Last of two parts

ENGELHARD — Hyde County, with its pancake-flat land, pocosin swamps and swarms of bugs, isn’t many peoples’ idea of paradise.

But to those who live, hunt and fish here, there’s no place prettier on Earth.

The Albemarle-Pamlico peninsula, on which the county sits, is rimmed on the east by Croatan and Pamlico sounds. It’s so remote and unpeopled that in the mid-1980s the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service chose it as a site for the reintroduction of the red wolf, an eastern predator that had been driven to the brink of extinction.

Hyde residents tend to be self-sufficient and friendly toward outsiders—as long as the strangers don’t try to tell them how to live. They distrust the federal government and criticize what they consider interference on the part of environmental regulators.

The N.C. Coastal Federation arranged with Wilson Daughtry and his partners to build a major hydrologic restoration project on Lux Farms in northeast Hyde. They entered a bureaucratic labyrinth.

Project Goals

The federation’s goal is to work with farmers to restore the hydrology of ditched and drained land in a manner that both heals the natural system and provides improvements to farming operations. By storing water in diked impoundments, the farmer can have adequate irrigation for crops during the growing season. Drainage water that’s held back for irrigation won’t be pumped into the rich estuaries of Pamlico Sound.

Daughtry also worries that federal agencies will soon require farmers to control the amount of drainage water coming off their fields. “It’s happening already in Florida,” he said. He saw the hydrologic restoration project as a way of getting ahead of the curve — and getting grant money to help foot the bill.

The federation in 2008 received an $80,000 planning grant from the Clean Water Management Trust Fund to model current and historic drainage patterns and design a restoration project on Lux Farms that could be built in phases.

Mike Burchell and his team at N.C. State University designed the project. Photo: NCSU

To design the project, the partners tapped Michael Burchell and a team of engineers at N.C. State University’s Department of Biological and Agricultural Engineering. Burchell and company had done the design work at the federation’s restoration project at North River Farms in Carteret County. They worked up a plan to hold drainage water in three reservoirs within Lux Farms. Overflow would seep into a restored historic slough that flowed north toward the Alligator River National Wildlife Refuge.

Then in 2009 the bottom fell out.

State budget shortfalls caused the state trust fund to place a hold on grants for all its projects, including the planning for the first phase of Lux Farms.

At the same time, administrative road blocks stalled the acceptance of the project property into the federal Wetlands Reserve Program, which is part of the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Natural Resources Conservation Service. The voluntary program pays easements to landowners who want to protect, restore and enhance wetlands on their property. Enrolling the Lux Farm property into the program was a requirement of the trust fund grant. No construction could move forward until the land was enrolled.

Another obstacle arose when Mike Bryant, the manager of the Alligator River refuge for the U.S Fish & Wildlife Service, questioned whether redirecting water north would harm the refuge’s diverse bottomland swamp forests. Such hydrologic trespass would not be allowed.

“We’ll be putting water back into its natural flow pattern,” said Erin Fleckenstein, a coastal scientist for the federation. “But we do need to be careful not to overwhelm the natural systems on the refuge.”

The design couldn’t be completed without modeling studies to show how much water would be released onto the refuge—and until water quality tests could measure the potential pollutant load.

Word Spreads

Fortunately, word of the Lux Farms project had attracted interest from other Hyde County farmers. Jamin Simmons, manager of Mattamuskeet Ventures Farm, just west of the Lux holdings, contacted the federation to see if a similar project was possible on his land.

Creating habitat for shorebirds became one of the project’s later goal. Photo: U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service

The U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service Southeast Atlantic Migratory Bird Office in Columbia had money available for the creation of bird habitat through a program called Partners for Fish and Wildlife. “We were looking to create marsh habitat,” remembered Kendall Smith, biologist for the office.

When the federation approached him about a possible project on Mattamuskeet Ventures, Smith initially didn’t think it would work. “We didn’t need any more habitat for waterfowl in Hyde County,” he said.

But he took another look at the language for the program “and realized it would also work for creating shorebird habitat.”

Within a year work was moving forward on shallow water impoundments on two 300-acre blocks of Mattamuskeet Ventures land. Simmons already had a pump available for the project, and the Fish & Wildlife provided $150,000 for building dikes and contouring the land to create ideal habitat for shorebirds. During the spring and fall migrations, drainage from farm operations would be pumped into the impoundments and held at optimum levels—rather than being funneled into canals for release into local waterways. Overflow from the project would be funneled into adjacent wetlands.

The project moved unusually quickly and was completed in the fall of 2010.

No one could quite believe the federation-farmer partnerships were yielding so much fruit. At a celebratory meeting in the Mattamuskeet Ventures hunting lodge, the two farmers, both wearing bemused smiles, sat looking at federation staff. “If you’d told me five years ago that I’d be working on something with this group,” Daughtry said, “I wouldn’t have believed you.”

Back in Business

The state trust fund in 2010 reinstated the planning grant for the hydrologic restoration project on Lux Farms. The agency also agreed to fund the first phase of the work, allocating $970,000 for the project.

But there was still the delicate matter of working out agreements with adjacent land holders, including the Alligator River refuge.

Modeling by the NCSU engineers had shown that the water seeping onto refuge lands from the project would be filtered by wetlands so thoroughly that its nutrient load would not hurt the refuge ecosystem.

Field surveys also had shown that farm pumping was causing subsidence in the peat soils of the refuge.

“There’s actually a water deficit that’s drying out the peat and causing problems,” said Fleckenstein. “This is an opportunity to rehydrate the swamps. But the amount of water released needs to be carefully monitored to make sure there aren’t any adverse effects.”

Unfortunately, the engineers had also realized that a 300-acre irrigation reservoir planned for Phase 1 would kill the trees in a swamp forest. Daughtry had hoped to flood the area to depths of four feet to provide irrigation for the fields just to the south.

Because of the high ecological value of the swamp forest, staff for the Natural Resource Conservation Service said they could not allow more than 18 inches of water to be held on the land. The realization was a blow to Daughtry’s hopes that the project would provide the farm with an adequate source of irrigation.

Bryant also insisted that some way be found to stop the release of water, should refuge staff determine that the added flow from the project was harming refuge lands.

Wilson Daughtry, left, supervises workers on his farm.

But could the refuge staff be assured that Daughtry would stop dumping drainage into the project area if asked? The relationship between the Lux Farms partners and the refuge staff had been strained by long-standing squabbles over hunting access on the farm property and the maintenance of shared roads. As the N.C. State engineers moved toward finishing the design, federation staff worried that the project would be derailed by their inability to assuage Bryant’s concerns.

Daughtry himself provided the solution. He suggested that his agreement with the Natural Resource Conservation Service for the wetlands contain a condition requiring Lux Farms to stop pumping water northward if the Fish & Wildlife determined that the project was harming refuge lands.

“Wilson has hung in there with us as we‘ve tried to develop the best design for all partners,” Fleckenstein said. “We’re lucky to have this relationship with him.”

In October, the federation signed a contract with Daughtry for work to begin the following year. The groundbreaking will culminate more than six years of planning.

Project’s Growth

What started as a project to restore oysters in Pamlico Sound has become much more. In addition to the original Fish & Wildlife shorebird habitat project, the Albemarle-Pamlico National Estuaries Program provided $99,000 for water quality monitoring and additional dike work to fine-tune the farm’s ability to hold water in one of the habitat blocks.

The state trust fund is providing $400,000 for a similar project that will redirect drainage water onto 1,350 acres that have been set aside in wetland program.

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s has made $70,000 available for a Watershed Restoration Plan within the Mattamuskeet Drainage Association. Farmers, engineers, federation staff and other partners are working together to identify future water management projects. Their goal is to remove waterways from the state’s list of impaired waters by cutting down on the amount of runoff coursing through the drainage system.

The federation staff has become regulars in Hyde, a conservative county generally avoided by other environmentalists. Mac Gibbs, the county’s agricultural extension director, now serves on NCCF’s board of directors.

And Wilson and Debby Daughtry, the federation’s original partners in Hyde restoration, greet federation staff members warmly when they stop into the farm office for yet another chat. Not that Wilson, with his droll nature, is effusive in his praise. When asked recently if he were pleased by the progress of the Lux Farms work, he just grinned and rubbed his chin.

“Well,” he said, “I haven’t run you off. Yet.”

First of two parts

ENGELHARD — This summer ground will be broken in northeast Hyde County for a restoration project conceived by unlikely partners—a farmer and environmentalists.

The farmer hails from a community of avid outdoorsmen and women in one of the most conservative areas of the country, a group that doesn’t generally cotton to environmentalists.

Working alongside him will be restoration staff members from the N.C. Coastal Federation. They all hope to put a whole landscape back in order.

When the last shovelfuls of dense black peat are put into modified dikes and sloughs on Lux Farms, much of the agricultural drainage from 1,400 acres will be removed from Pamlico Sound and redirected into its natural flow through wetlands toward the north.

As future phases move forward, the farmer will be able to store drainage water in irrigation ponds for use in dry times. The installation of flood gates will help protect farm soils from poisonous salt water as the world’s seas rise.

And improvements in water quality in Pamlico Sound will enable conservationists to build low-profile oyster reefs offshore, enhancing local fisheries and helping provide a buffer from storm surges.

It Began With an Oyster

A researcher in 1907 drops a buoy on an experimental oyster reef in Pamlico Sound. Photo: Freshwater and Marine Image Bank, Washington University Libraries.

The story of the landscape-scale restoration work in Hyde County begins, as many tales do, with a remarkably small player: the humble oyster.

In 2004, the federation received a grant from the N.C. Clean Water Management Trust Fund to write a coast-wide blueprint for resuscitating the state’s badly depleted oyster population. The federation targeted oysters for a reason: These energetic filter feeders remove copious amounts of pollution from estuaries. In a few hours a single oyster can clean a 10-gallon tank of muddy water.

But the state’s once-great oyster reefs have been decimated by a combination of overfishing, disease and habitat destruction. The grant required the federation to convene a group of experts to figure out how the oyster population could be brought back.

The federation established work groups on the north, central and southern coasts. The northern group’s assignment was complicated by the sheer size of the region’s waters, including Pamlico Sound.

Picture a dozen scientists, conservationists and fisheries biologists in a room, all talking about the research they’ve done on oysters and trying to figure out what more is needed. This writer was there and was impressed by the brain power. Trouble was, no one seemed to have a game plan for moving forward.

Previous work by researchers, the Nature Conservancy and the N.C. Division of Marine Fisheries had found that oyster larvae, or spat, would attach to chunks of limestone stacked in underwater piles. Limestone reefs were being built to replace historic oyster rocks that had been covered by sediment or destroyed by oyster dredges.

Building rock piles in the sound was expensive, and oyster spat must depend on currents to carry them to suitable habitat. Unless new reefs were built in places where currents would deposit spat, the work would be wasted.

But how could the group figure out the seasonal track of subsurface currents in Pamlico Sound? Such detailed flow studies had never been done.

An answer came not from the academic brain trust but from an Ocracoke waterman named Gene Ballance, who had painstakingly reconstructed maps of oyster reefs drawn in the 1880s drawn by Navy researcher Francis Winslow. Ballance is an Ocracoke native with thick glasses, a wide, friendly grin and an abiding love for oysters. He views the fate of the oyster and the commercial fishing industry as intertwined, and he is not willing to let go of either one.

His reconstruction of the Winslow maps showed a necklace of oyster reefs off the Hyde County mainland. If currents had carried oyster spat to those locations in the 1880s, it was likely they would still do so.

Gene Ballance

What’s more, the historic reefs lay in a region that had been shown by a Nature Conservancy study to have some of the highest biodiversity in southeast U.S. waters. New oyster reefs would provide habitat for other estuarine creatures—as well as knocking down storm waves that were causing severe erosion along the Hyde mainland.

There was just one problem. Stormwater from agricultural fields carried sediment, bacteria and plumes of tannic, overly fresh water into the sound just off Hyde County, ruining the waters for oysters.

A ‘Natural Partnership’

Wilson Daughtry and his wife, Debby, own Alligator River Growers. He is known in Hyde County as the go-to man for onions. In a county of soybean, corn and cotton fields, the Daughtries have made a name for themselves growing high-value crops like broccoli and the sweet onions that thrive in the black peat soils. Besides farming his own land, Wilson manages the adjacent Lux Farms property for several partners.

The federation in 2005 convened a group to look for wetland restoration projects that could help clean up the local waters for oyster restoration. Daughtry was one of the farmers invited to attend. The goal of the group was to find sites where water from ditches and canals could be diverted into wetlands, removing some of the runoff that poured into Pamlico Sound.

Daughtry and Mac Gibbs, director of the county’s agricultural extension service, had been collaborating on ideas for what were called tail water projects, in which drainage could be held in low-lying farm fields instead of being pumped to the sound.  The water could be used for irrigation, saving money on pumping expense. “When we heard that the Coastal Federation was interested in holding back water to improve the sound for oysters,” Gibbs said, “it seemed like a natural partnership.”

The federation had something the farmers lacked: a working knowledge of how to write grants and experience with hydrologic restoration at North River Farms in Carteret County.

Daughtry is a respected farmer with a sense of humor. One afternoon when the federation staff stopped by his farm office to chat (a folksy custom that’s become an art form in Hyde County), he casually pulled out an infrared satellite image of Lux Farms. “Take a look at that,” he said.

The image showed a wide swath of red running through the middle of the farm—low, wet land, most of it grown up in the unusual bog known as pocosin. An excited expression spread across the face of Christine Miller, an assistant director at the federation. “Is that—is that an old slough going through the middle of the farm?” she asked.

Wilson rubbed his chin. “Some people say it is.”

The image showed that water from the western end of Lux Farms had historically drained north toward what is now the Alligator River National Wildlife Refuge. If the slough could be restored, much of Lux Farm’s drainage could be removed from Pamlico Sound.

They were looking at a project the size of which had seldom been done—and that, they knew, had the potential to become a national model for restoration.

Tuesday: A plan takes shape

Second of two parts

“Where you from?”

Marc Basnight, a retired N.C. senator and once the state’s most powerful politician, pulled up next to an SUV parked at Jennette’s Pier in Nags Head, where a man was dumping sand out of his shoes.

The man looked surprised. “Maryland,” he said.

“How do you like our pier?”

The new cement structure stood high above the curling blue surf. For Basnight, who had craftily maneuvered for N.C. Aquarium funds to buy and later rebuild the old pier, the visitor’s endorsement was almost a personal matter. But the man hadn’t yet been on the pier.

“Well, enjoy it when you do,” Basnight said.

With a frown, he turned his attention to the ocean. “Look,” he said, indicating five imposing ships within a mile of shore.

They were factory fishing ships from the Chesapeake Bay seeking menhaden. “That shouldn’t be allowed so close to shore,” Basnight said. “I thought I had taken care of that. I thought they were supposed to stay offshore.”

But he hadn’t quite taken care of it. A call later confirmed that menhaden boats were allowed within a half mile of the beach in the winter. If those regulations were to be changed, someone else would now have to do it.

Basnight’s retirement from the N.C. Senate in 2010 followed the Republican takeover of the N.C. General Assembly and the loss of his hold on power as the Senate’s president pro tempore. While the Manteo resident remains a force in politics—Basnight is highly influential with Democratic office holders like his protégés Gov. Bev Perdue and U.S. Senator Kay Hagan—the shift has left the coast with a much diminished presence in Raleigh.

U.S. Rep. Walter Jones, D-N.C., (right) and N.C. Sen. Marc Basnight hold an impromptu discussion before the beginning of a 1989 public hearing at Manteo High School on offshore drilling. Photo courtesy of the Outer Banks History Center.

A Rising Star

But in the early 1990s, Basnight’s star was still on the ascent.

As chairman of the Appropriations Committee he was a favorite of then-President Pro Tempore Henson Barnes. The president’s post had recently acquired new significance. When Republican Jim Gardner was elected lieutenant governor in 1988, the Democratic majority in the Senate swiftly transferred much of the powers held by that office to the leader of their own chamber. Suddenly, Barnes rather than Gardner had final say over the budget, assignments to legislative committees and appointments to state boards and commissions.

In 1993 when Barnes announced his retirement, Basnight quickly made a bid for the president’s post. He called in favors and consolidated his support with impressive speed.

“He understood the way power works and the way personalities work,” said Tony Rand, a former Democratic state senator and close Basnight colleague. “Marc is a natural leader. You don’t ascend to a role like that unless people are willing to go down the road with you.”

Basnight swiftly started moving his pet projects through the chamber. Frequently these included his own ideas, gleaned from his voracious reading. On more than one occasion he forgot to tell his staff before announcing his latest grand plan.

In 1996 Basnight was invited to give an Earth Day address at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Invoking images from a huge fish kill that had plagued the Neuse River the previous summer, he announced the creation of a new source of money, the N.C. Clean Water Management Trust Fund, to be used to stem pollution in waterways across the state.

“He had even figured out a way to pay for it,” remembers Bill Holman, an environmental lobbyist at the time who is now director of state policy for the Nicholas Institute for Environmental Policy Solutions at Duke University.

People started calling Norma Mills, Basnight’s chief of staff, wanting to know more about the proposal. “But she knew nothing about it,” Holman remembered.

The trust fund became one of Basnight’s most cherished legacies to conservation. Since its inception in 1996, the fund has distributed about $970 million in more than 1,500 grants.  The money has been used to buy sensitive lands threatened by development, clean up hog lagoons, improve sewer plants and reduce stormwater runoff. It also bankrolled major planning initiatives, including a blueprint for restoring the state’s once-great oyster population.

The fund was so closely associated with Basnight that Republicans in the House “would take it hostage in the budget to get Marc to do something they wanted,” said David Rice, a former reporter for the Winston-Salem Journal who covered the N.C. General Assembly for 13 years.

Basnight’s contributions to stemming pollution also included his shepherding of the 1997 Clean Water Responsibility Act, which tightened regulations on hog farms and municipal sewage treatment plants.

Wielding Power

Sen. Marc Basnight (right) and Dean Louis Martin-Vega of N.C. State University’s College of Engineering look out at new engineering building. Basnight was strong support of North Carolina’s university system. NCSU photo.

He deftly wielded political capital, dispensing favors to those who earned them while sometimes punishing others. Rice recalled an incident when Basnight was trying to obtain state funds for a satellite campus in Dare County for the N.C. School of the Arts. Sen. Billy Creech, a Republican from Johnston County, facetiously called the project “UNC-B.” Rice quoted Creech in an article.

When Creech saw the published quote, “he pushed back in his chair and got real quiet,” Rice said. “Then he said, ‘Well, I didn’t want to get anything (in the budget) this year anyway.’”

Rice recalled that Basnight loved to joke with his colleagues and reporters, and that his jokes were often too racy to be repeated. Tony Rand, the Senate’s majority leader from 2001 to 2009, also spoke fondly of Basnight’s playful side. “We had fun, oh we had fun,” he said. But when asked to give an example, he demurred.

The fun could turn off in an instant when Basnight grew displeased. Legislative insiders tell of state employees being bullied into changing their positions on sensitive issues. And, they note, Basnight’s temper was legendary. Some used names to refer to Basnight that were not always meant to be flattering — The Boss, The King and The Squire of Manteo.

Basnight also amassed a huge campaign war chest, much of it from business interests.

It was inevitable that inland legislators began to resent the state funds flowing to the coast for special projects — The David Stick Library at the Outer Banks History Center, Roanoke Island Festival Park, Jennette’s Pier. And environmentalists bristled at the ease with which developers in Basnight’s district could grease the skids for pending permits simply by calling Basnight’s office.

In a 1995 editorial headlined “Basnight’s Lofty View,” the Raleigh News & Observer wrote that the senate president had “flirted with crossing the line” with too much arm twisting. The column cited Basnight’s interference with fisheries management issues and his diversion of $700,000 from an account in the state Department of Cultural Resources so it could be used to develop the Elizabeth II historic site at Festival Park in Manteo. “To be fair,” the editorial added, “Basnight has also been a champion of open government.”

As his terms as senate president stacked up year after year —an unprecedented run in state history—the criticisms and jealousies mounted. U.S. 64, the road between Raleigh and Manteo, was dubbed “Basnight’s Driveway” by some of his critics. It was raised and widened, while busier coastal roads like U.S. 17 remained narrow and congested.

“I never minded getting beat up in print,” Basnight insisted.  “I say bring it on. Free speech is one of the greatest things in this country. Let freedom ring.”

America’s founders—Washington, Franklin, Jefferson, John Adams and others— savaged each other “in pen and print,” he said. “It’s all part of the process. The truth will come out.”

Personal Trials

In 2002 Basnight suffered the first of a string of personal trials when his wife, Sandy, was diagnosed with cancer. He responded by seeking the best treatment for her—and in the process funneled $180 million to the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill for a cancer hospital and imaging center. That initial funding was followed by a recurring $50 million annual appropriation from the legislature despite tight state budgets and is making North Carolina a leader in cancer treatment.

Marc Basnight and his late wife, Sandy. AP Photo.

“The origin of it was his wife’s disease,” said Rice, “but its implications reach out to the one in three of us who will have that disease.”

Perhaps the most lasting of Basnight’s legacies will be his support of the state university system. In 2000 he was the driving force behind a $3.1 billion bond initiative for higher education, including community colleges. The bond was approved by 70 percent of the voters. He also funneled budget allocations into university research program.

Reflecting on his legislative legacy, Basnight mused, “We did a lot of good things with the universities, but with the environment too—in ways you wouldn’t even hear about.” He mentioned pushing the N.C. Department of Environmental and Natural Resources staff to clean up Swift Creek, one of the most polluted waterways in the state.

With a mischievous smile, he also told of replacing all the lights in both state Senate and House chambers with energy-efficient bulbs.

“They said the new light bulbs would cause headaches. I put them in and they never knew the difference.

“Everything we did, if it wasn’t going to make the world a better place, we knew it wasn’t worth doing.”

Through the years Basnight became an ally of N.C. Coastal Federation, which he said he admired because of its reasoned approach to conservation, emphasis on stormwater control and strong stance against beach hardening.

In 2003 the Coastal Resources Commission granted a variance to the state’s long-standing regulatory ban against seawalls and other types of erosion-control structures on the beach to allow the installation of sheet pilings along N.C. 12 in Kitty Hawk. The road was in danger of collapsing into the ocean. Basnight responded by shepherding through a bill that gave the ban against beach hardening the full weight of the law. However, the federation and other conservation groups were disappointed a few years later when a Basnight-led Senate passed a bill to weaken the so-called seawall ban to allow small jetties on the beach.

Jennette’s Pier in Nags Head undergoes construction. Marc Basnight maneuvered for N.C. Aquarium funds to buy and rebuild the old pier.
Basnight also began pushing for the use of stormwater controls like cisterns and rain gardens on state property. He installed stormwater controls at his restaurant.

Fire the destroyed the Lone Cedar Café in May 2007.  To everyone’s shock, the State Bureau of Investigation ruled the cause as arson, but no arrest was ever made.

Although he no longer visits with diners at the rebuilt Lone Cedar, Basnight spends time there overseeing changes to the waterfront, which includes an ever-expanding array of conservation features.

A month after the fire, Sandy Basnight lost her five-year battle with cancer.

Disease Strikes

Two weeks later, Rand said, Basnight fell for the first time. “(He) just toppled over face first. It’s his equilibrium,” Rand said.

Within a short period he fell twice more.

Doctors at first diagnosed a Parkinson-like nerve disease. His speech began to slow and slur, but initially he was able to adapt it to his folksy style of speaking.

After Republicans took over the Senate in the 2010 elections, Basnight lost his leadership position and would have had to go back to debating legislation on the floor. He said he had neither the necessary quickness of speech nor the strength for long stints on his feet.

In his resignation letter in January 2011, Basnight cited an additional reason for coming home: He was newly in love with Manteo resident Sue Waters, a teacher and musician.

Basnight is philosophical about having amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, or ALS, a degenerative disease of the nerve cells in the brain and spinal cord that control voluntary muscle movement. Motor neurons reach from the brain to the spinal cord and from the spinal cord to the muscles throughout the body. The progressive degeneration of the neurons eventually leads to their death. When the motor neurons die, the brain loses its ability to initiate and control muscle movement. With voluntary muscle action progressively affected, patients in the later stages of the disease may become totally paralyzed and unable to breath on their own. While there is no known cure or a treatment that halts or reverses ALS, some drugs can slow the progression and several others show promise in clinical trials.

In this county, the disease gets its more popular name from Lou Gehrig, a Hall of Fame baseball player for the N.Y. Yankees. He brought national and international attention to the disease when he abruptly retired from baseball after being diagnosed with ALS in 1939. He died two years later. Other notable people who have had ALS include Jim “Catfish” Hunter, a Hall of Fame pitcher from Hertford; Sen. Jacob Javits; actors Michael Zaslow and David Niven; boxing champion Ezzard Charles; jazz musician Charles Mingus; and Henry Wallace, a former vice president.

“There’s nothing so special about me that I shouldn’t have this disease,” Basnight said.

He is pursuing all treatments, as he urged Sandy to do with her cancer. Recently he had seen a new doctor in Charlotte, who he said offered him hope. “We’ve been once and we’re going back.”

His public role may be gone, but his charm remains—as does his colleagues’ and constituents’ regard for him.

“Politics make some people grow and some people swell,” Tony Rand said. “Marc never swelled.”

Sign a Petition to Help ALS Patients

Ed Johnson, a longtime federation member who owns a bike shop in Cedar Point in Carteret County, also has been diagnosed with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) or Lou Gehrig’s disease.

He notes that more than 40 treatments are now undergoing FDA trials and that there is great hope for every ALS patient.

Patients and their caregivers have started a Facebook page and are circulating a petition asking the FDA to make promising drugs more quickly available.

Coming Feb. 20: A profile of Sen. Harry Brown of Onslow County, the Republican majority leader in the state Senate and highest-ranking coastal legislator.

First of two parts

NAGS HEAD — On a mild December morning, Marc Basnight stood on the shore of his family restaurant, the Lone Cedar Café in Nags Head, showing off the post-hurricane improvements. “Look,” he said, pointing to the newly placed riprap, “recycled concrete, crushed into small pieces. It cost me a fortune.”

He pointed to the edge, where the rock met the lapping waves of Roanoke Sound.

“But late at night I have counted thousands of mullet down there,” he said “And we will have zero stormwater coming off this property.”

Basnight, 64, has avoided the press since his retirement from the N.C. Senate a year ago. He has been diagnosed with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, or ALS. In this country, it’s better known as Lou Gehrig’s disease. Still straight-backed, dapper and very sharp, he stays out of the public spotlight, in part because of a slowness of speech and weakness that makes it difficult for him to stand for long periods.

“I must have turned down 15 interviews, maybe more,” he said, shaking his head to yet another request.

Still, he couldn’t help giving a tour of the hardy roses that had survived a foot of water from Hurricane Irene. He proudly pointed out the restaurant’s water recycling system. He paused next to the back fences, fashioned from recycled cooking oil jugs and plastic drink bottles. A fence on the west side of the property consisted of carefully stacked wine and beer bottles.

“You should see that when the sun gets low,” he said, pointing to the glass assortment.

As pretty as the northern lights? A big grin spread across the senator’s thin face. “Yes. Beautiful.”

And a few minutes later, “Do you have time to ride to Jennette’s Pier?”

Marc Basnight (seated, right) joins the other members of the Dare County Bicentennial Committee in 1976. Seated next to Basnight is Natalie Case Austin. Standing are Bobby Owens, a county commissionor (left) and Carlisle Davis, the Manteo mayor. Photo courtesy of the Outer Banks History Center.

The Survivor

During his 26 years in the state senate—the last 17 as president pro tempore—Basnight grew to be the most politically powerful man in the state. He outlasted governors, opponents and many of his closest colleagues. He developed a reputation for ferociousness when it came to defending favorite causes—a number of which included protections for coastal waters.

He also grew beloved by his constituents, who knew him not only as the go-to man for solving problems, but as folksy and approachable, with disarming candor and charm. Basnight loved to chat with residents of District 1 whenever he stopped in a store or strolled the winter beach.

“I never wanted to be a leader,” he mused.

Really?

“Never. I didn’t want to be put on a pedestal. I wanted to challenge people and get them thinking big, beyond the problems in their own districts, about problems in the world.”

It’s been an interesting ride for a small-town native and graduate of Manteo High School—his highest educational honor until the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill awarded him an honorary doctorate of law in 1999.

As a legislator, Basnight was known for his curiosity and thirst to learn about issues. Discussing problems with constituents, he would turn to a staff member and say, “We need to know more about this. Get me a report about it.”

That wasn’t always the case. As a boy Basnight was a middling student who loved to have fun and play jokes on others. One classmate remembered Basnight piloting a skiff through flooded Manteo streets during Hurricane Donna, scooping up baby dolls that had floated out of the Ben Franklin store. There are also tales about an 11-year-old Marc organizing a town football team, with Saturday practices and occasional games against the rival Wanchese team.

In high school he played on the football team and hung out with pals, including Charlie Fearing and the late Buddy Davis. After graduating in l966, Basnight worked for the family construction business. Bobby Owens, Basnight’s brother-in-law and the long-time chairman of the Dare County Board of Commissioners, remembers a shirtless Basnight riding a bulldozer with his father. “He came from a large family and always worked hard,” Owens said. In 1968, Basnight married a local girl, Sandy Tillett.

‘Backwards Dumb’

His interest in civic affairs led him to a post as the first chairman of the county tourism board. He soon attracted the attention of the late Walter Royal Davis, an oil tycoon and a major influence in state Democratic politics.

“Mr. Davis took a liking to him and in a sense Marc became the son Mr. Davis never had,” Owens said. “At the beginning Mr. Davis told him how backwards dumb he was.”

Davis started sending Basnight the magazine The Economist and suggested other reading material.

Walter Davis

When he announced that he wouldn’t seek re-election in 1984, state Sen. Melvin Daniels asked everyone to support his cousin, Marc Basnight, who was then on the state Board of Transportation. “It was a total surprise to Marc,” Owens said.

In such a strongly Democratic county, it was tantamount to Daniels anointing his heir. Basnight won the seat handily.

Why did he enter politics?

“Isolation,” Basnight answered immediately. “I wanted to change that for the Outer Banks.”

When the legislative term opened in 1985, he attended a Democratic Caucus meeting in Pinehurst, where freshmen senators were invited to introduce themselves and say a few words. “I told them I’m from the Outer Banks, which you may not know about,” Basnight remembered. “Our roads were terrible, and our bridges. The highway to Hatteras was atrocious. I told them I felt like we should be part of the Commonwealth of Virginia. And I did feel that way.”

A wry smile creased his face.

“But I paid the price. I didn’t get very much accomplished that whole first year.”

It was a lesson he took to heart. Basnight was elected by business supporters, and everyone assumed it was to them he would pay his highest allegiance. But within a few years he developed an unusual interest in environmental issues. Bill Holman, then the only environmental lobbyist working the N.C. Assembly, remembers trying to get Basnight to support a ban against phosphate laundry detergents in 1985. Basnight didn’t go for it. “He was still very much in the mold of a DOT-construction guy,” said Holman, now director of state policy for the Nicholas Institute for Environmental Policy Solutions at Duke University.

Interest in Environment

But a shift occurred after a group called the Friends of Hatteras Island began fighting development of a golf course in Buxton Woods on Hatteras Island, Holman said. The group feared that chemical fertilizers and herbicides from the course would pollute public drinking wells. Other residents complained of seeing pollution for the first time in local waterways.

“He talked to his constituents and found out how important clean water is to the economy,” Holman said.

Sen. Marc Basnight, left, has a laugh with Ken Mann, the past president of the Outer Banks Chamber of Commerce, during a legislative breakfast in Nags Head in 1989. Photo courtesy of the Outer Banks History Center.

Basnight’s first years in the Senate coincided with a legislative sea change. The old guard was retiring, and the new senators had environmental issues on their radar screen.

“They were more moderate,” remembered Tony Rand, a long-time Democratic state senator and the majority leader from 2001 to 2009. “They came of age when the environment was something to pay attention to.”

“Some people come to the legislature and have a world view and they never change,” Holman said. “Marc started reading stuff and was intellectually curious enough to pay attention.”

Basnight specialized in helping those he came to call “the little man,” people without wealth or political connections whose needs, he believed, had long been ignored in Raleigh. To make it easier for working folks, he had his staff open his office early, by 7:30 or 8 a.m. and keep it open at least until 6 p.m. There was no voice mail or email in those days; every caller spoke with an aide. His style of constituent services was reminiscent of Jesse Helms, the Republican U.S. senator known for helping N.C. residents cut through government red tape. If you called Basnight’s office, you knew you would get a response—although Basnight would tell you frankly when he disagreed with you.

But Basnight took constituent services to a new level, Holman said. “Helms would solve problems, but he wouldn’t do anything about the policy that had caused the problems. Senator Basnight would want to fix the policy that had caused it. He wanted to change things. He worked his ass off. He was incredibly driven.”

Basnight never lost his Outer Banks hoi-toide accent, and the Raleigh press made much of his frequent malapropisms. Nonetheless, he quickly learned to maneuver through the Capitol. “He was comfortable in his skin,” Rand said.

He became known as a forceful orator and political player.

Then in 1988 a Republican, James Garner, defeated Tony Rand in his bid for lieutenant governor. The election of a Republican to that office set the stage for a procedural change that a few years later would greatly affect the senator from District 1—consolidating his power and thrusting him into the crosshairs of controversy.

Tuesday: Marc Basnight’s rise to power

Just west of the Outer Banks, the shores of the Albemarle and Pamlico sounds are coated with a thick brown hash of mud, muck and decaying plants and trees—organic peat. In boggy areas the peat is overgrown with sphagnum moss and a shrubby hedge so dense that a person dropped into its midst wouldn’t be able to see five feet. The name given to this country is pocosin, an Algonquin Indian word that means “the swamp on a hill.”

It’s the kind of place long thought to be worthless and long treated as such.

But in the late 1970s, entrepreneurs found a way to wring some economic value out of the region’s pocosins. A company named Peat Methanol Associates applied for state permits to strip the peat soils off the land and burn them to create methanol.

Without herculean efforts on the part of the N.C. Coastal Federation, other conservation groups and many local people, much of the Albemarle Pamlico region would have become a coastal strip mine. Instead, much of that land was eventually protected, making Washington, Tyrrell, Dare and Hyde counties home to a collection of refuges and preserves that make the counties among the wildest areas in eastern North America—wild enough to hold rare red wolves.

What better introduction could visitors have to a coast known for its storms, shipwrecks and culture of hardy individualism?

Wildlife Refuges

Home to a melee of plants and animals, pocosins are beautiful, diverse and fascinating—but also buggy and inhospitable. They’re quintessential wild North Carolina. Scientists estimate that 70 percent of the pocosins found in the U.S. are in the Tar Heel State. In a rural region hungry for jobs, Peat Methanol’s proposal to build a peat-burning plant in Tyrrell County was welcome news.

There was only one problem: Stripping off the peat would rob the soils of their ability to absorb rain. Stormwater would course into the estuaries, carrying with it sediments, bacteria and pollution. In 1982 the federation started working with volunteers to reach out to local fishermen about the dangers posed by peat mining.

Fishermen already knew that draining the swamps would hurt fishing, but they weren’t aware of the plans to strip mine and harvest120,000 acres of peat.  The federation not only spread awareness about the peat mining proposals, but it then worked closely with the local community to derail those plans. It was the federation’s first big battle, and it attracted wide attention. Local watermen squared off against some local officials and business boosters.

In the end, Peat Methanol Associates failed to get the permits needed to harvest the peat. About 93,000 acres of prime pocosin went on the auction block. The Richard King Mellon Foundation bought the property on behalf of the Conservation Fund. That land now forms the core of the 113-acre Pocosin Lakes National Wildlife Refuge, home to endangered red wolves and a host of birds, reptiles and mammals.

The refuge headquarters has helped transform the rural town of Columbia into a center for ecotourism.

Just to the east lies the 10,000-acre Palmetto Peartree Preserve, set aside by the Conservation Fund as habitat for threatened red-cockaded woodpeckers. Continuing toward the coast, across the drawbridge on U.S. 64 you’ll find the Alligator River National Wildlife Refuge, spanning 28 miles north to south and 15 miles east to west. This refuge was established in 1984 through a land deal brokered by The Nature Conservancy.

In 1987, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service released eight red wolves on the Alligator River refuge. The release capped a decades-long search for a place large enough to re-establish a healthy Eastern wolf population. The wolves fanned out across the region, hunting and breeding in the mix of fields, woods and pocosins. By last spring the wolf population, adults and pups, had grown to about 120.

Red wolves are secretive animals, and sightings are rare. Visitors are much more likely to hear them during the refuge’s howling safaris. But with luck visitors will see black bears, deer, and an abundance of birds, especially in the winter when thousands of waterfowl congregate on the Pocosin Lakes and Alligator River refuges and, in Hyde County, the Mattamuskeet, and Swan Quarter wildlife refuges.

Set aside for wildlife in the 1930s, the 50,000-acre Mattamuskeet and 16,400-acre Swan Quarter refuges faced a serious threat in 2004, when the Navy announced plans to build an outlying landing field (OLF) nearby. Pilots would have made thousands of touch-and-go landings, practicing for maneuvers with aircraft carriers at sea.

The Swan Quarter refuge includes a waterfront dock that’s a great place to gain access to Pamlico Sound or just stop for quick walk or picnic. The field would have been close enough to the wildlife refuges to disturb bird populations and the resulting bird strikes would have been hazardous to pilots. In the face of fierce opposition from residents and environmentalists, the Navy dropped its plans in 2007.

Defeat of the OLF preserved the natural beauty of the Albemarle Pamlico region. It’s remote and still buggy, but well worth exploring on your way to the more famous islands of the Outer Banks.

Nags Head Woods

Just off the crowded business district of Kill Devil Hills, a residential street climbs a dune and drops into a diverse deciduous forest called Nags Head Woods. It’s not the kind of place you’d expect to find on a barrier island. Tall ridges with dogwoods, oaks, and beeches drop precipitously into beautiful ponds. The forest owes its existence to the surrounding dunes that protect it from salty maritime winds.

If developers had gotten their way in the late 1970s, the forest would have been clear-cut and the dunes pushed into the ponds, leveling the ground for a residential subdivision. The development process was well underway when area resident Henrietta List formed a grassroots group to save the woods. A road had been cut through and fire hydrants installed. Thanks to List’s efforts, The Nature Conservancy bought the 1,100 acres of the forest and named it the Nags Head Woods Ecological Preserve. The Conservancy built a small visitors center and trails where visitors can hike, watch birds and participate in programs.

The Conservancy also helped preserve Run Hill, the great but little known sand dune north of the woods. Run Hill’s bulk protects the woods. Some of the greatest diversity in the forest is on the dune’s southwest side. But the dune is actively migrating, burying trees as it goes.

Jockey’s Ridge

A bit further south, the region’s most famous dune, Jockey’s Ridge, owes its existence as a natural area to another Outer Banks conservation heroine, Carolista Fletcher Baum Golden. In 1973 when the ridge was slated for development, Golden took that most radical of conservation steps: She stood in front of a bulldozer that was preparing to carve a chunk out of the dune. The state subsequently obtained 426 acres through purchase and land donations and established Jockey’s Ridge State Park in 1975.

At 110 feet, Jockey’s Ridge was once the tallest dune on the East Coast. But the supply of loose sand that once blew inland from the beach neighborhoods disappeared as land was paved and planted with grass. Since the 1980s the height of the dune has shrunk to 79 feet. When you visit the park, make sure to walk back to its sound side. That’s where the federation is working with park to restore salt marsh. You’ll see an oyster bag sill and marsh plants there.

Buxton Woods

South of Oregon Inlet in the crook of Hatteras Island, much of what is now the Buxton Woods portion of the N.C. Coastal Reserve was once slated to become a golfing community. In 1985 developers proposed building a 163-acre golf course and houses in the midst of the 3,000-acre maritime forest—the largest such woodland system in the state. The plan appalled a number of local residents, who formed a grassroots group called the Friends of Hatteras Island, which worked closely with the federation. They were worried about saving more than trees and underbrush.

Maritime forests are characterized by dense, salt-pruned foliage that forms a protective cover over shady undergrowth. The forest holds moisture and allows it to seep into the water table. Hydrologists warned that cutting the forest would put the Buxton aquifer and the public drinking supply at risk. Members of the Friends of Hatteras discovered an old map showing that the golf course would have infringed on a state-designated Area of Environmental Concern that included land set aside for an expansion of the public water well field. The discovery effectively killed the golf course.

The state bought the property, creating the Buxton Woods tract of the N.C. Coastal Reserve. The reserve now contains 968 acres and includes several hiking trails. The Buxton Woods ecosystem suffered major damage in 1993 from Hurricane Emily. Hundreds of loblolly pines were broken off. Others were killed during an ensuing outbreak of pine bark beetles. Although the snags are unsightly, the pine canopy is slowly being replaced by oak and cedar, the natural progression for a barrier island forest.

“Quite often people don’t realize the amount of effort that’s involved, or how incredibly complicated the process can be,” said David Owens, director of the state Division of Coastal Management during the fight to save Buxton Woods. “When a community group does manage to preserve a natural area, it’s a real triumph.”