Reprinted from The Outer Banks Voice

In a continuing effort to address the dangers of holes being dug and left unfilled on the beaches, the Nags Head Board of Commissioners passed a resolution during its Aug. 3 meeting seeking state legislation that would create criminal penalties for violations.

Citing the death of an 18-year-old boy that was killed on a New Jersey beach in May after the hole he and his sister were digging collapsed on them, the resolution asserts that the issue needs to be addressed.

“In the Town of Nags Head, there have been instances of damage to Town vehicles and equipment, particularly at night, due to holes that are not easily visible,” the resolution read. “Some municipalities have adopted ordinances that address this issue; however, these ordinances may not have enough power to force compliance; Legislation needs to be enacted.”

Currently, each municipality enforces bans on deep holes left unfilled on the beach through a patchwork of civil penalties, however, the resolution asserts statewide legislation “could increase our capacity to address the incredibly dangerous issue of holes on the beach.”

The dangers of large holes being dug and left on the beach have received significant attention locally this summer, with local ocean rescue chiefs holding a press conference in May to bring attention to the issue.

Since then, Nags Head Mayor Ben Cahoon has been in the forefront of efforts to create statewide legislation. Earlier this summer, the mayor reached out to coastal communities across the state, earning support from a number of communities in Dare County and beyond.

“I’ve not had a negative comment that seemed to (indicate) that we were kind of overreaching to deal with this,” Cahoon told commissioners prior to the board voting on the resolution. Cahoon said town staff would now forward the resolution to other coastal communities asking that they consider adopting it.

This story is provided courtesy of the Outer Banks Voice, a digital newspaper covering the Outer Banks. Coastal Review is partnering with the Voice to provide readers with more environmental and lifestyle stories of interest about our coast.

Reprinted from Outer Banks Voice

Signaling the seriousness of the problem, Dare County ocean rescue officials held Friday a joint press conference at the Ocean Bay Boulevard Beach Access to spread awareness about the dangers that digging large holes in the sand can pose to beachgoers and first responders, as well as sea turtles.

“The towns have spent a great deal of time and effort making the beaches safe for beachgoers,” Kill Devil Hills Ocean Rescue Supervisor David Elder said during the briefing. “Now we are talking about beachgoers keeping the beach safe for each other and for us as well.”

The press conference was held during the same week that two teens died in separate incidents when the holes they were digging collapsed on them – one on a New Jersey beach and the other at a Utah state park. It also comes at a time when area ocean rescue officials are observing an uptick in massive holes being dug on Outer Banks beaches.

Such sand holes and tunnels, ocean rescue experts said, can collapse on beachgoers. They can also pose a threat to those out walking, particularly at night, who may not see the holes. Additionally, they can pose a threat to lifeguards and other first responders who are responding to emergencies on the beach in ATVs or trucks.

All of these scenarios, they asserted, can end tragically.

“I wish that (digging of sand holes) was abnormal, but it’s becoming more normalized and that’s the reason we’re doing this,” Elder said. Just this week, his ocean rescue crew responded to two deep holes that were dug and left unfilled on the beach. Those holes were estimated to be more than 7 feet deep.

For his part, Kitty Hawk Ocean Rescue Director Cole Yeatts stressed the danger such holes create for first responders.

“For our lifeguards who are on patrol out there and the emergency responders, such holes can delay response or even make it worse …This becomes a secondary incident where we can no longer respond and have to have people come to us because we are in a wreck due to these holes,” Yeatts said.

Nags Head Ocean Rescue Captain Chad Motz said that as the moisture in the sand surrounding the hole dries out, the danger increases. “It becomes more unstable and there is a greater potential for collapse.”

Motz noted the threat to the five different types of sea turtles that nest on North Carolina beaches, all of which are either on the threatened or endangered species list. The turtles can fall into the holes, get trapped and potentially die.

“Just to restate,” Motz concluded, “if you dig a hole, fill it back in and it shouldn’t be deeper than the knees of the smallest person in your group.”

Kill Devil Hills Assistant Ocean Rescue Supervisor Ben Battaile appealed to adults to supervise children and young adults when they are digging holes on the beach.

“Digging holes is okay, it’s a fun pastime on America’s beaches. But we want you to do it safely. No deeper than knee deep is a safe way to dig a hole and have fun,” he said. “We want everyone to understand that holes are serious, and we need the public’s help.

Battaile added that if you see an unsafe situation on the beach in Dare County, call Dare Central Communications at 252-473-3444. “This is if you see somebody in distress in the water, this is if you see somebody that maybe dove into the water, this is also if you see a collapse hazard…this can be life threatening.”

This story is provided courtesy of the Outer Banks Voice, a digital newspaper covering the Outer Banks. Coastal Review is partnering with the Voice to provide readers with more environmental and lifestyle stories of interest about our coast.

Reprinted from the Outer Banks Voice.

Two years ago, Tamara Warren took over the helm of the Surfrider Foundation Outer Banks Chapter after its long stint fighting offshore drilling under the 15-year leadership of Chair Matt Walker and Vice Chair Ivy Ingram.

The emerging COVID-19 pandemic limited what activities and outreach the newly appointed chair could do, but rather than wait for the pandemic to end, Warren focused her efforts on mobilizing solo beach cleanups.

Over the course of those two years, Warren and her environmental advocacy group for beaches and oceans distributed more than 250 buckets from Pea Island to Corolla loaded with gloves, trash pickers and masks.

“That’s kind of what my focus was, just keeping the beaches clean and keeping our community active and engaged,” Warren said, adding that the chapter also breathed new life into its Adopt-a-Beach Access program that spans from Kitty Hawk to Nags Head — with those adopting an access making a commitment to clean it up five or six times a year.

The Surfrider Foundation has gathered data about what trash was being collected and uses it to determine where it needs to focus its efforts. That includes considering what efforts they need to make in educating in the schools and what bans they might need to fight for at the local government level, whether it be plastic bags, balloons or polystyrene foam.

“We really have been focusing the past two years on beach cleanups just because of COVID to keep everyone safe, so we are switching gears and switching into the Blue Water Task Force program,” Warren said.

On March 5, the Outer Banks chapter of the Surfrider Foundation plans to hold its first community event since the pandemic began. The “Freezin’ for a Reason” fundraiser will be held at the Ocean Bay Lifesaving Station in Kill Devil Hills to raise money for its Blue Water Task Force initiative. That’s a citizen water quality monitoring program “aimed at raising awareness of local pollution programs and bringing together communities to implement solutions.”

Warren said that the foundation hopes to raise $16,000 for water monitoring equipment. To get involved, folks can register to take a wintery plunge into the Atlantic Ocean, donate to the cause or specifically donate in support of their favorite Dare County celebrity who is participating in the plunge.

Outer Banks notables who have signed on to take the dip include Nags Head Mayor Ben Cahoon, First Flight Middle School Principal Diane Childress, Kill Devil Hills Mayor Ben Sproul, Kitty Hawk Mayor Craig Gariss, First Flight High School Principal Chuck Lansing, Kitty Hawk Elementary School Principal Greg Florence and Manteo Elementary School Principal Curtis Price.

Swag bags will be available for participants and the event will conclude with a breakfast at Jack Brown’s Burger Joint at 9 a.m. Plungers can eat free, but even those who choose to stay dry and warm can come and order off the menu. Live music, courtesy of The Connection from Williamsburg, Virginia, will also be featured.

Foundation projects

Once the foundation has the monitoring equipment, it can measure fecal and bacterial levels in recreational waters so they can be compared to the water quality standards set by public health agencies.

The main focus of the testing, Warren said, will be on waterways and accesses the foundation feels are heavily trafficked. Or, she added, “if we get a call about one area having some issues, we would definitely go to that area.”

Once the data is collected, the foundation would consult with local public works and health departments and come up with solutions if there are issues.

Another effort the Surfrider Foundation is working on — after seeing the amount of balloon trash on the beaches — is trying to implement a ban on releasing balloons into the air. Warren said the group plans on taking the cause to all the local municipalities, asking that a fine be imposed if someone is caught releasing a balloon.

“Essentially, it is littering and (people) are killing the turtles and other sea life by letting these balloons go,” she asserted.

But as for the March 5 event, Warren expects it to be a great opportunity for the Surfrider Foundation and community to come together.

“I think it’s really just going to be a fun filled day of celebration and just taking a breath – being a part of something good and celebrating each other and our friendships and our community,” Warren said of the event. “We’re off to a good start. We’ve got eleven more days to go, so hopefully we’ll get some more people on board.”

Event details and forms to donate or register are online.

This story is provided courtesy of the Outer Banks Voice, a digital newspaper covering the Outer Banks. Coastal Review Online is partnering with the Voice to provide readers with more environmental and lifestyle stories of interest about our coast.

Reprinted from The Outer Banks Voice

At its Monday, Jan. 3, meeting, the Dare County Board of Commissioners took another step forward on beach nourishment projects slated for 2022 by entering into a contract with Weeks Marine of Covington, Louisiana, to pump sand onto the beaches of Duck, Southern Shores, Kitty Hawk and Kill Devil Hills.

Last month, the commissioners awarded the contract to Weeks Marine, which will pump around 2.46 million cubic yards of sand on 12.1 miles of beaches in those four municipalities for a total cost of $28.9 million. According to the agreement, the work would be finished on or before Dec. 31 of this year.

Turning to the other Dare County beach nourishment efforts, the commissioners also approved an amendment to the capital project ordinance for the Avon and Buxton project.

That project is to begin May 1, with an end date of Sept. 30, and includes pumping a total of 2.2 cubic yards of sand along the shoreline, with 1 million cubic yards being placed along Avon beaches and 1.2 million cubic yards on Buxton beaches.

Commissioners awarded the bid last month for the 2022 Avon and Buxton beach nourishment project to Great Lakes Dredge and Dock Co., which came in with a bid of $25.9 million. Of that amount, the county is to contribute roughly $21.7 million. Other funding is expected to come from the Federal Emergency Management Agency and state grants.

This story is provided courtesy of the Outer Banks Voice, a digital newspaper covering the Outer Banks. Coastal Review is partnering with the Voice to provide readers with more environmental and lifestyle stories of interest about our coast.

Reprinted from The Outer Banks Voice

An advisory committee unanimously voted July 8 to recommend to the Dare County Tourism Board a conceptual plan for a $17.6 million event center at the Soundside Event Site in Nags Head.

The Event Site Advisory Committee’s recommendation comes more than two years after the committee was formed to consider how to best develop the property.

The 48,275-square-foot event center would include a 26,000-square-foot event hall, 1,500-square-foot meeting room and a 2,800-square-foot catering kitchen.

Now, the plan will go before the tourism board July 15 during its special meeting. If the tourism board backs the plan, it will go before the Dare County Board of Commissioners during its Aug. 2 meeting. The project will also require various approvals and changes to the zoning ordinance by the town of Nags Head as well as state permits related to wastewater.

The plan does not include a hotel, a possibility that has been floated a number of times in recent years and had generated some resistance in the community.

“We can make the building help (existing) events, but it will be incredible to see what else can happen,” Outer Banks Visitors Bureau Executive Director Lee Nettles told advisory board members.

According to an updated economic impact and site feasibility study by the Johnson Consulting presented to at the meeting, the indoor center could be used for sporting tournaments, consumer shows, music events, trade shows, conferences and occasional conventions. One of the building’s features will allow an entire wall to be opened to the adjacent event lawn. The site will include 312 paved parking spaces and 266 undeveloped grass spaces.

The feasibility study states that 72% of the view of the Roanoke Sound from U.S. 158 will be preserved and the indoor event center and lawn are annually projected to generate $25 million in new spending, $1.1 million in tax revenue, 191 jobs, and $8 million in increased earnings.

The eight-member Event Site Advisory Committee includes Nags Head Mayor Ben Cahoon, Nags Head Commissioner and Tourism Board member Webb Fuller, Dare County Commissioner Rob Ross and others.

The event center could accommodate between 300 and 2,500 people and a maximum of 130 vendors, opening it up for events such as trade shows. And at the July 8 meeting, some advisory group members lauded the potential such a facility would offer.

“There are industry groups down here that would bring people, but we don’t have a site (in Dare County) that would accommodate local groups that would bring people in from the outside,” Fuller said.

For his part, Advisory Committee Member Ralph Buxton touted the concept, noting, “This is a big step in trying to figure out a use for this site…I really like the fact that there’s broader community use. The more we can encourage the use of this site, the more the public will support the expansion or development of the site.”

This story is provided courtesy of the Outer Banks Voice, a digital newspaper covering the Outer Banks. Coastal Review is partnering with the Voice to provide readers with more environmental and lifestyle stories of interest about our coast.

Reprinted from The Outer Banks Voice

As part of its 2021-22 fiscal budget, the Dare County Board of Commissioners on Monday unanimously approved the creation two municipal service districts (MSDs) in Avon that will be taxed to help foot the bill of a $12.68 million beach nourishment project that will pump roughly one million cubic yards of sand along 2.5 miles of beach in that community next year.

Property owners in those districts will collectively contribute an estimated $750,000 per year over a five-year period to stave off the encroaching Atlantic Ocean that, in recent years, has led to chronic ocean over wash and flooding during storm events that has threatened oceanside homes and cut off N.C. Highway 12. The remaining funds to pay for the project will come from the county’s beach nourishment coffers.

Service District A will include all properties in Avon east of Highway 12 and south of Due East Road, while Service District B will include all properties in Avon. Property owners in MSD A will pay 20 cents per $100 of assessed value toward sand pumping efforts in addition to a Service District B tax of 5 cents per $100 of assessed value.

County officials have stressed in recent months that the sand pumping project is necessary due to the extensive closures of N.C. 12 during recent storm events that create severe disruptions to the life, health, safety and welfare of the residents of and visitors to Hatteras Island. Meanwhile, the plan has attracted significant attention among residents of Avon, both for and against beach nourishment in the oceanside community.

The county has received hundreds of emails regarding the project and the special tax in recent months. And during a public information session earlier this year, dozens of residents spoke. But at the June 7 public hearing, only two Avon property owners spoke, with both opposing the project.

“I have a very modest cottage on Croaker Court that may parents bought in 1975,” Mary Ann Marsal told commissioners during the public hearing. “The dune is higher than it’s ever been since that time and we don’t get ocean flooding on our road. I think it’s really arbitrary and unfair that we would be put in both districts and consequently be charged five times the amount of tax as those who are in District B.”

Belton Gray, Jr. told commissioners that the county didn’t have the money “to continue throwing at beach nourishment.”

“It would appear that the answer to most of our problems now is beach nourishment,” he said after the commissioners approved the project. “I just would like to pose one question to the Dare County Board of Commissioners. When the sand is gone, and it will be, will you repeal this unjust tax?”

This story is provided courtesy of The Outer Banks Voice, a digital newspaper covering the Outer Banks. Coastal Review Online is partnering with the Voice to provide readers with more environmental and lifestyle stories of interest about our coast.

Reprinted from Outer Banks Voice

Dare County commissioners in a unanimous vote Monday authorized county staff to begin the statutory process of establishing a municipal service district in the Hatteras community of Avon to help cover the cost of a $11 million beach nourishment project that will pump roughly 1 million cubic yards of sand along 2.5 miles of beach.

Property owners in the service district are expected to collectively contribute an estimated $750,000 per year over a five-year period through a special tax in an effort to stave off an encroaching Atlantic Ocean that has, during recent storms, flooded N.C. 12 and threatened homes.

“We’re at a point where we’re going to do this (and) we’ve got to start a process to create a tax service district — and there’s a statutory process for that,” County Manager Robert Outten told the commissioners Monday prior to the vote.

The action signals the board’s desire to move forward with the 2022 project, roughly half of which would be funded through the Dare County Beach Nourishment Fund, with the other half funded by property owners in the community.

Oceanside property owners from Due East Road to the community’s southern border will foot the largest contribution that comes from taxes, paying an anticipated 25 cent tax per $100 in addition to their annual property bill. Westside property owners in the project area will be asked to pay 5 cents per $100 for the sand pumping.

Several steps are required to establish the district, Outten explained, including sending notices and maps to property owners as well as holding a public hearing. Those steps take about 60 days. Commissioners will then need to come back to finalize the district and set a tax rate during the budget process in late May or early June.

The proposed beach nourishment plan has attracted significant attention among Avon residents. The county received hundreds of emails regarding the project and the special tax. During a public information session last month, dozens of residents spoke both for and against the project.

During the public comment period of the Monday meeting, several residents spoke prior to the vote, offering different views on the subject. One resident said that the proposed district was drawn up “in an unfair and arbitrary way” and would represent a 45% increase in her annual taxes.

Another resident praised the commissioners, noting that, “Obviously saving the beach is essential to the entire community, and we are willing to pay our fair share … No one wants their taxes raised, but some things are worth paying for, at least until there’s a more permanent solution.”

This story is provided courtesy of the Outer Banks Voice, a digital newspaper covering the Outer Banks. Coastal Review Online is partnering with the Voice to provide readers with more environmental and lifestyle stories of interest about our coast.

Reprinted from Outer Banks Voice

A new rip current forecasting model unveiled earlier this month by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration is able to predict the hourly probability of rip currents along every mile of beach up to six days out — a significantly improved tool that could result in fewer rip current deaths.

Part of the National Weather Service’s Nearshore Wave Prediction System, the model relies on wave and water level data and incorporates more than a decade of data and observations from Kill Devil Hills Ocean Rescue and other area lifeguard agencies in order to make the hourly predictions.

“Before this model was implemented, our method for forecasting rip currents was a manual procedure, which only allowed for predicting rip currents for large sections of coastline on a daily or twice daily basis, a day or two into the future,” said NOAA Senior Scientist Greg Dusek, who led the effort to develop the model.

The model predicts the probability of the dangerous seaward currents on a scale of 0 to 100% and will help forecasters better identify for the public particular hours of the day when hazardous rip currents are most likely at a particular location. People who are planning to visit the beach over a weekend, for example, can find out what the rip current risk will be during their visit as early as six days before they arrive.

Currently, the United States Lifesaving Association estimates that rip currents account for more than 100 deaths per year as well as 80% of rescues made by beach lifeguards. Hazardous rip currents are particularly common along the Outer Banks, known for its rough ocean conditions.

“We’ve changed the messaging over the years, so people better understand what (rip currents) are and what do if you are caught in one. But we were still having the same number of drownings,” Dusek said, pointing to the importance of getting the predictions to people before they step on the sand.

The newly-launched model covers the coastal United States, Puerto Rico, Guam and Hawaii and improves accuracy over the existing approach by more than 50% in some cases, Dusek said. “(Forecasters) now have additional information they haven’t had in the past.”

Dusek said NOAA launched its efforts back in 2011 with the help Kill Devil Hill Ocean Rescue, which provided years of rip current observations and rescue data. That data, as well as that from other lifeguard services around the country was used to better understand rip currents as well as validate the model and improve rip current messaging.

Since efforts began, Kill Devil Hills Ocean Rescue Director David Elder said his agency, as well as other water rescue agencies that were part of the efforts, collaborated with NOAA and the NWS with the end goal of creating a model that would be a good resource for the NWS, respected by lifeguards and eventually rolled out to the public.

“What this does is it kind of casts (the forecasts) further into the future and the hope is that it also gives people good information so they can further their understanding,” Elder said.

For his part, Dare County Emergency Management Director Drew Pearson said the new model “brings greater fidelity to the forecast.”

“A better-informed beachgoer is a safer beachgoer,” he said, adding that improvements in the forecast will help visitors to beach make better decisions about whether to stay on the beach or go in the water on a particular day.

Reprinted from the Outer Banks Voice

Dare County plans to fund sand pumping efforts in both Southern Shores and Avon by withholding $1.4 million in beach nourishment funds from each of the five oceanfront communities was met with some pushback from Nags Head commissioners at their Jan. 6 meeting while sparking a broader discussion on funding mechanisms for these projects.

During a presentation to commissioners, County Manager Bobby Outten explained that both Southern Shores and Avon need beach nourishment, but that the current $8.5 million in the county’s fund falls short of what’s needed to help finance the two projects. But, he said, reducing the county’s contributions for replenishment efforts to each town by $1.4 million – the same amount the towns received in a state grant this fall for beach nourishment projects – would free up enough money to do so.

“We got lucky, I suppose, at least from my perspective,” Outten told the Nags Head Commissioners.

But not everyone appeared to share that view.

Expressing dismay about the loss in revenue, commissioners voiced concern over how the beach nourishment fund, which comes from a portion of the occupancy tax, is divvied up among the towns, asked about assurances of future funding and wondered whether there was a better source of funding that could be explored other than occupancy tax revenues.

Commissioner Michael Siers, referring to the state grant, contended the county was trying to “retrieve grant money that we received for damages from Dorian.”

In response, Outten asserted, “That’s not correct …We are not taking any of your money. You got a grant that had nothing to do with Dorian or anything else, it was just a grant. We got one as well.”

For his part, Commissioner Webb Fuller suggested the county needed a formula that provides some degree of certainty about how much each community is going to receive in the future and asked if funds were being dispersed fairly.

Outten responded that such a formula already exists, one that projects 10 years into the future.

“You assume none of that has occurred but the (beach nourishment model) shows you what we are going to give each community into the future,” he said. Speaking of equity, the county manager said, “every community has skin in the game because everybody is going to be taxed.”

Beginning in 2011 with the Nags Head beach nourishment project, the county has contributed roughly 50 percent to each town’s sand pumping efforts and also commits money for future maintenance projects. Towns also fund their perspective projects through municipal and service district taxes.

In response to a question by Commissioner Renee Cahoon about whether Avon property owners on the west side of N.C. 12 would be taxed, Outten said the community would likely be faced with a 40-cent tax on oceanside property and a 10-cent tax in other areas of the community to help fund its project.

Outten told commissioners if the county moves forward with its intended plan, “You are going to be in exactly the same place, with exactly the same amount of sand, exactly the same amount of everything. You just won’t have as much of it funded with Dare’s money.”

He added, “If there is a better way to do this, we’d love to hear it. Our goal is to take care of the beaches of Dare County as a whole and if there is a better way to do it, we want to do it.”

Following Outten’s presentation, Commissioner Kevin Brinkley observed that, “What the county is doing is, they already spent money out of that fund, but yet he’s coming to us now asking for our blessing, our okay, to spend the rest of the money for the projects.”

At the conclusion of the discussion, commissioners considered the need to pursue different funding options for beach nourishment and floated the idea of area professionals in the field forming a working group to explore those options. Mayor Ben Cahoon said he would suggest a gathering of the mayors following COVID-19 guidelines to discuss possibilities.

County Manager Outten has made a similar presentation to the Kitty Hawk, Southern Shores and Duck town councils and is expected to go to the Kill Devil Hills Board of Commissioners Monday, Jan. 11. The Dare County Board of Commissioners is expected to take up the matter at its mid-month meeting Jan. 19.

This story is provided courtesy of the Outer Banks Voice, a digital newspaper covering the Outer Banks. Coastal Review Online is partnering with the Voice to provide readers with more environmental and lifestyle stories of interest about our coast.

Reprinted from The Outer Banks Voice

Hoping to fund two new beach nourishment projects in 2022 – one in Southern Shores and the other in Avon – the Dare County Board of Commissioners next month will consider a plan to help finance those projects with the limited amount of money currently available in the county’s coffers designated for such projects.

During the board’s Dec. 21 meeting, Dare County Manager Bobby Outten told the commissioners that the $8.5 million currently in the county’s Beach Nourishment Fund was only enough to help pay for one of those projects – but not both. The proposal he unveiled at the meeting is for the county to find an additional $7 million to pay for the two projects by reducing the funds it gives to all Dare County municipalities for beach nourishment.

Southern Shores, the only municipality in Dare County that hasn’t yet conducted a town-wide renourishment project, has seen increasingly thinning beaches in recent years. Avon, an unincorporated part of the county, has been faced with extensive beach erosion and ocean overwash onto N.C. 12 during almost every significant storm event over the past two years. Early this year, the county had chipped in to pay for feasibility studies in both communities.

The project in Southern Shores is estimated to cost between $14 and $16 million, and Avon’s sand pumping would cost roughly $11 million. Over the years, beach renourishment projects have been funded through a combination of municipal and service district taxes as well as Dare County’s Beach Nourishment Fund, which typically foots about 50% of the bill for the projects in the municipalities.

“So, we’ve got almost $30 million worth of projects out here and we’ve got $8.5 million dollars (available in the Beach Nourishment Fund). And we are trying to think ‘how in the world are we going to fund these projects,’” Outten told the commissioners at the meeting. “We’ve played with the numbers to figure out how we could do it. Otherwise, you all were going to be in the precarious position of having to pick one project over the other.”

This fall, Dare County, Nags Head, Kill Devil Hills, Kitty Hawk, Southern Shores and Duck were each awarded a roughly $1.4 million grant from the N.C. Department of Environmental Quality’s Division of Water Resources for beach nourishment and other projects to remediate storm damage. In light of those grants, Outten proposed that the county reduce the amount it contributes to each of the five municipalities’ recurring nourishment projects by that same $1.4 million — freeing up an additional $7 million for the Avon and Southern Shore projects.

Reprinted from The Outer Banks Voice

Local officials in Dare and Tyrrell counties are appealing to officials in Raleigh and Washington, D.C., in an effort to prioritize the replacement of the 60-year-old Lindsey C. Warren Bridge, better known as the Alligator River Bridge.

The 2.8-mile bridge across the Alligator River has closed several times in recent years to undergo repairs.

“The repeated and continuing failures of the span since it was ‘fixed’ have gone on and on – it is time to fix the problem and to fix it with a bridge replacement,” said Commissioner Wally Overman during the Nov. 2 Dare County Commissioners meeting. The bridge underwent a major renovation several years ago as part of a $16.7 million effort to extend the span’s life.

Dare County Commissioners have passed several resolutions over the years urging action to replace the bridge, most recently in January when the board asked that the North Carolina Department of Transportation, or NCDOT, include the project in its 2023-2032 State Transportation Improvement Plan.

NCDOT recognizes the importance of the bridge replacement, said the department’s Division 1 Communications Officer Tim Hass, noting that a consultant earlier this year was tasked with conducting an environmental review of the replacement project. That review process, however, has been shelved due to COVID-19 budget constraints. Once the nine- to 12-month review is complete, $150 million in funding would still have to be identified for the project.

Hass said that transportation officials are making efforts to move the project forward. “We’ve heard from the folks in Tyrrell County and Dare County and know it is a priority,” he said.  “It’s just a matter of how high a priority and identifying funding.”

For his part, Overman has contacted State Rep. Bob Steinburg, R-Chowan,  U.S. Rep. Greg Murphy and Rep. Bobby Hanig, R-Currituck, seeking their support.

“We need to keep the hammer down on this now until we get some sort of positive resolution,” he asserted. “It is something that we really need to press on and keep pressure on DOT to get this done however they get the funding — whether it’s federal, state, whatever. We really don’t care. It just needs to be fixed.”

Columbia’s Board of Aldermen is also sending former resolutions and letters to state representatives asking for their support, according to Town Manager Rhett White.

“The bridge is not getting any younger, newer or stronger,” he said. “In fact, the bridge is getting more use and more abuse every month of the year that goes by and every year that goes by.”

Adding that between 200 and 400 Tyrrell County residents travel to Dare County regularly for work, White said, “I think that while Dare County is concerned about hurricane evacuation, we’re concerned with getting our people to and from work.”

Overman, who along with Dare County Planning Director Donna Creef are members of the Albemarle Rural Planning Organization, or ARPO, noted that the span’s replacement has received the general support of that organization, particularly among representatives from Tyrrell, Hyde and Currituck counties.

“The functionality of that bridge is absolutely paramount when we’re talking about ensuring the safety of our residents and visitors,” Overman said.

Both Overman and White voiced frustration over the difficulty transportation improvement projects in rural areas have in competing with other projects in more urban areas of the state.

“It just contributes to the delay in a new or replacement bridge,” Overman said, adding that is why he and other officials are seeking the help of state representatives. “We want to get this thing front and center, and get it moving.”

White noted that the need for replacement has been on the table for two decades. The closures due to repairs and renovations, he added, “turns everything on its head. You’re looking at about a 90-mile detour to get to the Outer Banks and we’ve got anywhere from two to four hundred people (from Tyrrell County) a day, depending on the season, who drive to the Outer Banks for work.”

When the bridge was built, he observed, tractor trailers going from Columbia to the Outer Banks were few and far between, but now it is “almost a steady stream…We just feel like if they don’t (replace the bridge) we’re going to have a major problem with this bridge that’s going to affect a lot of people’s lives.”

White said that he expects that the Southern Albemarle Association will lend its support to the replacement project when it meets in January and that proponents will seek the official support of the ARPO at its next quarterly meeting.

This story is provided courtesy of the Outer Banks Voice, a digital newspaper covering the Outer Banks. Coastal Review Online is partnering with the Voice to provide readers with more environmental and lifestyle stories of interest about our coast.

Reprinted from Outer Banks Voice

An application for a use permit that would allow the HOM Development Co. to operate a sand mine on a 65-acre property in Powells Point has stirred up concerns among some nearby Currituck County residents.

The excavation of sand and topsoil would encompass an 8.28-acre, roughly 35-foot-deep pit on the parcel owned by Jo Ann Gallop of Harbinger.

HOM Development, a Manteo company, is seeking the use permit from the county for a 10-year period, but expects to complete the excavation within five years, according to a statement made by its representative, Ken Elliot, at an Oct. 15 community meeting.

In its application to the Currituck County Planning and Community Development Department, HOM Development states that the closest residence to the proposed use area is 335 feet from the proposed mine operation and 956 feet from the proposed location of the dewatering pump that would pump water from the sand pit to an above-ground sediment pond on site.

“Sand is a required component of many types of residential and commercial construction, and the location of the proposed use will benefit the local community with reduced costs of this commodity due to lower transportation costs,” HOM Development’s application states.

The proposed location, situated between two residential neighborhoods on N. Spot Road and Pinewood Acres, has residents concerned about the effect such a project could have on noise, safety, traffic, water quality, and other environmental impacts.

Facebook group called Pinewood Acres/Spot Road Preservation Coalition was formed last week to oppose the project.

“We are used to hearing birds out here…we literally hear crickets,” said Leslie Livingston, a Pinewood Acres resident who estimates her home to be about 1,000 feet from the proposed mine. She added that trucks hauling sand along N. Spot Road pose safety concerns for residents out walking or riding bikes.

“We are concerned about maintaining the quality of life back here,” she said. “This is not a benefit to Currituck County as a whole.”

It’s anticipated that the review process for the use permit will take several months, according to Currituck County Planning Director Laurie LoCicero. December would be the earliest it would go before the Currituck County Board of Commissioners.

LoCicero said that once the use permit is deemed complete by planning staff, it will then be reviewed in November by the Technical Review Committee, made up of county staff and representatives from other agencies including the Albemarle Regional Health Department, the North Carolina Department of Transportation and the North Carolina Department of Environmental Quality, or NCDEQ).  The use permit will then go to the county commissioners for approval or denial.

Aside from county approval, HOM Development will have to secure a mining permit from NCDEQ to begin excavation. After excavation is complete, HOM Development said the pit would become an 8.28-acre pond and used as an environmental habitat and for recreational use. According to the company’s application, excavated sand will be stockpiled inside the permit area until it’s sold, and there will be an average maximum of 12 trucks per day leaving the mine site. Voice efforts to reach a HOM Development representative for comment were unsuccessful.

In addition, the mine will be gated with “no trespassing” signs and accessed via a private road that connects to N. Spot Road and then Caratoke Highway. The mining operations, according to the application, will be screened by distance to residential properties as well already existing foliage.

Pinewood Acres resident Sandy George echoed Leslie Livingston’s concerns. “Just the sound of heavy mining machinery…and the dust, that’s a concern,” she noted, adding that her house is an estimated 800 feet away from the proposed site.

With the Pinewood Acres residents on private wells, George said that one major concern for nearby residents is the impact it could have on water quality. The operator “is going to have to continuously pump water out of what could be an aquafer that we are tapped in to, so the potential of losing water…is of utmost concern to all of us.” she said.

“We are also afraid it is going to injure our property value,” George continued. “When I bought my house, it was next to agricultural land. And now they are putting a commercial mining operation on it.”

This story is provided courtesy of the Outer Banks Voice, a digital newspaper covering the Outer Banks. Coastal Review Online is partnering with the Voice to provide readers with more environmental and lifestyle stories of interest about our coast.

Reprinted from the Outer Banks Voice

After more than a year of planning and hosting a number of listening sessions to gather citizen input, Manteo officials anticipate construction of the Manteo Town Common to begin in November and to be completed by early spring 2021.

Located at the old Fort Raleigh hotel site, plans for the site include a park with 60 parking spaces as well as natural landscaping, sitting areas, pathways and green space.

On Aug. 11, Manteo’s planning board unanimously approved the site plan for the town common, which will cover just over 50,000 square feet of space nestled between Budleigh and Ananias Dare streets. Manteo has entered into a 25-year lease with Dare County to develop and maintain the site, which is to be completed in two phases.

“It’s pretty remarkable to be able to get both a beautiful park and the parking lot … it brings aesthetics and function into a really important part of our town,” said Sherry Wickstrom, the planning board chair, who also serves on the Town Common Task Force.

The first phase of the project will include the parking spaces as well as lighting, landscaping, pathways and the extension of utilities for future restrooms anticipated in phase two of construction.

Project engineer John DeLucia of Albemarle & Associates said town officials have asked for shade trees to be planted, as well as native plants that are drought tolerant, fragrant, colorful and appealing to birds and pollinators.

According to Town Manager James Ayres, the town has budgeted $732,844 for the project and in addition, has received a $221,885 grant for the project from the Dare County Tourism Board. The municipality is also awaiting word on two other state grants it has applied for.

In an interview with the Voice, Ayers praised the project, noting that it not only helped alleviate parking woes in the downtown area but would also be “a great town park with sitting areas, pathways and more.”

Restrooms as well as potential shade areas, such as a trellis, are planned for the second phase of the project. Lighting will be part of both phases and will be consistent with lighting at Creef Park and Magnolia Market.

The park, DeLucia said, “is designed to be a quiet green space where people can sit on a bench and read or meditate and be in the shade.”

Wickstrom elaborated during the Aug. 11 meeting. “It’s really to engage all the senses so there will be this wonderful sound of song birds and animals that will find this a great habitat. There will definitely be fragrance with the jasmine and other plantings. And it’ll be a visual beauty as well.”

Demolition of the county-owned buildings on the site, including the historic Fort Raleigh Hotel, was completed last year. The site plan does not require approval from the Board of Commissioners.

DeLucia said that construction documents are being finalized with the hope of going out to bid at the end of August. He anticipates Manteo Commissioners could award a bid at their October meeting and construction could begin in November.

“Everyone is shooting for this to be ready for the springtime,” he concluded.

This story is provided courtesy of the Outer Banks Voice, a digital newspaper covering the Outer Banks. Coastal Review Online is partnering with the Voice to provide readers with more environmental and lifestyle stories of interest about our coast.

Reprinted from Outer Banks Voice

Along with warm ocean temperatures and crystal-clear water these past few weeks, Outer Banks beachgoers have been seeing another sign of summer lately — jellyfish.

Having to navigate their way around these ocean critters that can deliver an annoying sting, along with a recent increase in sea lice, has some folks opting to stay on the dry sand.

While sea nettles and other types of jellyfish may seem more ubiquitous in the last week or so, local experts say that’s pretty typical for this time of year and add that they play an important role in the ocean’s ecosystem food chain.

“We tend to get jellies in the summer over the course of a long hot stretch of weather,” said Terri Kirby Hathaway, a marine education specialist at North Carolina Sea Grant. And the clear ocean water that has graced the Outer Banks on and off over the last few weeks has certainly helped beachgoers more easily spot them.

Sea nettles, which tend to thrive in warmer waters, can deliver a nasty, but nondangerous sting if someone brushes up against it. They usually have a red or white tinge and tentacles, and Hathaway says they are typically the ones responsible for “the sting that we feel.”

Kill Devil Hills Ocean Rescue, which began flying flags this year on the beaches to alert beachgoers when jellyfish and other concerning sea life are more prevalent, has hoisted the flags off and on over the course of the summer, but Ocean Rescue Director David Elder said the amount of jellyfish this summer has been on par with other years.

Jennette’s Pier Director Mike Remige agreed, adding that as a surfer, he hasn’t seen any more jellyfish than during a normal year. Sea lice, which are mostly blue crab larvae, have been increasingly prevalent in recent days and can cause intense itching. Remige said that the larvae are entering their second gravid period in late July and early August, making it more likely that beachgoers could swim through a patch of these tiny sea creatures.

Hathaway cautioned that even if jellies are washed up on the beach or dead, their stinging cells on the tentacles can still function.

“Their tentacles can break off of the bell, yet can still sting even if not connected to the body,” she said, noting that similar to bee venom, some people are more allergic to their sting than others.

Hathaway said that other jellyfish that can be found in Outer Banks waters at this time of year are cabbage-head, or cannonball jellyfish — named after their cannonball shaped bell.

“Those are completely harmless,” Hathaway noted. She added that moon jellies, shaped like an umbrella and easily identified by their four distinct horseshoe-shaped gonads, are the most common along the Outer Banks.

There are several reasons why jellyfish can appear in greater numbers during particular periods over the summer and Hathaway cited one of them. “When we get sea nettles, you can usually look back a few days and there was a big rain even in the Chesapeake Bay watershed,” she explained.

In the late summer and early fall, consistent southeast winds can cause sea life from the Gulf Stream to visit the Outer Banks coastline, including the more dangerous Portuguese man-o-war and colorful blue buttons, which are not considered dangerous but can deliver a sting. Both are related to the jellyfish. In the winter, Lion’s Mane and Mushroom Cap jellies are more frequent on the Outer Banks.

While jellies can be pesky to deal with for beachgoers, Hathaway said they serve an important purpose, providing food to Loggerhead and Leatherback sea turtles, as well as ocean sunfish and spadefish.

This story is provided courtesy of the Outer Banks Voice, a digital newspaper covering the Outer Banks. Coastal Review Online is partnering with the Voice to provide readers with more environmental and lifestyle stories of interest about our coast.

Reprinted from Outer Banks Voice

New technology aimed at reducing the time it takes to locate missing persons in the water is being tested for the first time on the Outer Banks this summer with the hope that it will become a mainstay in search and recovery efforts while more quickly providing closure to families of drowning victims.

The technology, called AquaEye, was first used locally during a missing swimmer call near Kitty Hawk Pier on July 3. A handheld scanner, AquaEye uses ultrasound and artificial intelligence technologies to identify victims underwater and is touted as being able to scan an 85,000-square-foot area in four minutes.

Phill Lloyd, a Nags Head resident and national training manager for AquaEye, responded to the scene that morning at the request of Mirek Dabrowski, who contracts lifeguarding services for the town of Southern Shores. Dabrowski said that Lloyd – using the AquaEye – was able to quickly locate the victim in what he said was “a difficult search environment.”

Reprinted from The Outer Banks Voice

Two of the four Dare County municipalities that are expected to partner on a 2022 beach nourishment project have given the green light for the Coastal Protection Engineering of North Carolina Inc. to move forward with the critical design and permitting steps needed prior bidding and construction of the project.

The Kitty Hawk Town Council and the Kill Devil Hills Board of Commissioners both unanimously approved a contract with the Wilmington-based firm Monday, while the Duck Town Council is expected to take up the contract on June 17 and Southern Shores Town Council will hold a public forum on June 16 before committing to the project.

Project Manager Ken Wilson told the Voice that over the next six to eight months, his firm will be providing assistance to the municipalities in the way of engineering design, environmental permitting and identification of offshore sand resources. The firm provided the same services for the four municipalities and Dare County as part their joint beach nourishment project in 2017.

“We’re going to have crews out there doing some additional investigations offshore,” Wilson noted, adding that in addition to a borrow site used for the 2017 project, there may be some areas that could have usable sand that are a little closer to the Southern Shores and Duck project.

“If we can identify those and if we can develop them into permitted borrow sites, it could potentially bring the cost of the project down,” he added. Final designs will also be drafted, taking into account any improvements that could be incorporated based on the results of the 2017 project.

As part of the 2017 nourishment project, nearly 4 million cubic yards of sand was pumped on 1.7 miles of shoreline in Duck, 1,500 square feet in Southern Shores, 3.58 miles in Kitty Hawk and 2.6 miles in Kill Devil Hills. Wilson estimates that the towns, working collaboratively, realize a 15 to 20% cost savings as well as improve the speed and efficiency in which project goals can be achieved.

“There are a lot of benefits that the four counties have seen by working together on this,” Wilson asserted. Once design and permitted are finalized, Wilson noted there will likely be a future contract in which his firm will develop bid documents and perform some construction oversight.

Beach nourishment projects are funded through a combination of funding from municipal sources as well as Dare County’s Beach Nourishment Fund.

Reprinted from Outer Banks Voice

With the 83rd season of Paul Green’s “The Lost Colony” canceled this month due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the Roanoke Island Historical Association, or RIHA, board of directors has turned its efforts to modernizing the outdoor drama that has been performed nightly each summer at the Waterside Theater for more than eight decades.

As for the immediate future, uncertainty remains about whether North Carolina’s mass gathering guidelines will loosen to allow the curtain to open on an “alumni show” later this summer. And a big question revolves around “The Lost Colony” staff.  With the show’s cancellation this summer, five of the seven full-time staff members, including its chief executive officer Bill Coleman, were notified on April 7 that they were furloughed for three months and then will be terminated.

Only two full-time staff members remain at the moment, associate producer Lance Culpepper and office manager, Katie Stone.

According to RIHA Board of Directors Chairman Kevin Bradley, the decision to cancel this season was a difficult one.

“It was a historic decision…and we realize there will always be an asterisk next to this leadership team,” said Bradley, noting that 70% of the organization’s revenue comes in over the summer season. “Without our summer season, we had to set ourselves up to survive, and our organization (still) be standing, by the end of the year.”

With Waterside Theatre quiet over the summer, Bradley said his board has been working on short-term and long-term goals for “The Lost Colony.”

“We are going to take advantage of the three extra months …We got a break and as much as we hate the break, we’ve got to take advantage of that,” he said.

Bradley said that if the stay-at-home order expires and the state opens up, RIHA is planning to pull together an alumni show in the theater that would highlight the show’s most cherished scenes, ones Bradley said, that “folks are emotionally tied to.”  The event, which could potentially run over a few weekends, would be free to the public with the opportunity to offer a donation.

The August show, he added, would be trimmed down to an hour as opposed to the roughly two-hour show and likely coincide with RIHA’s annual celebration of Virginia Dare’s birthday in late August. He also said the fourth annual Lost Colony Wine & Culinary Festival on Sept. 26 was still expected to proceed as scheduled.

A longer-term goal the board is focused on, Bradley said, without offering details, was to modernize the show in an effort to tell the story in  the most relevant way. “It will be a fresh look on a historical treasure,” he asserted, adding that the show will be “very different” while “still honoring the past very well.”

While staffing has been reduced to a skeleton crew, Bradley said RIHA will begin rebuilding its crew as it moves closer to the 2021 season. “We’ll be bringing staff back in such a way that supports our new type of show.” While saying he could not comment on whether former staff will be brought back or there will be new staff, he said he expects the board will identify candidates by the first of the year.

For his part, Coleman, who has been CEO at “The Lost Colony” for almost eight years, said the process of letting the staff go was disappointing. While acknowledging that furloughs and layoffs are happening in the community and across the country, Coleman took issue with the process, saying furloughed staff members were notified on April 7 to be out of the office by the end of the day and then received a letter with the terms of the furlough and eventual termination.

Coleman acknowledged that, “The theater business is out of business – it’s not even going on on Broadway. The tourism business is another business that’s taking a major hit and we’re an organization that did both. I would be surprised if we were able to maintain a full staff.”

“But you know,” he added, “I can take my own, but I just felt like the staff were more or less caught off guard. All of us at the organization were good friends, and good teammates … and again, we felt somewhat, I think maybe discarded is the word.”

When asked to comment on the RIHA’s process of letting go the staff members, Bradley declined, adding that it would be inappropriate to comment on former employees.

Reprinted from Outer Banks Voice

A Raleigh attorney has filed a complaint in federal court on behalf of six out-of-state Dare County homeowners arguing that Dare County’s March 20 declaration restricting access to the county due to the COVID-19 pandemic is unconstitutional.

The April 7 complaint, filed by attorney Chuck Kitchen in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of North Carolina, argues that the county’s amendment to its March 16 State of Emergency declaration intrudes on the owners’ rights under the Privileges and Immunities Clause of the U.S. Constitution.

 “While the residents of Dare, Currituck, Hyde, and Tyrrell counties have the right to travel in Dare County, to engage in a common calling, and to obtain medical treatment in Dare County, the Plaintiffs are prohibited from engaging in these activities solely because they are residents of another State,” the complaint argued.

The complaint also asserts that the Privileges and Immunities Clause is applicable to the actions taken by local government, and that the March 20 declarations “could not survive under a strict scrutiny analysis” because the orders are not narrowly tailored to serve the government’s interest in public safety. The complaint also states that the county’s action “excessively intrude upon Plaintiffs’ rights … effectively banning them from engaging in conduct that is Constitutionally Protected.”

Since Dare County’s March 20 decision to bar access to nonresident property owners, an impassioned and often angry debate has erupted on social media, and elsewhere.

In remarks made at the April 6 meeting of the Dare Board of Commissioners, Chairman Bob Woodard said, “The decision to restrict visitors and nonresident property owners was not made lightly. We truly hope everyone will understand that this difficult decision was made to safeguard our citizens. These restrictions will save lives.”

Meanwhile, Dare County Sheriff’s Office has manned checkpoints into the county around the clock, dealing with some travelers who try to gain access to the county through strategies that range from securing temporary licenses to hiding in the trunks of cars.

Kitchen, who told the Voice he has since received calls from other nonresident Dare and Currituck property owners affected by the March 20 order, said that he did not know when the complaint would be scheduled to be heard. As of April 7, Dare County had not been served with the complaint.

“All of the (plaintiffs) own property in Dare County and are being kept from going to Dare County because they are not from one of the four counties Dare County lets in,” Kitchen said, referring to residents of Dare, Currituck, Tyrell and Hyde counties.

The compliant also argues that pursuant to North Carolina law, the March 20 declaration must be made through an ordinance rather than a resolution. “The Dare County State of Emergency Declaration is therefore an ultra vires act of the County as it was not lawfully enacted in accordance with a valid Emergency Management Ordinance,” it stated.

Dare County Public Information Officer Dorothy Hester confirmed that the county has not been served with the complaint and said that the county was unable to comment on possible litigation.

This story is provided courtesy of the Outer Banks Voice, a digital newspaper covering the Outer Banks. Coastal Review Online is partnering with the Voice to provide readers with more environmental and lifestyle stories of interest about our coast.

Reprinted from the Outer Banks Voice

A Camden County Superior Court judge has ruled that the Sea Breeze beach access in the Duck subdivision of Sand Dollar Shores is now within the town’s jurisdiction and belongs to the public.

The ruling marks a major win for Outer Banks business owner Bob Hovey and his wife Tanya, who filed a suit in August against the neighborhood’s homeowners’ association, arguing that the walkway was in the public trust.

Judge Lamott Wiggins on Feb. 14 granted the Hoveys a summary judgment without a trial. In his ruling, Wiggins stated, “It is declared that the “8’ pedestrian beach access easement … is an easement dedicated to the general public for the purpose of providing pedestrian access to the Atlantic Ocean beach held in the public trust by the State of North Carolina and is now in the jurisdiction of the Town of Duck.”

Hovey, who owns Duck Village Outfitters and has for years led a crusade for public beach access in the northern Outer Banks town, posted the news of the Feb. 14 ruling on his Facebook page on Feb. 29. “It’s been a long struggle, but the public can now enjoy the beach in Duck, N.C. on the Outer Banks,” Hovey wrote.

In an interview with the Voice, Hovey said that he hoped to work with the Town of Duck and the Sand Dollar Shores Homeowners’ Association (HOA) to continue to enhance beach access in the municipality. “Hopefully this will open the doors for some better opportunities for the public,” he said.

Hovey noted that he anticipated an appeal by the HOA, which would have to be filed within 30 days. Such an appeal process could take up to two years, but Hovey noted that “until the court says otherwise, it’s public at this point.”

Duck Town Manager Christopher Layton told the Voice that the town had signed a “consent order” with both parties saying that “we were going to abide by whatever the ruling is. This is an issue between two property owners.” According to Wiggins’ ruling, the town was a “nominal defendant” in the suit and did not participate in arguments, present evidence or materials.

Layton added that pending any appeal, the walkway is “a public access at this point,” noting that the ruling, while making the access public, does not obligate the town to do anything further at this point. The Voice was unable to reach Sand Dollar Shores Homeowners Association attorney Casey Varnell for comment.

The civil case was originally scheduled for Dare County Superior Court on Feb. 3, but it was continued to a later date in Camden County. The complaint argued that the Sand Dollar Shores Homeowners’ Association was “without authority to declare” the Sea Breeze beach access as common area for the exclusive use of its members and declared that the roads and easements in that neighborhood were dedicated to the public in 1981.

A staple in the Outer Banks surf community, Hovey filed the complaint in Dare County Superior Court several months after being arrested and charged with second-degree trespassing last May when attempting to use the access at the end of Sea Breeze Drive. But in light of the recent ruling, both Hovey and his attorney in that case, Angelea Norcross, said they were confident that charge would now be dropped.

“I feel confident they will make the right decision and dismiss the charge,” Norcross told the Voice. “(The walkway) was found to be public, there should be no doubt that he was not guilty of trespassing … Even if it is appealed, I still think there was reasonable doubt at the time Bob was arrested.”

A viral video of him being confronted by two angry homeowners at the time of the arrest helped to push the issue of public access in Duck onto the front burner. Soon after his arrest, Hovey launched a fundraising campaign that raised more than $13,000 toward legal efforts to secure public beach access in the municipality.

This story is provided courtesy of the Outer Banks Voice, a digital newspaper covering the Outer Banks. Coastal Review Online is partnering with the Voice to provide readers with more environmental and lifestyle stories of interest about our coast.

Reprinted from Outer Banks Voice

As Southern Shores continues to grapple with whether to move forward with a town-wide beach nourishment effort in 2022, the town council has agreed to begin investigating how it might fund such a project, which could carry a price tag of between $14 to $16 million.

While Southern Shores piggybacked on the north end of Kitty Hawk’s nourishment project in 2017 in order to pump sand onto about 1,500 feet of eroded beach to the east of Pelican Watch, such a town-wide project would be a first for the municipality.

During a work session Tuesday, the council directed town staff to coordinate with the Charlotte-based financial consultants DEC Associates to begin exploring options for creating municipal service districts, or MSDs, that would ultimately help the municipality foot the bill for widening town beaches.

Properties in the MSDs, likely those on and near the oceanfront, would be assessed a separate levy to help pay for the cost of the project. Town funds would not have to be raised until the 2021-22 fiscal year.

“If we are contemplating (beach nourishment) options or no options, that funding source is as important as anything else … what we are going to ask people in the audience here to potentially pay,” said Councilman Matthew Neal during the work session on beach nourishment options. “I am a newly elected individual and raising taxes is not my key thing.”

Newly elected Councilwoman Elizabeth Morey echoed Neal’s comment. “In order for us to make an informed decision, we need to have the people who pay the property taxes know what amount of payment they are looking at.”

The town, if it moves forward with sand-pumping efforts, is banking on Dare County to kick in at least $7.6 million from its Beach Nourishment Fund. That would leave Southern Shores needing to come up with $1,073,928 annually over the five years of the special obligation bonds. That translates to 7.82 cents of the property tax equivalent, DEC’s Andrew Carter told the council.

“This is your skin in the game,” he said, adding that neighboring towns have made the same contribution. Carter also noted that all the towns have raised the funds for their projects differently. “Some have multiple MSDs, some have taxed town wide or they’ve had a hybrid of those two methods.”

While Dare County Manager Bobby Outten acknowledged that the county does have between $7.5 and $8 million to contribute to a beach nourishment project somewhere in the county, he told the Outer Banks Voice that county commissioners haven’t yet to determine where that money will be earmarked.

Through its Beach Nourishment Fund, Dare County has helped to fund Southern Shore’s beach nourishment study. It also recently embarked on a similar study in Avon. “The board (of commissioners) hasn’t chosen where to spend the money yet,” Outten said, adding that once the study is completed in Avon, the board would have to prioritize. “We haven’t gotten that far yet.”

During the  meeting Tuesday, DEC’s Doug Carter explained that such a project involves a commitment to renourish every five years.

“Once you start it, it never ends,” he added. “You make your beach better, and in five years you replenish it again. Once you are in the business of beach nourishment, you are in the business of beach nourishment.”

The Jan. 21 session also included a presentation by APTIM Coastal Planning and Engineering’s Ken Wilson, whose firm has conducted the beach nourishment study for Southern Shores and assisted in the development of its beach management plan.

In addition to two nourishment options it had previously presented that included pumping sand onto the beach from Third Street south to the town line, Wilson outlined two additional options that would include nourishing the entire stretch of town’s shoreline.

If the town decides to proceed with one of those options, DEC’s Doug Carter encouraged council members “to sell the county on the project, and that it provides the greatest benefit to the community from an economic perspective.”

For his part, Outten noted that there are a few factors that could create urgency when it comes to a county commitment. “One is how quickly do they need it and how quickly are beaches eroding.”

Another possible factor involves consolidating projects. The towns of Duck and Kitty Hawk are also expected to do renourishment projects, possibly in 2022, and conducting neighboring projects at the same time can save millions of dollars on the mobilization process, he said.

Still, as the county manager noted, there won’t be any decisions on where the county’s nourishment money will go until the Avon study is complete, which will likely be sometime this spring. That means Southern Shores may have a little wiggle room before it decides whether it wants to move forward with beach nourishment and make its pitch to the county.

Reprinted from Outer Banks Voice

Lou Browning’s ease around wild creatures didn’t begin when he moved to Hatteras Island as a young adult in the late 1980s, although that was about the time when he first began helping friends at the National Park Service with sick and injured wildlife.

During his childhood years growing up on a small farm outside of Winston-Salem, aside from the usual assortment of farm animals, Browning found himself spending time around some pretty exotic creatures such as camels and orangutans, just to name a few.

“It was just dumb luck,” explained Browning of his early exposure to animals. “I had some pretty peculiar friends and was just lucky to be in the right place at the right time.”

Browning’s love for wildlife has remained steadfast and was a driving force for the Hatteras Islander in establishing the nonprofit Hatteras Island Wildlife Rehabilitation, Inc., a modest infirmary with flight pens tucked among the live oaks and pines of the maritime woods off N.C. 12 in Frisco.

Browning built the center after he mentored with a rehabilitator and was able to work toward earning a U.S. Fish and Wildlife Migratory Bird Rehabilitation Permit.

Now, nearly a decade after opening, Browning has retrieved and nursed back to health hundreds of wild animals, from orphaned osprey to injured diamond-backed terrapins. He’s assisted in retrieving countless cold-stunned sea turtles and has released innumerable birds back into the wild.

Browning responds to calls anywhere in northeastern North Carolina to the Virginia line but in the past few years, due to call volume and time restraints, he’s narrowed his focus to caring primarily for raptors such as owls, hawks and osprey. Where he was once receiving upward of 500 calls a year, now it’s down to a more manageable number – roughly 100.

Browning doesn’t get a salary for his work, which can consume between 20 to 60 hours a week, and depends on his own resources and donations. Sometimes, he’ll drive hours to receive injured or sick raptors, rehabilitate them, release them or if not, finding a permanent home for them in places like the Carolina Raptor Center or other educational facilities.

“This is just a hobby that has gone bad – gotten completely out of control,” he laughed.

For Browning, learning about rehabilitation is a never-ending journey, and he takes advantage of any training he can get by attending symposiums at veterinary schools and learning what he can from veterinarians.

Even when he may not have a lot of patients, Browning keeps busy. Recently, he helped the Network of Endangered Sea Turtles, or NEST, retrieve dozens of cold-stunned sea turtles off the beaches to take to the North Carolina Aquarium on Roanoke Island’s Sea Turtle Assistance and Rehabilitation, or STAR, Center. Volunteering with that effort is something he does every winter.

A trained falconer, Browning’s calming demeanor around wild animals has always seemed to come naturally. He knows how to approach wildlife in a nonthreatening, nonaggressive way, doesn’t flinch if he is bitten and is completely at ease, whether he has a carload full of cold-stunned turtles ready for transport or the talons of an owls resting on his forearm.

While many people enjoy rehabilitating what Browning refers to as “the warm and fuzzies,” such as deer and squirrels, he’s always been drawn to the raptors – the eagles, hawks, and owls.

“They are just magnificent creatures,” he said.

Browning’s current patients include a screech owl who was hit by a car in Moyock and suffered a fractured bone in its hand, a fractured femur and a trauma induced cataract, as well as a barred owl who was found lodged in the grill of a car after being hit just south of Jacksonville. Both are recovering well, with the barred owl expected to be released by Dec. 31.

The bulk of raptors that Browning takes in have been hit by cars or have lead or insecticide poisoning – or both.

“My aim is to give (the birds) every opportunity for release,” Browning said, noting that there are a series of tests they need to pass for them to be released back into the wild.

As for the barred owl stuck in the vehicle grill for hours, Browning said that “it’s just dumb luck” the bird will be able to be released soon after the ordeal it had been through. “It was simply beat up.”

After two weeks of rehabilitation with Browning, the owl was soaring through the air in the flight pen behind the infirmary this week – ready to return home any day now.

Reprinted from Outer Banks Voice

The second-degree trespassing case against Duck Village Outfitters owner Bob Hovey, who was arrested in late May for attempting to use the Sea Breeze beach access in Duck, has been continued until a higher court can rule on who ultimately owns the property Hovey was attempting to use in the Sand Dollar subdivision.

As far as the criminal case, Norcross said Hovey is pleading “not guilty” to the trespassing charge.

While Norcross said the majority of trespassing cases are cut and dry, she added that in this case, “There’s a genuine issue of fact and law as to whether that walkway to the beach is public or private. Since the Superior Court judge has to make that decision, having a criminal trial now is not expeditious…it’s sort of a waste of time.”

District Attorney Andrew Womble concurred with Norcross, telling the Voice that the continuance was “because there are issues that need to be ironed out on the civil side. We don’t want the criminal case to impact the civil case,” he asserted.

Hovey’s arrest and his subsequent crusade for public beach access in Duck has drawn considerable public attention and has since sparked a larger community debate over the absence of public beach access in the northern Outer Banks town. A viral video of Hovey being confronted by two angry homeowners as he attempted to use the beach access also helped put the issue on the front burner.

Reprinted from the Outer Banks Voice

Nags Head Mayor Ben Cahoon is among around 30 leaders from 13 coastal states heading to Washington, D.C., this week to urge lawmakers on Capitol Hill to maintain offshore drilling protections passed this summer by the House of Representatives.

The effort, coordinated by the conservation organization Oceana, comes as Congress prepares to hammer out details of the 2020 Fiscal Year spending plan. And it’s another chapter in a longstanding battle over offshore drilling that was re-ignited in early 2017 when newly elected President Donald Trump signed an executive order restarting the process of opening the Atlantic, and other waters, to offshore energy exploration.

The protections include two amendments to the Interior, Environment and Related Agencies funding bill that would block offshore drilling expansion during Fiscal Year 2020 in the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans, along with the eastern Gulf of Mexico. A third amendment would block funding for the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management to issue permits for seismic air gun blasting in the Atlantic Ocean. The goal of the coastal delegation is to lobby lawmakers to protect those amendments as they wind their way through the federal budget process.

“We’re here to send a message to protect those provisions as they go through [the budget process],” Cahoon said during a Nov. 12 interview. “This is the message of Nags Head. Offshore drilling is bad for us … we have a wonderful economy that supports the community and protects the environment.”

Cahoon and others in the delegation, which includes business leaders, conservation advocates and local and state elected officials, are scheduled to meet with lawmakers Wednesday and Thursday in anticipation of upcoming federal budget negotiations. The federal budget year begins Oct. 1, however Congress passed a continuing resolution in September that was signed by Trump to fund the government through Nov. 21.

The delegation’s visit also comes after a federal judge’s ruling this spring that shut down the Trump Administration’s plans to lift a ban on oil and gas drilling in the Arctic. The ruling caused Trump officials to sideline, at least temporarily, larger plans to expand drilling off the nation’s coasts.

Cahoon is joined on Capitol Hill by two other North Carolina officials – Beaufort Mayor Rett Newton and Carteret County Chamber of Commerce President Tom Kies, who also serves as president of the Business Alliance for Protecting the Atlantic Coast.

Cahoon said the group would be meeting with Sen. Thom Tillis, R-N.C., and also hoped to meet with Rep. Greg Murphy, R-N.C., who recently won the special election to succeed the late Walter Jones Jr. and who represents the Outer Banks.

“It’s a priority for me to meet (Murphy) and bring him the message that the Outer Banks is unified in opposition to offshore drilling,” said Cahoon.

An outspoken opponent of offshore drilling, Cahoon co-hosted a Mayoral Roundtable to Protect Our North Carolina Coast in May in which nearly a dozen mayors attended to show solidarity in their opposition.

At the event, North Carolina Secretary of the Department of Environment Quality Michael Regan cautioned those at the meeting not to let their guard down when it came to the campaign against offshore drilling. “We have to remain vigilant in opposition to the drilling off our coast and we have to be prepared to protect our communities,” he said.

In a Nov. 12 press release, Oceana also emphasized that the battle is far from over.

“For decades, Congress upheld offshore drilling moratoriums through the Interior-Environment funding bill,” the release stated. “While the Trump administration delayed plans to expand offshore drilling to new areas, the January 2018 proposal to open over 90 percent of federal waters to offshore drilling remains on the table.”

In a related matter, another Dare County mayor was traveling last week as part of an effort to oppose offshore drilling. Outgoing Kill Devil Hills Mayor Sheila Davies was invited to Nova Scotia by the Council of Canadians to speak about the town’s and county’s fight to oppose offshore drilling. That group, along with Nova Scotia Offshore Alliance, announced that a dozen municipal governments there were requesting an inquiry into offshore drilling along with a moratorium.

This story is provided courtesy of the Outer Banks Voice, a digital newspaper covering the Outer Banks. Coastal Review Online is partnering with the Voice to provide readers with more environmental and lifestyle stories of interest about our coast.

Reprinted from the Outer Banks Voice

NAGS HEAD — In the face of widespread opposition to the idea, the Nags Head Board of Commissioners unanimously voted Nov. 6 to remove a proposal from its meeting agenda that would have eliminated existing lot size requirements for larger homes, effectively ending further consideration of the measure.

“I don’t feel the board was ever in favor of large homes,” Commissioner Michael Siers said before making the motion to remove the item from the agenda. Commissioner Renee Cahoon seconded the motion.

Following the vote, Mayor Ben Cahoon told a crowded meeting room that the proposal was “a dead issue at this point.”

Both Siers and Renee Cahoon initially voiced support for the idea of eliminating of the town’s 16,000-square-foot lot requirement on homes of 3,500 square feet or larger, with Siers first bringing the concept to commissioners in June. Since then, however, the measure has failed to gain support from both the planning board and town staff and was met with significant opposition in the community.

In October, the Nags Head Commissioners voted to continue a public hearing on the matter until its Nov. 6 meeting, noting at the time that several commissioners were not present and that postponing action on the amendment would allow more time for the public to provide feedback.

At that October hearing, a number of residents spoke out against the concept, including Lauren Nelson, a local Realtor and resident of Nags Head. She told the commissioners the proposal was a “short-sighted plan that would move the development of Nags Head in the wrong direction.”

North Carolina Coastal Federation’s Michael Flynn argued at that same hearing that the amendment would increase density, adding to the volume of stormwater runoff into coastal waters.

Shortly before the Nov. 5 municipal election, the Voice interviewed the three candidates running for the Nags Head Board of Commissioners – Renee Cahoon and Kevin Brinkley, who both won, and Keith Sawyer, who lost in his bid. Both Brinkley and Sawyer said they opposed eliminating the lot size requirement and Cahoon indicated she had not received any public input supporting an effort to eliminate it.

A town staff memo had concluded that if the text amendment were to be adopted, the total number of lots not excluded from large residential dwellings due to lot size would jump from 697 to 3,204 in the C2, CR, R-1, R-2 and R-3 zoning districts alone.

The lot size issue in Nags Head surfaced as Outer Banks communities continued to grapple with how to regulate what are derisively referred to as “mega-mansions” along the oceanfront.

In 2015, the North Carolina General Assembly stripped local municipalities’ ability to regulate the size of homes by the number of bedrooms. Since then, municipalities have relied on a variety of strategies to maintain some control on the size of event homes, including square footage restrictions, setback and parking requirements and occupancy limitations.

This story is provided courtesy of the Outer Banks Voice, a digital newspaper covering the Outer Banks. Coastal Review Online is partnering with the Voice to provide readers with more environmental and lifestyle stories of interest about our coast.

Reprinted from Outer Banks Voice

Three months after his confrontation with homeowners over beach access in Duck went viral, Bob Hovey and his wife Tanya have filed a complaint in Dare County Superior Court against the Sand Dollar Shores Homeowners Association and the Town of Duck over their right to use the Sea Breeze beach access in that neighborhood.

The Aug. 26 complaint contends that the recorded subdivision plat illustrates that the roads and easements in that neighborhood were dedicated to the public by the owner in 1981 and accepted by the Dare County Board of Commissioners, and that the HOA was “without authority to declare” the access as “common area” for the use of its members in 2015.

The Hoveys also argued in the complaint that the town “has an affirmative duty to protect the public’s right to use said easement instead of enforcing the HOA’s claimed right of dedication.”

The access has long been a bone of contention between the HOA and the Hoveys, who have a home in the adjacent Osprey Ridge neighborhood on the west side of N.C. 12. Most recently, it was the scene of a May 29 confrontation between Bob Hovey and several HOA members that ended in Hovey’s arrest by Duck police for allegedly trespassing on private property.

Hovey, the owner of Duck Village Outfitters, posted a video of that altercation that attracted considerable attention and prompted a heated online debate about the lack of public beach access in the town. Duck officials have maintained throughout the controversy that the municipality doesn’t own or maintain any beach access locations, nor can it grant permission for their use.

The Duck Town Council has been slow to weigh in on the issue, deciding at its Aug. 7 meeting that it would wait until spring in order to consider public water access and community input on the matter during the process of developing its Coastal Area Management Act Land Use Plan.

The Hoveys have asserted that the most direct pedestrian route from their property in Osprey Ridge to the ocean has been to use the Sea Breeze Drive beach access and that it was used regularly by themselves and their renters in the past. That is until they and other property owners in Osprey Ridge received a letter in 2016 from attorneys representing the Sand Dollar Shores HOA.

“In order to access and use these amenities, you must be a dues-paying member or their guests,” the 2016 letter read. “We must urge you to make it clearly known to your tenants that they are not to use the beach access within Sand Dollar Shores.” The notification also stated that non-members were subject to “legal action” if they attempted to use the access.

The Aug. 26 complaint contends that as a result of that letter, the Hoveys’ rental management company, Brindley Beach, terminated its contract with them “and refused to include the Hovey residence in their rental management program for the 2016 summer rental season resulting in lost rental income.”

However, Hovey and others continued to use the access until Hovey’s arrest on May 29.

Following his arrest, Hovey launched a fundraising campaign that raised more than $13,000 toward legal efforts to secure public beach access in the municipality. Hovey has contended in the past that at least three of the beach accesses in Duck were deeded to the public long before the town was incorporated and remain in the public trust.

This isn’t the first time Hovey has taken his case to court. In 2017, he argued similar points in a complaint that was ultimately dismissed without prejudice. However, the issue was never resolved. As for his second-degree trespassing charge, Hovey’s court appearance has been postponed until October. He says he intends to plead not guilty to the charge.

Attorneys representing Sand Dollar Shores HOA and Hovey could not be reached as of press time. Duck Public Relations Director Christian Legner declined to comment on Hovey’s Aug. 26 complaint.

Reprinted from Outer Banks Voice

MANTEO — Award-winning filmmaker and Manteo High School alumnus Tyler Nilson grew up in Colington, where he spent countless days exploring the island and listening to the stories of the locals.

Years later, those tales and the people who told them have become an integral part of Nilson’s work, including his most recent adventure flick, “The Peanut Butter Falcon,” which features a star-studded cast that includes Shia LaBeouf and Dakota Johnson.

“The truth is, I grew up in the greatest place in the world you could raise a kid, and at the greatest time … and (the Outer Banks) is a community of people I love and care about so deeply,” said the 37-year-old Nilson, who, along with co-director Michael Schwartz, wrote and directed the modern-day Mark Twain film that shares the story of a young man with Down syndrome who runs away from his life at a retirement home to fulfill his dream of being a professional wrestler.

The film debuted in March at the South by Southwest Film Festival and earned the festival’s Audience Award for Narrative Spotlight. Although the footage was shot on the Savannah, Georgia, delta. Nilson said “The Peanut Butter Falcon” and its characters are based around the shores where he grew up and the community that he said raised him.

“It’s an Outer Banks story,” he said, adding that he plans to have a local screening that will be “a raucous OBX premier where no one wears shoes.”

“I grew up during a time when Colington people told great stories,” said Nilson, who originally wanted to make surf films after graduating from Manteo High School in 2000. He eventually drove out to Los Angeles in 2006 in his pickup truck with $800 in his pocket, lived out of his truck for a year, and then became a successful hand model before breaking into filmmaking.

“The Peanut Butter Falcon” follows Nilson’s 2015 short film “The Moped Diaries,” which was featured in a number of film festivals, that was shot on the Outer Banks with a cast comprised entirely of locals. That film follows a young boy growing up on a small island in North Carolina and his struggle with change when a new bridge is built connecting the island to the mainland.

“So many of the people (from the Outer Banks) made their way into my stories,” he said. “All the stories in ‘Peanut Butter Falcon,’ I don’t feel like they are mine.” Naming locals like restaurateur Mike Kelly, ocean rescue lifeguard David Elder and Wanchese fisherman Winkie Silver, Nilson said, “I just stole all of their stories to make a movie with one long narrative.”

“This movie is perfection.” See #ThePeanutButterFalcon now in select cities, everywhere August 23. Get tickets: https://t.co/cpYLmtFeO3 pic.twitter.com/loCaU6gmo7

— The Peanut Butter Falcon (@tpbfalcon) August 20, 2019

The film is infused with local touches like North Carolina license plates, boats with names like Colington, references to local geography and characters sporting Outer Banks baseball hats. It even includes some old Outer Banks reference points, such as the former Britthaven nursing home, which is now Peak Resources.

The idea for “The Peanut Butter Falcon,” which boasts an impressive cast of actors, including Shia LaBeouf, John Hawkes, Dakota Johnson, Bruce Dern and Thomas Hadden Church, was conceived while Nilson and Schwartz were working at a camp for disabled artists. There they met Zack Gottsagen, an inspiring young actor with Down syndrome who was eager to make it to the big screen.

“We were cut from the same cloth,” Nilson recalled of Gottsagen. “We hit it off right away.”

Nilson credited the locals and their support for not only making “The Moped Diaries” possible, but also “The Peanut Butter Falcon.” He notes that both films wouldn’t have happened without the help of Wanchese’s Nancy and Winkie Silver, who let Nilson and Schwartz use their home, family, props and cars. “(Nancy) even sewed the sheet for the raft,” said Nilson, referring to a major prop in his recent film.

Despite the time that has passed, the Outer Banks undoubtedly has stayed with Tyler in the 13 years since he moved to the West Coast. He still considers the month he spends here each summer as “coming home.”

In an effort to support local graduates who may not be interested in the traditional college path, Nilson set up an annual scholarship he calls, “The World’s Greatest Scholarship in the Universe Scholarship for Dare County, but not Hatteras or Currituck.”

The monetary award, he added, “is as much as we feel your dream needs … anywhere from infinity dollars to two dollars.”

When it comes to the Outer Banks and his films’ connections to it, Nilson remains grateful and loyal to the place he calls home.

“The Outer Banks gave me a real sense of community. It’s my family … and I’m the son of all those people. That stretch of sand has some really beautiful individuals and everyone is kind of their own outlaw there. It was just a really magical place to grow up.”

Reprinted from Outer Banks Voice

MANTEO — The North Carolina General Assembly unanimously passed legislation July 11 that places Shallowbag Bay within the town’s corporate limits here, giving the municipality authority to adopt and enforce ordinances regulating the scenic waters that wrap around the downtown district on Roanoke Island.

For the town, that means it will now have jurisdiction over anchoring and mooring of vessels as well as the ability to better monitor and act on issues such as derelict boats, which plagued the municipality several years ago when two boats were left abandoned and unclaimed in nearby waters – one along the downtown’s waterfront and the other in nearby Doughs Creek.

The legislation, House Bill 429, was requested by town officials and introduced by Rep. Bobby Hanig, R-Dare. It was part of a bill that also authorized Hyde County to regulate the navigable waters within Silver Lake on Ocracoke Island.

For Manteo’s part, the bill identified the waters from the northern tip of Ballast Point extending northwest to the southern tip of Baum Point, along with Doughs and Scarboro creeks, as part of the town’s corporate limits.

Mayor Bobby Owens said that when the two abandoned boats became an unsightly part of the landscape back in 2017, some residents started a petition to have the boats removed.

“They found out it wasn’t that easy. You don’t just go get someone to move a boat, and it was still hard because these were public waters,” the mayor noted.

Because the boats were unclaimed, and the state’s Wildlife Resources Commission and Marine Patrol monitored and patrolled the waters extending three miles from shore, town officials found themselves having to jump through a number of bureaucratic hoops to have the vessels removed.

Plus, Owens noted, “If a boat is adrift, it’s fairly easy to move. If it sinks, it’s the hardest thing to move.” It’s also rather costly, town officials discovered at the time.

The predicament prompted the town to seek the local bill. “With this legislation, we will be able to move a boat much easier, and keep the beauty as best we can,” the mayor said.

Town manager James Ayers said that derelict and abandoned boats can not only cause damage to the environment, but also present hazards to boaters and other users of Shallowbag Bay. He noted that the regulatory hurdles in 2017 caused months of delays.

“But the new law will allow the town to streamline the process by which people and the environment can be protected from such hazards,” he said.

With Shallowbag Bay now under the town’s jurisdiction, the municipality will also be able to adopt regulations addressing the types of activities permitted, speed zones, no-wake zones and the placement of navigational aids.

Ayers said the development of regulations will include a robust community engagement effort.

“The next step is to listen to the community and seek feedback,” noted Ayers.

Among the opportunities to provide public input will be the regularly scheduled meetings of the Manteo Board of Commissioners on Sept. 4 and Sept. 18. The public is also being encouraged to send ideas and suggestions to a special email address at shallowbagbayregulations@manteonc.gov.

Reprinted from Outer Banks Sentinel

As Dare County municipalities try to address concerns about the proliferation of “mega-houses” and their impact on the character and environment of beach communities, the town councils in both Southern Shores and Duck met last week to explore new approaches to the issue.

During a Nov. 7 special meeting called in response to SAGA Construction’s plan to build two 12-bedroom homes on the oceanfront, the Southern Shores Town Council unanimously directed staff to draft a zoning text amendment that would create a residential overlay district encompassing properties east of N.C. 12 and those abutting the highway to the west. The proposal would require stricter development standards in the district based on the size of homes.

Meeting on the same day, the Duck Town Council considered a proposal by the planning board to develop town standards that tie allowable septic capacity to lot size.

They also scheduled for Dec. 5 a public hearing on a draft ordinance that would set a tiered approach to regulating house size based on lot size, with a maximum allowable home size of 7,000 square feet.

In the past, Dare County towns relied on regulating the occupancy and size of rental properties by placing limits on the number of allowable bedrooms. But in 2015, the North Carolina General Assembly prohibited them from doing that. The move left municipalities grappling with how to best control the homes that have become a lucrative part of the resort area’s rental business.

In Southern Shores, town officials last week opted to add an additional layer of regulation in the overlay district, along with the town wide cap of 6,000 square feet of allowable living space that has been in place since 2016. If ultimately adopted by the council, the proposal would place stricter development standards on homes in the overlay district based on size.

For example, homes that are more than 4,000 but less than 6,000 square feet must adhere to a 25 percent lot coverage limit and 28-foot building height, while those that fall below that square footage have a little more leeway, with a 30 percent lot coverage requirement and height limit of 35 feet. The structure of other standards relating to building setbacks, trash receptacles and landscape buffering is similar in nature.

As for parking, all spaces in the overlay district must be 10 by 20 feet and adjacent to a two-way drive aisle that is a minimum of 18 feet wide.

At last week’s Duck Town Council meeting, members considered a recommendation by the Duck Planning Board to regulate occupancy by establishing town standards for the capacity of septic systems based on lot sizes. While not taking action on that plan, they opted to resurrect a proposal that regulates house size based on lot size.

In the end, the council voted 4-1 — with Mayor Don Kingston casting the dissenting vote — to set a public hearing for Dec. 5 in order to give property owners and residents another chance to weigh in on an ordinance that had been the subject of a September public hearing, before the council sent the plan back to the planning board for tweaking.

Under this tiered proposal, lots of 9,999 square feet or less could have a house with a maximum of 3,500 square feet. On the other end of the spectrum, lots of 25,000 or more square feet could have a house that was up to 7,000 square feet. While larger residences would be allowed if higher development standards were met, no dwellings could exceed the overall 7,000-square-foot cap.

Several council members, including Jon Britt, voiced concern over regulating house size as opposed to occupancy and cited that it penalized large lot owners. “That is not why we went down this road,” Britt told fellow council members. “We went down this road because of concern about density and too many bedrooms.”

This story is provided courtesy of the Outer Banks Sentinel, a weekly Dare County newspaper that is published in print every Wednesday and headquartered at 2910 South Croatan Highway, Nags Head. Aside from the print paper, the Sentinel also produces a continually updated digital version at www.obsentinel.com.

Reprinted from Outer Banks Sentinel

In a move that comes as no surprise, the Nags Head Board of Commissioners unanimously voted on May 2 to move the town’s beach nourishment project back to 2019 in order to avoid the dramatically higher costs of a project this summer.

The lowest bidder, Great Lakes Dredge & Dock, provided an estimate of approximately $52 million for a 2018 project, about $16 million more than its 2019 price tag to pump the 3.73 million cubic yards of sand onto the 10-mile stretch of beach from Milepost 11 to the southern town line.

Town Manger Cliff Ogburn said the delay boiled down to dollars. “The permits were in hand, the bids went out on time,” he said during the commissioners’ meeting. “The proposals, economically, just did not come back. Had they come back at the 2019 prices, we could be nourishing in 2018.”

Town officials went into high gear last year in an effort to get permitting and funding in place for a 2018 start date, but when bids came in earlier this spring, the town reconsidered moving forward this year.

The project, aimed at replenishing the sand along the oceanfront that has been depleted since the last nourishment project in 2011 as well as from Hurricane Matthew, is being funded through municipal, county and federal sources.

The town’s portion of the project — 2.3 million cubic yards — will cost approximately $22.2 million and be financed equally between municipal bonds and the county’s Beach Nourishment Fund. The town is also eligible for roughly $16 million in FEMA funding for about 1.43 million cubic yards of sand determined to have been lost during Hurricane Matthew in 2016.

Ogburn said he expects the town to enter into a contract with Great Lakes in June of this year for the 2019 project, which is expected to get underway beginning May 1 and extend to the end of next year.

As for FEMA funding, Ogburn said that the federal agency prefers to appropriate funds closer to construction. “We are still hoping we can obligate the funds, otherwise we will have to rebid (for that portion),” he later told the Sentinel.

Commissioners Renee Cahoon and Webb Fuller broached the topic of expanding the town’s Municipal Service Districts (MSDs), the areas where property owners are required to pay an additional tax earmarked toward the project’s debt payment.

“As we go through the budget process, I would hope we could take a look at expanding the MSDs,” Cahoon told the board. “I think there are areas of the town that are more dependent on beach nourishment than other areas, as they are only accessed by one road.”

Cahoon said she was specifically speaking of properties along Old Oregon Inlet Road, adding that, “This is more of a long-term picture, not just project by project.”

Fuller echoed Cahoon, saying that varying tax rates within the existing MSDs should also be considered, and is “something I think we should look at as quickly as possible.”

While Ogburn said that there would likely not be time to create new MSDs to help offset costs of the 2019 project, adjusting tax rates within existing districts might be possible.

For his part, Commissioner Michael Siers suggested that sharing some of the costs with visitors, in the form of a retail sales tax, also be considered to “offset the homeowners from having to pay all of that.”

This story is provided courtesy of the Outer Banks Sentinel, a weekly Dare County newspaper that is published in print every Wednesday and headquartered at 2910 South Croatan Highway, Nags Head. Aside from the print paper, the Sentinel also produces a continually updated digital version at www.obsentinel.com.

Reprinted From the Outer Banks Sentinel

The latest efforts to televise Manteo Board of Commissioners meetings stalled on Wednesday, March 7, after Commissioner Eddie Mann’s motion to air the meetings on the local government access channel failed to get a second.

Mann, along with Mayor Bobby Owens, had been leading the most recent push to televise the board meetings. Manteo is the only town in Dare County that does not air its meetings on the public access channel known as CURRENT TV. Dare County also televises its board of commissioners meetings.

Mann said 24 citizens contacted him in some form to voice their support of televising the meetings, while one was opposed to it.

In Manteo, the mayor does not cast a vote unless there is a tie vote among commissioners. Owens, when elected last November, indicated that airing commissioners’ meetings was a priority.

In an interview with the Sentinel last week, Commissioner Christine Walker told the Sentinel, “I feel like the majority of the board speaks their minds and in you put it on video, I think it is going to take that all away.”

Town officials had estimated that it would cost the municipality roughly $5,500 a year to have the meetings televised.

This story is provided courtesy of the Outer Banks Sentinel, a weekly Dare County newspaper that is published in print every Wednesday and headquartered at 2910 South Croatan Highway, Nags Head. Aside from the print paper, the Sentinel also produces a continually updated digital version at www.obsentinel.com.

Reprinted from the Outer Banks Voice

KILL DEVIL HILLS — High pressure sitting on top of the Outer Banks for much of the summer may be why a peculiar and eye-catching ocean dweller has made an appearance along the shores of area beaches.

Blue buttons, or porpita porpita, have been seen drifting in the surf zone and washing up, attracting the attention of beachgoers because of their bright color and unique shape.

Brian Dorn, director of operations and husbandry at the N.C. Aquarium on Roanoke Island, said blue buttons are actually not jellyfish but a colony of hydroids that are most closely related to the Portuguese man o’ war.

Blue buttons are usually found offshore in tropical waters of the Atlantic Ocean and while it’s not unheard of, they are not regular visitors to Outer Banks waters.

About an inch in diameter, blue buttons have two parts — the float in the center, which is a small round disk with a mouth underneath, and the blue and purple hydroids, which have small stinging cells along them.

The stinging cells are used to catch food, but don’t deliver a sting that can be felt by people who may come in contact with them, Dorn said. They may cause some skin irritation, however.

The weather the Outer Banks has experienced this summer coupled with the infrequent northeasterly winds, Gulf Stream waters are nearly upon us and occasionally bring with them unusual dwellers like blue buttons, said David Elder,  director of Kill Devil Hills’ Ocean Rescue.

“They’re normally offshore but occasionally the ocean will show us stuff like this and we have a chance to learn more,” he noted. “They’re not uncommon, but they are uncommon to our beach patrons. They’re neat to see.”

Dorn said blue buttons can survive in a lot of different areas and are usually found where two currents are converging. Like jellyfish, blue buttons are propelled by the wind and ocean currents.

Chad Motz, director of Nags Head’s Ocean Rescue, said there were a good number of blue buttons washing up on Nags Head beaches as well. He said the brightly-colored creatures are not a common sight on his beaches, either.

Blue buttons have also been spotted on Bogue Banks beaches in Carteret County.

Reprinted from the Outer Banks Voice

KITTY HAWK — Swarming bugs known as “fuzzy bills” or “blind mosquitoes” have shown up as unwanted guests in some regions of the Outer Banks, and residents and tourists have been closing doors, turning off lights and doing whatever it takes to keep them at bay.

But regardless of the measures, they are making some people downright miserable, and Carl Walker, Dare County’s vector control supervisor, is hearing all about it.

“I’ve received about 25 calls this week alone,” Walker said Friday, adding that in his more than 10 years as supervisor he’s never seen such an infestation.

Called midges, they are common around coastal areas but don’t bite or carry disease.

“I’ve had people tell me they have had to scoop buckets of these out of pools and others said they are so thick that they couldn’t go outside and that they were breathing them in,” Walker said.

He said the majority of complaints have been from Southern Shores, Kitty Hawk and Kill Devil Hills, particularly from west side neighborhoods. Walker added that the midges apparently haven’t been as much of a nuisance in Nags Head and further south and he wasn’t sure why.

Walker also said he’s heard the insects are not only bugging people out locally, but across the state as well.

“We’ve had good years and bad years, but this has been one of the worst,” he said. “The good news is they don’t bite, so it’s really out of our hands. It’s not our job to take care of them. I really don’t know what the answer is for those who are having trouble with them.”

One vacationer reported that the midges attacked their rental home every night beginning around 8 p.m. “We can’t even go outside and enjoy the outdoor decking at night and have to vacuum up hundreds of these pests if we open the door just for a brief second to get something from outside,” the vacationer wrote in a comment on the Outer Banks Voice website.

There is no shortage of videos on YouTube of midge swarms. This is one of a nice collection taken by an apparent admirer on Beaver Island, the largest island in Lake Michigan.

While some restaurants with outdoor seating have struggled with the recent infestation, Randolph Sprinkle, co-owner of Salt Box Café on Colington Road, said he has been lucky because the café has a screened-in porch.

“Three days ago we had gigantic swarms of them,” said Sprinkle, adding that lights seem to attract the bugs the most. “We’ve been turning out lights whenever we can and using fans because they are weak flyers. I can tell you that they are very annoying to walk through.”

Along with his “fuzzy bill tactics,” the somewhat cooler and windier weather has seemed to help thin out the swarms, he said.

Reprinted from the Outer Banks Voice

NAGS HEAD — Portuguese man-of-wars were showing up on Outer Banks beaches last week, likely due to strong and sustained easterly winds blowing onshore for well over a week.

Between 20 and 30 of the venomous Gulf Stream dwellers have washed up in Corolla, and handfuls have sporadically been spotted on beaches south into Nags Head.

While experts say it is infrequent these animals are blown this far north, it’s not unheard of.

Ocean rescue directors report that most of the animals have few stinging tentacles — if any — by the time they reach the beach.

“It’s not something we are alarmed about, but it gives us the opportunity to inform,” said David Elder of Kill Devil Hills Ocean Rescue. “Anytime we have a wind onshore for many days, we may see these come up. They are very Gulf Stream specific. We may see them every year. It isn’t an acute problem, nor is it chronic.”

But, he added, “We know that in nature, anything that is very brightly colored may be warning us to stay away.”

Corolla Ocean Rescue Deputy Chief Scott Simpson said he is using the opportunity as a teaching point for patrons as well as lifeguards. “We want to keep them up-to-date as far as what the first-aid response is in regard to stings and what the organism is.”

Illustration: The (N.Y.) Museum of Natural History

The Portuguese man-of-war is not actually a jellyfish, but a siphonophore — an animal made up of a colony of organisms working together and dependent on each other. The balloon part, which sits on top of the water, acts as a sail and is blown in whatever direction the winds are going, said Terri Kirby Hathaway, a marine education specialist with North Carolina Sea Grant.

Hathaway said a southeasterly wind can also blow in other Gulf Stream animals, such as a relative of the man-of-war, the blue button, and sea slugs.

“It’s not common to see the Portuguese man-of-war, but I’ve lived here for 30 years and I’ve seen them before,” Hathaway said, adding that the animals are very venomous. Even the tentacles that break off can deliver a powerful sting.

Mirek Dabrowski of Surf Rescue, which covers Duck, Southern Shores and the National Park Service beaches, said it’s typical to get one or two of the animals a summer, but the quantity recently has been unusual.

Also called bluebottles, the man-of-war’s stinging tentacles are typically 30 feet long.

Pat Raves, education curator at the N.C. Aquarium on Roanoke Island, said even dead, man-of-wars can pack a powerful punch and cautions to leave them alone. “If you see one, you definitely need to stay away.”

Elder said the brightly-colored blue buttons, organisms that are about the size of a quarter, have been showing up as well.

Unlike its relative, they do not have a powerful sting and resemble buoyant circular disks with tentacles around the edges. They, too, inhabit Gulf Stream waters.

The recent beach swell has also brought ashore species of Gulf Stream fish and significant amounts of Sargassum weed, large brown seaweed common in waters off North Carolina. The seaweed floats in island-like masses offshore. When washed onto the beach, it aids in beach accretion. Sargassum is home to a variety of sea life, including tiny crabs, shrimp, fish and juvenile sea turtles.

If stung, consensus among experts is to remove tentacle remnants with a gloved hand or credit card, and rinse the affected area with seawater. Vinegar is not recommended. Ice can reduce swelling and a benzocaine topical anesthetic can treat pain. If a person shows any signs of an allergic reaction or worsening condition, seek medical attention immediately.

A sting from a Portuguese man-of-war can cause extreme pain for several hours, and lesions and scarring could result. But the sting is rarely fatal.

The wind along the Outer Banks shifted to the southwest beginning on Saturday and continued for several days. The influx of man-of-war was blown offshore again.

Reprinted from the Outer Banks Voice

MANTEO — With construction well underway, the N.C. Aquarium on Roanoke Island is expected to open its improved Sea Turtle Assistance and Rehabilitation Center, or STAR, sometime in mid-2014, according to aquarium curator Christian Legner.

The state Department of Environment and Natural Resources is paying for the 3,000-square-foot center, which is being built in partnership with the Network for Endangered Sea Turtles, or N.E.S.T. Aquarium officials say they hope to occupy STAR next month to begin outfitting it for operation.

A turtle receives treatment at a rehabilitation center at a N.C. Aquarium. Photo: N.C. Aquariums

Legner said the facility should be up and running no later than early summer.

It will outshine the current turtle rehab center. It will have more space and state-of-the-art exhibits that will engage the public in the rehabilitation process. Currently, aquarium workers and N.E.S.T. volunteers operate out of a small outbuilding at the aquarium site that Legner says is about three times smaller than the building now under construction.

“We just keep taking turtles until we are full to the brim,” Legner said. “Last year, we had more than 70 turtles.”

When the facility becomes overcrowded, turtles are shipped to other rehab centers in the state. The new facility will significantly reduce the need to transport turtles out of the area, which reduces the stress on the animals during their rehabilitation.

STAR will include key equipment to allow veterinarians to treat the turtles on-site, more treatment space and increased options for housing the turtles, Legner said. It is being built off the current Operation Sea Turtle Rescue exhibit on the sound side of the aquarium and will include a separate treatment exam room with a large window for public viewing.

The current facility is often overcrowded.

LCD screens will also be installed to post information for visitors about current patients.

The new center also will feature technology to enable N.E.S.T. volunteers and aquarium staff to answer questions from visitors as they work on the turtles.

The new center will provide three times more space than the area now being used. Photo: N.C. Aquarium on Roanoke Island

“There will be a lot of new graphics and interactive exhibits for the public,” Legner said.

The aquarium and N.E.S.T. will continue to work together to respond and treat cold-stunned turtles in the winter months and injured or sick turtles throughout the year. Once turtles are treated by a veterinarian, they are transported to the rehab center until they are healthy enough to be released into the ocean.

The new facility will include holding tanks for recuperating turtles, food preparation areas, storage space and a large medical treatment room. An advanced filtration system in the tanks will give caregivers the opportunity to provide turtles with better care, according to Legner.

A strong education component will be included in the new facility with the large window and interactive displays.

“Visitors will now get a behind-the-scenes look at us working with the turtles,” Legner said.

N.E.S.T. partners with the aquarium by providing frontline response to turtles in distress as well as funding veterinary bills and volunteering seven days a week at the turtle rehabilitation center. The aquarium foots the bill for room and board as well as some medical expenses and staffing, Legner said.

Reprinted from the Outer Banks Voice

The new $32 million campus of the Coastal Studies Institute sits on 217 acres.

SKYCO — The University of North Carolina’s Coastal Studies Institute is slated to open the doors to its Outer Banks Campus in November, finally giving the institute a home to continue the research and education programs it has been conducting in Dare County since 2003.

Nancy White, the institute’s director, said construction of the $32 million facility on N.C. 345 in Skyco is expected to be completed in the next couple of weeks.

Faculty and staff will move in during November, with a dedication of the buildings likely sometime in December.

The campus sits on 217 acres of mostly marshland. A 60,000-square-foot research building with classrooms and a lab is constructed on about 35 acres of upland, along with a 16,000-square-foot marine operations building.

The research institute has had a presence in Manteo and Nags Head for nearly a decade and conducts about $6 million in grant-funded research and education annually in coastal North Carolina, White said.

The institute was started in Dare County to fill a research gap in northeastern North Carolina, particularly as it relates to coastal development and its pressure on natural resources. Faculty and staff have been operating out of office space in Manteo and a makeshift lab in Nags Head.

The new campus will be one of three other university-based marine science research facilities strategically located along the N.C. coast.

Nancy White

The institute, which partners with five state universities, focuses on four main areas of research: estuarine ecology and human health, coastal engineering and ocean energy, public policy and coastal sustainability and maritime heritage.

Because of budget shortfalls, White said, initial plans for an auditorium and dormitories have been put on hold.

“We are still pursuing those projects,” she said, adding that the institute hoped to gather enough money over the next several years through state and private funding.

The Skyco campus will provide a venue for seminars, workshops and intensive research.

White said the community will see the effects of the institute’s work increase, particularly in areas of shoreline erosion, maritime research and education.

The institute has started a number of programs in K-12 schools in northeastern North Carolina, including estuarine ecology and aquaculture programs at Cape Hatteras Secondary School, the Build an Observation Buoy program to study water quality and the constructed wetlands project at Manteo High School. The institute was also instrumental in getting local high schools involved in the Remotely Operated Vehicle Workshop and Competition, White said.

While the institute has worked in supporting curriculum at local schools in the past, the new facility will enhance field-based learning opportunities, she added.

Also, White said, the institute’s top-rated dive program will now be complemented with the addition of the advanced media lab at the facility with high-resolution videography capabilities. The lab will allow laypeople to get a first-hand look at shipwrecks and other underwater videography.