecosystem would be at risk, Tooley noted, and it would lose any chance of qualifying as a carbon farm. That’s why it is important for the canals to hold the 9 feet of water. As Tooley described it, it was like creating a tub and putting a plug in it. Consequently, the natural sponginess of the peat was absorbed, in turn making it much less of a wildfire hazard.

“I know what we’re doing is working,” she said.

The Algonquin name for “swamp on a hill,” pocosin is the regional version of peat, known for its ability to hold water, and conversely, to burn hot and long. Fifty percent of peat – the remains of dead plants preserved over millennia – is composed of carbon. Despite being only 3% of the Earth’s surface, healthy peatlands store more than twice the carbon of all the planet’s combined forests. Desiccated or burned peat, however, releases carbon into the atmosphere.

Peat fires burn deep into the ground and are notoriously difficult to extinguish because they can spread horizontally and create hot spots that are difficult to find until they flare up. With their carbon-rich material – peat is still mined throughout the world for fuel – peat fires are some of the worst carbon polluters. Paradoxically, it is also one of the best natural solutions to keeping carbon in the ground.

John Cook, District 13 forester with the North Carolina Forest Service, told Coastal Review that the Evans Fire in 2008 happened after two years of severe drought, making the underground organic soil, which lacks sand or clay, exceptionally dry. Then once the topsoil is on fire, the heat keeps drying the soil deeper and deeper.

Even though there was a shorter-term drought going on when lightning ignited the recent wildfire, dubbed the Ferebee Road fire, the strategy at the ranch to dam canals with stacks of cement bags to sustain optimal water levels throughout the 10,000 acres is currently incomplete. The agency has a right to go on private land to stop a fire so it won’t affect somebody else, he added.

“They just don’t have the structures yet to hold water,” he said. “The ditching got ahead of the reality.”

Roads and ditches tend to eventually work like dikes, Cook said. And the problem with pocosin is that when flooded from above, the top of the “swamp on a hill” ends up becoming the center of a doughnut. Firefighters learned from the Evans Fire, which spread underground, and pumped water into canals from nearby lakes to flood the fire from below. Firefighters also cut firebreaks through the land and around the perimeter of the fire, and doused the sides and edges of the fire to keep it from spreading.

Cook said that holding the 9 feet of water Tooley had done at Carolina Ranch did help slow the progress of the Ferebee Road fire, but the more expensive water-control structures used nextdoor at the refuge are able to more efficiently pump water off and on a site as needed to move it around the network of canals.

“She’s doing what she can with what she has, until she can get structures in place,” he said.

Although Tooley wants the Fire Service to fix canal gates and remove cut trees and piles of brush left after the fire, Cook said that is not the agency’s responsibility, comparing it to expecting a fire department to repair your house after it burns. It’s not just because it’s private land, he said.

“I didn’t start the fire,” he said. “I came and put the fire out.”

But he said the service will remove sediments in wetland streams and restore access on paths and roads. Otherwise, the downed growth will be left to nature.

“Those trees are going to rot,” Cook added. “We don’t go back and landscape.”

Spurred by new urgency to mitigate climate change impacts and buoyed by a flood of federal funds, carbon offset projects are gaining momentum nationwide. Tooley remains determined to not only be one of them, but to help use pocosin as an asset to create an innovative business model for the community, while helping to stem the effects of climate change.

“That’s what makes coastal resiliency happen, because it naturally holds water,” Tooley said of northeastern North Carolina’s peatlands. “If everybody doesn’t work together – and I mean public and private – we will never have coastal resiliency.”

From an Island Free Press report

The Dare County Waterways Commission is hopeful that maintenance issues in Hatteras Inlet finally can be addressed in a timely manner.

“We don’t want to wait until the last minute,” Commission Chair Steve “Creature” Coulter said at the Jan. 9 meeting in Manteo. “We want it fixed and maintained so we can tell the people to come.”

With permission from the Oregon Inlet Task Force, the new state dredge Miss Katie is on track to be able to work in the Connector Channel by early February, waterways administrator Barton Grover said in later interview.

The Oregon Inlet Task Force, which controls the dredge’s schedule, voted at its Jan. 10 meeting to approve the commission’s motion requesting the Hatteras work, Grover said.

There will likely be another request for the Miss Katie to go back to Hatteras at the end of March, he added. The goal is to prevent another shoaling crisis by keeping the channel in good shape before the six-month sea turtle moratorium begins on April 1. But work is possible in the warmer months with permission from regulatory agencies.

“I think a week to 10 days is a good measure of how effective they can be in the Connector Channel,” Ken Willson, Dare County dredge projects consultant with Coastal Planning & Engineering of North Carolina, speaking remotely, told commissioners. “Then maybe monitor it and come back and do a cleanup at the end of March.”

The 156-foot shallow-draft hopper dredge, christened on Oct. 13 at a ceremony in Wanchese, is a public-private partnership with Greenville-based EJE Dredging Service, built with a $15 million allocation from the state Shallow Draft Navigation fund. EJE owns and operates the Miss Katie, and the Oregon Inlet Task Force has been charged by Dare County to manage the dredge, including its operation schedule and project monitoring.

In return for EJE dredging in the county at a reduced rate for 10 years, the state loan will be forgiven, according to the contract. The agreement also can be renewed.

This story is provided courtesy of the Island Free Press, a digital newspaper covering Hatteras and Ocracoke islands. Coastal Review is partnering with the Free Press to provide readers with more environmental and lifestyle stories of interest along our coast. 

HATTERAS — As it turns out, long-sought flexibility in maintenance of essential Hatteras Inlet navigation channels didn’t take an act of Congress. It boiled down to a much simpler concept: go-with-the-flow realignment.

But with the finalized expanded authorization to dredge Rollinson Channel, it may seem like a Christmas miracle for islanders now relieved of navigating a labyrinth of regulatory hurdles to address shoaled channels.

For Steve “Creature” Coulter, a Hatteras charter boat captain and chair of the Dare County Waterways Commission, the new realignment, which he said Dec. 2 was a “done deal,” is delayed validation of his initial assessment.

In 2013, as Coulter recalled in a recent interview with Coastal Review, when the waterway’s “short route” between Hatteras and Ocracoke islands was deemed too dangerously shoaled to dredge, he called the office of the late 3^rd District Rep. Walter Jones and suggested, essentially, that the law allowed channel dredging to follow best water.

But at the time, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, the agency charged with maintenance of Rollinson Channel, said that an act of Congress would be required to change the channel’s authorized metes and bounds.

“If we could do just what we wanted to do, I’d have had it done nine years ago,” Coulter said, recounting what he half-jokingly told Josh Bowlen, who had served as Jones’ legislative director, and later, chief of staff.

After Jones’ death in 2019, Bowlen has served as legislative assistant for Sen. Richard Burr, R-N.C., who will retire in January.

Although it’s not clear when the Corps adopted its different stance, its authority to follow the deepest natural water, or best water, in the Rollinson Channel Navigation Project was explained in the environmental assessment and finding of no significant impact, or FONSI, that was signed Nov. 30 by Robert M. Burnham, acting district commander for Corps’ Wilmington District.

The realignment of a portion of the project’s Hatteras to Hatteras Inlet Channel that follows deep water, the document said, was “due to the changes in shoaling patterns” caused by the dynamic inlet conditions.

“The project’s authorization does not specify the precise location of the Hatteras to Hatteras Inlet Channel, and therefore the location may be altered if found to be justified,” the document said, citing a regulation that allowed modifications.

The channel was originally authorized in 1962 under the River and Harbor Acts and included a 100-foot-wide, 12-foot-deep fixed channel extending through Rollinson Channel from Hatteras Harbor to Pamlico Sound, and a 100-foot-wide, 10-foot-deep channel from Rollinson Channel to the Hatteras Inlet gorge, with part of the channel being fixed and part following best water.

Somehow, what Coulter and other mariners considered common sense broke through to the surface.

“Having a channel that follows natural deep water to the extent practicable,” according to the environmental assessment, “given the natural dynamic nature of sediment movement, will allow for a safer, more reliable channel, reduced dredging effort, and an associated reduction in maintenance dredging costs, as well as having the least impact to the environment.”

Of the three actions proposed, the preferred alternative that was approved chose to abandon the “historic direct route” to the inlet gorge and to reroute the channel to follow best water along what is known as the “horseshoe route.”

“This is the only way for (the Corps) to economically maintain access to the gorge at Hatteras Inlet and will allow transportation of passengers, goods, and services to continue from the mainland, as well as allowing safe access to open ocean waters,” according to the document.

Not only will the dredging be able to be more flexible and timelier, the realignment also frees up use of federal funds for work within the project.

Work in the horseshoe will be allowed between Oct. 1 and March 31. Also, Sloop Channel North and Hatteras Connector Channel can now be maintained any time of the year.

Decades before the short route became impassable and impossible to dredge, the inlet was stable and rarely had navigational difficulties. After 1993, when the inlet was 0.35 miles wide, the southwest end of Hatteras Island began eroding, likely spurred by the effects that year of the “Storm of the Century” and Hurricane Emily.

As detailed in the environmental assessment, sand from the eroding land over the years, as well as what drifted through the widening opening to the ocean, resulted in more shoaling. By 2019, about 315 acres from the tip of Hatteras was gone, and the inlet had widened to 1.7 miles. At the same time, about 130 miles of shoreline was lost from the eastern end of Ocracoke Island. Today, the inlet is over 2 miles wide.

As navigation through Hatteras Inlet became more difficult, and the ferry route between Hatteras and Ocracoke islands switched to the longer horseshoe route, the commercial and charter fishing fleet, recreational boaters and fishers and the Coast Guard, also had to adapt their routes to reach Ocracoke and the ocean, depending on shoaling.

It soon became evident that dredging would be needed beyond the authorized Rollinson project the Corps had been maintaining. Problems developed in a confusing number of channels, or portions of them, some with evolving names. The South Ferry Channel — for a time a “no-man’s land” that no one had permission to maintain — became too shoaled to dredge and was replaced by the nearby Connector Channel.

But the piecemeal of jurisdictions, funding pots and government administrators — local, state, federal — involved in addressing problematic areas often resulted in time-consuming permit applications and costly delays.

Agreements had to be made among the county, the state and the Corps for certain work to be done, also not a quick process. Often, certain dredges were needed for certain conditions, but they weren’t available. Sometimes dredges were called away for a more pressing need, or broke down mid-project. A shared funding pot would be depleted by a more urgent project, such as the ferry route, leaving little or nothing for another needy channel. More than once, dredging projects would be undone by storms not long after they were completed.

For the last five or so years, members of the Waterways Commission were often left frustrated by numerous twists of fate and bureaucratic complications. Confronted repeatedly by the Corps inability to clear bits of shoaled channel outside the rigid authorized Rollinson parameters, the commissioners’ running theme through the years was the need for flexibility.

With the new flexibility, a Corps dredge on its way elsewhere would be able to do a little clean up where needed in Hatteras Inlet.

“If there’s money in the budget for Rollinson Channel, they can just stop by and do the work,” Coulter said.

Finally, in a big way, the realignment, while not a panacea, fills in gaps and removes one of the more persistent blockades to addressing the unpredictable nature of shoaling, while offering responsive dredging that can save time and money.

That means the Connector Channel, Crossover Channel, Sloop Channel, Hatteras Ferry Connecting Channel and Barney Slough, all of which may have had different names or versions that were maintained in different ways, will now be part of the expanded Rollinson project, explained Dare County Grants and Waterways Administrator Barton Grover.

It also puts Hatteras Inlet on par with Oregon Inlet in funding projects. For instance, the Corps just did $400,000 worth of work in the last three months in Oregon Inlet, and it cost Dare County “not one cent,” he said.

“In a nutshell, it’s a positive,” Grover said about the Hatteras realignment. “We now have access to federal dollars for the entire inlet.”

Also, there will be an additional area provided to dispose of dredged material, an important requirement for every dredge project.

Last year, he said, Dare dedicated $250,000 for Hatteras Inlet dredging, with a 75% match in state dollars, paid out of the state Shallow Draft Navigation Channel Dredging and Aquatic Weed Fund.

Dare also budgeted $800,000 for its new hopper dredge, the Miss Katie, which will often be used to supplement Corps work. In addition, the Corps received $1.43 million for Rollinson Channel from the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act, and $580,000 remained as of mid-November.

Since so much of the dredging situation has changed, Grover said, it will take time to gauge the impact on the maintenance and emergency work and the budgets. The reality, he added, is that even though the Corps now has the authority to dredge much more of Hatteras Inlet, it doesn’t mean it will have the funding or the available equipment.

If push comes to shove, he said, the county and state may have to supplement the cost of projects.

“I believe we’ll have a better sense in September of what it costs to maintain the ferry channel,” Grover said. “It’s a brand-new thing, not only with the federal channel, but also with us having Miss Katie.”

The Old Oregon Inlet Life-Saving Station is one of the most beautiful historic buildings on the Outer Banks, situated at a dramatic coastal location that would befit a movie setting. 

But it’s got to go.

Where and when and to whom is what the North Carolina Aquariums — the building’s current owner — is trying to figure out.

“It’s a piece of history — we would really like to see it preserved,” Larry Warner, the director of N.C. Aquarium on Roanoke Island, recently told Coastal Review. “Our goal now is to move it.”

Built in 1898 for about $7,000 on a picturesque corner of beach between the Atlantic Ocean and the East Coast’s most unruly inlet, the station has not been in use since it was decommissioned by the U.S. Coast Guard in 1988. Standing exposed for decades on the northern tip of Pea Island National Wildlife Refuge, the deteriorating building was nearly buried in sand and a magnet for vandals.

In 2007-08, the state paid $7 million to elevate and renovate the structure, demolish 1970s-era dormitories, weatherize the building and restore its historic good looks.

Around that time, the North Carolina Aquariums system was planning to turn the site into a satellite facility for students and interns to study in what was envisioned as a marine and coastal wildlife research center on the Outer Banks.

“Then Jennette’s Pier jumped into the picture,” Warner said. “All the focus and all the funds went into the pier.”

With Jennette’s Pier in Nags Head since transformed into a major research/educational asset and attraction for the aquariums, the fate of the life-saving station was put on the back burner.

In the governor’s proposed fiscal 2022-23 budget, Warner said, the Aquariums requested $600,000 to relocate the station, potentially to a 16-acre site near the Roanoke Island aquarium. But the funds never made it into the final budget, and it’s not clear when or if another request will be submitted.

Although the Aquariums is seeking the move, it’s still open to where it might go.

“We are not married to the building coming over to the aquarium,” Warner said.

In addition to the station, the state owns 10 acres under and surrounding it. The Pea Island refuge, managed by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, has an easement at the site for management of wildlife, said Rebekah Martin, manager of Coastal North Carolina National Wildlife Refuge Complex.

During the construction of the Marc Basnight Bridge, which opened in 2019 to replace the 1963 Bonner Bridge, the state Department of Transportation right of way easement was modified, she said, resulting in DOT abandoning some of it and maintaining portions of it. The refuge easement was part of the mitigation DOT agreed to provide.

DOT had briefly proposed building a boardwalk between the parking lot and the station, Martin said. But at the realization that it would be constantly covered in sand, the idea was dropped.

The refuge has neither demanded nor requested that the station be moved from Pea Island, Martin added.

Last year the state presented a concept that included moving the building to Roanoke Island, she said, with the condition that costs would be shared by DOT and Fish and Wildlife. But Martin said in a later email that there is no record that she is aware of that documents the discussion between the agencies about the proposed move or the potential cost share.

“From our perspective, we would certainly support the relocation of the building to a safer site,” Martin said in the interview. “We don’t have the funding available to move the building at this point.”

Since the refuge does not own the footprint property or the building, any decision, and the timing, to move the station would be up to the state, she said.

Meanwhile, the refuge continues to manage wildlife on the 10 acres with implementation of seasonal shorebird nesting closures and coordination of bird and other species’ monitoring, Martin said.

Today the station, backdropped by a vista of swirling sea, sitting amid undulating dunes and facing the inlet, presents a living postcard of 19th-century maritime life to drivers crossing the inlet heading south over the Basnight Bridge.

But with its doors and windows reinforced against intruders, the building is inaccessible. Curious sightseers can park at a public lot near the station and follow a foot path in the sand to get a closer look at its exterior.

It’s a rather sad plight for one of the few authentic life-saving stations remaining at its original location on the coast. Listed on the National Register of Historic Places, the station, deemed to be in remarkably good condition, has had a bumpy road to its state of benign uselessness.

After the Coast Guard departed, relocating to its current station on the calmer northwest side of the inlet, the old 11,361-square-foot, wood-frame station was turned over to Dare County. That prompted a long battle with heirs of Jesse Etheridge, who gave the U.S. Lifesaving Service the land in 1897 with the condition that it would revert to him if the property ceased being held by the service. But evidently the eventual heirs did not make a timely claim to the property, and the U.S. government deeded the station to the county.  Finally, in 2000, the county handed the property over to the state, which promptly assigned it to the N.C. Aquariums to administer.

Aquariums Divisions Director Maylon White said that the situation with the proposed relocation of the station “remains status quo.”

White said that it is too soon to know if the Oregon Inlet station relocation request will be part of this year’s new proposed budget.

“We’re very much interested in preserving it,” he said in a recent interview. But he reiterated that conservation more than location is the overriding goal.

“We’re open to suggestions,” he said. “What we need to get is funding, and then we need to have discussions if there are better places to put it.”

If the relocation is eventually funded, he added, the N.C. Aquariums would “be happy” to discuss the potential transfer of the state’s 10 acres it owns at the station to the Pea Island National Wildlife Refuge.

One contender who has put their name in the hat for a location for the station is the nonprofit Pea Island Preservation Society, which owns and operates the Pea Island Lifesaving Station Cookhouse, which was moved from Rodanthe to Collins Park in Manteo.

According to its website, the group’s primary mission is to preserve and interpret the history of the station and of its keeper, Richard Etheridge, the only Black Life-Saving Station keeper in the history of the Lifesaving Service, which was inherited by the Coast Guard.

Etheridge’s gravesite has been memorialized at the Roanoke Island aquarium grounds.

Joan Collins, the Pea Island Preservation Society director of outreach and education, said that the group is in the preliminary stages of investigating the possibility of moving the Oregon Inlet station to a lot near the Cookhouse site in Manteo.

“It’s such a beautiful building and it connects to our history,” she told Coastal Review. But securing that relocation, she acknowledged, would require numerous steps and much planning.

“We would love to get it if we could,” Collins said. “If we can acquire the funding.”

Second in a series.

RODANTHE — As every nor’easter blows over the Outer Banks this winter, what is top of mind for many is whether another sagging oceanfront house along the Hatteras Island beaches will succumb to the pounding waves of the Atlantic.

With a total of three large houses collapsing into the ocean so far this year, numerous oceanfront property owners in Rodanthe are scrambling to obtain permits and contractors to move their houses back from the severely eroded beach. A few of the large wooden beach houses are sitting in the surf, playing chicken with a stormy sea.

“Once it’s down, it’s considerably more difficult,” Mike Dunn, owner of W.M. Dunn Construction, LLC, of Powells Point, the contractor hired to clean up the fallen houses, said in a recent interview. “It’s cheaper, easier and more efficient to tear down a house.”

Cleanup, which is not covered by insurance, is as much as four times more expensive for the property owner, he said. A standing house can be removed for about $10,000 to $15,000; a fallen house could cost $50,000 to $100,000.

Related: A cycle of septic repairs, washouts on park service beaches

Dunn said his crew, using excavators and front-end loaders, removed 30 to 40 dump truck loads of debris that stretched along 11 miles of beach after two houses fell in May, with some crew on the job as long as 60 days. The contractor also was hired to do the cleanup of the house that collapsed in February.

“The problem with this type of work for the (owners) is they’re cleaning up everybody else’s trash,” Dunn said, referring to neighboring properties. “People lost decks, pools, fences, all that kind of stuff, during the storm.”

Although many fault the owners of the threatened or doomed beachfront houses, there is plenty of blame to go around: inconsistent real estate disclosure rules; outdated local zoning laws and building codes; gaps in state regulations; ineffective federal policies; escalating climate change impacts; inaccurate flood maps; and overall government inaction.

Whatever the reason, Dunn believes it is unfair to conclude that the property owner is at fault or irresponsible.

“They were shocked,” he said of the Rodanthe owners who lost their houses. At least two of them were from out of state, he said. “I’ve had guys literally crying to me on the phone. It’s very sad. It’s very unfortunate what happened to them — one had to file bankruptcy.”

The erosion rate in Rodanthe has long been one of the highest on the Outer Banks — as much as an annual average of 14 feet — but it has accelerated with rising sea levels, especially with storm impacts. Especially for people who are unfamiliar with the speed at which an Outer Banks beach can change, Dunn said, it can be unexpected, as it was for one of the owners.

“When he bought the house about 1 1/2 years ago, he probably had about 150 feet of beach,” he recalled. “And then, there was nothing.”

Beach nourishment is currently not available for Rodanthe, a point of contention to property owners in the small, unincorporated village. Dare County officials have said beach widening in that area would be too costly. Yet, numerous Rodanthe beachfront houses are currently listed for sale on real estate websites.

In North Carolina, real estate agents licensed by the state are required to disclose any known hazards or defects with prospective buyers, who are then to be provided a form with the information before a contract can be signed. Real estate agents are not allowed to lie if questioned about potential risks or other problems. But those same rules may not apply to out-of-state sellers, properties sold by the owner or unlicensed agents.

Bottom line, large houses are allowed to stand on the beach until they are inevitably destroyed, casting debris that is carried far and wide by currents and winds because no authority, no force of law, is demanding nor commanding that they be removed.

To wit: there’s the Federal Emergency Management Agency’s National Flood Insurance Program, a requirement for mortgaged property in a flood zone.

“The policies are not paying out anything until it’s a claim,” explained Allen Moran, an owner of Basnight & Moran Insurance Agency in Nags Head. “It’s similar to if there’s a tree over your house, they won’t pay before it falls down.”

The maximum FEMA will pay for a house when it collapses is $250,000 for the building, and $100,000 for the contents, he said. Flood insurance ratings have recently been changed to better reflect the real flood risk of property, which has increased the costs for some properties, and decreased it for others. 

Under the old rates, he said, the average policy for an oceanfront property in Dare County would cost about $3,000 a year; now it will range from $4,500 a year to $6,000 a year. 

Moran said the program also offers Increased Cost of Compliance, or ICC, coverage of up to $30,000 to help owners with property in designated “special flood hazard areas” meet local requirements to rebuild or repair flood-damaged structures, which includes relocation. An owner has to apply within six months of submitting a claim, and it must be damaged 50% or more or suffered a repetitive loss history with 25% or greater loss in each loss.

Still, as one FEMA official explained, with the increasing number and severity of disaster threats, addressing measures — whether proactive or responsive — for high-risk properties is complex and beyond the capability of one agency.

“We believe insurance coupled with mitigation is key to disaster resilience against climate change – especially flooding, the most common and destructive threat,” said FEMA Deputy Associate Administrator for Resilience David Maurstad in an email response to Coastal Review. “In the end, no single government and private sector entity can develop and implement a mitigation strategy, especially not today with climate change.”

Currently, there is a total of 4.7 million national flood insurance policies in force, according to Maurstad’s email. For context, the agency pointed out that the 2020 U.S. Census data reports 81 households in Rodanthe. Of all the nation’s disasters, flooding is the most common and costliest, impacting 98% of the United States.

“Living in close proximity of a water source, such as a coastline, the risk definitely increases that a structure may be impacted by flooding,” Maurstad wrote.

But since property development decisions are not made by FEMA, he noted, the location of properties are local decisions. “Communities that participate in the NFIP have, at a minimum, adopted the minimum federal and state requirements for floodplain management,” he said.

Costs for demolition or relocation are not covered under the National Flood Insurance Act. But they used to be. Adopted in 1988, the Upton-Jones Amendment provided coverage for structures in imminent danger on an eroded shoreline. The program would pay up to 40% of the policy to relocate endangered structures and up to 110% of the policy to property owners to demolish and remove their structure. At the time, the maximum amount of an oceanfront policy was $185,000 for the structure and $60,000 for its contents.

The amendment was repealed in 1994, and no effort since to revise it has gained traction in Congress.

As it stands now, removing the property from the risk is not the role of the flood insurance program.

“Essentially we are distinguishing between an insurance program which pays out for insured losses versus mitigation grant programs which reduce the risk of flooding to structures and therefore the risk of insurance payouts when the mitigation is focused on insured properties,” explained Maurstad.

FEMA currently offers numerous grants to address flood risk. Dare County’s Hazard Mitigation Grants Program, which offers local, permanent residents an opportunity to apply for funds to elevate their homes above current base flood levels, has been popular and effective. Other competitive grants are available through the Building Resilient Infrastructure and Communities program, which offers funds for projects such as flood control, utility protection, stabilization and retrofitting, and Flood Mitigation Assistance Grants, for projects that reduce or eliminate repetitive flood risks.

On Aug. 12, FEMA published a funding opportunity that increased the funding level for Flood Mitigation Assistance by five times, from $160 million to $800 million, Maurstad said. To date, the program has mitigated more than 8,000 FEMA-insured properties over the last 20 years. Also, he said, home acquisitions are eligible through the Building Resilient Infrastructure and Communities program funds and the Hazard Mitigation Grant Program.

Congress established the National Flood Insurance Program in 1968 in response to disaster costs following severe flood and storm damage from Hurricane Betsy in 1965, the nation’s first billion-dollar hurricane. But the original intent to provide government-subsidized property insurance for Americans living in flood-prone areas has become a Pandora’s box of budget deficits, political division and regional rivalries, pitting coastal residents against inland property owners, cities against rural communities, and victims of ocean surge against those who’ve suffered flash flooding from rising rivers and intense rains.

As described in a 32-page Congressional Research Service paper on the program, updated in October, the program has been plagued by underfunding and dysfunctional politics, especially as disaster costs have been spiking. Ridden with acronyms, complicated rules and changing risk ratings based on state flood maps, the program is difficult to understand even for the private insurance agents who handle the flood policies.

Since the end of fiscal year 2017, there have been no less than 21 short-term congressional reauthorizations of the program, with the most recent due to expire Dec. 16. Congress canceled $16 billion of program debt in 2017, which allowed it to cover claims for hurricanes Harvey, Irma and Maria. But the insurance program currently owes $20.525 billion to the U.S. Treasury, leaving $9.9 billion in borrowing authority from a $30.425 billion limit in law, according to the Congressional Research Service document.

Despite its fiscal woes, FEMA is still focused on expanding the number of properties covered by flood insurance, and is working closely with insurance and real estate industry professionals and community leaders to drive purchases, Maurstad, the FEMA administrator, said.

But flood insurance is hardly a panacea. Financial preparedness is also necessary to rebuild after a disaster, he added, helping not only restoration of homes and communities, but also reducing the need for federal disaster assistance.

Prompted by a petition in January 2021 from the Association of State Floodplain Managers and the Natural Resources Defense Council seeking revisions of the current floodplain management standards, Maurstad said, FEMA is in the process of analysis of potential updates in regulations and policy.

Eroding shorelines that threaten existing development reflect only a portion of where flood insurance is important. But climate change impacts will only increase flood risks and storm damages that will require coming together to find solutions, or adaptation.  

“It is the urgent task of each of us, as a nation of stakeholders,” Maurstad wrote. “Disaster resilience is a cross-cutting and integrated effort among a wide range of stakeholders from the public and private sectors. Each area of expertise and sphere of responsibility affects another. It is all part of one, all-encompassing story.”

This story has been updated to clarify details on testing protocols.

DUCK — It was flashback to high school chemistry class for some, but Duck residents were up to the challenge last week at an information session about a carbon capture demonstration project proposed off their beach.

Vesta North Carolina is seeking a permit to place about 20,000 cubic yards of ground olivine in the nearshore waters 1,500 feet from the shoreline of this northern Outer Banks town.

The intention is to study on a small scale the ability of the material to mitigate the impacts of climate change. But residents wondered about unknown risks inherent in a test project, and if their resort community might be stuck with the consequences if it went awry.

Other projects the company has conducted using olivine are in Massachusetts and New York, although neither has been done in the open ocean.

“There’s 330 miles approximately of shoreline in North Carolina and there’s over 120 miles of them that have no population on them,” one Duck resident commented. “Why does it have to go here?”

One big reason is the town’s resident coastal science behemoth, the Army Engineer Research and Development Center’s Field Research Facility. That’s what Grace Andrews, Vesta’s head of science, told a full room of attendees at the Nov. 17 meeting. Informally known as the Duck Pier, the 45-year-old oceanfront site is renowned worldwide for decades of innovative research and volumes of data on coastal processes.

The Corps’ Engineering with Nature, or EWN, program is partially funding the Vesta project, and scientists at the pier are collaborating on the project with Vesta. 

“You have one of the best-studied beaches of anywhere in the United States,” Andrews said. “The sheer knowledge here makes this location invaluable in terms of ensuring that we can do world-class, rigorous science. It’s unparalleled, and it’s frankly unequaled anywhere else.”

Olivine, named for its green hue, is a magnesium silicate mineral that is similar to quartz, the main ingredient of the sand on Outer Banks beaches. But it has an important difference: Olivine can capture carbon dioxide, the main greenhouse gas blamed for global warming.

“It is an incredibly common mineral,” Andrews said. An inert rock, olivine can be found all over the world, including in large quantities in western North Carolina, and it can be mined and milled to specific grain size. But the only active mining currently in the U.S. is on the West Coast. “Why do we care about all this? It’s because it has a special property that removes carbon dioxide from the atmosphere when it comes into contact with the water.” 

Andrews, who has a doctorate in Earth science from Northwestern University, explained that olivine’s unique quality is part of a natural process known as mineral weathering that happens whenever water meets rock. But not all minerals remove carbon, she said, as olivine does.

“When it dissolves, when it goes through this weathering process, it removes about one ton of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere per cubic yard of olivine,” she said. “And it permanently stores it in the ocean as a form of dissolved carbon called alkalinity.”

The goal of the test project, she said, is to quantify carbon removal efficiency and confirm prior academic research that it is safe and meets Environmental Protection Agency-established protocols in tests conducted by a National Environmental Laboratory Accreditation Program-certified laboratory.

Displaying chemical formulas on the screen during her slide presentation, Andrews provided a mini-lesson in the chemical processes involved: Carbon dioxide, or CO2, plus water, or H20, equals the acid H2CO3. It happens every time it rains, she explained.

“But when you combine that with the olivine, what you do is, you drive a mineral weathering reaction that takes that carbon dioxide and turns it into dissolved carbon. So, you’ve now moved that carbon dioxide from carbon dioxide in the atmosphere into this carbonic acid and into a dissolved carbon called alkalinity. And it’s that alkalinity that’s good for the ocean. That’s what offsets ocean acidification.”

Although the concept, broadly known in the scientific and academic circles as ocean alkalinity enhancement strategies, has been studied for more than a decade, she said, Vesta’s plan is just one in a range of technologies being proposed to field test the concept. And she noted that a National Academies of Science, Engineering and Mathematics report published this year emphasized the need for small-scale research and development projects in the ocean such as Vesta’s pilot demonstration.

Vesta, based in California, is a hybrid, public benefit corporation and nonprofit, allowing it to do its work without worrying about profit margins, while also able to accept contributions from donors.

The company had initially approached Duck last year with a proposal to piggyback its pilot project on the town’s planned beach nourishment, about which it provided a presentation at the June 16, 2021, town council meeting. But ultimately, the timeline for both projects did not work, and Vesta scaled the test research back to a much smaller quantity of olivine that would be kept off the beach by the natural nearshore sediment transport system. After updating the town at its council retreat in February, Vesta submitted applications to the Corps and the state. Those applications were pending approval at the time this story was published.

The material is expected to be shipped from an unspecified mine in Norway and deposited under 25 feet of water off Duck. Although olivine does contain trace minerals such as nickel and chrome, Andrews said, any leaching would occur over decades. Coupled with the volume of water moving around the material, she added, any release signal would be immeasurable.

According to the website for Sibelco, which operates the world’s largest commercial olivine mine deposit in Aheim on the west coast of Norway, olivine is the primary component of the Earth’s upper mantle. It also has been found in meteorites, on the moon and on Mars.

Thanks to olivine’s thermal and refractory properties and high melting point, the site said, the mineral is commonly used in metallurgy industries. Olivine is also the fastest weathering mineral, which lends it the ability to efficiently sequester carbon. It is also useful for high-density ballasting, such as for wind turbines, and for thermal heat storage.

“Looking ahead, the recent development of new environmental applications means that Aheim is today supporting a greener future with innovative solutions for carbon sequestration, renewable energy, water treatment and heat storage,” according to the website.  

Andrews assured residents that the test project includes a monitoring program with divers and research buoys. She also promised that not only would the olivine not come near the shoreline, and even if it did it would not turn the beach green – a concern one resident had expressed. As a sample she brought to the meeting showed, the small volume of olivine compared with beach sand would completely dilute any green tinge.

The town would have no involvement or authority over the project, said Duck Town Manager Drew Havens.

Despite some skepticism about the proposed project expressed in numerous questions from the audience at the recent information session, Havens said that he had heard mostly openness to the project from residents and the town council, which agreed in February to send a letter of support to the Corps. Only one person at the Nov. 17 meeting questioned the validity of climate change.

“It’s great to see people engaged and involved like that,” he said.

Havens said that some folks may have felt blindsided because there hasn’t been much public discussion about the pilot project since it was downsized, although the public meetings have been available to view online. When stakeholder property owners were recently notified by Vesta about the informational meeting, he said, it renewed interest in the project.

“You have people who are very, very passionate about their community and their home,” Havens told Coastal Review. “Having those different conversations doesn’t mean anything bad. We have a community that’s very inquisitive.” 

Both the town and Vesta said that efforts will be stepped up to provide more transparency and wider availability of current information about the project.

After listening again to Andrews’ presentation, Havens said that he is even more comfortable that the project is not risky for the town. He also said he appreciates that the Duck Pier is supporting the project as an innovative approach to mitigate carbon emissions.

“I understand people’s unease,” he said. “I do have a certain amount of trust in the scientific rigor, not only with Vesta, but with our regulators.”

Reprinted from Island Free Press

Underwater power lines crossing Hatteras Inlet’s Connector Channel have created another delay in finalizing the realignment of the Hatteras ferry channel, also known as the Rollinson Channel.

Shortly before Oct. 24, when the Army Corps of Engineers was expected to sign off on the draft environmental assessment, or EA, the agency decided that it needed more information about the cables, Coley Cordeiro, civil works project manager at the Corps’ Wilmington district, told the Dare County Waterways Commission.

“We were pretty close to signing on the dotted line, and then this cable issue came up,” she said, calling into the meeting held Nov. 14 at the Dare County Administration Building in Manteo.

But she assured the panel that it shouldn’t be much longer before the issue is resolved.

“We’re working that into the environmental assessment,” she said, “and we should have that buttoned up by the end of November.”

The inlet channels are currently under state and federal jurisdictions, with only a portion of them authorized for federal funding or dredging, including the Hatteras Ferry Channel.

Commissioners have been frustrated for years by having to obtain different permits and funds to address shoaling, an inefficient and costly process. Once the realignment is in place, it would expand federal authorization for dredging in the inlet and allow more flexible and responsive maintenance and emergency dredging year-round.

Initially, the Hatteras Ferry Channel Realignment Draft Environmental Assessment, released in October 2021, was expected to be approved by April, but finalization has been stymied by additional review requirements to include the Connector, or Connecting, Channel in the EA and to determine impacts on submerged aquatic vegetation, among other reasons.

Commission Chairman Steve “Creature” Coulter seemed baffled at the recently stalled progress.

“That cable’s been there for a long time,” he noted. “It’s just kind of strange that it’s causing this delay at the end.”

Army Corps of Engineers Navigation Branch Chief Jeremy Smith, also speaking remotely, explained that the depth of the cables needed to be confirmed. There are three lines, but only one of them, which stretches to Ocracoke, is energized. The other two lines are abandoned or disconnected. There would be a 100-foot buffer on either side of the lines for dredging.

“It’s all about the safety for the crew, and safely getting power to the island,” he said. “We’re not going to risk either one of those.”

According to Ken Willson, Dare County dredge projects consultant with Coastal Planning & Engineering of North Carolina, there are GPS coordinates for the cable locations, but the depth of the live line needs to be verified.

“We have been talking to the power company,” he said. “They speak very confidently that the (line) has not changed since it was put in, that is, between 8 to 12 feet deep.”

Willson added that more discussion is expected about the inactive lines.

Commissioner Ernie Foster asked Willson if there was any way to remove the abandoned cables.

“I’m sure it can be done,” he responded. “It’s just a matter of who will pay for it.”

In addition to the glitch with the realignment, there will also be a wait for expected dredging in the Connector Channel.

The Corps’ dredge Merritt had been planned to work earlier this fall in the channel, but it ended up being diverted to work in Carolina Beach and then Oregon Inlet, where it broke a rudder, explained Barton Grover, Dare County grants and waterways administrator.

Grover said in a later interview that once the Merritt is repaired at Manns Harbor and able to finish its work in Oregon Inlet, the hope is that it will be able to go to Hatteras sometime in mid-December.

Then, if the Oregon Inlet Task Force gives its approval, he said, the Dare County dredge Miss Katie will be able to leave Oregon Inlet and do additional cleanup in the Connector Channel behind the Merritt.

The county has received a one-time permit modification to dredge in Hatteras Inlet for seven days while waiting for the alignment to go through, he added.

“We were covering our bases,” Grover said. “Now with all the delays, I’m glad we did.”

This story is provided courtesy of the Island Free Press, a digital newspaper covering Hatteras and Ocracoke islands. Coastal Review Online is partnering with the Free Press to provide readers with more environmental and lifestyle stories of interest along our coast.

BUXTON — Susan West, a longtime advocate for the Hatteras Island fishing community and a writer who helped foster improved communications and respect between regulators and fishermen, died last week at age 73.

“She made sure that Hatteras and those small fishing communities were never left out of the conversation,” recalled Karen Willis Amspacher, director of the Core Sound Waterfowl Museum and Heritage Center on Harkers Island. “She made sure Hatteras was at the table.”

Amspacher, speaking Monday to Coastal Review, fondly remembered being able to pick up the phone to talk to her friend at 4:30 a.m., and engage in long conversations.

“She was the person I would call when I needed clarity and rational thought,” she said. “She understood people and she understood her community.”

West passed away unexpectedly Thursday at Outer Banks Hospital from complications from cancer treatment, said North Carolina Sea Grant Fisheries Extension Specialist Sara Mirabilio.

“She was a dear friend, personally and professionally,” she said, adding that besides working on fisheries issues together, they had a close bond as breast cancer survivors. West has been a part of Mirabilio’s life since she started working at Sea Grant in 2003, she said.

“As a writer, as an activist, she was really good at bringing issues to life,” she said. “She was definitely an advocate for the industry … yet her demeanor was very calming and inclusive.”

As a young transplant to the Outer Banks from Baltimore, the course of West’s life was set after meeting Rob West, a surfer from Long Island, when they worked together at a Hatteras restaurant in the 1970s. After they married, Rob became a commercial fisherman.

In the early 1990s, as tensions started rising around commercial fishing, Susan decided to organize a local women’s auxiliary group to the North Carolina Fisheries Association.

But to Susan West, a graduate of Towson State University who had worked for the Maryland Historical Society before coming to Hatteras, the women’s group tapped her talent as a dogged researcher and patient communicator who could understand arcane fisheries policies and translate it to watermen and their families with clarity and precision.

Barbara Garrity-Blake, who later coauthored “Fish House Opera” with West, remembered first meeting her in 1992 at a Hatteras-Ocracoke women’s auxiliary Fisheries Association meeting.

“There she was, with that long, red braid halfway down to her butt,” Garrity-Blake recalled. The two became fast friends, and in no time, “fisheries conspirators,” she said.

After serving three years together on the Moratorium Steering Committee, a collaborative state legislative panel created to overhaul fisheries policy that led to the 1997 Fisheries Reform Act, the two women agreed that most people had little understanding of fisheries issues or fishermen, Garrity-Blake said Monday. So they decided to write a book from the watermen’s perspective, which became “Fish House Opera,” published by Mystic Seaport Press.

Garrity-Blake, a cultural anthropologist who teaches marine fisheries policy at the Duke University Marine Laboratory in Beaufort, said that West was not only keenly intelligent and insightful, she was also unflappable. 

“She always said, ‘You know, Barbara, we just need to keep plugging along,’” Garrity-Blake recounted. “In the midst of the rough and tumble world of fisheries, she always remained calm. She was just trusted by everybody. I think that’s because she was a reasonable, thoughtful person.”   

With her deliberate speaking style — composed and paced, as Garrity-Blake described it — people listened to West and respected the way she handled herself when she approached problems.

“Instead of raising hell, she would raise a question,” she said.

West’s remarkable accomplishments also included an oral history project, “Carolina Coastal Voices,” that involved transcribing old and new interviews with old-timers and community members, a blog with Garrity-Blake, “Raising the Stories,” and a leadership program, or “Fish Camp,” that hosts dozens of young people interested in or newly licensed in commercial fishing. She also served on the board of NC Catch and helped organize the Dare County Working Watermen’s Committee.

In addition, West is an award-winning writer who has penned numerous articles for multiple publications. And, she was instrumental in launching the annual “Day at the Docks” in Hatteras and its popular “Seafood Throwdown” chef contest that began as a celebration of survival of the village after Hurricane Isabel in 2003.

West appreciated the fishing heritage of the Outer Banks, but she realized that it’s more practical — and meaningful to state regulators and policymakers — for the fishing community to focus on the importance of their livelihood and the income and seafood product they produce for themselves and the state, said Lynne Foster, a Hatteras resident and friend who, with her husband Ernie Foster, runs the Albatross Fleet. 

“She poured all her energy into what she could do to preserve fishing here,” Foster said. But her style leaned into warm, honest and witty rather than aggressive.

“Susan was always kind,” she said. “There was a gentleness about her. You never saw her lose her top.”

In addition to her husband, West’s survivors include her mother, Betty Jane Butler of Manteo; brothers, Billy Butler of Easton, Maryland, and Tommy Butler of Raleigh; three nieces; and her dogs, Lydia and Hank, according to her obituary released by Twiford Funeral Homes. She was preceded in death by her father, Thomas Butler.

An informal celebration of West’s life is to be held.

But Amspacher said the “girls” who have worked for so many years alongside West are already planning to meet on Hatteras in the coming months to celebrate their friend’s life.

“For an important life like that, yes,” she said. “I just feel like that everyone needs punctuation at the end of our sentence.”

First in a series.

RODANTHE — Nothing good can be said about septic tanks leaking their foul contents onto a public beach. It sounds even worse that it’s within a national seashore on the Outer Banks renowned for its beautiful, clean beaches.

That unfortunate reality illustrates the challenge adapting to rising seas under outmoded policies and a bureaucracy paralyzed by competing interests.

“We have observed septic seeping out as recently as Saturday,” Dave Hallac, superintendent of Cape Hatteras National Seashore, said Thursday.

In the wake of several houses this year falling into the sea, Hallac said that about two-dozen houses in Rodanthe remain exposed to the ocean, where much of beachfront has lost the protective dune.

The national seashore’s physical scientist Michael Flynn said that the National Park Service was notified Oct. 29 about a strong odor of sewage on Ocean Drive in Rodanthe, where a number of houses, some with exposed and damaged septic tanks, are standing on the beach just yards from the swirling Atlantic. Earlier this year, three large houses on the same road collapsed into the ocean, littering miles of shoreline.

When Flynn inspected the area Sunday, he found that the whole drain field for one septic tank was washed out, he said, and another appeared to have an unsealed pipe that led to its drain field.

“It was two hours before low tide,” Flynn said. “You could see the high tide line. (The surf) was probably washing over the pipe.”

Rodanthe, one of seven village communities on Hatteras Island, has one of the highest rates of beach erosion on the Outer Banks. At Mirlo Beach, at the north end of Rodanthe, the average annual erosion rate has been as high as 14 feet.

According to Flynn, between 1998 and 2022, the average annual rate of erosion on Ocean Drive has ranged from 9 to 12 feet. In Buxton, another highly eroding shoreline that was recently renourished, he said that the erosion rate over that same period averaged about 6.8 feet a year.

The issue was reported to the Dare County Planning Department and the county Department of Environmental Health, which administers septic permits for the state.

According to information provided in an email Thursday from the county health department, a total of 24 septic systems had been compromised by storm damage at 15 different oceanfront properties this year. Nine septic repair permits were issued for Rodanthe properties, and remaining property owners may not have applied for a permit, or are waiting for new surveys to be completed.

“Several properties had repair systems installed and then subsequently washed out again,” according to the email. “In a few instances, the repair system was installed and washed out before the dwelling was ever reoccupied and as such would not contain any sewage.”

Property owners are required by state law to have a septic contractor remove and dispose of unusable old tanks. The county health department said it was not aware of any abandoned tanks, but if the system is on park service land, the federal agency would issue the removal order.

If a property owner does not comply, the first enforcement action would be issuing a Notice of Violation, followed by an Intent to Suspend, and finally an Immediate Suspension of Operation. But typically, the real estate property manager is notified, and the property is taken out of the rental program until repairs are made. If a compromised property is occupied, the occupants must be immediately relocated. Currently, there are no legal actions pending against any property owner, the health department said.

“In any case, the real estate company and property owner are instructed to have the remaining contents of the septic tank pumped out by a pumping and hauling service immediately,” according to the email.

Dare County Planning Director Noah Gilliam said that between February and July, notices were sent to more than 20 oceanfront property owners in Rodanthe and three in Buxton about various threats to their property, ranging from fallen decks to undermined foundations to damaged wastewater systems to risk of collapse.

Gilliam said that the county works with property owners to find solutions on a “case-by-case approach” to each damaged property.

“We’re still encouraging people to seek out an alternative method,” he said, including relocation, which can easily cost more than $100,000.

So far, three Rodanthe property owners have moved their houses away from the ocean, either farther back on their lot, or to another lot, and two more are in the process of obtaining permits.

Also, a private community was recently granted its request by the state to have Seagull Road declared officially abandoned, freeing up 45 feet of land under the road to relocate 12 houses. 

On-site septic systems in North Carolina are regulated by the North Carolina Department of Health and Humans Services under rules adopted by the Commission for Public Health, according to the department’s website. The commission’s septic rules are administered by local health departments, under the supervision of the On-Site Water Protection Branch within the Division of Public Health. If more than 50% of a septic system is damaged, under the rules it is no longer eligible for repair without a permit. There are also rules regulating setback and distance the system must be located from the house.

The state Division of Coastal Management is in the process of reevaluating and rewriting septic system rules, noted Ana Zivanovic-Nenadovic, assistant director of policy for the nonprofit North Carolina Coastal Federation, which publishes Coastal Review. One place to start, she said, would be for the state to follow the Department of Health rule already in place that bars septic tanks in areas subject to frequent flooding unless they’re watertight enough to withstand a 10-year flood.

“They do not remain operable during a 10-year storm because they’re ripped apart and leak sewage,” she said.

But as Zivanovic-Nenadovic said, the issue with big houses collapsing on eroded beaches goes beyond broken septic tanks littering shorelines. The Coastal Federation is working with the National Park Service, the state and other partners to find solutions that protect the public trust beach, the overall environment, private property rights and public access to the resources.

Operating under the same rules, regulations and policies is clearly not sustainable, she said. What can be done so at-risk houses sitting in surf zones are considered uninhabitable? What are realistic rules to locate septic systems on shorelines? How can homeowners be forced to clean up their houses that fall into the ocean, and what should be considered proper cleanup?

“This is a complex interplay of things that can be done on multiple levels,” Zivanovic-Nenadovic said.

Meanwhile, if someone wants to buy an oceanfront house today in Rodanthe, they’ll have plenty to choose from on Zillow and other online real estate sites. Including on Ocean Drive. 

NAGS HEAD — After intense pushback from nonprofit Friends of Jockey’s Ridge and its supporters, the state of North Carolina on Friday shot down construction of a privately operated museum to honor Francis and Gertrude Rogallo’s invention of the flexible wing used in hang gliding.   

“While we remain interested in telling the story of the Rogallos and low speed flight as part of our educational mission, the Department does not support proceeding with a lease of property to the Foundation or construction of a museum at Jockey’s Ridge,” Director of North Carolina State Parks Dwayne Patterson wrote in a letter sent Friday to the friends group.

For Ann-Cabell Baum, the state’s rejection of the project was a second victory: Nearly 50 years ago her mother, Carolista Baum, famously laid down in a front of a bulldozer to stop development at Jockey’s Ridge, the tallest sand dune on the East Coast. Baum’s persistence rounded up the support that led to creation in 1975 of the Jockey’s Ridge State Park in Nags Head. Today the park, which abuts Roanoke Sound, is one of the most visited state parks in North Carolina.

“My mom would be so happy now,” an exultant Baum said after receiving the news Friday. “She just would be over the moon.”

In recent weeks, representatives of the Rogallo Foundation, a nonprofit established in 1992, had made presentations at several local government board meetings about its proposed plan to construct a 12,000-square-foot museum, with the estimated $7 million cost raised by the foundation.

Francis Rogallo, with his wife’s assistance, invented the flexible wing in 1948 while working at NASA. Rogallo did numerous test flights of his hang gliders at Jockey’s Ridge in the 1970s. Today, his invention is used in paragliders, parafoils and kiteboard kites, among other flying machines. 

In the foundation’s draft memorandum of understanding, the foundation would staff and operate the proposed Rogallo Museum and seek a 99-year lease at no cost on land adjacent to the existing park visitor center.

But the friends group insisted that the proposed site was not suitable for a commercial operation at a public park and an environmentally sensitive area.

“All we wanted to do is protect the park and the land,” Michael O’Brien, chair of the Friends of Jockey’s Ridge, said Friday. “I’m extremely happy, but I still think the Rogallo Museum is a great idea. I just don’t think (Jockey’s Ridge) is an appropriate location.”

At the group’s board meeting Oct. 11, members said they felt blindsided when hearing about the Rogallo Foundation presentations at meetings in the community that did not include their board. The museum was first proposed about five years ago, but then little had been heard about it until recently.

“It looks like this is basically a done deal, and we want to stop that,” board member George Barnes told North Carolina Division of Parks and Recreation Deputy Director Brian Strong, who attended the meeting. “At least I do.”

Barnes, a retired superintendent at the park, along with the eight other board members, questioned the benefit to the park, as well as the friends’ lack of input into the proposal.

Joy Greenwood, current superintendent of Jockey’s Ridge State Park, said another meeting with her and Strong was held Oct. 20, when they met with John Harris and Billy Vaughn with the Rogallo Foundation. The state was evaluating the concept and had not taken a position, Greenwood said, adding that public engagement would be an important component if it moved forward. 

“I don’t feel like it’s either support, or against,” she said in an interview Thursday. “Right now, it’s collecting of information.” 

But in discussions with the leadership of the state Department of Natural and Cultural Resources, overseer of the state parks, the Oct. 28 letter revealed that concerns about the project outweighed its educational appeal.

“The Secretary is concerned about the size and scope of the proposed museum and its effect on both the natural landscape and the limited acreage available in the vicinity of the visitor center for recreational and other uses by the Park,” the letter said. “The Secretary is also concerned that the proposal does not meet various legal requirements affecting the property, including the purposes of the constitutional and statutory provisions establishing the State Nature and Historic Preserve, of which Jockey’s Ridge is a designated component.

“There are also concerns about the appropriateness of leasing public land to a private entity whose mission and objectives may vary from those of the Division, and with recently expressed public opposition to the proposal,” the letter continued.

In an interview Friday, Harris, who owns Kitty Hawk Kites, with a location across the street from Jockey’s Ridge and elsewhere on the Outer Banks, said he was “disappointed” by the state’s disapproval.

“I thought that they would do due diligence … it was a process that had to be worked through,” he said.

Harris denied that the project site was planned on an environmentally sensitive area at the park. Although he said the recent board meetings were meant to get the information out to the public, he said it was a mistake not to meet early with the Friends group.  

But Harris said he still believes the Rogallo Museum would have been a great fit at Jockey’s Ridge.

“We haven’t pursued any other locations because that site makes the most sense for the museum from the standpoint of history,” Harris said. 

But that doesn’t mean he is giving up on getting the museum built.

“It’s a good project,” he said. “The bottom line is, we’ll get it done.”

She was young and shy, and showed no interest in him. He was new to the neighborhood, and besides, she already had a boyfriend, albeit one with a sketchy reputation. But the matchmakers, determined to lure her to the better choice, used a time-honored ploy: get her mother’s approval.

To the relief of Joe Madison, North Carolina program manager and wildlife biologist with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service’s Red Wolf Recovery Program, putting that relocated male red wolf into an acclimation pen at Alligator National Wildlife Refuge with the older resident female worked like a charm.

“Even though she was no longer breeding age, the thinking was if she accepted him into the area, then so would her daughter,” Madison explained during a virtual presentation held by the agency last week to discuss updates on the newly revitalized recovery program. “Over time … the daughter would visit the pen regularly. We timed the release of that male with when that younger female was likely in heat. After his release, he pretty much went straight to that female.”

The wild red wolf female quickly dumped the coyote she had been hanging out with, Madison added, and within a couple of weeks, the newly freed male red wolf dispatched his smaller rival.

Not only did he successfully bond with the young female, Madison said, the male wolf sired a litter of six pups this past spring — an unusually large litter for the critically endangered red wolf. And as of September, the now-teenage pups are still roaming in the same area with their mother and grandmother.

That is part of a positive shift for the species, which just a few years ago, after public and political hostility spurred agency cuts in the recovery effort, had seemed all but doomed in the wild.

But at a public in-person meeting held in Columbia last week, there was no adversarial remarks directed toward the refuge staff from the 50 or so attendees, Kim Wheeler, executive director of the nonprofit Red Wolf Coalition, said in a later interview.

“The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service has definitely recommitted to the (recovery) program, and part of that is transparency,” she said. “To me, that’s very encouraging … That’s not just words, it’s resources.”

It’s been a while since things were looking up for the species, the only known wild population of red wolves in the world. The spring litter of pups was the first born in the wild since 2018. New enclosures have been built to help introduce more captive-bred wolves into the 1.7-million-acre recovery area on public and private lands in rural Hyde, Tyrrell, Dare, Beaufort and Washington counties.

Despite some deaths from vehicles or gunshots, there are signs that the mortalities are decreasing thanks to better communication with hunters and landowners, reflective collars on wolves and signage on highways warning drivers to look out for red wolves.

As a policy, U.S. Fish and Wildlife staff don’t anthropomorphize wild wolves such as giving them names or birthday parties. In fact, they take pains to have as little contact as possible, in order to ensure that the animals maintain their fear of humans. But it’s helpful to have supporters of the Red Wolf Recovery Program cheer the survival successes for the social and intelligent creatures from the sidelines.

With the proposed update to the red wolf management plan expected to be finalized and implemented in 2023, the agency plans to continue its efforts to rebuild the species’ wild population, building on proven conservation strategies and protective measures as well as looking ahead to expanded options for habitat and genetic diversity.

Released in June, the draft revised recovery plan is open for public comments through Oct. 28. It is the first version of the recovery plan to be updated under the guidance of a 51-member recovery team that includes representatives from state wildlife agencies, wildlife and zoo biologists and researchers, residents and others.

“Part of that is a focus on collaborative conservation — that is, enhancing collaboration and communication and community and partner engagement,” Red Wolf Recovery Program Coordinator Emily Weller said during the presentation. “Because we’ve fully acknowledged that successful recovery for the red wolf will require collaborative efforts with those that are have a vested interest in red wolves, but most especially landowners in the local community.”

The wolf recovery staff has been meeting monthly with the North Carolina Wildlife Resources Commission, which oversees coyotes, deer, bear and other animals that live alongside wolves on the landscape, to share information and discuss coordination on management actions and revenue issues.

The agency, which is charged with administering management of endangered and threatened species, has also been providing more regular updates on social media and its website about red wolf activities. The wildlife service’s red wolf public phone hotline has also been improved to ensure more timely responses.

A new outreach program for landowners, called Prey for the Pack, has been launched by Fish and Wildlife to provide funding and technical assistance to landowners for habitat work to meet their land management goals. In exchange, landowners agree to allow red wolves on their land and for them to be monitored.

And in the interest of clarity, the wild red wolves will no longer be described in government-speak. Instead of being referred to as “the North Carolina nonessential experimental population,” or the NCNEP, the wolves will instead be known simply as the eastern North Carolina red wolf population.

Although the NCNEP will remain as the legal designation, Weller said, the words “nonessential” and “experimental” were often misinterpreted in a way that undermined the value of the species.

Historically, the red wolf had once roamed much of the Southeast, but overhunting and habitat loss diminished its population. In 1973, the species was listed as endangered under the Endangered Species Act, and subsequently it was declared extinct in the wild. Meanwhile, Fish and Wildlife had captured some wild red wolves scattered on land in Louisiana, and in 1987 four pairs of their offspring were transferred to Alligator River National Wildlife Refuge in Manteo.

Over the years, the recovery team used innovative management tactics to limit coyote hybrids, release captive-bred adults into the wild and encourage wild red wolf mothers to foster newborn captive-bred pups. By the mid-2000s, there were about 130 wild wolves in the five-county recovery area. But in recent years, with much of those management strategies discontinued, the numbers of known wolves had plummeted to as few as seven.

Amid a series of lawsuits from conservation groups that accused the agency of violating the Endangered Species Act, among other violations, the U.S. District Court in January 2021 ordered the agency to draft a plan to resume release of captive red wolves into the North Carolina recovery area. According to Fish and Wildlife, the first two phases have been implemented, and Phase 3, covering through May 2023 and coordinated with the state Wildlife Resources Commission, was submitted to the court in September.

Currently, there are 10 red wolves within the recovery area who are fitted with orange radio collars, Madison said, and as many as 10 other red wolves without collars. Those numbers do not include the six pups, who are not yet big enough to wear the collars.

There were also 13 known mortalities in the last two years, 11 of them captive-born releases. Five of the deaths were from vehicle strikes, three from gunshots, and three had unknown causes. In addition, there are 243 captive red wolves in 49 zoos and other facilities throughout the country.

It is illegal under the Endangered Species Act to shoot red wolves. Although coyotes are smaller than red wolves in weight and height, they look fairly similar from a distance or in low light.

All wild wolves are tracked and monitored. If they stray on certain private land, the wildlife service will contact the property owner. Several wolves who seemed too comfortable in populated areas have been removed and returned to captivity, Madison said. There are also 24 sterilized coyotes, which wear white reflective collars, that are monitored by the Wildlife Commission.

It is legal to shoot coyotes during the daytime within the red wolf recovery area, but Madison urged people not to kill collared coyotes, which can’t breed but keep other coyotes from entering their territory. In the process, the sterile animals are helping to keep the coyote population down by holding territory, he explained. The adaptive management strategy, developed around the late 1990s, also prevents coyotes and wolves from mating, among other good effects.

“One of the reasons it was developed was that within well-established red wolf territories, you have a lower amount of total canids, and it’s made up mostly of red wolves,” Madison said. “I don’t mean that it will necessarily exclude coyotes, but there’s a much, much lower coyote population.”

In general, coyotes — a highly adaptable species, inspiring some to compare them to cockroaches and rats — have greater need for prey and diversity of prey, including many bird species, he added. They also have an uncanny survival tool: If one coyote is removed, it typically will be replaced by several coyotes.

“And areas where there are no red wolves,” Madison said, “there’s a much higher total density of canids made up of coyotes because they have much smaller home range sizes.”

Even though red wolves avoid people, once in a while they’ll attack livestock or other animals. To address that concern, the Red Wolf Coalition has developed a depredation compensation program to reimburse landowners who lose livestock to the wolves.

“But as part of that, I want to tell folks that there’s only been nine documented incidences of red wolf depredation over the 35 years since their reintroduction into North Carolina,” Madison said. “So, it’s an extremely rare occurrence.”

And when reports are investigated, he added, the real culprit is usually found to be a dog, fox, bear or raccoon. Or, of course, a coyote.

RODANTHE — Big houses falling into the ocean on the Outer Banks earlier this year had many people wondering why the government didn’t do more to proactively get the houses off the beach before they collapsed, with debris spreading for miles.

The changing climate has added urgency to already complex balances between private property rights and public trust issues. And instead of proactive measures, legal threats have instead resulted in apparent inaction.

“It’s very frustrating to look nationally and see we don’t have any great models for getting homes off the beach that are risk of collapsing,” Robert Young, director of the Program for the Study of Developed Shorelines at Western Carolina University, told Coastal Review last week.

As has happened in Nags Head and other beach areas, government measures are immediately met with lawsuits often with representation by legal advocates for private property rights that argue that such measures constitute a “taking” — essentially government taking private property for public use.

“There are very powerful interests that are seeking to protect this oceanfront resort economy,” Young said.

He noted a similar example happening in Harbor Island, South Carolina.

“They’re fighting over whose job it is to remove the houses,” Young said. “Everybody is suing everybody.”

In a May 31 op-ed in the Charlotte Observer, Young stated that climate change had increased the urgency to establish proactive coastal policies and encourage more realistic development.

Even though most oceanfront houses on the Outer Banks are investment properties, it is often the taxpayer and the local communities who pay the price when the houses collapse into the ocean. Only a small percentage of properties on the oceanfront are year-round homes, and the large majority are investment houses, Young said.

Young noted that some of the imperiled beach properties had sold within the past year. He pointed a finger at the real estate industry and the need for disclosure laws.

“So whose job is it?” Young asked during the interview, referring to removing teetering houses before they collapse. “I guess it’s God’s job.”

Willo Kelly, chief executive officer of the Outer Banks Association of Realtors, told Coastal Review that under North Carolina Real Estate Commission rules and standards, real estate agents have an ethical obligation to be truthful, but every risk is not necessarily apparent, predictable or even legal to talk about, such as a neighborhood crime rate.

Even federal flood insurance maps in North Carolina do not necessarily reflect the real risk, she said, so it is wise for prospective buyers to do their due diligence on oceanfront property.

“It’s not really that the house may be flooded — we have houses on pilings — but if (the ocean) pushes on pilings and the house falls, it’s flooded,” Kelly said, adding that the Outer Banks are undeniably dynamic barrier islands.

“Nobody is thinking that if you have an oceanfront house that it’s going to be there forever,” Kelly said. “This is the first year we’ve seen these numbers of houses that been impacted.”

After months of informal discussions on how to address the problem, Division of Coastal Management Director Braxton Davis and Cape Hatteras National Seashore Superintendent Dave Hallac are expected to elaborate on those discussions Thursday during the Coastal Resources Commission meeting in Wilmington.

Related: Coastal commission to discuss imperiled beach houses

Davis is expected to provide details of proposals to tighten regulations on septic tanks along the beachfront. Exposed tanks often create public health hazards on eroded beaches, especially after storms, as Davis notes in a memo to the commission included in the meeting agenda.

Davis, Hallac and others, including Dare County officials, have been part of discussions held by a recently formed interagency group to tackle the problem, including determination of the authority of federal and state agencies to take protective actions on their jurisdictional shorelines.

“The Work Group will engage with partner organizations and stakeholders to identify and research policies and programs to establish a proactive, holistic, predictable, and coordinated approach to erosion-threatened structures in North Carolina,” Davis explains in the memo. “The Work Group is planning to meet regularly in the coming year and produce a report outlining short- and long-term solutions.”

As erosion increases with rising seas, and with climate change intensifying storms, more oceanfront structures have encroached on public beaches, Davis notes in the memo. Based on an agency review of 2020 imagery, he said, “over 750 of approximately 8,777 oceanfront structures were considered at risk from oceanfront erosion (no dunes or vegetation between the structure and ocean.)”

Hallac told Coastal Review that preventing the problem in the first place is the goal.

It’s not just destruction of the houses, Hallac said, it’s also about the long-term effects on the public and the natural resources in and along Cape Hatteras National Seashore. After the houses fell into the surf earlier this year, debris stretched for 15 miles up and down the beach, as well as in the ocean and on private property, and dozens of destroyed or damaged septic tanks were strewn along the beach.

“We still have a debris problem from the houses that collapsed in May,” Hallac said recently. “There are thousands and thousands of pieces of tar paper and carpet padding up to 4 miles from the house collapse site.”

The park has had to purchase a $40,000 beach rake to sift debris from the sand and has spent a “substantial” amount in cleanup costs in addition to what the property owners paid for a contractor to clean the debris.

Erosion has complicated where the national seashore boundaries exist, but in general, Hallac said, the park is understood to have jurisdiction of the beach between the high- and low-tide lines. 

“Their backyards now are essentially in the Atlantic Ocean,” he said. “Fences, retaining walls, decks, lighting are in the national seashore.”

When Dare County notified the national seashore officials about the risk, Hallac said that 24 property owners were then notified and asked to do whatever was possible to prevent their houses from being destroyed, such as having it removed or demolished.

Several homes have been moved from the beach, either back on their own lot, or on a new lot, or are in the process of planning to move.

With severe beach erosion, houses don’t need a storm to push them into the sea — they can be undermined and collapse just from wave action on clear day. The most recent collapse happened when winds had maxed out at 30 mph.

“We’re beginning to get our arms around the magnitude of the threat,” Hallac said.

Meanwhile, the agency is researching and evaluating the park’s authority and long-term options in addressing protection of the national seashore.

Looming over past discussions has been the threat of lawsuits.

Sierra Weaver, senior attorney with the nonprofit Southern Environmental Law Center in Chapel Hill, said that the federal, state and local governments have the authority and responsibility to protect the public.

Weaver said that what’s known as a “taking” is a complicated legal concept, but it’s not when the ocean does the taking.

“North Carolina state law is very clear that when an ocean takes a person’s property, it’s not the government taking the person’s property, that is the ocean taking a person’s property,” she told Coastal Review. “And because of that, when you’re faced with erosion that takes down a person’s house, you’re looking at natural acts of the ocean. And so North Carolina law is set up to ensure we’re protecting public safety in the face of a dynamic coastline.” 

Weaver said the recent house collapses were a wakeup call to all levels of government. That includes increased transparency and disclosure on the part of real estate agents.

“This is one of those things that is becoming really a hot topic across the country at the state and federal levels, is how can homeowner disclosure requirements be strengthened to ensure that we stop this cycle of people either not knowing that there’s a problem or claiming that they know that there’s a problem?” she continued. “That is, is the buyer unaware that there’s a problem? Or are they fully aware that houses are washing into the ocean, but they’re gambling that they’re make enough in rent before the ocean is lost, and then collect on flood insurance?”

She said the long-term answer is in changing the incentive structure for homes on the coast, “so we stop this cycle of people simply looking to make money rather than looking to protect those public trust resources that we all value so much.”

Weaver said the takings concept is “a world full of balancing tests and multiple considerations” that becomes “very murky very quickly.” It’s site-specific.

“There’s just a lot of factors that come into play that make it very, very difficult to talk about any particular situation until it’s right in front of you,” she said.

MANTEO — Nearly 20 years ago, the White House Council on Environmental Quality seemed to have finally put its federal sword through the heart of the Oregon Inlet twin-jetty proposal, a project that Congress had approved in 1970 after it had brewed in local committee rooms for at least a decade.

But now, as shoaling has continued to create hazardous conditions for vessels in Oregon Inlet, North Carolina U.S. Rep. Greg Murphy, a Republican representing North Carolina’s 3^rd District, is asking the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers to take another look at building twin jetties. Murphy and the bill’s cosponsor Rep. Rob Wittman, R-Va., have introduced legislation directing the Corps to conduct a new feasibility study for construction of the proposed jetties.

“While dredging has been somewhat effective in easing the issues at Oregon Inlet, it’s not a permanent solution,” Murphy said Thursday in a press release.  “It’s clear that a dual jetty system, which requires an act of Congress, is necessary for long-term navigation, commerce and flood control purposes.” 

Murphy had announced introduction of the legislation, the Oregon Inlet Jetty Feasibility Study Act, Aug. 19 during a press conference in Manteo, but the bill was not published on the congressional website until Thursday.

The legislation needs House and Senate approval. The study would then have to be done within eight months, and a report submitted to Congress within a year.

In an interview after the press conference, Murphy was uncertain what support the measure would receive in Congress, although he said he has had good discussions with members and with the Corps about the need for the jetties. 

Murphy also said that the feasibility study is not funded. The congressman, who had voted against Biden’s Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act and the Inflation Reduction Act, said he did not expect either bill to provide funds for the study, but he would welcome wherever the funding could be found.

As of late Thursday, the Congressional Budget Office cost estimate for the measure had not been received, according to the congressional legislative website.

At the press event, Murphy acknowledged the complexity of the more-than-60-year history of Oregon Inlet dual-jetty plan, which involved countless studies, hundreds of meetings from local boards to congressional committees, and millions of dollars. 

“It’s really going to take a concerted effort,” he said. “This is the most studied inlet in the country, but we have to start from scratch again.”  

In May 2003, when the Council on Environmental Quality announced the consensus agreement between jurisdictional federal agencies not to proceed with the proposed project, part of the explanation was that economic and environmental data created uncertainties about any benefits.  

Those questions, “and the risk to important resources,” Council Chair James L. Connaughton said at the time, “weigh against proceeding with the project.”

Although Outer Banks watermen were deflated, it didn’t take long before they began pursuit of new efforts — so far with no success — to get the project built. Proponents say the jetties, which would be walls on either side of the inlet by the Marc Basnight Bridge, would block sand buildup in the navigational channel.

They say that the jetties are needed to prevent loss of life and vessels in the inlet, to protect water quality, and to protect the enormous economic benefit of the inlet to the local economy and the fishing and boating communities.

The state and Dare County have been consistently in support of the project.

After Congress had authorized the jetties in 1970, it had never funded the estimated $100 million or so cost. The project called for the Corps to dredge a 20-foot by 400-foot navigation channel for deep-draft fishing vessels and construct two long jetties to divert sand from the channel.

Oregon Inlet, the only ocean to sound passage between Virginia and Hatteras, is known for its dangerous currents and constantly shifting shoals.

Barton Grover, Dare County waterways administrator, said the county currently allocates $3 million for Oregon Inlet dredging each year. With state match, that has meant $9 million in nonfederal funds have been available for dredging each year.

The inlet and its shoreline are within Cape Hatteras National Seashore, which has historically been opposed to the jetties. Opponents, including numerous environmental groups and public agencies, say that the jetties would cause serious erosion farther south and would have a detrimental effect on fish populations.

Located adjacent to the Pea Island National Wildlife Refuge and between the Atlantic Ocean and Pamlico Sound, the inlet and its marshes are important fish nurseries and habitats for dozens of species of fish, including crab, shrimp, sharks, bluefish and numerous other finfish and shellfish.

In 2014, Duke University coastal scientist Orrin Pilkey — a longstanding and vocal opponent of the jetty project — expressed to Coastal Review his shock that the state was studying how to get control of the inlet so the jetties could be built.

“I’m extremely concerned and appalled that the issue still exists,” Pilkey said at the time. “The jetties have been thoroughly discredited on all levels.”

After the council killed off the jetty project in 2003, it promised that the federal government would provide resources for more surveys and dredging of the inlet. Although both improved, the dredging has proved inadequate, whether because of funding shortages or increased demand.

The dredge Miss Katie, a private-public in partnership with Dare County and the state, arrived in Wanchese last week. The hopper dredge, built by private company EJE, will be taking over much of the dredging responsibilities in Oregon Inlet once it starts work in coming weeks.