WILMINGTON — They’ve been at it for 90 years now, and like the gardens they’ve planted and supported through those years, the Cape Fear Garden Club continues to grow. From 12 charter members in 1925, the club is now comprised of just over 400 members, including 33 emeritus members, who must either be 80 years old or have been members of the club for 40 years.

The club’s reach has grown, as well. In 1925, its 12 charter members did a lot of the “cultivation of flowers, shrubs and trees” work themselves. These days, the club raises money to support the work of others — scholarship grants to the University of North Carolina Wilmington and Cape Fear Community College, for example, along with conservation efforts at Battery Island and at a National Audubon Society bird sanctuary. In 2014, the club gave over $80,000 in grants to 26 local organizations.

“They have a grant program that funds beautification, education and stewardship,” said Ted Wilgis, an education coordinator for the N.C. Coastal Federation. The federation has received some small grants from the club.

“Their funding is wonderful because it’s an easy grant,” he added. “It doesn’t require matching funds and theirs can be used as matching funds for other grants.”

The singular sources of funding for these grants are the annual Cape Fear Garden Club Azalea Garden Tour and the N.C. Azalea Festival. The festival, held last week, has been going on for 68 years. The garden tour held with the festival is six years younger.

“To promote the cultivation of flowers, shrubs, and trees and thereby to beautify the homes, streets, and highways of the community, that this beauty may enrich the lives of all.”

Cape Fear Garden Club Objective (circa 1925)

The Cape Fear Garden Club, the oldest in the state and reportedly the second-largest in the country among those affiliated with the National Garden Clubs, had been in existence for 23 years when the Azalea Festival began in 1948. Five years later, the Garden Club assumed full responsibility for the garden tours.

“The young club was already on location, playing midwife, when the festival idea was birthed at Greenfield Lake,” wrote Susan Taylor Block, local author of the definitive history of the club, the festival and the garden tours – Belles and Blooms: Cape Fear Garden Club and the North Carolina Azalea Festival. “They intersect and re-intersect through time like the tendrils of a morning glory vine, climbing a white picket fence.”

Block details the formation of the garden club, which started in 1923, as a literary round table known as the Tuesday Book Club. In January 1925, though, three of its members decided that they’d rather discuss gardening instead of books and proposed a change in the club’s purpose. They met for an organizational meeting a month later. They wrote the new club’s objective, which would later expanded to include the preservation of native birds; chose the yellow jesamine as the club’s official flower; and received an official gavel carved from The Dram Tree, a local landmark that grew in the Cape Fear River,  “watery fork in the road to sailors going either to Brunswick Town or to Wilmington.”

“Among their early objectives was the idea of a club without dues,” noted Elaine Henson, the club’s historian and a past president, “although that one didn’t last.”

Mrs. E.K. Bryant in the early 1930s planted the seed of garden touring when she opened her garden at 11 South Fifth Ave. for the first known Cape Fear Garden Club tour. The tour was open to members only, but according to Taylor, “the concept took root.”

In May of 1933, the club held its first flower show, and in 1939, hosted a Camellia Festival in the Great Hall of St. James Church, that, Taylor notes in her book, “spawned annual encores.”

The final piece of the puzzle was Greenfield Lake. As the Garden Club, in its early years, “continued to consider Wilmington its personal landscaping project,” Greenfield was originally part of a plantation owned by a Dr. Samuel Green. The lake went through several owners before it became known as McIlhenny’s Pond, where, in the early 1900s, rowboats were rented to young men, “courting their sweethearts among the water lilies and cypress trees.”

“Greenfield lovers and lovers of Greenfield were horrified when a carnival purchased the lake,” Block wrote, “and walled it off with a high board fence.”

In the city election of 1925, voters approved $65,000 to buy Greenfield Lake. Though the onset of the Great Depression, as Block described it, “made bread more important than blossoms,” improvements to the lake continued, albeit slowly.

“We helped plant azaleas there,” said Henson. “It was a WPA (Works Project Administration) project; our very first. Later, about 1938 or so, we helped improve the road (around the lake), and the landscaping. Our members donated azaleas from their own gardens.”

World War II and its aftermath when 30,000 servicemen and shipyard workers left the city would further interrupt improvements around the lake. In 1947, however, looking to promote tourism at the lake, Hugh Morton and Dr. Houston Moore began to plan a festival that would be a small affair with a parade, a dance and a flower show.

Members of the Cape Fear Garden Club were present at the early organizational meetings and became among the 36 ‘Incorporators of the Azalea Festival.’ Others included the Wilmington Chamber of Commerce, Airlie, Orton Plantation, various civic clubs, several fraternal organizations and the Homeowners Association of South Third Street.

This year’s festival started at Greenfield Lake’s Hugh Morton Amphitheater on Friday and featured 13 private and public gardens. “It takes a total of about 300 people to do that,” said Henson, adding club members work in shifts throughout the tour schedule.

The New Hanover County Arboretum is among the organizations that benefits from the activities of the Cape Fear Garden Club. The recipient of a $1,400 grant in 2014, the arboretum, according to Director Al Hight, affords club members an opportunity “to hang out in a place that’s not concrete and asphalt.”

“They have a long history of working with us, supporting the (arboretum) since its inception in the ‘80s,” he said, “awarding us grants for different projects.”

The club, he says, plays a community-unifying role.  “They’re gardeners,” Hight said, “but they’re also a part of the social fabric of the community. It’s a powerful group of people, and they make things happen.”

WRIGHTSVILLE BEACH — Christmas is all about recycling. The stories have been recycled for thousands of years. The traditions, including trees and decorations, have been passed down to us from the Middle Ages and beyond.

In November, the folks at N.C. Coastal Federation, in keeping with this fine tradition of Christmas recycling, announced that they would inaugurate the first Christmas season in their new headquarters here by inviting people to recycle nautical-themed items to decorate the building at the Fred and Alice Stanback Education Center.

The staff met, educator Ted Wilgis told a local newspaper, and decided to invite the community to decorate the building and “continue the theme of repurposing, reusing and recycling.”

Decorating festivities began on Monday, Dec. 1. The outside of the building was strung with garland made of nautical line donated by Atlantic Diving and Marine Contractors. The company in 2013 helped remodel the relocated Palmgren-O’Quinn that became the federation office in the Historic Square.

“We called them and they found this rope,” said Mike Giles, a federation coastal advocate. “It was originally used on the Liberty ships during the war. They donated 200 feet of it and had to load it with a forklift.”

Federation staff cleaned the line a bit, and secured it to the railings on the second-floor exterior of the building. The Harbor Island Garden Club contributed wreaths, and federation board member David Paynter and others added evergreen trimmings from recent work on his own property.

Giles takes this re-purposing stuff very seriously, as evidenced by his own desk at the center, which is a made out of a used door, both its knobs still in place. He was among the first to contribute, adding what’s known as a “long-line float” to the exterior decor.

“My wife had been asking me to get rid of it for years,” he said.

Added to this motley collection of nautically-themed decorations were a variety of items re-cycled from federation work in local waterways.

“When we’re out on the water,” said Giles, “we end up picking up trash, like abandoned crab pot floats. A combination of people brought their own, too.”

The invitation to donate to the decor is with a tour of the building. According to Giles, a number of local residents have taken advantage, and there is tangible evidence that the community has taken note of the results.

“Part of the lights (wound around the nautical rope) went out recently,” said Giles, “and we got calls about it.”

Donations are still welcome, while the staff works on the interior with slightly more traditional decorations. All of it, scheduled to be in place by Thursday.

“That’s the date of our volunteer appreciation Christmas party,” said Giles,” at which we will recognize our volunteer of the year.”

There’s still room, so if you, or someone you know, has any appropriate, nautically-themed items to donate, feel free to bring them to the federation office and string them up on the Liberty ship docking rope. You’ll meet members of the staff, be conducted on something of an informal tour of the facilities and discover ways to contribute beyond the holidays.

Workers with Coastal Stormwater Services install an innovative infiltration system to divert polluted stormwater runoff away from an outfall pipe leading into Banks Channel along Waynick Drive in Wrightsville Beach.

WRIGHTSVILLE BEACH – Several retrofit projects designed to reduce stormwater runoff are currently being installed along roadways and other high pollution sites in this beach community.

The new projects are the latest in an eight-year effort to address water-quality issues in Masonboro Sound. The varied projects are designed to help state agencies, nonprofit groups and other communities develop and implement plans to control stormwater runoff, say the projects sponsors. Scientists will monitor the projects to determine how effective they are. The results will direct future plans. A team led by theN.C. National Estuarine Research Reserve, the N.C. Coastal Federation and the University of North Carolina Wilmington is heading the effort.

“We need to do this everywhere, if we’re going to improve our water quality,” said Tracy Skrabal, the federation senior coastal scientist and the manager of its office in Wrightsville Beach.

According to Larry Sneeden, whose Coastal Stormwater Services Inc. is the lead contractor, the six new projects are varied, although they all work pretty much the same way. Three of the sites, he explained, are in the center median of Causeway Drive and are re-directing runoff to the grass, instead of having it piped directly into the water.

Berms were placed in an existing stormwater ditch at another site, along West Salisbury Street, to slow the flow of runoff and allow it to soak into the ground, Sneeden said. A rain garden near the old fire station on West Salisbury is intercepting rain water from the drainage system, he explained.

“Basically,” Sneeden added, “we excavated a basin, and placed sod over most of it, where we’re putting in some wetland plants, mainly to allow water to infiltrate in and pick up nutrients.”

Tracy Skrabal

Larry Sneeden

The sixth site, described by Sneeden, as “the most interesting,” will intercept water from the drain pipe at the end of Iula Street, which discharges into Banks Channel.

“They’ve been getting a lot of high bacteria counts (down there), which have led to swimming closures and warnings,” said Sneeden. “This is going to intercept the stormwater.”

These retrofit projects are just part of what Skrabal described as a “two-prong approach” to the stormwater issue. While encouraging the use of what’s known as low-impact development, or LID, for future developments, the federation and its varied business and government partners are also seeking and discovering ways to correct problems created by existing development.

“We’ll need to build smarter in the future, from the design stage,” she said. “It’s cheaper to design in LID, and we want to encourage that, but we need to look at existing properties, too.

“You could easily do hundreds of these small projects and not run out of locations,” she added. “Many of these techniques can be done by property owners. We’ll take these projects and use them as educational tools; we’ll do tours, bringing property owners and engineers out and train them.”

A $349,000 grant from the University of New Hampshire and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administrationis paying for the work.

The project is the latest outgrowth of a collaborative process that the federation organized in 2006 to address stormwater issues in Masonboro Sound. The state’s coastal reserve system, UNCW, the N.C. Department of the Environment and Natural Resources, Wilmington, Wrightsville Beach, other local and state government organizations, land developers and contractors are among the partners. The team has completed several projects to reduce runoff in the Bradley and Hewletts creeks watersheds in Wilmington.

One of the main goals of the original effort was to create and implement a plan to allow regulators, scientists, developers and homeowners to collaborate on projects to control runoff, the largest source of pollution to coastal waters. Locally, that collaboration has extended beyond the 2006 team to include working partnerships with theNew Hanover County Soil and Water Conservation District, the state Shellfish Sanitation and Recreational Water Quality Section, the N.C. Division of Coastal Management and the N.C. Department of Transportation.

The project provides demonstrations of low-cost, effective solutions to direct stormwater runoff away from drains and waterways and into areas which allow the runoff to soak into the ground.

“Part of our job,” said Skrabal of the federation’s place on the team “is to provide staff support and find these partnerships that accomplish our mission. These are the kind of collaborations that we thrive on.”

While much of the collaboration at work on these projects, dating back over many years, appears to be concentrated in organizations, it’s important to remember that these organizations are made up of people, some with their own personal reasons for getting involved.

“My family’s been here since the 1800s,” said Sneeden, a Wilmington native. “Growing up, I spent a lot of time at the beach, enjoying water sports, and my interest in the water carried over to my professional career.”

Sneeden recalled that during his high school days, in the early 1970s, education about the local marine environment was focused more on flood control rather than water quality. That, he said, has changed, now that many local areas are closed to shellfishing, which informs his personal stake in the matter.

“I like oysters,” he said.

This is one of the kayak launches in River Bluffs, a development near Castle Hayne that sits on the Northeast Cape Fear River. The N.C. Coastal Federation presented its developer, Burrows Smith, a Pelican Award for designing the site using low-impact development, which reduces the volume of polluted stormwater runoff entering and degrading coastal water bodies. Photo: River Bluffs Living

WILMINGTON — Burrows Smith isn’t your typical developer.

“In the development world, they want to do things they did last year,” he said. “I like to do things that make sense, and if it’s more economical, then it makes sense.”

Finding better ways to control the poisoned runoff that is polluting our waters is something that makes sense to Smith. His efforts won him a Pelican Award this year from the N.C Coastal Federation. The annual awards are meant to highlight exemplary efforts to protect the coastal environment.

Burrows Smith won a Pelican Award for promoting and using low-impact development at his 313-acre development on the Northeast Cape Fear River near Castle Hayne. For Smith, using LID made sense because it was better for the environment and saved money. Photo: River Bluffs Living

Smith received his award for the low-impact development, or LID, principles he has applied throughout the design of a 313-acre development on the Northeast Cape Fear River near Castle Hayne. Called River Bluffs, because it sits on one overlooking the river, the development is expected to feature 193 houses in its first phase and a 143-slip marina on the river. Though he initially approached the project with the idea of employing conventional systems for stormwater runoff, a LID conference he attended in Raleigh in 2010 convinced him that using more natural methods was not only the right thing to do, but it would save him and his partners thousands of dollars.

“Man, I thought, our site would be perfect for this,” he said. “I told the engineers to scrap the plans, we were going LID. We threw all the plans in the trash and started over.”

Smith was no stranger to starting over. A native of Wrightsville Beach, and graduate of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Smith returned to Wilmington  and formed Burrows Smith Construction in the early 1980s. In 1988, he merged with A.C. Skinner to form Skinner-Smith Construction, specializing in the construction of sub-divisions in New Hanover County, including Masonboro Landing, Masonboro Forest and Porter’s Neck, to name just a few. His other development projects included Sea Watch at Kure Beach, Wrightsville Sound Office Park and Plantation Landing.

“I sold out of everything in ’05,” he explained. “I felt like there was going to be a recession, which turned into a depression.”

He started over, two years later, when he was approached by property owners, unfamiliar with the mechanics of developing property, about developing the Castle Hayne land. He wasn’t exactly reluctant to get back into the business, but it took a while.

“Someone recommended me, I was interviewed, and we hit it off,” he said. “It took me about a year because I wasn’t in a big rush to go to work for somebody. They bought the property in ’06, I got involved in ’07, and around ’08, we started engineering the site.”
He approached the River Bluffs development, as he had done in the past, looking to conventional means of curbs, gutters and ponds to divert and collect stormwater runoff, until he realized that a traditional wet pond would force him to cut down large sections of the property’s forest and pay for the removal of acres of sandy soil, perfect for the natural absorption of excess rain.         

The meeting in Raleigh offered developers solutions to the often difficult and time-consuming task of complying with a variety of federal, state and local regulations. It convinced Smith of the benefits of LID.

“It is,” said Smith in a River Bluffs promotional video, “kind of a throwback to the way we used to do roads and we’ll actually have no runoff into the river, which makes us very unique.”

Though LID ideas are not new, they have encountered some resistance from some old-school property developers, in large part, because developers are geared toward doing things in a familiar way. What’s different about River Bluffs is the “all-in” mentality fostered by Smith. He hopes the River Bluffs will show other developers in the region that LID concepts work at controlling runoff and save money. As one of many examples, Smith figures that River Bluffs roads, absent the conventional curbs and gutters, will save $500,000. That, he said, should make developers sit up and take notice.

Burrows kept these trees rather than cutting them down to pave a road into the development. This will allow polluted stormwater runoff to drain into the sandy soil and also saved him money. Photo: River Bluffs Living

Other LID concepts were incorporated in the design of the development from the start. Houses will feature pervious driveways that allow stormwater to drain into the ground and cisterns that collect rainwater that will automatically irrigate lawns. Native plants will be used for landscaping because they require less water and fertilizer, and downspouts will direct stormwater to grassy areas, rather than to the streets. The last line of runoff defense will be roadside swales that will collect any polluted runoff before it reaches the river.

Earlier this year, The Wilmington-Cape Fear Home Builders Association announced winners of its 28th annual Parade of Homes and introduced a new Energy Efficiency Award, sponsored by Duke Energy Progress. The River Bluffs Development Corporation’s Covington model won the award, which was based on its final Home Energy Rating System Index score.

Interviewed for a River Bluffs promotional video, Bill Hunt, a professor with N. C. State University, praised Smith’s contributions not only to the site but to the future of LID projects as well.

“Burrows had a lot of stick-to-it-iveness to make sure that this went through,” Hunt said. “What’s been done (there) is that they’ve taken advantage of a lot of the natural infiltration that existed on the property.

“Certainly, because of the trail-blazing nature of this development, and as big as it is,” he added, “I think other developers can begin to feel a little bit more comfortable about the amount of red tape and extra review time that goes into having some more innovative infiltration-based technologies employed on a site.”

Multiple contractors are involved in building the houses, and according to Smith, there has not been a lot of resistance to changes brought about by strict implementation of LID practices.

“A couple of the contractors had done things like this before,” he said, “(and while) there was a little bit of belly-aching about things like pervious driveways, all they really care about in the end is selling the houses.”

Smith grew up in Wrightsville Beach and loved fishing and getting oysters.  “I wouldn’t call myself an environmentalist,” he said. “I’m more of a practical person. I’m not carrying a (North Carolina Coastal) Federation banner, but I do care about the environment.”

WRIGHTSVILLE BEACH — Though her depiction isn’t likely to appear in a brochure for tourists, Tracy Skrabal of the N.C. Coastal Federation describes this beach town near Wilmington as “a very small, but impervious town, surrounded by water.”

There, she’ll tell you, lies the problem.

The goal of the plan is to reduce the flow of polluted stormwater into Bradley Creek.

Most problems, though, have solutions, and one is beginning to take shape here behind the fire station, but more on that in a minute. First, let’s look at how we got to where we are.

Development along the shoreline over the years has traded soil, trees and marshes for concrete, asphalt and other hard building materials that have robbed the land of its ability to absorb rainwater. Confronted by these so-called “impervious surfaces,” rain from storms has drained into waterways instead of soaking into the ground. This runoff is poisoned by the detritus of society – excess pesticides and fertilizers from lawns, asbestos from brake pads, oil and gasoline byproducts from vehicles and unhealthy bacteria from animal droppings that have closed areas to shellfishing, and in some cases, even swimming. You won’t find those facts in your average tourist pamphlet either.

“This stormwater runoff,” said the executive summary of Wilmington’s 2012 watershed restoration plan for two local, polluted creeks, “picks up bacteria and transports them… much like a bus picks up and discharges its passengers.”

The plan to clean up Bradley and Hewlett’s creeks is a no-holds-barred attempt to reverse declining water quality and restore these waterways to their original condition.  Instead of tackling the much more difficult task of eliminating multiple sources of bacteria — the passengers on the bus — the plan looks to alter the dynamics of the transportation system: In essence, shutting down the bus line and denying the passengers their ride to the water. That water is instead routed to more useful destinations.
No small feat, as a 107-page restoration plan would indicate, but at the plan’s core are two very simple ideas: Increase public awareness through education and find workable solutions.  The plan devotes much space to that last item. It stresses the simplest solutions, such as encouraging residents to redirect roof drainpipes away from driveways and sidewalks and toward a garden, lawn or other water-absorbing surface. They could use a bucket, rain barrel or high volume cistern to collect the runoff from the drainpipes. With the addition of a pump, the stored water can then be used to irrigate plants and water lawns.

Here the project team gathers in front of a cistern. The team includes staff from N.C. National Estuarine Research Reserve, the University of North Carolina Wilmington, Wrightsville Beach, Wilmington, the N.C. Department of Transportation and the N.C. Coastal Federation.

Workmen install one of the cisterns.

The Wrightsville Beach Fire Department has even discovered it can be used to wash fire trucks. That effort has just begun, with the addition of a 25,000-gallon system of cisterns in and around the town’s Public Safety Building, which opened in the summer of 2010.

The point, it should be noted, is not the storage of water for plants or washing vehicles. It is, said Wrightsville Beach’s Stormwater Manager, Jonathan Babin, about “the ability to eat seafood out of Hewlett’s and Bradley creeks again.”

With help from the federation, the town received grants to buy and install five 3,000-gallon cisterns at the Public Works Department. Town officials soon discovered that a half-inch rain easily produces 15,000 gallons of water, filling the tanks to capacity. They applied for a grant extension, again with the federation’s assistance, and bought a 10,000 gallon tank, which was installed just outside the recreation fields, directly across from the Public Safety building. A pump brought the overflow from the smaller tanks to the larger tank. The water from the larger tank is used to irrigate the playing fields.

“The fields were taken completely off the water grid,” explained Babin, “so there’s no aquifer impact.”

Babin reported that 27,985 gallons of rainwater was stored and reused last month alone.

“It makes a big difference,” said Skrabal. “They’re capturing all of the runoff from this very large building. It’s a great reuse, watering all these fields with rainwater.

There is more to be done. Wrightsville Beach has also overseen the installation of pervious concrete parking lots and passed strict regulations governing new construction in the town.

“If you build a house or business in Wrightsville Beach, over 500 square feet,” said Babin, “it has to have a stormwater control measure. All of the rainwater has to be contained on your property.”

The town is doing pretty much all it can to meet the goals of the multi-decade watershed restoration plan. Skrabal said.  “The burden,” she said, “is on the town and us to make people understand why they have to do this. As it is, they don’t make the connection between the water on their property and the water they recreate in. People need to hear the message over and over. It’s one of the reasons we’re here.”

The relocated Palmgren-O’Quinn house standing on stacks at its new home in the Historic Square of Wrigtsville Beach last year.

The renovated Environmental Education Center and Southeast Office complete with rain gardens and permeable pavement.

WRIGHTSVILLE BEACH — There are several reasons why you should consider attending this Saturday’s grand opening of the N.C. Coastal Federation’s new digs in the Historic Square here. You’ll learn about the federation and its staff, plans and projects. Plus, you’ll have some fun.

Everyone is invited to come to the federation’s new Environmental Education Center and Southeast Office. It all starts at 2 p.m. when the regional staff will acknowledge the previous owners of the Palmgren-O’Quinn house, Mark and Debbie Mitchell. They donated it to the non-profit group. There will be the official ribbon cutting, of course, and then people will be able to tour the new headquarters, which floated down on a barge from Harbor Island a little less than a year ago.

“What we’ve been noticing,” said Mike Giles, a coastal advocate for the federation, “is that people are walking into this house who have a personal connection to it. This house was a center, a hub of activity on Harbor Island. A lot of people grew up with the O’Quinn house.”

According to Giles, among the many things people may learn by attending Saturday’s festivities is a sense of the home’s history. That history and the Historic Square location have opened doors to partnerships with the adjacent Wrightsville Beach Museum and with the town’s Recreation Department.
“We’ll be able to utilize facilities and coordinate with each other to achieve common goals,” said Giles.

Along with informal tours of the building, people will be able to see a series of permanent displays on environmental topics and inspect the federation’s innovative approaches to controlling stormwater at the site like the pervious pavement, rain gardens and cisterns.

Visitors will also see the first of many rotating art displays, like photographic artwork by Melissa Wilgis. The University of North Carolina Wilmington’s Bonnie Monteleone will be on hand with her “What Goes Around, Comes Around” display of plastic art, highlighting the on-going damage being done to our oceans by discarded plastics.

Tracy Skrabal

“There’ll be activities for kids, and light refreshments, as well,” said Tracy Skrabal, manager of this new office and education center. “There’ll be a videographer on hand, too, who will be recording the thoughts of people who’ve spent time in this house, along with the thoughts and memories people have of the federation itself.”

A photographic slide show will show the house’s move on barge and truck and its yearlong renovation.

In addition to objects that can be seen, heard, touched, felt and tasted, the grand opening will offer attendants a few things to think about as well. “People will be able to find out about the new programs that we will be initiating in our education center,” said Skrabal, noting plans for a speaker series, set to start on May 14, with a visit from the N.C. Audubon Society’s Walker Golder.

People will also learn of a planned series of Coastal Adventures, which will take folks out from the center and into the community, to understand and witness the federation’s work. Included in these Adventures are plans for a series of Coastal Culinary Adventures with Liz Biro, who writes a food column for the federation’s daily news service, Coastal Review Online, and will conduct excursions to farmers’ markets and visit with local chefs.

Mike Giles

“This Grand Opening, and our plans for the future, will offer people a chance to connect more intimately with the work that the federation does,” said Giles. “We’ll be demonstrating the opportunities that people will have to engage more in our volunteer programs.”

It should be noted that none of this would have happened, were it not for the successful completion of the capital campaign to raise $600,000 to move and restore the old beach cottage. As of April 17, when the federation announced the results of the successful campaign, $643,715 had been raised.

So head out on to Wrightsville Beach on Saturday and see for yourself what sort of fruits a collaborative community effort can yield and the benefits they’ll bring to the entire southeast region of North Carolina.

WILMINGTON — The work of the N.C. Coastal Federation, like the coastal environment it is incorporated to protect, is an intricate spider web of activity.

At the center of this web are a variety of hands-on activities that interact directly with the coastal environment — volunteers planting cordgrass and cypress trees as part of the North River Farms restoration in Carteret County, for example, or the construction of an oyster reef in the White Oak River in Onslow. As the web widens, you’ll find people taking action to forestall present or imminent threats to the environment, as the Stop Titan Action Network in New Hanover County continues to do. You’ll find people making trips to Raleigh designed to tackle thorny legislative issues, and a house, making a trip along the Intracoastal Waterway, to become the federation’s new southeast regional home.

Emily Colin

A touch at any given point on this web of activity, no matter how seemingly insignificant, has a way of quivering the entire structure, demonstrating the vital connections between our coastal environment, the people who inhabit it and the work being done to protect both.

A recent addition to this web, found in a section linking art and science, has been a collaboration between the federation, local members of the American Society of Landscape Architects and Dreams of Wilmington, a non-profit youth development program which provides kids in need with high-quality, free-of-charge programming in the literary, visual and performing arts.

It began when the society designated 2013 as the year of public service and set its nationwide membership to the task of providing free design services. Local architects Tim Clark, Roy Pender and Howard Capps in August started talking about groups in the Cape Fear region that might benefit from their services. Pender then had a chance meeting with Lauren Kolodij, the federation’s deputy director. She introduced the architects to Tracy Wilkes, executive director of Dreams of Wilmington, which, in collaboration with Wilmington, was looking to improve its headquarters site at 901 Standing St.

“The demand for programs was exceeding our available space,” said Emily Colin, Dream of Wilmington’s associate director, “and (the available property to expand) was raw and empty.”

Not for long, though, thanks in part to the multi-faceted contributions of the federation, the local architects and a grant from the N.C. State Cooperative Extension. All invested in seeing that the emerging development of the 10 or so acres incorporated design that would reduce stormwater runoff from the site.

“The city of Wilmington directed us to the site,” said Christy Perrin, program manager for the extension’s Watershed Education for Communities and Officials program. “We submitted a grant proposal to the Environmental Protection Agency last year to implement stormwater retro-fits at the Dreams site, where there is (presently) no stormwater management; water from the site runs directly into a creek.”

Though still in the planning stages, the project will entail a series of retrofits that will include water treatment, rainwater capture, harvesting, a rain garden and a change from impervious to pervious pavement in the area.

Dreams of Wilmington provides children free programs in literary, visual and performing arts. Photo: Dreams of Wilmington

“With impervious pavement,” Perrin explained, “water just slides right off. Pervious pavement will soak up that water and let it soak into the ground.”

With the collaboration of the federation and the local architects, the project evolved from the Cooperative Extension’s original plans for simple stormwater retro-fits into a major development project that would include outdoor classroom spaces and studios, a roof structure to an outside sitting area, an outdoor performance space to accommodate 100 people, a sculpture garden, a raised vegetable/flower garden and a rain garden with parking facilities.

Seemingly incapable of allowing an educational opportunity to pass them by, Dreams of Wilmington and the federation shared a series of 100 images that illustrated these types of facilities with Dream students and staff at a design workshop. At that workshop, the Wilmington’s Steve Harrell presented a brief history of the site, and Perrin offered a presentation on the grant proposal. Capps reviewed an aerial photo of the site with the assembled students, discussed the study area and introduced a workshop exercise, which included a brief review of the 100 images. Students were asked to identify (with orange stickers) up to 12 photo images of facilities they would like to see on the site and were given the opportunity to stand and share with the group why they selected certain photos. The design team was able to benefit from understanding why certain images were selected.

It is all, said Colin, in keeping with Dreams of Wilmington’s commitment to environmental awareness; a commitment exemplified by the organization’s recent collaboration with the Fort Fisher Aquarium. Students participated in field trips to the aquarium, which culminated in an organizationally-appropriate Arts Day, centered on the experience.

“Many children feel profoundly disconnected from their environment,” she said, “and so many children live here who never get to the aquarium. It was a non-traditional partnership, building on the theme of increasing environmental knowledge and awareness; values that we’re always trying to instill, to create committed students.

“It wasn’t just about formal knowledge,” she added, “but experiential, hands-on education, working with others and creating something, as a result. It furthered the aquarium’s goals, as well as our own.”

Howard Capps

So, too, she went on to say, with this emerging project at the organization’s headquarters, where, in the design stages, students have already been afforded the opportunity to not just watch, but participate.

“So, for us,” Colin said, “the idea of this project was a teaching opportunity. We ask them ‘What is a rain garden?’ and ‘Why should you care?’ We ask them to determine what role they can play and how they can help to design it.

“It’s an opportunity for discovery and learning,” she said. “A little piece of empowerment that helps makes our students positive stewards of their environment.”

Sometime this month, the local architects, the federation, Dreams staff and the Cooperative Extension will meet to update ongoing plans and create a timetable for the entire project, which could be completed within a year.

After nearly a year, the federation staff packs up and moves into the Coastal Education Center and Southeast Office in the historic square of Wrightsville Beach. Photo: Eugene Maloney

WRIGHTSVILLE BEACH — Nobody likes to move. That, at least, was the consensus of a decidedly unscientific poll taken during the N. C. Coastal
Federation’s relocation of its Southeast office on Causeway Street in Wrightsville Beach to a new home in the Historic Square, about a mile
or so away.

Asked to rate their enjoyment of the moving process in general on the venerable one to 10 scale, with 10 representing the pinnacle of
enjoyment and one being an aversion to the very thought of moving, the dozen or so folks who did the majority of the heavy lifting of
boxes, furniture and office equipment during two days last week of the actual move rated moving an average of about two.

It should be noted that Coastal Advocate Mike Giles’ rating had a way of bringing that average number down considerably. “Minus 10,”
he said, adding that his rating was less about the actual moving and more about preparing for the move and the reorganization that comes
after.

“That,” Giles said, “is about 90 percent of it.”

His office in boxes, Mike Giles crouches at his computer desk to work throughout the move-in day. Photo” Eugene Maloney

Giles
then stepped into his new office on the second floor of the remodeled Palmgren-O’Quinn house, which had been treated to a barge ride around Harbor Island last June to become the federation’s Coastal Education Center and Southeast Office. By midday Friday, Giles was in front of a makeshift computer station, crouched in front of a keyboard and monitor, working without benefit of a chair.

The movers caught a break on Thursday. By 8 a.m., a crew of female volunteers from the University of Wisconsin at Madison was making its
way to the Causeway Street office to lend a hand. They had decided to spend their spring break helping nonprofit groups rather than doing
the usual college thing in Fort Lauderdale or some other spring-break locale. The temperature stood at 47 degrees, under thinly-clouded
skies with a light, offshore wind. Not exactly beach weather, but more than comfortable for a little manual labor.

Tracy Skrabal directs a group of college students, who came during their spring break to help the federation move . Photo: Eugene Maloney

They assembled, a number of them clutching cups of coffee, around 9 a.m. and started hauling cardboard boxes down to a couple of vans and a
trailer. Over the next few hours, during which the temperature stayed relatively cool, this crew of female volunteers, along with federation staff members and the odd journalist made two trips back and forth to the new offices, hauling those same cardboard boxes up one and sometimes two flights of stairs, depositing them at room locations marked with cardboard signs taped to doorways. In the afternoon, after being treated to lunch — divided almost evenly between requests for pizza or subs — the crew painted the steps to either side of the house, which Tracy Skrabal had spent some time earlier preparing for them, lining the steps with tape. She is the manager of the federation’s Southeast office.

On Friday morning, the moving company Two Men and a Truck transferred the heavier equipment and furniture, doing so in a single trip that
left the old office bare and clean, albeit in need of a good vacuuming. By afternoon, it was done, and by Giles’ figuring, the real work of the move began. Ted Wilgis, the federation’s educator in the region, guessed that it would be about two weeks before all the moved boxes, furniture and equipment found their proper spaces and the new offices would be able to re-establish a normal working routine. Though the actual move had been delayed by about 10 days, the staff was optimistic that it could safely meet its scheduled date for the proposed Grand Opening on May 3.

For all of the headaches brought on by the actual move, the staff was visibly excited, for a variety of reasons.

“I’m thrilled about this move,” said Skrabal. “It’s been a long time coming and it’ll be good for us.”

“There’s a lot more space,” said Ted Wilgis, as he wrestled boxes from his old office to his new, larger one. “The biggest amount of
added space, both indoors and outdoors, will be for the public.

“The things we gain,” he added, “outweigh the personal pain of the move.”

All the moved boxes, furniture and equipment will find their proper spaces before the proposed Grand Opening on May 3. Photo: Eugene Maloney

Across the parking lot from the new building, about a football field away, Madeline Flagler, director of the Wrightsville Beach Museum, has been watching the progress of the move, since the house pulled up on a truck last June, and she’s almost as excited as the federation staff. The arrival of the federation in her backyard, along with its planned education center, opens the door to numerous opportunities, which, though not discussed as yet, seem likely to arise.

“It’s nothing formal yet,” she said, “but we’ve talked about the idea of collaborating on school trips, combining elements of science
and history into that experience. I’m sure more things will develop as we become actual neighbors.

“I’m excited,” Flagler added, “that there’s going to be someone here (in Historic Square), year round.”

According to Giles, there will be a ‘tourist attraction’ component to the emerging education center, which will improve on the federation’s
outreach and education objectives for residents and visitors. All of this will take place within the expanded confines of the new regional
office, allowing not only space for the federation staff to do its job, but classroom and public event space to improve on environmental
education.

Work on the N.C.Coastal Federation’s new regional office continued even in the snow. The staff should start moving in on March 10.

WRIGHTSVILLE BEACH — The renovation and restoration work on the N.C. Coastal Federation’s new Southeast regional office is rounding the final turn and headed for home, much like the structure itself did, when the barge carrying it cleared the Wrightsville Beach drawbridge and turned up into Lee’s Cut last June.

The federation saved the Palmgren-O’Quinn house, built out on Harbor Island in 1946, from demolition at its 115 South Channel Dr. location, loaded it onto a barge and transported it two miles around the island to its new location on West Salisbury Street in Wrightsville Beach’s Historic Square. Expected to receive its town occupancy permit on March 1, federation staff will be moving into the building about 10 days later. The nonprofit plans to have an open house and grand opening on May 3.

The federation will be moving from its 800-square-foot office on Causeway Drive, where boxes were being stacked on boxes and staff was almost sitting in each other’s laps, to a 3,000-square-foot, two-level building that will contain the group’s regional administrative offices and a coastal education center.

The Palmgren-O’Quinn home, owned by former Wrightsville Beach mayor, Robert O’Quinn, and his wife, Catherine, for over 40 years, was sold to Mark and Debbie Mitchell in 2012. Their desire to build a new home on the lot could have meant the demolition of the original structure, but Catherine O’Quinn put the Mitchells in touch with the federation, which had been looking for just such a building to move. The Mitchells donated the home to the federation, which assumed responsibility for moving it and renovating it for its new home.

The regional staff will be leaving cramped rented office space and into a spacious building that will allow it to offer varied programs.

“We contracted with the folks who’d actually moved the Cape Hatteras Lighthouse (Expert House Movers),” said Coastal Advocate Mike Giles. “We deconstructed the ground floor, that use to have living space, in order to jack the house up. It was first put on wheels, then transferred onto a barge (for its two-mile, Intracoastal Waterway trip to Historic Square).”

Flood plain regulations required that the house be elevated, and in the absence of the recently-deconstructed ground floor, it was placed on pilings. The federation offices and classroom spaces will occupy what use to be the second and third floor of the house, while the open space below will be used for outdoor programs.

“It was quite an operation,” said Giles, adding that while they had hoped to be moving into the facility in February, a variety of unexpected issues — including recent winter storms — delayed that move until March.

“We’re pretty much on schedule, but when you start moving an old home, and deconstructing it, you find things you have to address,” Giles continued. “There was (for example) asbestos in the cement block covering on the ground floor that had to be (dealt with). It’s a 1946 home, and you never know what you’re going to find when you start taking things off and repairing things. There were a few larger steps than we had anticipated, but it all went smoothly.”

The work was under the supervision of lead contractor Ralph Konrady, a long-time Wrightsville resident, along with project partners Atlantic Marine & Diving Contractors Inc., A Structural Guy Structural Engineer, Coastal Stormwater Services, Keller’s Fire Protection and Security Specialist, Old School Rebuilders, Szostak Design and the town of Wrightsville Beach.

“To begin with, we had to have approval of the town’s preservation board, and town council,” said Giles. “The town was very supportive and helped us out quite a bit.”

There were any number of adjectives that Konrady might have employed to describe the scope, size and progress of the various tasks that he and his crew have accomplished over the last eight months. His first choice was a surprise.

“It was a fun project,” he said. “Challenging, too. The logistics of it have been pretty daunting, but we’ve had great people to work with, and it’s coming together well.”

The federation is about $14,000 shy of its $600,000 fundraising goal to move the house and to renovate and furnish it.

Volunteers showed up on Fridays, sometimes in driving sleet, to paint and plants bushes. The next scheduled volunteer day is set for Friday from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. Volunteers, who work for a couple of hours, or all day, are provided with paint and project materials, as well as food and beverages.

The federation will use space under the building for outdoor programs.

The federation wants the center to be a showcase for rain gardens and other types of low-impact development techniques to control stormwater.

“We utilize stormwater and rain water off of the roof and the property to infiltrate it back into the ground to irrigate the plants,” Giles explained. “We’re developing a rain garden that accepts the storm water and runoff from the roof. That way, it doesn’t run into our coastal marshes and pollute them.”

It is, for the federation staff, more than just a move to more spacious offices. The move will enhance the Federation mission in a variety of ways.

“We’re going to be able to expand our outreach and educational programs,” said Giles, “to include special events and speaker series at the house; to talk about what’s important about our coast – clean clams and oysters, eating, fishing, shellfish. We’re going to be doing a lot.

“We’re not only going to continue to reach out to folks,” he added, “we’re going to have a place for them to come now. We’re putting our money where our mouth is; demonstrating how people can live in harmony with the coast.”

SOUTHPORT — It was an issue that the folks at SavetheCape.org thought they had put to rest, and it was a little like stumbling into someone walking ahead of you when they stop short, suddenly.

Two weeks before Christmas, they read in a newspaper article that the N.C. State Ports Authority had posted record profits for fiscal year 2012-2013 and that its plan for a “large scale, deep-water facility” in Brunswick County was very much alive, though still long-term in nature. As recently as last July, George Rountree, an authority board member, had told Save the Cape that the authority was “very sympathetic” to the proposal that the land set aside for that proposed international  container port be turned into a national seashore or state park.

Mike Rice and Toby Bronstein keep plugging away on plans to create a new park on the Cape Fear River. Photo: Judy Royal

Save the Cape was already devising very specific plans for those 600 acres along the Cape Fear River and had used the $4,000 proceeds from two art auctions held in September and December to commission conceptual drawings that would accompany those park plans.

The Ports Authority’s December assessment, then, caught Save the Cape off guard. “To have (these plans) reappear at this time is frightening,” Mike Rice, one of the group’s founders and directors, told the newspaper at the time. “So we have to be very concerned and go back and revisit the whole issue as we did several years ago.”

“It was a very disappointing surprise,” Toby Bronstein, the other founder and director, remembers.

As an organization, Save the Cape grew out of public opposition to the authority’s plans for the new port. The idea of buying the land tabbed for the port came later, after the authority shelved the plans in 2012.

“I think we’ll always be in stop-the-port mode until there’s disposition of that land,” Bronstein told a newspaper reporter two years ago. “We don’t believe it’s dead. We believe (the disposition of that land) is simmering on the back burner. We don’t believe it’s as threatening today as it was a year ago, but we don’t believe it’s dead.”

But that’s not stopping Save the Cape from moving ahead with its alternate vision of what the land could become. It has joined with the Sea Biscuit Wildlife Center on Oak Island on a proposed bird and wildlife rescue and rehabilitation center on the land. Mary Ellen Rogers, the center’s founder and director, and Greg Schue, an architect, have toured the site.

“We see a state-of-the-art bird and wildlife rescue and rehabilitation center that will be the anchor; the crown jewel of the state park idea,” said Bronstein. “Nothing like it exists in North Carolina.”

Bronstein spent a year as a volunteer with the center when she arrived in North Carolina in 2007. She hopes that the collaboration between the two organizations will impart a sense of momentum to Save the Cape’s plans.

The inclusion of a specific park plan, with the Sea Biscuit Wildlife Center as its anchor, also opens the door to new, federal funding sources, Rice said.

The N.C. State Ports Authority still owns the land but may be softening on the idea of a state park.

“There is a bureaucratic ladder to climb,” he said, “and over the next nine months, we’ll be preparing a much more extensive prospectus.”

A biological survey of the tract’s natural communities is planned, Rice said. So is an analysis of a park’s potential regional economic effects.

Typically, center’s like Sea Biscuit are on or adjoin park land, he added. “What would happen here is that the park itself would be a landlord, with the Sea Biscuit Wildlife Center as a magnet attraction, something very special that would add to the appeal of the park,” Rice said.

The N.C. Division of Parks and Recreation would have to eventually be brought into the mix, he said. “They have a procedure,” he said. “They have criteria and they develop a plan. We are going to do as much as we can to do that work for them and give them a package that they can adopt, or not.”

There are, according to Rice, some subtle signs that the Ports Authority is warming to the idea of a new park. Every year, Audubon North Carolina conducts its annual Christmas Bird Count. For the first time,  the authority allowed the birders access to the property for this year’s count.

“This signals to us a new spirit of cooperation,” said Rice.

“It’s a much more cooperative Ports Authority,” Bronstein agreed. “There’s a real spirit of cooperation, for which we are very grateful.”

But Save the Cape isn’t letting its guard down, Rice said. “We are not,” he said, “putting our weapons away yet.”

Volunteer stack mesh bags full of oyster shells to make a reef at Morris Landing.

This is the result of countless hours of work by hundreds of people.

HOLLY RIDGE — Ted Wilgis, an educator for the N.C. Coastal Federation, strolled along the marshes of Stump Sound near this small community in Onslow County. He pointed out a strip of shoreline at the federation’s Morris Landing Clean Water Preserve, where the nonprofit group began creating a living shoreline back in 2005. A herd of fiddler crabs skittered from the low-tide water line, across a patch of sand, burrowing into the marsh grass, waiting for the tide to come back and deposit dinner. Dragonflies flitted along the tips of the grass, already eating mosquitoes.

As he talked his way through the reclamation project, pointing with pride to the work done by countless volunteers, Wilgis was constantly reminded of the work yet to be done, not just with the on-going restoration of 52 acres of shoreline and marshland, but with teaching the people who will be needed to insure the project’s success.

“This blows my mind,” he says, referring to the ongoing eight-year effort to create and restore the preserve.

The work continues, but not in the rain. The federation had planned to gather volunteers at the landing on Saturday and again on July 27. Wilgis cancelled those dates today because of expected bad weather. The new dates are Saturday, Aug. 10, and Tuesday, Aug. 20.

Volunteers will meet at the preserve on Aug. 10 from 10 a.m. to noon, to build another oyster reef. After the work, everyone will let their hair down a bit for what the federation is calling a Community Clean Water Celebration. They can view educational exhibits, enter a cast net throwing contest and win various prizes. The kids can print fish on t-shirts, pull seine nets along the shoreline and compete in a host of games.

On Aug. 20, volunteers will work from 9 a.m. to 2 p.m. placing the remaining 5,000 bags of oyster shells and marl in the water for the second and final day of oyster reef construction.

The second part of the Aug. 10 event is all about having fun while learning something, Wilgis said.

“We don’t want volunteers to walk away from building an oyster reef, and not understand why they did it and how it works,” he said. “It’s also about understanding the value of that, to feel ownership and stewardship of that project and the coastal environment.”

Ted Wilgis, left, talks to volunteers before a work session at Morris Landing.

The Morris Landing site stands, in many ways, as a prime example of how, since its inception in 1982, the federation has worked as an advocate and support group for people who want to take action to protect the coastal environment.

The methodology started to take shape in 1982 when federation founder and executive director, Todd Miller, rallied fisherman and others to successfully fight off speculators who wanted to strip mine peat from the boggy lands between Albemarle and Pamlico sounds. It was brought to bear locally when Lena Ritter, a Stump Sound native and oyster fisher, sought the federation’s help in her five-year fight against developers who wanted to build condominiums on nearby Permuda Island. Ritter won and the island is now preserved as a state sanctuary.

In both instances – and in the many more that were to follow — the federation worked to help local people solve vexing coastal environmental problems.

The best way to protect a place, though, is to buy it. Probably unknown to many of its 10,000 or so members, the federation is one of the most successful land trusts in the state, having preserved more than 10,000 acres of ecologically important land across the coastal plain. There were small parcels, like the 31-acre Hope Pole Creek Preserve in Atlantic Beach and the 20-acre island in the White Oak River that is now part of a state park and is home to an environmental education center. And then there were the huge tracts, like the 6,000 acres of an old farm in eastern Carteret County that is the site of one of the largest wetland restoration projects in the country.

Using a state grant, the federation bought this place, too, when the Boy Scouts of America put it up for sale in 2002.

“The Boy Scouts were using the area for camping,” said Wilgis, “but it was open to the public, as well. People were able to drive up and down the shoreline, but there was a lot of dumping going on.”

The Morris Landing Preserve.

With the Federation’s acquisition of the site, that sort of thing has stopped. While still keeping the preserve open for people to enjoy, the Federation stopped the more damaging aspects of public access, partly by building a wooden walkway that restricted vehicle access.

The big picture of the Morris Landing Clean Water Preserve is that it’s a key site for the federation’s and N.C. Division of Marine Fisheries’ strategies to restore oysters, enhance shellfish habitat and manage a sustainable oyster fishery in the highly productive waters of Stump Sound. The restoration part of that process is only part of the story, just as the events scheduled for Saturday are only partly about the volunteers’ creating an oyster reef. The second half of that event – the Community Clean Water Celebration – is about education.

“It’s much more expensive to restore an area than it is to protect it,” Wilgis said. “So, for me, that’s what I look at. This is a very long haul, and there’s a lot of positive stuff going on; working with volunteers, students, by not only engaging them in having fun, but in attaining a sense of accomplishment, too, so they make that connection. That kind of thing will keep you going forever. Those are the things that make this job wonderful.”

You can really make Wilgis’ day by showing up and rolling up your sleeves. Call him for more information at 910-509-2838 or email him

WRIGHTSVILLE BEACH–It was a great match-up last year, and it’s even better this year.

On Friday and Saturday (June 21-22), Fisherman’s Post, Wilmington’s weekly saltwater fishing newspaper, and the nonprofit North Carolina Coastal Federation will hold the second of five fishing tournaments, planned through to mid-September, looking to crown a local fishing champion based on an aggregate weight of flounder caught during the events on the 2nd Annual Inshore Tournament Trail.

Though Fisherman’s Post has been sponsoring inshore tournaments for eight years, beginning in Carolina Beach, and later, Wrightsville Beach, last year marked the beginning of its Inshore Tournament Trail, as well as its relationship with the Stop Titan Action Network (STAN).

Max Gaspeny, editor of the Fisherman’s Post and host of the tournament addresses the winners in 2012.

“Sarah (Gilliam, STAN coordinator) and I have known each other for a long time,” said Max Gaspeny, editor of Fisherman’s Post. “It’s a cause we believe in, so it was an easy choice.”

This year, the relationship has expanded to embrace the North Carolina Coastal Federation, and once again, Sarah Gilliam is spearheading the coordination process, and the match-up is even more relevant.

“The fishing community depends on clean water and healthy fisheries,” said Gilliam, “and it’s exactly what the federation is working for.”

According to Gaspeny, the partnership will reap benefits that exceed its own mandate. The tournament itself will be providing the federation with a portion of the proceeds, and before it’s over, a wealth of new members, while the federation is offering volunteer support and promotion assistance. Beyond that, though, the federation’s participation will help overcome what has been a natural tendency for fisherman to be suspicious of environmental groups.

“Some environmental groups have done disingenuous things that have impacted fishermen,” said Gaspeny, “and people have had some pretty negative experiences.”

“I think the Coastal Federation is making people realize that they have a lot in common,” he added. “Sarah’s doing a phenomenal job, and we’re excited about the four events to come.”

This year’s fishing tournament is all about flounder. Photo: Fisherman’s Post

This year’s Tournament Trail (complete schedule below) includes the familiar Wrightsville and Carolina Beach events, the popular Southport and Topsail tournaments that were introduced last year, and a brand new kickoff event out of Ocean Isle Beach’s Ocean Isle Fishing Center (held May 31-June 1). It’s an all-flounder format this year for the main leaderboard, with the winner based on heaviest two-fish aggregate in the Southport and Carolina Beach events and single big fish in the other three tournaments.

With the single Ocean Isle Beach tournament in the rearview mirror, Wayne Crisco sits atop the leaderboard, having caught a fish weighing in at 5.11 lbs. Joe Zurad caught a 5.07-pounder, and Adam Meyer weighed in with a 4.95-pounder. In all, 28 fish were caught on the opening weekend of the multiple tournaments, ranging from Crisco’s leading weight fish, down to the 1.96-pounder caught by Andy Broadwell.

“In keeping with the conservation-minded tradition of the Inshore Challenge and the N.C. Flatfish Championship, live weigh-in (is being) encouraged,” wrote Gaspeny in his welcome message on the Fisherman’s Post Web site, adding that bonus payouts will be awarded for all fish making the leaderboard that are weighed in alive.

A sunset catch.

“Some of these fish are going to further aquaculture research at UNCW, and the remainder will be immediately released.”

Participants in the tournament will receive points corresponding to the weights of their heaviest single flounder in each event, competing for the highest total number of points, which will determine the 2013 Inshore Challenge Champion. That series champion will be chosen, based on the top three fish caught throughout the five events, which means that anglers need only fish three out of the five. In fact, if you fish only two events, and receive weight points that put you at the top of the leaderboard at the end of the five events, you could become the champion that way.

“We at the newspaper pride ourselves on putting on an event, instead of just a tournament,” Gaspeny continued in his on-line message, “so anglers can expect food, beverages, raffles, camaraderie, and more surrounding the Registration and Awards Ceremonies at each of the new tournaments.”

“Heavy-hitting sponsors like Berkley and Budweiser have already signed on,” he added, “and it’s their support that makes these ‘events,’ instead of just fishing tournaments.”

According to Gaspeny, last year’s biggest-drawing event at Carolina Beach brought out about 75 fisherman. Al Holpert’s 11 lb. flounder earned him the championship title.

“You tend,” noted Gaspeny, “to see the bigger ones later in the year.”

Along with the substantial cash and prizes involved with victory (listed below), the first 10 people that register for each of the five events will earn free membership to the federation. In addition to the 10 new members signed on at Ocean Isle, Sarah Gilliam said that other registrants signed on, as well. It is, for the federation at least, about the dissemination of information to existing members of the fishing community.

“It’s about building awareness and developing relationships with that community,” she said, adding that while, for the federation, it’s something of a membership drive, it doesn’t preclude participants from the fun of it all. “It’s cool, because this is something that families do together. There’s a whole family (the Lester family) that gets involved with this; grandfathers, sons, and grandsons.”

“It’s going to be well worth the time,” she said of the federation’s commitment in terms of actual time and volunteers. “If the first one (in Ocean Isle Beach) is any indication, I’m very excited about the rest of the summer.”

Tournament Schedule (remaining events)

Event #2
Southport Inshore Challenge
June 21-22, 2013, at Southport Marina

Event #3
Wrightsville Beach Inshore Challenge
July 19-20, 2013, at Wild Wing Cafe & Wrightsville Beach Marina

Event #4
Topsail Inshore Challenge
August 23-24, 2013, at East Coast Sports & Sears Landing

Event #5
Carolina Beach Inshore Challenge
September 13-14, 2013, at Inlet Watch Marina

Championship Payouts

(For individual event payouts, consult Web site information on each tournament)

1st $1,000

2nd Two Riley Rods Custom Rods ($50?0+ value)

3rd Riley Rods Custom Rod and Penn 300 Battle ($350+ value)

4th Riley Rods Custom Rod ($250+ value)

5th Penn 4000 Battle Reel and Fenwick HMG 7′ Rod ($200)

6th Penn 3000 Battle Reel and Fenwick HMG 7′ Rod ($200)

7th Penn 3000 Battle Reel ($100)

8th Igloo Marine 72-qt. Cooler ($90)

9th Blacktip Tackle Bag ($90)

10th Gulp Alive – 4 buckets ($80)

WILMINGTON – Anna Brodmerkel likes wetlands. She appreciates their beauty and recognizes the threats to them. Because of that, she’ll have an extra $1,000 to take with her this fall to Chapel Hill

A senior at Heide Trask High School in Rocky Point, Brodmerkel won a statewide high-school essay contest that was sponsored by Cape Fear River Watch and the Stop Titan Action Network, or STAN. Her essay was chosen from 51 entries for top prize of a $1,000 scholarship. Brodmerkel plans to attend the University of North Carolina in the fall.

Launched in October, the contest sought to “promote interest in environmental conservation, with particular regard to heavy industry and related subjects,” according to the contest guidelines.

“The idea,” said Kay Lynn Plummer-Hernandez, an education specialist with Cape Fear River Watch, “was to bring the message statewide. We’ve been getting the message out locally, and we (wanted) to make it more of a statewide outreach program.”

Anna Brodmerkel

Though River Watch took the lead, the contest was co-sponsored by the six other organizations in STAN — The N.C. Coastal Federation, PenderWatch & Conservancy, Citizens Against Titan, The N.C. Chapter of the Sierra Club, the Southern Environmental Law Center and the Duke University’s Environmental Law and Policy Clinic.

The students were asked to address, in essays limited to 1,500 words, one of three topics involving the proposed Titan America cement plant near Wilmington. Most of the students, Plummer-Hernandez said, chose to write about the importance of wetlands and how the Titan project could affect them. Other contestants chose to explain the importance of environmental regulations and to examine the effects of Titan’s emission on the region’s air and water. A few even tackled the third topic, watershed monitoring, and how the local watershed might be affected by Titan Cement’s proposal.

“We didn’t write the questions in a way that gave an opinion,” said Sarah Gilliam, the STAN coordinator. “We did it in a way that let the students form their own.”

She explained that the entries were read by a subcommittee, which whittled the field down to five. Those were forwarded to the five judges — Tom Babel, an attorney and board chair of the Greater Wilmington Chamber of Commerce Foundation; Diana Ashe, associate professor and coordinator of professional writing at the University of North Carolina Wilmington; Christopher Finelli, chairman of UNCW’s Biology and Marine Biology Department; Jonathan Barfield Jr., a New Hanover County commissioner; and Mary McLean Asbill, a senior attorney at the Southern Environmental Law Center. The essays were judged on research accuracy, writing ability, originality, creativity and overall excellence.

“The two most important considerations were research accuracy and creativity,” Gilliam explained. “We were looking for (a student) who did not just report what they found, but related that information in a meaningful way.”

The five finalists were Brodmerkel and Alexis Buie, both from Heide Trask High School, and Nicholas Pugh, Emily Abshear and Nathan Wall, all from Croatan High School in Carteret County.

“Too often, we humans take nature’s phenomenon, the wetland, for granted,” Brodmerkel wrote. “Humans forget wetlands are a defining characteristic of regions, abuse them and are ignorant of their importance to the surrounding environment. Wetlands provide southeast North Carolina with a plethora of benefits unique to each region. The impending destruction of wetlands would be a travesty not only for humans, but the organisms whose lives depend upon the irreplaceable habitat as well.

“Critical to the environment and economy, wetlands must be protected at all costs from dangers such as Titan Cement,” she concluded, “Community members have the power to fight against environmental injustice and are working to protect one of nature’s disappearing wonders.”

Brodmerkel is an active member of her school’s National Honor Society, Key Club, Bridge Club, Science Club, Science Olympiad team, pep and marching bands and student government. She will be a Global Gap Year Fellow at UNC, where she plans to study anthropology.

“In the future,” she wrote in a short biography, “I hope to become successful in a career conserving the earth’s resources for future generations.”

Wall won second place for his essay on environmental regulations. He received a student membership to North Carolina’s chapter of the Sierra Club.

The contest will be repeated next year, Plummer-Hernandez said.  “I learned that students are very passionate about the environment,” she said. “More passionate than I expected.”

Byron “Barry” Bey had intended to play music on the beach. Photo: UNCW

SOUTHPORT – Here’s a fish story about a guy who really wanted to be a beach bum but ended up inspiring a whole bunch of kids instead.

His name is Byron “Barry” Bey. And he came down this way more than 25 years ago to play music on the beach and maybe help with an aquaculture program that South Brunswick High School wanted to start. But he gave up the beach life and became a teacher and his aquaculture program, which releases hundreds of little flounder into local waters each year, is now known the world over.

“There was no curriculum,” Bey recalled of those early days. “When I walked through the door, I was given an outline.

“We had 15 or 20 (students) that first year,” he added, “and they were the wildest cowboys you ever saw. It was not what I expected, but it turned out to be a good thing.”

Aquaculture is like farming, but with fish. Instead of corn, wheat, oats and assorted vegetables, you grow bass, flounder, shrimp and other aquatic creatures. Growing our seafood in this way may become increasingly important in the future.

We now import about 85 percent of the seafood we eat, according to the federal government. Growing our seafood and the essential omega-3 fatty acid it contains may be the only viable way to feed fish to a world hurtling toward nine billion people.

That’s where Barry Bey and his kids at South Brunswick High School come in.

From meager beginnings — “raising largemouth bass in a ditch,” Bey noted — the school’s aquaculture program, which was the first of its kind in the state, now attracts well over 100 students every year. It has been recognized for restocking the area’s fish population (flounder, most recently) and as a role model for other schools. Five schools in North Carolina and others in the country and in Europe now have aquaculture programs. South Brunswick students in 2008 teleconferenced with students in a Denmark high school, sharing aquaculture and biotechnology lesson plans, Power Point presentations and training films.

The aquaculture program occupies a small corner of the South Brunswick High School campus. Photo: South Brunswick High School

Over the years, the program has picked up two N.C. Governor’s Awards for education and business and technology and has been recognized by the University of North Carolina Wilmington, Time-Warner Cable and Progress Energy for converting to solar power. Sea World gave the schools its Program Excellence Award last year, and Bey was recently nominated for a Sea World’s Educator of the Year.

Though Bey tries to deflect the spotlight, it’s difficult to separate the program from the man. The program he helped start is now the envy of many four-year college programs, and he has sent hundreds of students out into the world, preaching the gospel of aquaculture and the broader subject of marine environments. Within the last few years, he has begun to teach the children of former students, and while lessons learned in both classroom and the hands-on laboratories are important, so, too, are lessons in character, the shaping of responsible, environmentally-aware citizens.

“I always had trouble standing out at school,” said Stephanie Rudloff, a 2007 graduate of South Brunswick High School who is currently working as a marine biologist at Ripley’s Aquarium in Myrtle Beach. “He’d have me do something, have me open up in class. He gave me confidence in his class, and it helped me with other classes, too.”

She had always known she wanted to work in the marine environment and a career in marine biology seemed right. While the aquaculture program created the foundation for her further education and later employment, it was Bey who helped mold the young woman, Rudloff said.

“He taught me a lot of hands-on things,” she said. “Every morning, I had to count baby shrimp, so we’d know the population that we were breeding. I learned how to work hard, which has helped me in the development of a good work ethic.”

Like Rudloff, Chad Casteen of Southport always had an interest in the outdoors, fishing in particular. A 1993 South Brunswick graduate, Casteen now works for Archer Daniels Midland and runs fishing charters out of Southport. He, too, remembers the value of the aquaculture program and its teacher.

“He was real energetic,” Casteen said of Bey, “and kept kids interested. He actually got me to calm down and pay attention a little.”

Born in Montgomery, Ala., Byron Bey moved to Raleigh when he was 10. He earned a two-year degree in fish and wildlife management from Wayne Community College in Goldsboro, though initially, he was more interested in music and became, for a while, a professional musician. It’s an interest he continues to share with his students.

Bey sometimes helped his brother, a commercial fisherman. In 1987, Mose Lewis, then the principal at South Brunswick High School, hired Bey’s brother and nine others for the fledgling program; Byron was the last.

“Basically,” he said, “I came down (to this area) originally to play music at the beach.”

A student prepares brine shrimp that are fed to the little flounder. Photo: South Brunswick High School

Soon, though, he was attending summer courses at various colleges to obtain a teacher certification. Then, he created the school’s aquaculture program.

Bey is quick and expansive in discussing the many ways that the program has always been a community effort, entailing financial and volunteer support and cooperation from school officials; local, regional and state authorities; residents of Southport; and the students themselves. That support, however, follows the program initiatives, as with its recent conversion to solar energy to power the laboratory and the re-cycling of fish tank wastewater to irrigate local golf courses.

“Savings using a solar panel array at out fish farm showed our students and the local community how to cut energy costs, (while improving) profits,” he explained in his application for the Sea World award and grant that his program won in 2012. “With federal, state and local LEA budget cuts, our students and team felt this was something we could do to save money; to keep our school system functioning, and an example to other school systems in the same belt-tightening situation.

“This was truly a student-led project,” he went on to write. “The students themselves did the work . . .assessing site requirements, choosing the best possible site. They and the community learned that it was in their best interest and the best interest of other students and communities — statewide, nationally and globally — to learn about and incorporate green technology in an effort to make this a more energy-efficient world for our children’s future.”

“A marvelous opportunity,” Rep. Mike McIntyre called it. “(It gave) the students and community a real-world experience in ‘greening’ our future solar energy. This type of experience (will prove) to be invaluable, as (these students) enter the workforce.”

Bey continues to hear from former students. Many have gone on to teach others, maintaining the program’s exponential reach. Jaylyn Yuhas, who graduated in 2000, has almost completed her bachelor’s degree in early childhood education, and in a 2010 letter, described him as “my most favorite teacher ever.”

“You made a lasting difference in me,” she wrote to him. “As small as an hour a day seems, it changed my life forever. You are the reason I want to teach, why I want the chance to do (what you did) for my students.

“Who knows?” she concluded, “maybe I will be writing you for advice on how to start my own aquaculture program in the school where I teach.”

It comes down to choices, and early in life, Byron “Barry” Bey made a few of his own, born of a simple desire, really. Though he ended up working on a global problem, locally, it began with a modest pleasure he continues to enjoy.

“I like to fish,” he said.

WILMINGTON — She remembers the question vividly, with snapshot clarity in her mind’s eye. It was 1971 and Bonnie Monteleone was about 12 years old. She and her mother were in the kitchen of their Elmira, N.Y., home. Mom was wrestling with a piece of cellophane, wrapped around a Styrofoam container that held dinner, when she posed a rhetorical question.

“Where does all this stuff go?”

Little Bonnie didn’t know the answer back then. It would take almost 40 years for the answer to present itself in the graphic photo of a deformed turtle. When young turtle had swam into a plastic, six-pack ring, which got caught on its shell. The plastic ring stayed put as the turtle grew, and resulted in the deformity of the turtle’s entire body.

Monteleone was by then working in the chemistry department at the University of North Carolina Wilmington. She had moved to the city in 2004 when her daughter was enrolled at the university. She landed a job at chemistry department, where she works to this day. Monteleone decided to go back to school to pursue a Master’s degree and a possible career in scientific writing.

Bonnie Monteleone

The turtle photo in 2007 dramatically altered those plans. The accompanying article detailed the background to what was about to become Monteleone’s new life’s work. Written by Susan Casey, the article was originally published in Best Life magazine and has been reprinted in a variety of magazines and on Web sites.

Casey described the work of oceanographer Charlie Moore. He sailed in 1997 from Hawaii to California and came across what would later be known as the North Pacific Garbage Patch. It is an area of the ocean, twice the size of Texas, that contains six times as much plastic as sea life. It was, noted Casey in her article “as though someone had taken the pristine seascape of (Moore’s) youth and swapped it for a landfill.”

Moore left a 25-year career running a furniture restoration business and embarked on a mission to discover what exactly was going on with this amount of plastic in our oceans. He created the Algalita Marine Research Institute to conduct studies of the problem and spread the word.

Monteleone was instantly horrified by the picture of the turtle, and with the help of a UNCW fellowship to defer research expenses, she contacted Moore and participated in a 3,460-mile research trip aboard his vessel.

Her master’ thesis on the subject, titled the “Plastic Ocean Project,” became the name of a non-profit corporation she founded, dedicated to research, education and outreach on the subject. She and other students joined with the Bermuda Institute of Ocean Sciences last summer and conducted research in an area 30 or 40 miles off the coast of Bermuda, to determine whether the problem that existed in the North Pacific was as prevalent in the Atlantic. Though not as dramatic, the plastic problem was everywhere.

“If you’re going to talk about impact,” she said to a reporter from Bermuda’s Royal Gazette publication at the time, “you should indicate the marine life associated with it. We looked at these marine animals, which look a lot like the plastic we were collecting.

“If marine life is mistaking the plastic for food, it will be consumed,” she went on to say, “and when you consider that the first piece of plastic you ever touched in your life is still around, unless it has been burned, you start to see the scale of the problem.””

Plastics, Monteleone explained, have been found in sea birds, turtle fish and whales. In one study, conducted in the Pacific Northwest, a single bird was discovered with 454 pieces of plastic in its stomach.

She brought the issue to a local meeting of the Sierra Club last month at Halyburton Park, and though her Power Point presentation was thwarted by a facility-based computer glitch, she changed gears deftly and with the assistance of some art work she has created (an altered re-creation of a public domain mural called the Great Wave, that blends pictures of plastic, embedded in an ocean wave), she demonstrated the problem to a small, but enthusiastic group of Sierra Club members.

Evidence, to date, has suggested that this problem has not, to any great degree, begun to affect the North Carolina coast. Along with UNCW students, she has been collecting samples off the coast, and has yet to discover signs of any widespread problem here.

“We’re gathering baseline data,” she said, “and right now, we don’t see the microplastics that we see elsewhere, which says a lot about what we have to offer here.”

This picture of a deformed turtle started Bonnie Monteleone’s on her life’s work.

Still, she notes, it is a problem that residents should not dismiss. It is also something of an intractable problem that she is anxious to address. In a blog post on the Plastic Ocean Project, she made note of the fact that she can no longer purchase her favorite Wishbone salad dressing in glass jars. A ubiquitous “they” have decided that the product will only be offered in plastic.

“I realize that big business has the upper hand on our packaging,” she wrote, “and most of us will just suck it up and buy what we want, when we want, no questions asked, and that translates to more plastic trash in our environment.”

She goes on to recommend that you actually collect trash, particularly plastic, in a selected area over a period of week or so, and determine which company is producing the largest amount of it. With pictures and videos, she suggests, compile an evidence database and send it all to the offending company.

“Suggest that they promote responsible disposal of their packaging (and) promote user responsibility in their ad campaigns,” she wrote.

“We need to find the areas where it’s concentrated, especially fishing areas, because that’s the most troubling for both man and marine life,” she said.

“Of all the environmental issues,” Monteleone told the Royal Gazette, “this is one that people might be able to clean up. At least, it’s visible.

“First,” she added, “we have to make people realize we have a problem.”

Residents of the North Carolina coast can give native plants a boost, strengthen sand dunes or reduce oil consumption by simply recycling their Christmas trees.

Not all Christmas tree recycling programs are created equal, though, and if you want to assure that recycling you tree enhances the coastal environment, you should first find out what will happen to your tree.

Most recycling programs, for instance, will process the used trees into mulch, which may be used in private gardens and public parks where it will aid plant life and stabilize the soil to prevent stormwater runoff. Some mulch, however, is used for entirely different purposes. New Hanover County, for example, contracts with a company called Diversified BioMass.

“We will pick them up and take them to Diversified BioMass,” said Lynn Bestul, the county’s solid waste planner. “They’ll mulch it and use it for boiler fuel.”

The county, he noted, has three drop-off locations: Myrtle Grove Middle School, Ogden Park, and the county landfill at U.S 421-North.

Recycled trees are commonly used along the coast to preserve sand dunes, but don’t consider randomly tossing it onto a beach.

“Please,” said Melanie Doyle, a conservation horticulturist with the N.C. Aquarium at Fort Fisher, “do not take your tree and dump it on a beach.”

She noted that the aquarium once collected used trees, and with sand fencing, use them to create dunes. But Christmas trees don’t grow, Doyle said. To fortify sand dunes, you need living plants with fibrous roots, she explained.

But the trees can be used to shield living plants from wind, thus helping them take root.

Three state parks — Fort Macon in Atlantic Beach, Jockey’s Ridge in Nags Head and Hammocks Beach in Swansboro – will collect trees for use on their shorelines. Trees can be dropped off at any time during normal park hours.

Justin Barnes, a ranger at Jockey’s Ridge, said the park tries not to over-manage the dunes. “We don’t want to impede (a dune’s) natural process,” he said, adding that park uses the trees to fortify “problem areas,” where sand is trying to escape the dune.

At 92 feet, the tallest sand dune on the Atlantic coast is in Jockey’s Ridge, but recycled Christmas trees are used on it or the park’s main dunes. “We don’t put trees on those,” Barnes said. “This year, we’re looking at an area where the sand is starting to approach some private property, adjacent to the park. It’s advanced about six or seven feet into their backyard, and what we’re doing is building a dune inside the park boundary to (impede that encroachment).”

Combined with sand fences, recycled Christmas trees can aid in dune restoration.

Like Doyle, Barnes cautioned against the practice of just dumping a tree onto a beach. “You want to be careful in park settings (and not) introduce something foreign,” he said. “You don’t want to introduce species that don’t belong. Technically, that’s litter, and we try to employ a little bit better management style to the process than just tossing them.

“We don’t advertise it too much,” he added of the park’s recycling of the trees. “It’s basically a word-of-mouth thing. Towns will call (about trees they’ve collected through their own recycling programs) and what we’ve always done is to stack them up in our parking lot until we’re ready.”

While the rangers prefer to use the trees to build up problem areas along the dunes, they do, on occasion chip them up into mulch for use in the park. “We try to use as many of the trees as we can,” Barnes said.

The N.C. Aquarium at Jennette’s Pier in Nags Head also has a Christmas tree recycling program. Like those at Jockey’s Ridge State Park, the trees are placed on the nearby dunes. According to Daryl Law, the aquarium’s assistant manager and public relations officer, it’s important to understand that the trees alone are not the answer to dune erosion.

“If you really want the trees to act as a wind block or a sand block,” he said, “you have to use them in conjunction with sand fencing. They go hand in hand.”

The recycling program began last year and, Law said, was very successful program. You can drop them off in the pier’s parking lot.

Beach towns also have tree recycling programs. Topsail Beach, for example, has a recycling program that allows residents to drop off tree at town property on the corner of Davis and Anderson streets. Trees can be taken there immediately after Christmas and for the first few weeks in January.

Holden Beach will also use your old trees for beach nourishment. Drop them off next to the town’s Recycling Center under the water tower.

Check with your town or county to see if they have a recycling program for old Christmas trees.

WILMINGTON — As you step through the doors of Lovey’s Natural Foods and Cafe in the Landfall Shopping Center, you are transported to another era; to a time when buying food was more than just a determined walk through aisles of product in search of just what you needed. You’re not in a supermarket, but in a marketplace, where not only can you buy, but eat it as well. You can chat with the proprietors and greet friends and neighbors. You can linger as varied intoxicating aromas fill your nostrils. Baked bread, fresh fish, cooking meat.

In Lovey’s shopping for food is, as it was in the past, a social occasion.

It’s not hard to imagine that back then, in the midst of the heady marketplace atmosphere, someone would tip over a soapbox, stand on it and address the assembled crowd about some burning issue of the day. Marie Montemurro and Karen Stewart, owners of Lovey’s Cafe, don’t use a soapbox, but their commitment to North Carolina’s coastal environment, not insignificantly connected to their commitment to the sale of healthy, organic food, will find one or both of them circulating through a Lovey’s lunch crowd. They won’t intrude on a customer’s enjoyment of a meal, but they will chat about Titan America’s plans to build along the banks of the Northeast Cape Fear River what would be the country’s fourth-largest cement plant. Montemurro and Stewart will urge patrons to stop by the register on their way out and sign a petition to help stop Titan.

“If I’m working the register,” said Montemurro, “I’ll get 20 signatures. I don’t know for sure, but we’ve probably collected at least 1,000 signatures.”

Marie Montemurro received the Pelican Award from Dick Bierly, the federation’s vice president.

The interior of Lovey’s harkens back to a time when food shopping was a social occasion.

The N.C. Coastal Federation gave Montemurro and Stewart 2012 Pelican Awards for their work against Titan. The federation gives the annual awards to recognize exemplary efforts to protect the coastal environment.

“They are a petition-gathering machine for the stop Titan effort,” noted a Federation press release announcing the award. “They have also made their business available for Stop Titan events, posted action alerts, volunteered at events and donated yummy snacks to keep our supporters happy.”

Though Montemurro and Stewart believe themselves to be exactly where they were destined to be, and happy about it to boot, neither of them would have envisioned it in the earlier years of their separate lives in New York. Montemurro grew up working in her grandmother’s store in the Soho section of Manhattan. After college and a stint at hairdressing school, she worked her mother’s store — Lovey’s Gourmet Specialty Foods and Catering — in Warwick, N.Y. She took over managing the store when her mother, Lovey, died in 1992.

“It was a little crazy,” she said, noting that through the last full-time management part of it, she was a breast-feeding mother of a very young child. “All the deliveries and the wholesale (part of it), and working all hours of the night, I swore I was never going to do that again.

“I came down here with no job,” she said, “which was very stupid.”

That was in 1997. Montemurro got right back to food with a job for a catering company, and then worked in the deli department of Harris Teeter and later, ran the deli and kitchen for All About Food. She looked into the possibility of buying Doxey’s Market, where Lovey’s is now, but when she determined that the owner wanted too much for it, she settled for running its kitchen. When Doxey’s was finally sold to someone else, she signed on as its manager.

Stewart, meanwhile, had started out in Long Island with the idea of being a florist. She attended community college and got a degree in biology. She stayed an extra semester in order to get a degree in chemistry, but abandoned the plan when she was afforded the opportunity to work at something she really loved.

“I owned a pony out in Medford (Long Island) and had always loved horses,” she said of a job offer she accepted with the Long Island Game Farm, training animals for performances. She went on to work at the Roosevelt Raceway in Westbury, NY, originally as a groom, but with an eye toward eventually training race horses.

It was, she said, “challenging, rewarding, and the best job I ever had,” but it was not to be. “I considered being a jockey at one time, came really close to it, but decided not to, because I thought it would be too dangerous.”

She instead owned a cleaning business, was a bookkeeper for her brother’s landscaping business and owned a pet shop. She moved to North Carolina in 1996 where “homes were cheaper, taxes were cheaper.” Unlike her last winter in New York, she didn’t have to shovel 13 feet of snow.

At Lovey’s, you can buy wholesome food and sign a petition to stop Titan.

Settling along the southeast N.C. coast, Stewart began eating at Doxey’s Market, where she would occasionally travel to eat. “It was the best place to eat,” she said. “Very healthy food and the cafe and salad bar were fantastic.”

Stewart met Montemurro, and together they bought Doxey’s Market. After some major remodeling, they opened for business in July 2002.  They eventually doubled the store’s original 3,200 square, encompassing four store fronts.

Montemurro told Stewart about the atmosphere of the original Lovey’s Cafe in Warwick. Stewart wanted their new venture to be just like it, and they settled on re-naming the market Lovey’s Natural Foods and Café. If you look real close in a tinted window, just inside the store’s entrance, you’ll see a hand-painted, wooden sign from the original. Between Montemurro’s experience in the food business, and Stewart’s experience with retail and health foods, the match was a natural.

Their work with the effort to Stop Titan was just as natural.

“We live here,” said Montemurro.

“We have children,” added Stewart.

“You like to think you can make a difference,” Montemurro said.

“You can make a difference,” said Stewart.

“We love it here,” they said.

ST. JAMES – They’re called The Royal Order of the Honorary St. James Oyster, and while there are no secret handshakes or arcane rituals involved  they do wear baseball caps with the order’s logo, and most recently for a second version, the life cycle of the oyster stenciled on to them. There are tote bags, too.

Mostly, though, the volunteers who make up the group in Brunswick County tote bags full of oyster shells to build reefs and perform assorted other environmental good deeds.

They’ve done it so well that the group’s founder, J. Taylor Ryan, and its member who help researchers monitor baby oysters were among the 16 individuals, groups and agencies that received a 2012 N.C. Coastal Federation Pelican Award.

Members of the St.                    James Citizen Volunteers work with UNCW researchers to monitor baby oysters. Photo courtesy of J. Taylor Ryan

“These awards are our way of recognizing extraordinary commitment to protecting and preserving our coast,” said Todd Miller, the federation’s founder and executive director. “We should never underestimate the power that many people can bring to the effort of assuring that our coast remains a healthy and vibrant place. We can’t thank them enough.”

The “power of many people” was in particular evidence from the very start with The Royal Order of the Honorary St. James Oyster. About seven years ago, Ryan, a resident of St. James Plantation, attended a federation seminar and learned that an oyster could filter between 30 to 50 gallons of water a day. From other seminars he attended Ryan knew that such filtering can help clean pollutants in stormwater runoff. He immediately set out to create a pair of oyster reefs in the Intracoastal Waterway adjoining St. James Plantation community, a gated community near Southport that formally incorporated in 1999.

Ryan enlisted the aid of the federation’s Ted Wilgis; Sabrina Varnam, the oyster shell recycling coordinator for the state Division of Marine Fisheries; Troy Alphin, a researcher at the University of North Carolina-Wilmington; and Shelley Lesher, the mayor of St. James. After a year or two of organizing and coordinating, it was time to recruit volunteers to bag oyster shells, which would be used to build the reef, and get them in the water.

“When you advertise for one of these things, you’ll normally get 10 or so volunteers, and if you’re lucky, sometimes as many as 30 or 40,” said Alphin.

More than 90 people showed up.

“I was expecting several weekends of work,” said Alphin, “They filled between 1,500 and 1,700 bags, and it was done in about four hours.

“J. Taylor Ryan was very instrumental at getting everybody together at one time,” Alphin added. “He’s got a lot of energy and is very good at that.”

Varnam had just been hired by the fisheries division to head its recently-funded oyster shell recycling program. She had barely sat down at her new desk when she got the call from Ryan.

“It was a dream when he called,” she said. “It was so wonderful to find people in a community who wanted to get involved.  Anytime I talk to groups, I always use the St. James group as an example.”

The order members wear their hats with pride. Photo courtesy o J. Taylor Ryan.

In time, Ryan organized his volunteers into the Royal Order of the Honorary St. James Oyster — Josann Campanello, the town’s administrator, came up with the name. Within the group are the St. James Citizen Scientist Volunteers, which shared this year’s Pelican Award with Ryan. They basically help UNCW researchers gather data to monitor baby oysters, or spat. While scientists evaluate the information, said Alphin, ordinary people “can read a thermometer, and collect the data for us.”

The volunteer group has become important to the residents of St. James Plantation.  From Ryan’s awareness of what one oyster can do came a volunteer army that now boasts a distribution list of nearly 500 residents, with whom Ryan is quick to share credit.

“Of the many fine characteristics inherent to the people of this community,” said Ryan, “their spirit of volunteerism is unbelievable.”

One might say the same of Ryan himself. Though born in Morganton in the foothills of the Blue Ridge, he grew up in New York, first in the city and then in a small town up the Hudson River. He was a Boy Scout senior patrol leader and a member of his high school track team. He returned to North Carolina to get a degree in business administration from Wake Forest University. After a hitch in the Army’s Signal Corps, Ryan joined IBM in 1965 and stayed for almost 30 years. He moved to St. James Plantation in 2001.

“I just felt that I could have a far better lifestyle on the North Carolina coast than I could in New Jersey,” he said. “The plan was to come down here, look over a few retirement communities and spend some time thinking about it.

“I don’t spend money easily,” he added, “but I surprised myself… What a great decision that turned out to be.”

Drawing on his father’s post-retirement work teaching an outdoor education program in New Jersey and his own work as a Boy Scout camp counselor, it didn’t take long for Ryan to hook up with his community’s stormwater committee and begin attending federation seminars. He went on to join fishing clubs and boating clubs and has recently become a member of a turtle watch group on Caswell Beach.

After building those first two oyster reefs about six years ago, the group has added other reefs in the waterway that are UNCW research sanctuaries.

“I’ve been blessed with a very fortunate life,” Ryan said of his environmental activism, “and I wanted to give back to the community.”

“And those who were seen dancing, were thought to be insane by those who could not hear the music” – Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche

SUNSET HARBOR — Meet N.C. Coastal Federation volunteers Kevin Talon and Phyllis Evans, members of what’s become known as the Lockwood Army, so-called because of their united, disciplined and tireless contributions to the environmental health of Brunswick County’s Lockwood Folly River and Inlet.

Early on, this army might well have been perceived as “insane” dancers by those who could not hear the music of threats being posed to this river’s environment. Today, thanks, in part, to a $309,000 grant awarded to the federation in 2007 by the N.C. Division of Water Quality, Talon and Evans continue their environmental activist dance. Only now, it’s to music that, thanks to them and other members of the Lockwood Army, the river community can actually hear.

Appropriately enough, Talon and Evans, from disparate and geographically distant backgrounds, met 24 years ago, on a Ramada Inn dance floor in Maine. Today, when occasions arise, they still get out there and (literally) dance, as well.

Kevin Talon tests for sediment in the Lockwood Folly River.

Talon is the Maine connection. Born and raised in Lewiston, ME, he spent the first 23 years of his post-high school life working for the Midas Muffler Corp. and raising a son with his first wife. A self-proclaimed “country girl” from Stanley, N.C., Evans spent most of her post-high school years as an accountant for a manufacturing firm in the Charlotte area, while raising three children with her first husband. In 1988, by then single, Evans travelled to Lewiston to be with one of her daughters for the birth of a second grandson. It was there, on what she described as her “first outing” since she’d arrived, that she went to a local restaurant in a Ramada Inn, which featured music and a dance floor. Talon, also single, just happened to be there and asked her to dance.

“I made some kind of remark in our initial conversation that I loved the state and wanted to visit a lighthouse,” she said. “He (subsequently) took me to the Cape Elizabeth (Two Lights) Lighthouse.”

They’ve been together ever since, four years beyond a time frame for permanence declared by Evans at the outset.

“I made it pretty clear,” she said. “I was married the first time for 19 1/2 years, and I would not declare him a ‘keeper’ until we’d passed 20 years.”

For a while, the romance endured a separation of more than 1,000 miles, with Talon paying visits to North Carolina and Evans trekking up to Maine, before they decided that one of them was going to have to make a career change. Evans resettled in Maine, where she was able to find work as a corporate accountant. After three winters in Maine, she returned with Talon to North Carolina in 1991. Tallon transferred to a Midas plant in Gastonia and Evans went back to work for the company she’d been working for in Charlotte before she left.

“I loved Maine,” she said. “I’m an outdoors kind of person, and I loved the ice fishing and the snowmobiling, but my youngest daughter was still in high school, and my mom was getting on in years.”

Three years later, Talon quit Midas. From a new home in Pitt County surrounded by  about 15 small ponds, he and Evans went into raising catfish.

“Phyllis was an accountant for Carolina Classic Catfish,” he said, “and with the ponds, we just continued from there and made a business out of it.”

“That’s where I got my first inkling of things needing to be done,” Evans said, “”and I became conscious of the environment.”

Hurricane Floyd put an end to their catfish business in September 1999. It flooded their home with four feet of water, and all of their catfish swam away. Federal regulations would have required them to re-line the ponds and install irrigation systems, and it was more of a financial burden than they were willing to undertake. They were both also employed elsewhere at the time. In the fall of 2004, they made the decision to sell the farm and began looking for a new home.

“I had always, always wanted to live at the beach,” she said, “and we looked (at property) on the Outer Banks. We were both still working, not ready to retire yet, and there were just more jobs with better pay in the Wilmington area.”

Raising catfish made Phyllis Evans aware of the importance of water quality.

Talon found a job with Rampage Yacht in the Leland area, and Evans went to work as an accounting manager for Oak Island Accommodations. They settled in Brunswick County, in Sunset Harbor. It was there that they first encountered the Lockwood Folly River, and the federation’s call for volunteers to conduct water quality studies. The grant also included provisions for the development of methods to control the stormwater and educate the community about the environmental threat, which over the years had shut down 55 percent of the river to shellfishing.

They were involved in the original studies and participated in the sampling, which really got them connected to the river,” said Mike Giles, a federation coastal advocate and the coordinator of the Lockwood project. “They’re a part of that river community. It’s a part of their everyday lives.

“These people were more than just volunteers,” Giles added. “A friendship developed among these people, who all became advocates, very vocal advocates of the river.”

“We really became involved when we got down here,” Evans said. “I’d been aware of the effects of stormwater, but hadn’t realized it was the major culprit.”

While the Lockwood Army has no more official tasks at this point, Talon and Evans, now retired, continue to volunteer to, among other things, bag oysters that become part of artificial reefs being built on the Intracoastal Waterway near Oak Island.

“They attend county commission meetings throughout the whole area,” said Giles of their continuing work, “and they’re involved in the implementation plan (for improving water quality). It’s not just about that initial study anymore. They’re committed to whatever the river needs.”

“Kevin and Phyllis love to eat oysters,” he added, “and they definitely hear the music.”

WILMINGTON — Margaret Herring, federation volunteer and self-proclaimed “creek keeper,” has been an activist for most of her life. When she retired from her career as a school teacher and came to Wilmington at the turn of the century, Herring became involved, first, with Cape Fear River Watch programs and in then 2003, at the age of 66, with the federation.

“I had an aunt who would take me outside and talk about the trees and nature,” she said, “I’ve always loved the outdoors and liked taking care of it, so it came naturally.”

Living on Riley’s Branch of Hewlett’s Creek, she learned from Ted Wilgis, a federation educator, and from training as a former Coastkeeper volunteer all about the stormwater that flowed by her property to the ocean.

Margaret Herring

“It was a wonderful training program,” she said. “It really raised my consciousness about stormwater and the impact it has on the environment.”

She is characteristically modest about her contributions as a federation volunteer, noting that “basically, I pick the trash up out of the drain near my house.”

Wilgis is more expansive. “She helps with restoration and advocacy, and took the bus up to Raleigh to lobby,” he said. “She doesn’t do a ton of stuff, but she is dedicated.”

Dedication is just one of the things that Herring brings to the table as a Federation volunteer. She also brings a few hard-earned lessons from a long history of political and social activism.

“We have to work together to take care of (the coastal environment), so everyone can survive,” she said. “I learned about working together and about political power in the civil rights movement.”

The lessons almost got her killed.

Born in 1936 in Ashland, Ky., Herring moved as a baby to Winston-Salem, where she attended R.J. Reynolds High School and went on to study liberal arts at Wake Forest College. Married and with two children, Herring was living in the Washington area in 1962 when she began working as a secretary and assistant to Drew Pearson, the famed syndicated newspaper columnist.

The One Man One Vote campaign in the 1960s swelled voters rolls in the South with African-Americans.

“We were very close friends,” she said of the professional relationship that lasted about two years. “My job, basically, was to open his fan mail and answer it, and I’d type up his columns and his diary.

“We kept getting press releases from civil rights organizations about people trying to register voters in the Deep South,” she added, “and about how they were being beaten or killed.”

In the summer of 1964, Pearson brought Herring along to the Democratic National Convention in Atlantic City, N.J., where the party would eventually nominate President Lyndon Johnson for re-election. A variety of civil rights organizations were also there, demonstrating outside the hall.

Pearson sent Herring to the Gem Hotel to interview representatives. She spoke with members of the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party, which had been created in 1964, with assistance from the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee (SNCC), to challenge the legitimacy of the white-only Democratic Party and seat black members at the convention. It was a challenge that failed, initially, but it served to dramatize the injustice experienced by disenfranchised blacks. It was, according to SNCC Chairman John Lewis in Wikipedia, a “turning point in the civil rights movement.”

“Our community (in Winston-Salem) was very segregated when I was growing up, so I had seen all of this first-hand, and it didn’t make any sense to me why they were treated that way,” she said. “My father was a Baptist preacher and a well-educated Greek scholar, so all that and the things that Jesus said, just made that sort of behavior a huge contradiction for me.”

It was enough of a contradiction to make Herring quit her job with Pearson, leave her children with her husband in Washington and head to Mississippi and then eventually to SNCC headquarters in Atlanta.

In Mississippi, Herring helped gain support for the students by calling press in the North, friends of SNCC and local police stations. SNCC had programs in Alabama, Georgia, and Arkansas, and it was Herring’s job to try to acquire as much financial and human assistance for the organization as possible.

“There was an opportunity to be a part of it and I knew it would pass, that it wouldn’t last forever,” said Herring. “If I didn’t go then, I knew I’d never have the chance to do something about injustice.

“I guess it gets in your blood,” she added.

But when a new era of the civil rights movement emerged in 1966, she turned the reins over to those whom she considered their rightful owners. The concept of Black Power became prevalent and Herring responded to the calls made by activists like Stokely Carmichael for a stronger, more African-American led force.

Herring left the SNCC, took a year off and met her second husband. She then was off to eastern Kentucky to work with poor whites and to combat high poverty rates, unemployment, poor schools and infrastructure. Coal companies there had exploited their workers and polluted the environment by strip-mining, and they didn’t much like outsiders coming in to stir up trouble

Ernie Ford scored an unexpected hit in 1955 with his rendition of Merle Travis’ “Sixteen Tons,” a coal-miner’s lament that Travis wrote in 1946, based on his own family’s experience in the Kentucky mines. Its fatalistic tone contrasted vividly with the sugary pop ballads and rock & roll just starting to dominate the charts at the time:“You load sixteen tons, what do you get? Another day older and deeper in debt. Saint Peter, don’t you call me, ’cause I can’t go; I owe my soul to the company store…”

Herring and her husband moved to Pike County, Ky, in 1967, where opposition to their activities got ugly. In August of that year, their home was raided by 17 armed men and they were arrested and jailed for sedition.  Herring was pregnant at the time.

Seized in the raid were hundreds of documents, purported to be evidence of seditious behavior. Copies were made and forwarded to U.S. Sen. John McClellan and his Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations, a remnant of Sen. Joe McCarthy’s House Un-American Activities Committee. When the couple refused to give up the originals, they were charged with contempt of Congress.

Herring and her husband were released on bond, and Herring soon gave birth to a son.

In the middle of the night during the unusually cold winter of 1968, her home was bombed. In the “darkness and swirling dust” of the explosions, with a crying baby and her husband “crawling around looking for his clothes,” Herring managed to call the Kentucky State Police, who found evidence that six sticks of dynamite had been thrown against their bedroom window. They left Pikeville that night.

It took 18 years for the criminal and civil court lawsuits filed against McClellan and his committee to resolve themselves. When they did, in 1982, Herring had some money to pay for a college education. She earned a master’s degree in international education from American University and eventually taught English as a second language. She retired in 2000.

“I was very, very tired,” she said of her decision to retire, “and it was time.”

Ancestors on her father’s side of the family had run a farm in Pender County, so Herring was familiar with the Wilmington area. It has numerous amenities that interest her: theater — she ushers at the Red Barn Theater occasionally — a university, and, of course, the beach.

So here she is in 2012, advocating for the environment of her adopted home and continuing to apply lessons learned the hard way.

“You can’t,” she’ll tell you, “just stand by when you see injustice.”

Editor’s Note: If you want to read more about Margaret Herring, see In Our Defense by Ellen Alderman and Caroline Kennedy (Morrow), Freedom Spent by Richard Harris (Little, Brown), Night Comes to the Cumberlands by Harry Caudill (Jesse Stewart Foundation), and It Did Happen Here, by Bud and Ruth Schultz (University of California Press). 

LELAND — It took a long time for Leland’s Veronica Carter to become an environmental activist and volunteer for the N.C. Coastal Federation, but in a way, it was a role she’d been preparing for most of her life, without knowing it.

Born and raised in Brooklyn, N.Y., she began her pursuit of a career at Fordham University in the Bronx, as a political science major. Now, some 35 years later, she is finally putting some of that particular aspect of her education to practical use in her multiple roles as a federation board member, volunteer, Coastal Resources Commission member and an ambassador for a safer environment, especially in Eastern North Carolina’s poorer communities.

“She’s one of our most active board members,” said Mike Giles, “and one of our best ambassadors in the Southeast region, getting people involved in our coast.”

Careers in the Army at at the UN prepared Veronica Carter for her current role as an ambassador for a cleaner environment.

Beginning in college, however, Carter’s life had moved in a different direction. She joined Fordham University’s ROTC program, where she earned a commission as a second lieutenant in the Army and began a 20-year career that ended in retirement in 2001. She became an ordnance officer (“not ammunition, but maintenance,” she said) at a time when the Army was looking to develop the concept of a “multi-functional logistician.”

“They decided at the time that rather than have folks (focused) in transportation, or supplies or maintenance,” she said, “they needed to know a little bit about everything.”

She became that logistician, which led to tours throughout the United States, Europe and Korea (twice). Eventually, she returned to New York, where she became a professor of military science, in charge of the Army ROTC program at her alma mater, Fordham. She also signed on as an adjunct professor at New York University, where in 2000, she met a student who worked for the United Nations. She was told that there were “lots of logistics jobs” at the United Nations, and with retirement from the Army about a year away, she began the application process.

“It was a good thing I did,” she said, “because the process took about a year.”

In 2001, now retired as a major, she went to work for the Department of Peacekeeping Operations at UN headquarters in New York, where her Army experience was put to good use as a logistics desk clerk in the Africa unit. In many cases, the job required significant amounts of time away from a desk in New York, and Carter found herself on planes, heading to (among other places) Sierra Leone, Guinea and the Democratic Republic of the Congo, where her expertise helped the organization assure that any given peacekeeping mission was properly planned and executed with all of the support services such a mission required, from medical facilities, paymasters, transportation, and of course, the actual personnel.

During her two-year stint with the UN, Carter’s mother died, which led to a major shift in her priorities. Her father was now a widower, after 46 years of marriage, and Carter’s worldwide travel to coordinate UN missions became problematic.

“My father was back in Brooklyn by himself for the first time, and when you’re in places like Bangladesh, it’s not like you can get back from there in a few hours,” she said. “I realized that I needed to be in a different profession; one where I could get back on a plane in a matter of hours, not days.”

Carter had an aunt, uncle and cousin who had moved to North Carolina in the 1990s, which had led to numerous family visits to the Whiteville area. During those visits, Carter “fell in love with the city of Wilmington.”

“This led me saying to my father, ‘We’ve been in North Carolina a lot, so how about we go down and see if it’s someplace we’d like to settle?’” she said. “He told me he wanted to be wherever I was, so that’s what we did.”

In December of 2003, after purchasing the land in Leland and building a house on it, she moved her father here. She joined him two months later.

“I stayed retired for about six months,” she said. “My father hadn’t moved in over 40 years. I knew beforehand that it was going to be an emotional experience for him, so I stayed with him for that six months, before starting to work at Fort Bragg as a civilian contractor doing logistics.”

Veronica Carter often found herself in the spotlight as the leader of the opposition to a huge landfill.

The Hugo Neu dump would have been built in a poor community on the edge of the Green Swamp.

Within the first six months of her residence here, her father handed her a leaflet, inviting area residents to an organizational grassroots meeting, designed to stop a proposal to build a 750-acre landfill in the area on the edge of the Green Swamp, five miles from where they lived.

“He showed me that leaflet and I thought, ‘This doesn’t sound good,’” she said.

Carter attended the meeting of the Brunswick Citizens for a Safe Environment meeting and didn’t like what she heard.

“That same week, a representative from the company (proposing the landfill) was on the radio, answering questions and I liked it even less,” she remembered.

It was at this point, that all of her background began to coalesce — her educational background in political science, her Army and UN experience with logistics and perhaps, most importantly, her personal experience as an African-American. It was more than just the idea that Hugo Neu,  later to become Simms-Hugo Neu, was proposing an environmentally dangerous idea. It was also the fact that this landfill, and others being proposed throughout North Carolina at the time, happened to be next to African-American, Latino or predominantly poor neighborhoods.

Veronica Carter’s private, environmental justice train had, after many years, finally left the station. She went on to become president of the Brunswick Citizens for a Safe Environment, later re-namedThe Cape Fear Citizens for a Safe Environment, and was at the forefront of the logistical, political, scientific and personal campaign that led to the passage in 2007 of Senate Bill 1492, North Carolina Solid Waste Management Act, which was the first overhaul of the state’s solid waste laws in two decades.

The bill’s siting requirements for new landfills made it impossible to build the Hugo Neu landfill.

Among the people instrumental in championing this particular cause were Giles, Tracy Skrabel and the late Jim Stephenson of the N.C. Coastal Federation. Shortly after the passage of the bill, they asked Carter to become a member of their board of directors.

“I’d been so impressed with the way that (the Federation) had worked at getting this law passed,” she said, “that I accepted.”

She’s been on the board ever since, continuing to disseminate the environmental message. Gov. Mike Easley appointed Carter to the N.C. Coastal Resources Commission, which sets development policies in the 20 coastal counties. Gov. Beverly Perdue re-appointed her. Thinking back to her early days at Fordham University, Carter noted that it had taken her all of those intervening years to finally make use of her political science degree

She brings to the commission her activist agenda and a great deal of passion about environmental justice, particularly as it relates to poor, often minority communities.

“There are companies out there that continue to target poor, usually minority communities that more often than not, rely on their environment,” she said. “They hunt, they fish, they dig their own wells. These companies count on these people not to fight.

“I want them to learn that they can fight,” she said, adding that she might not have been able to “connect the dots” of this issue without the federation.

While so much of what led to her work with the federation was based on educational and vocational experiences, the history of what brought her to this space and time goes back even further. In discussions with her father, during the early days of her environmental activism here in North Carolina, they talked of the troublesome “minority” angle of the environmental threats; of the ways that companies targeted and potentially exposed minority and poor communities. These discussions harkened back to an earlier time, when Carter was growing up, and her parents laid the foundation for all that was to come.

“Both my mother and father,” she said, “always taught me to do the right thing.”

WILMINGTON — There was, according to Ron McCord, no “Aha!” moment, no defining event that crystallized his long-time commitment to the N.C. Coastal Federation. It was, rather, a steady growth in his awareness of the environmental threats posed to the coastal region he had adopted.

Born and raised in St. Louis, far from any seacoast concerns, McCord was working for GlaxoSmithKline at Research Triangle Park in the 1980s and began spending summers with his family at Wrightsville Beach. There, for the first time, McCord was exposed to coastal environmental issues.

Ron McCord, standing, and Lewis Piner help move the federation into its new office in Wrightsville Beach.

“That’s when I started getting more interested in the coast,” he said, “and became aware of the development problems. I would read about some of the things that were going on,particularly unscrupulous development, creek pollution, the shellfishing that was closing down, the reduction of the oyster population, and I thought, ‘Something needs to be done about this.’”

Over-development became a pressing concern when McCord and his family moved to Wrightsville Beach. The area’s population swelled in the mid- to late 19880s, and it got so crowded, McCord said, that he’d come home at night and find cars parked in his carport. He sold the home in Wrightsville in 1994 and built a house on the sound side of Topsail Island, where he and his wife, Diane, lived until recently moving back to the Wilmington area.

Continuing to broaden his awareness about his adopted environment, he read an article about the N.C. Coastal Federation, and decided that it would be a good group to get involved with.

“At first, I just became a member and then I started volunteering,” he said. “I did pretty much everything you can think of, from the hands-on dirty work of filling bags with oyster shells for reefs, to using my boat to ferry the oyster shells out and distributing them in the river.

“I’ve lobbied in Raleigh, met with legislators, you name it,” he added, “and I’ve also represented the federation at pretty much every festival in the area.”

Modest to a fault, McCord’s contributions to the federation’s on-going initiatives far exceed his efforts on the front lines of volunteer work. McCord’s association with GlaxoSmithKline, for example, was instrumental in the acquisition of a company grant in 2008 that helped the federation expand its regional offices along the coast.

“Ron is a particularly strong volunteer and spokesperson for the federation,” said Mike Giles, the organization’s Coastal Advocate in the Southeast Region. “He is by far one of our greatest ambassadors.”

McCord, who insists that he’s “not a bleeding heart liberal, but a conservative Republican,” doesn’t do as much of the hands-on dirty work these days, but remains a fierce and vocal advocate for environmental vigilance. He is encouraged these days by a younger generation, which appears to enthusiastically advocate for the environment.

“There’s a fairly large group with the university here (the University of North Carolina-Wilmington), that’s very involved and turn out for work days for planting along the banks and helping fill oyster creeks,” he said. “They turn out in large numbers and are very gung ho.

“In this area,” he added, “I think the transfer of knowledge and interest is quite high.”

Ron is not the only McCord with an active interest in the coastal environment. Diane is an artist whose paintings focus on marshes, beaches. Son, John, who more or less grew up on Wrightsville Beach with a surfboard under his feet, inherited that sport’s somewhat pragmatic interest in clean, coastal waters. He graduated from UNCW’s with a degree in natural resource management and works for the university’s Coastal Studies Institute.

McCord remains committed to the work and the education of others to get that work done. He’s not exactly sure how one goes about convincing people to volunteer –“I wish I knew,” he said — but he does know that for all the progress that’s been made, particularly through the efforts of the federation, the struggle goes on.

“There is still” he said, “a heck of a lot of work to be done.”