WILMINGTON – For more than two hours, residents in an area considered ground zero for PFAS contamination in North Carolina passionately, often angrily, chastised the Environmental Management Commission’s proposed PFAS monitoring and minimization rules.

Dozens of people who signed up to speak – 60 in all – at the public hearing Thursday in downtown Wilmington took turns at a podium unleashing what turned into a collective no-holds-barred rebuke of the proposed rules and, at times, the commissioners who pushed them forward for public comment.

Several of those who spoke in front of a crowd of about 230 people who filled a room in Wilmington’s Skyline Center shared stories about their own health issues, illnesses their loved ones have suffered, and family and friends they’ve lost to various forms of cancer.

Throughout the hearing, people snapped their fingers, signaling their agreement with those speaking at the podium. At the close of every short speech, the audience erupted in rousing applause and cheers.

The sheer number of people who signed up to speak prompted Environmental Management Commissioner Yvonne Bailey, the hearing officer that evening, to ask that residents limit their comments to two minutes.

“Those of us living here have advocated relentlessly at the local, state and federal level, and even at the U.N. for protection of our air and water,” said New Hanover County resident Priss Endo. The North Carolina Department of Environmental Quality “has proposed new surface water standards, but in response, the Environmental Management Commission is proposing regulations that will still allow 500 industries across the state to release PFAS chemicals.”

The hearing last week was the third and final the commission scheduled this year on its proposed monitoring and minimization rules for per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances perfluorooctanoic acid, or PFOA; perfluorooctanesulfonic acid, or PFOS; and a branded compound called GenX developed by DuPont spinoff Chemours. The commission has also been hosting public hearings on similar proposed rules for the monitoring and minimization of 1,4-dioxane, an industrial solvent and likely human carcinogen that has also been found in downstream drinking water sources.

PFAS are a mixture of chemicals used in a host of consumer products from nonstick cookware and food packaging to stain-resistant carpets, water-repellant attire, and makeup.

These chemicals have been found in numerous drinking water sources in North Carolina and traced back to discharges from industrial manufacturers, landfills, firefighting facilities and publicly owned treatment works that accept industry effluent.

Ongoing research into human health effects of PFAS, of which there are more than 15,000 related compounds, have found that some of the substances, including PFOA and PFOS, have been linked to health issues such as weakened immune response, liver damage, low infant birth weights, and higher risk of certain cancers.

Nearly a decade has passed since residents in the Lower Cape Fear region first learned through a local newspaper article that Chemours’ Fayetteville Works facility in Bladen County had for decades knowingly discharged PFAS directly into the Cape Fear River.

Since then, public drinking water utilities that pull raw water from the river have spent millions of dollars upgrading their facilities with filtration systems and methods to keep PFAS out of their final product.

Chemours, under a 2019 consent order, has had to test thousands of privately owned drinking water wells for contamination.

“The 2019 consent order was a start,” resident Jim Nesbit said. “It’s not enough. Your mission is to protect the health of the people of this state. Use the full authority you have to take on the pollution of corporations.”

The PFAS monitoring and minimization rules the commission agreed to put out for public comment have remained under a hail of verbal fire from residents, the public utilities that provide their drinking water, and environmental organizations throughout the Cape Fear region.

As written, the rules do not set specific discharge limits or penalties for PFAS dischargers found to be in violation of those rules.

“As a 33-year water professional and former EMC member, I am testifying that the voluntary minimization plans, as proposed, are ineffective,” Cape Fear Public Utility Authority Executive Director Ken Waldroup said Thursday. “They’re essentially empty facades that do not solve the problem. These minimization plans do not remove PFAS from the Cape Fear River because all reductions are voluntary. Voluntary plans are simply ineffective. Upstream dischargers have had decades to disclose and minimize their PFAS discharges. Unfortunately, history has shown that dischargers only do so in response to effective regulation with specific mandatory limits or mitigation.”

Dr. LeShonda Wallace, who serves on the advisory board for the GenX Exposure Study, one that is measuring GenX and other PFAS exposure in area residents, said the proposed rules ignore science.

Instead, the proposed rules prioritize corporate convenience over public health, she said.

“The impacts are also economic as well as generational,” Wallace said. “PFAS contamination reduces property values, and it shifts the cost away from the polluters and on to the rate payers. Environmental protection and justice requires that those who cause the pollution pay to prevent it and that they pay to clean it up, and I urge the commission to reject these ineffective minimization rules and adopt enforceable, evidence-based standards that reduce pollution at the source.”

Lifelong New Hanover County resident Chip Jackson carried a doll baby with him to the podium.

“I came here tonight to tell this panel how ignorant I have been. I’ve been ignorant because nine years ago I trusted you people. I trusted you to do something,” he said. “I’ll give y’all a pro tip. When you see a baby float by in a stream, you look upstream to see who threw it in the stream.”

Resident Rosemary Schmitt said she simply wants to trust that the water coming out of her tap is not harmful.

“Drinking water should be safe, not something that comes with a list of side effects,” she said.

Just two weeks away from graduating with an undergraduate degree from the University of North Carolina Wilmington, Tyler Raines said he was in a conundrum.

“I don’t have much else to say that hasn’t already been said about the economic, environmental, and social impacts of PFAS on the health of all human beings,” he said. “As I think about where I’m planning to root myself post-graduation, I find myself at a loss. Do I stay here in Wilmington and get poisoned by PFAS or do I go back to my home in Fuquay-Varina and get poisoned by 1,4-dioxane?”

The Environmental Management Commission could decide as early as September to approve or reject the proposed rules. If adopted, those rules would go to the Rules Review Commission for final approval by early next year.

Written comments on the proposed PFAS monitoring and minimization rules are being accepted by email to publiccomments@deq.nc.gov with the subject title “PFAS minimization” or by mail to Karen Preston, DEQ-DWR NPDES Permitting Section, 1617 Mail Service Center, Raleigh, NC  27699-1617.

Energy providers wasted no time last year asking the Trump administration to rescind 2024 federal standards for coal ash disposal.

Five days before President Donald Trump returned for a second term in the White House on Jan. 20, 2025, 10 power suppliers, including Duke Energy, fired off a letter urging Lee Zeldin, Trump’s then-nominee to head the Environmental Protection Agency, “decline to defend these unlawful rules.”

Now the EPA is proposing to revise federal regulation for coal ash disposal, a move that would relax the Biden-era national standards for inactive, often unlined basins designed to store a sludgy mix of watered-down fly ash and bottom ash.

Here in North Carolina, where comprehensive coal ash legislation was pioneered, proposed changes at the federal level are not expected to affect, at least for the time being, the state’s robust coal ash management law.

Nor would the proposed federal revisions impact the terms of a 2019 settlement agreement between the North Carolina Department of Environmental Quality, Duke Energy, and public interest groups that set closure schedules and monitoring requirements for the power company’s remaining coal ash basins.

“None of that is going to be changed by what EPA is trying to do now at the federal level,” Southern Environmental Law Center Senior Attorney Nick Torrey said.

But Torrey cautioned that sites where coal ash has been removed may still contain residual groundwater contamination.

“The federal regulations require monitoring and corrective action for that pollution,” he said. “If utilities can get exceptions and exemptions from those things, that’s potentially concerning. Fortunately, we do have a state process as well that’s dealing with groundwater issues, but it was never meant to be a substitute for the federal standards. There’s more vulnerability that coal ash contamination could be allowed to persist. So, we’ll have to be watching that very closely as things go forward.”

Coal ash, referred to in regulation and industry as coal combustion residuals, or CCR, is the byproduct created when coal is burned for electricity. It contains toxic heavy metals such as arsenic, mercury, cadmium, lead and radioactive elements, according to the EPA.

In early February 2014, some 39,000 tons of coal ash slurry discharged from a collapsed pipe at Duke Energy’s retired Dan River Steam Station near Eden into the river. The spill spread as far as 70 miles downstream.

In the fall of that year, the North Carolina General Assembly enacted the North Carolina Coal Ash Management Act, or CAMA.

CAMA (not to be confused with the Coastal Area Management Act) initially set deadlines for Duke Energy to close a group of basins at four of its power plants by certain deadlines.

EPA in 2015 finalized the federal CCR rule under the Obama presidency. The Biden administration strengthened those regulations in 2024.

By that time, DEQ had finalized a basin closure schedule for all 14 of Duke Energy’s facilities in North Carolina. Following litigation and a settlement agreement between community and conservation groups, DEQ and Duke Energy, a 2020 consent order was approved to govern the cleanup process for the remaining sites.

Duke Energy anticipates officially fully excavating the 12th of its 32 coal ash basins in North Carolina by year’s end. Both coal ash impoundments at the Sutton Steam Plant in Wilmington were excavated by July 2019.

Duke Energy spokesperson Bill Norton confirmed in an email earlier this week that the excavation of ash at its W.H. Weatherspoon Power Plant in Lumberton is complete, well ahead of schedule. The company is in the process of working through the basin’s clean closure certification, a process expected to be completed later this year, Norton said in the email.

“Not yet counting Weatherspoon, we have completed excavation at 11 North Carolina basins and are making strong progress at the remaining 20, with well over half of our basin ash safely excavated in the states,” he stated. “All sites remain on or ahead of schedule for basin closure deadlines as shown here.”

Norton said the EPA’s proposed rule changes will not impact Duke Energy’s proposed coal retirement dates.

“We continue making progress on coal retirements while balancing our regulatory approvals and increased load growth – regulators have made clear that replacement generation must be online and serving customers prior to further coal plant retirements,” he said. “While the potential EPA CCR rule changes have no impact on our proposed coal retirement dates, we appreciate prior changes to in the federal regulations that provided flexibility for our coal facilities, enabling us to maximize the value of existing generation by extending the operational life of these assets to help meet load growth at the lowest possible cost to consumers. Retirement dates are subject to regulatory approval.”

Coal-fired operations at Belews Creek Steam Station in Stokes County are expected to be shut down no later than Jan. 1, 2040. The retirement of that plant’s coal combustion operations will mark the end of Duke Energy’s coal-fired power generation in the state.

“We are making tremendous progress on meeting all obligations agreed to years ago in our North Carolina settlement with state regulators and environmental groups – that commitment is unchanged, and state regulators have confirmed our plans are protective of public health and the environment,” Norton said.

Beneficial reuse units at the company’s Buck Combined Cycle Plant in Salisbury, Cape Fear plant in Moncure, and H.F. Lee Energy Complex on the banks of the Neuse River in Goldsboro have been reprocessing coal ash at those sites to make it suitable for use in concrete since 2020, he said.

Katherine Lucas, DEQ’s Division of Waste Management public information officer, stated in an email that the agency “is evaluating the proposed changes to determine any potential impacts on ongoing excavation and remediation activities at Duke Energy facilities.”

“In the absence of an U.S. Environmental Protection Agency-approved state permit program, utilities must comply with both federal and state requirements. North Carolina remains a national leader in coal ash management, both in establishing comprehensive regulations and in the scale and pace of closure and remediation efforts. DEQ believes the state’s regulatory framework is at least as protective as federal requirements and does not anticipate that federal changes would reduce existing environmental and public health protections.”

The EPA is accepting public comments on the proposed rule changes through June 12.

The agency is hosting an online public hearing at 9 a.m. on May 28. 

SURF CITY – Kerri Allen acknowledged early on what was also obvious to her audience.

“I do not need to tell anyone in here we have a really high density of leases,” the North Carolina Coastal Federation’s coastal management program director said. “In our public trust waters, when you have that many users, there are going to be conflicts.”

Several people sitting inside the Surf City Municipal Complex’s town council chambers that April 14 afternoon nodded in agreement, eager to share their thoughts on the subject.

With either temporary or permanent shellfish leasing moratoriums in North Carolina waters to its north and south, Topsail Island’s waters have become a hot commodity for oyster growers.

There are now nearly 190 shellfish leases in the waters behind the 26-mile-long barrier island from the New River and its adjacent estuarine waters south to Topsail Sound.

That’s a roughly 46% increase from the collective number of leases in 2018 in Onslow and Pender counties.

The squeeze put on the waters around Topsail Island has prompted ongoing calls for a temporary moratorium on new shellfish leases in the area.

The Topsail Island Shoreline Protection Commission, or TISPC, which is composed of elected officials from each of the island’s three towns – Topsail Beach, Surf City and North Topsail Beach – initiated a request for a temporary pause on leases more than a year ago. Commissioners in Onslow and Pender counties did the same.

Shellfish lease moratoriums in the state may be enacted only by the North Carolina General Assembly.

On April 10, 2025, Rep. Carson Smith, R-Pender, introduced legislation requiring a statewide study on shellfish leasing and the current lease moratorium.

House Bill 841 made it no further than the Senate’s Rules and Operations Committee.

“If there is a temporary moratorium, we don’t feel that’s unreasonable,” Allen said last week.

A pause would give the Coastal Federation and North Carolina Sea Grant more time to talk with those who live along and use the waters around the island and come up with suggestions to help shape future policy that would protect the industry, make it sustainable long term, and ease user conflicts, she said.

Additional focus groups, including one for shellfish growers, will be scheduled this fall.

Meanwhile, a temporary moratorium that has been repeatedly extended since it was first enacted in New Hanover County in 2019 is set to expire in July.

“It’s very reasonable to say if we were able to open up some of these other areas that could help alleviate the pressure that this area is seeing,” Allen said. “A lot of the oyster growers that we work with in this region live in New Hanover County and they would love not to have to drive up here to take care of their farms. We are actively trying to get New Hanover to not extend their moratorium. I do not have a good feel, one way or another, how that’s going to go yet, but we are having those conversations.”

Surf City Mayor Teresa Batts said officials on the island do not intend to wait for a decision before asking for a temporary moratorium.

“I know you’re going to go through the procedural steps, but the TISPC, we’re not going to sit back and wait,” she said. “If we see that New Hanover County is trying to extend their moratorium, then we’re going to try to slide in there on their session and piggyback on their moratorium.”

The Coastal Federation, which publishes Coastal Review, and North Carolina Sea Grant teamed up last year to launch a Geographic Information System, or GIS, database pinpointing areas where leases may or may not be suitable in the waterways behind Topsail Island. The GIS database is anticipated to be published next year.

Recommendations shared with the organizations will help shape the North Carolina Strategic Plan for Shellfish Mariculture, a plan commissioned by the General Assembly in 2017.

This document is effectively the state’s roadmap for a sustainable shellfish industry. It’s not meant to be a fixed document, rather one that evolves as the industry evolves and conditions change, Allen explained, adding, “which they very much have changed since 2017.”

In the years since, the state has seen a shift where shellfish farmers are using floating gear to grow oysters in the water column, a method that allows them to maximize the spaces in which they grow their product.

Unlike cages that are placed on the waterbed, those in water column leases poke up from the water’s surface.

And, as more water column leases have been granted, complaints have mounted about their impacts to the viewsheds of waterfront properties, boating and kayaking access, and infringement on popular fishing spots.

Fishing guide Capt. Ray Brittain offered to take Allen and N.C. Sea Grant Extension Director Frank López on his boat, and on his dime, to show them how the leases affect his business.

“There’s so many PVC pipes out there,” Brittain said. “You don’t need a thousand PVC pipes to mark,” a lease area. “We can’t fish in those. I mean, mark your outer edge to show people where it is, but a lot of it is just unnecessary stuff.”

Brittain was among nearly 30 attendees at the April 14 meeting, where participants were asked to break into two groups to discuss concerns and recommendations that will be documented and shared with local elected officials, legislators, and state agency officials.

Those at the meeting in Surf City last week touched on a host of issues, raising concerns related noise associated with shellfish farming activities, nighttime navigation around shellfish leases, the density of leases around Permuda Island Reserve, and linear placement of leases along estuary island shorelines blocking anglers from following fish.

Some asked for shellfish farmers to be required to carry liability insurance, while others suggested the North Carolina Division of Marine Fisheries create a more robust public notification system announcing lease applications that would include property owners whose land is within and adjacent to the viewshed of a proposed lease.

Other recommendations included an implementation of buffers by moving leases further from shorelines based on specific locations within a waterbody, potentially increasing lease fees, decreasing the length of time a lease is valid, and the possibility of commissioning studies on the impacts of floating cages on the ecosystem.

The Coastal Federation and Sea Grant are accepting comments online through the Stump Sound shellfish mariculture planning – stakeholder input form through Aug. 1.

FAYETTEVILLE — Proposed monitoring and minimization rules for industrial dischargers of 1,4-dioxane and the public sewage plants that accept those facilities’ waste fail to protect North Carolinians’ drinking water, speakers at a public hearing said Tuesday.

All but one of the 13 people who spoke at the North Carolina Environmental Management Commission’s hearing at Fayetteville Technical Community College criticized the proposed rules, arguing those rules fall short in reducing the amounts of 1,4-dioxane discharged into people’s drinking water sources and lack enforcement.

Those comments mirror ones articulated at the commission’s April 9 hearing on the proposed rules in Hickory. A third hearing is scheduled for May 12 in Jamestown.

“The so-called monitoring and minimization rule establishes certain monitoring requirements, but the term minimization is misleading,” Fayetteville resident Madison Williams said. “The way the rule is promulgated is in a way that does not require polluters to reduce PFAS or 1,4-dioxane emissions into North Carolina drinking water supplies, and it imposes no consequences, even if those discharges increase. This in effect is a polluter written rule.”

Related: Public hearings set on proposed wastewater discharge rules

The commission is hosting separate public hearings, the first of which was held in Asheville last week, on a similar rule for per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances, or PFAS; perfluorooctanoic acid, or PFOA; perfluorooctanesulfonic acid, or PFOS; and GenX, a chemical specific to a manufacturing plant that sits near Cape Fear River in Bladen County.

Under the proposed rules, publicly owned treatment works that receive industrial wastewater, and their manufacturer customers, would be required to monitor for discharges of 1,4-dioxane, an industrial solvent, into rivers, creeks and streams.

Facilities would be required to conduct baseline monitoring every three months for one year. Based on those sampling results, dischargers may be required to conduct additional monitoring.

“If determined to need ongoing sampling the industrial direct discharger will be required to develop a minimization plan,” explained Bridget Shelton with the Division of Water Resources’ planning section. “A minimization plan is a strategy to reduce or eliminate pollutants at the source before they are discharged into the environment.”

Facilities that “meet certain criteria” may request exceptions from ongoing monitoring and minimization plan requirements, she said.

The proposed rules do not set specific discharge limits or penalties for violations.

That fact has drawn sharp criticism from residents, environmental groups and public drinking water providers who have been calling on the state to establish drinking water standards for PFAS and 1,4-dioxane and regulate direct dischargers of those chemicals.

“Over 1 million North Carolina residents consume water from the Cape Fear River, water that is contaminated with 1,4-dixoane, PFAS and other forever chemicals that will continue to proliferate without sufficient regulations at the federal and state levels,” said Jonelle Kimbrough, executive director of Fayetteville-based environmental nonprofit Sustainable Sandhills. “The proposed 1,4-dioxane minimization rules seem to be an attempt at regulation but, as written, they essentially do nothing to protect the natural resources or public health of our state and we need protection.”

Rob Clark, Cape Fear River Watch’s water quality programs manager, said the organization and its more than 1,000 members collectively opposed the proposed rules.

“These rules are completely inadequate when it comes to dealing with PFAS and 1,4-dioxane pollution in the Cape Fear River Basin,” he said. “The proposed minimization rules do not set enforceable limits on how much these toxic compounds can be discharged into our waterways. Instead, they rely on polluters to monitor their pollution and submit plans describing how they might reduce that over time. Do we really think that polluters are going to cut into their profits in order to do the right thing and stop discharging these chemicals into our waterways?”

Representatives of downstream public water suppliers said the proposed rules lack a clear objective to significantly decrease 1,4-dioxane levels in state surface waters.

Fayetteville Public Works Commission’s Environmental Programs Manager Rhonda Locklear pointed out that statewide monitoring has identified 1,4-dioxane primarily in the Cape Fear River Basin.

The North Carolina Department of Environmental Quality, “has sampled surface waters in 15 of North Carolina’s 17 river basins, confirming that most industrial 1,4-dioxane sources are in the Cape Fear River Basin, where 35% of these samples since 2017 were above non-detect thresholds, almost 10 times the rate in the Neuse River Basin, and nearly 200 times that of the Yadkin-Pee Dee River Basin,” she said. “The problem areas are well-defined, documented, and PWC expects DEQ to set meaningful regulations and reductions in the Cape Fear River Basin.”

Cape Fear Public Utility Authority Deputy Executive Director Kevin Morris said that the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, which classifies 1,4-dioxane as a likely human carcinogen, warns that at even at concentrations of 0.35 parts per billion, long-term exposure to the chemical increases cancer risks to humans and may cause significant kidney and liver impacts.

“Downstream water systems continue to experience periodic spikes in 1,4-dioxane despite having no role in producing or discharging this chemical, which demonstrates the limitations of our current regulatory framework,” Morris said.

He highlighted how effluent from Asheboro’s wastewater treatment plant has periodically tested for elevated levels of 1,4-dioxane, concentrations of which far exceeded levels associated with long-term health risks.

“These discharges flow into waterways like the Haw and Cape Fear rivers,” Morris said. “They’re relied upon by downstream drinking water systems, and they require additional monitoring, treatment, adjustments and customer communication. The downstream public ultimately bears the risk from and the cost of managing contamination that they had no part in creating. Voluntary reduction measures are insufficient to ensure consistent outcomes or to protect downstream communities. Utilities can manage only what arrives at their intake.”

As of Wednesday, DEQ had received more than 2,000 public comments and counting on the commission’s proposed rules for 1,4-dixoane and PFAS, according to Josh Kastrinksy, DEQ’s deputy communications director.

“The comments we’ve received in writing have by and large reflected the comments we’ve received in person,” he said.

Andrew Mlot, chair of the North Carolina Pretreatment Consortium Inc., a nonprofit that represents more than 180 pretreatment professionals in 64 state-approved pretreatment programs across North Carolina, was the only person Tuesday to speak in support of the proposed rules.

But that organization has “several specific concerns” with the rules as they are currently written, he said.

“The costs to treat 1,4-dioxane at the POTW (publicly owned treatment works) level is staggering. Capital costs alone range from $10 million to $1.3 billion, making source control the only practical path forward,” he said.

The proposed rules would require public treatment works in Greensboro, Burlington, Asheboro, High Point and Reidsville, which have been conducting monitoring and minimization activities going back to 2015, to start over, Mlot said.

“We ask for an explicit offramp for POTWs that have already completed successful programs. Replace any detection with a workable screening threshold. As currently written, any detection of 1,4-dioxane triggers ongoing monitoring requirements and a full minimization plan. NCPC members do not believe this is workable. We support an alternative screening threshold based on meaningful concentrations or loading levels,” he said.

DEQ is accepting written comments through June 15. Comments may be submitted by email to publiccomments@deq.nc.gov with the subject heading “1,4-dioxane minimization, or by mail to Bridget Shelton, DEQ-DWR Planning Section, 1611 Mail Service Center, Raleigh, NC 27699-1611.

Microplastics and pharmaceuticals have made the Environmental Protection Agency’s newly published draft list of substances in public drinking water that warrant scientific scrutiny.

This marks a first for the EPA, which, along with U.S. Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., announced last week that microplastics and pharmaceuticals are two of four contaminant groups and dozens of chemicals included on the draft Sixth Contaminant Candidate List.

The April 2 announcement kick-started a 60-day public comment period.

The Trump administration hailed the additions to the list, also referred to as CCL 6, as “a landmark set of actions to safeguard the nation’s drinking water.”

“For too long, Americans have vocalized concerns about plastics and pharmaceuticals in their drinking water. That ends today,” EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin stated in a release. “By placing microplastics and pharmaceuticals on the Contaminant Candidate List for the first time ever, EPA is sending a clear message: we will follow the science, we will pursue answers, and we will hold ourselves to the highest standards to protect the health of every American family.”

The announcement comes as the Trump administration is actively pursuing rolling back drinking water standards for several per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances, or PFAS, established under the previous administration.

PFAS, along with disinfection byproducts, once again made it onto a CCL, which singles out contaminants that are known or anticipated to be in public drinking water systems, but are not regulated under the Safe Water Drinking Act and may be considered for future regulatory action.

Also making it back on the list is 1,4-dioxane, an industrial solvent that, along with PFAS, is known to be in the drinking water sources for tens of thousands of North Carolinians, perhaps most notably in the Cape Fear Region.

Last year, the EPA announced that it would retain current National Primary Drinking Water Regulations for PFOA and PFOS but rescind regulations and reconsider regulatory determinations for other PFAS, including GenX.

GenX is specific to Chemours’ Fayetteville Works facility that is situated near the banks of the Cape Fear River and more than 70 miles upstream of Wilmington. The Cape Fear River is the raw drinking water source for hundreds of thousands of North Carolinians.

The federal agency also said it was extending deadlines for public water treatment plants to come into compliance with the federally established limits for those PFAS.

Since the late 1990s, the EPA has been required by law to publish every five years a list of contaminants that are either unregulated or not proposed for regulation.

CCLs are considered the initial step in a process to better understand, through scientific research, potential human health risks of contaminants in drinking water.

And, while clean drinking water advocates say this is a good first step, they urge the public to call for regulations to limit the levels of or altogether halt the discharge of contaminants into public drinking water sources.

“I think it’s important to recognize what chemicals are in our drinking water and to study the risks associated with that,” Hannah Nelson, a staff attorney with the Southern Environmental Law Center’s Chapel Hill office said. “But simply adding chemicals to this list isn’t going to protect our communities. They’re on the list because we know they’re in drinking water, so now we need to take the next step to control the source of that pollution at the source and get it out of our drinking water. I North Carolina, because we know these pollutants are already there, I think we really should be focusing on how do we keep them out in the first place, because that’s how we truly protect our communities.”

Residents in the Cape Fear region, the local governments that represent them, the public water utilities that serve them, and environmental organizations are embroiled in an ongoing fight pushing for state regulations to put the onus on dischargers of PFAS and 1,4-dioxane to reduce the amounts of chemicals they release into drinking water sources.

On Tuesday, the North Carolina Environmental Management Commission will host its first in a series of public hearings on proposed PFAS and 1,4-dioxane monitoring and minimization rules.

Three hearings will focus on proposed rules for discharges of PFOS, PFOA and GenX into North Carolina’s surface waters and three on proposed rules for monitoring and minimizing 1,4-dioxane in wastewater discharges from certain facilities into surface waters.

The proposed rules packages do not set specific discharge limits or penalties for discharge violations, which has become a sticking point for those who argue that the rules would do little in actually minimizing the amount of those contaminants in drinking water sources.

“We know our environmental rulemaking body is currently trying to pass rules on PFAS and 1,4-dioxane that don’t control chemicals at the source,” Nelson said. “Having drinking water standards would be a helpful too, but our real focus should be, how can we keep these out in the first place and how can we encourage our state and our federal leaders to protect the people from the pollution before it even reaches the point of coming out of our sink and pouring into our cups.”

Beyond Plastics, a Bennington College, Vermont-based organization dedicated to ending single-use plastic pollution, called for similar regulation for microplastics.

“The U.S. Environmental Agency has taken an important first step to regulate microplastics in drinking water,” Beyond Plastics President and former EPA Regional Administrator Judith Enck stated in a release. “I applaud this decision by the EPA and urge the agency to move rapidly to not only regulate microplastics in drinking water but to also prevent microplastics from entering our water supplies.”

Cape Fear River Watch’s Water Quality Programs Manager Rob Clark agreed, saying that microplastics are ubiquitous – they’re in our environment and in our bodies.

“It’s a situation where it seems like we already have a lot of information on this,” he said. “What we need is ubiquitous monitoring across the country and we need regulation. The quicker that we get to setting a maximum contaminant level for microplastics, the quicker it’s not in our drinking water.”

In its April 2 release, the EPA noted that while human health benchmarks for pharmaceuticals are not regulations and not enforceable, “they are a vital resource, empowering local decision-makers to evaluate risks and protect their communities when pharmaceutical contamination is detected at concerning levels.”

The public comment period on draft CCL 6 will close June 5.

The EPA is expected to sign a final list by Nov. 17.

“I think public comment periods on action like this are really important because it’s a good time for folks to express concerns about the chemicals that are known to be present in their drinking water,” Nelson said. “Adding chemicals to the list is truly just an acknowledgement that they’re in the water. I don’t think we should read this list as a commitment to going above and beyond and advocating for folks. What we need to see is strong action to keep those chemicals out, whether it be from the federal administration or our state agencies.”

This year, the Gullah Geechee Cultural Heritage Corridor wanted to shake things up, get away from what has been their traditional meeting formula, and instead offer an up-close and personal, historically engaging experience.

The nonprofit’s North Carolina Summit invites you to take part in the “Black Church Crawl,” an immersive tour celebrating the history of Black churches that have housed decades of congregants in Brunswick and New Hanover counties.

Scheduled from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. April 18, the tour will allow participants to step within the walls of three historic Black churches, where speakers will delve into the stories of how these cultural landmarks came to be and their significance as spaces of faith, fellowship and community.

“Although you might live in a certain area, you might not be really invested in what’s going on,” said Nora Williams, Gullah Geechee Cultural Heritage Corridor public relations and marketing campaign coordinator. “We wanted something that was happening in their community and something that they also could get involved in. Of course, anyone is allowed to participate, but we felt like this would be a great way for people to learn more about themselves and their history and the culture.”

The summit in North Carolina kicks off the first of four meetings the commission-led nonprofit holds annually in each of the states in which the corridor spans.

The corridor is one of the largest of the 62 designated national heritage areas in the country, encompassing about 2,200 miles through coastal counties from Florida to southeastern North Carolina.

“We’re one of the ones that primarily focus on people,” Williams said.

The Gullah Geechee are the descendants of West and Central Africans ripped from their native land and shipped to America, where they were enslaved to work on the coastal rice, Sea Island cotton and indigo plantations of Florida, Georgia and the Carolinas.

Their enslavement on isolated coastal plantations and barrier islands helped them retain many of their indigenous African traditions, which remain today through spiritual traditions, arts and crafts, and food.

They even created their own language, Gullah, a mixture of West African dialects and English that is not spoken anywhere else in the world.

Congress enacted the Gullah Geechee Cultural Heritage Corridor and the commission established to oversee it on Oct. 12, 2006, through the National Heritage Act of 2006 with the aim of recognizing, sustaining, and celebrating the Gullah Geechee’s contributions to American culture and history.

The nonprofit assists the four state governments and local governments within those states in interpreting the Gullah Geechee’s story and preserving historic sites, data and artifacts associated with its people and culture.

One of those sites sits just off Cedar Hill Road in Navassa, the first stop of the church crawl, an event that will feature public historian, performance artist and Gullah Geechee’s own Tyanna Parker-West, Wilmington native and WilmingtoNColor founder Cedric Harrison, and Pastor Derrick Parker.

Just last year, a multiyear, more than $1 million effort to restore Reaves Chapel, a one-room church built on the bluffs of the Cape Fear River in Brunswick County by people formerly enslaved at Cedar Hill Plantation more than a century ago, was completed.

The little chapel in Navassa was eventually relocated by its congregation, using logs and a team of oxen, inland on land Ed Reaves, a former Cedar Hill Plantation slave, donated to the church in 1911. The church eventually became affiliated with the African Methodist Episcopal denomination and remained an AME church until its doors closed permanently in the mid-2000s.

Today, it is a tangible testament to those who built it, maintained it, and worshiped in it.

The crawl will continue across the Cape Fear River to downtown Wilmington, where Chestnut Street Presbyterian Church, the oldest African American presbyterian church in North Carolina, and St. Stephen African Methodist Episcopal Church continue to welcome congregants.

Services have been held at Chestnut Street Presbyterian Church for more than 150 years since it was erected during the third great awakening, a time in the United States of religious activism and social reform that occurred from the late 1850s to the early 20^th century.

Roughly a third of a mile away, congregants have filled the pews in St. Stephen AME Church’s current sanctuary since its completion in 1886. The building that stands at 501 Red Cross Street today replaced the original, simple wooden chapel whose members, about 1,500 by 1879, had outgrown its sanctuary.

“The congregation of the popular church was a powerful influence on the community and the state,” according to the North Carolina Department of Cultural and Natural Resources.

When President William Howard Taft visited Wilmington in 1909, he stopped at the church to make a speech to African American schoolchildren.

Williams said in a telephone interview last week that heritage corridor officials chose to hold the church crawl in the Wilmington area because the nonprofit organization wants to preserve and celebrate the Gullah Geechee community in New Hanover and Brunswick counties.

“We understand that Wilmington and the surrounding area is growing very fast,” she said. “Our goal as the corridor is to preserve and amplify the Gullah Geechee community in these areas, so we felt like this was a great time to highlight that community.”

Registration for the Black Church Crawl is $25, which includes transportation and a lunch featuring the culinary flare of two-time James Beard nominee Chef Keith Rhodes, owner of the wildly popular Catch in Wilmington and Voyce Bistro, his newest restaurant featuring coastal cuisine infused with Caribbean flavors.

“We would love for it to fill up and have as many people as possible,” Williams said of the church crawl. “We’re flexible and we have the ability to provide more transportation if more people are interested.”

She anticipates the organization will hold future events as part of its state summits, adding “We do see this growing and being a more interactive experience as opposed to you come in and it’s a presentation. I think we really want people to experience these spaces, experience the people.”

Ocean Conservancy has launched an online calculator that lets users see how many seabirds, sea turtles and marine mammals they’ve helped by picking up plastics from the environment.

Whether you’re a party of one scooping up plastic trash as you stroll on an ocean beach, or part of an organized group cleanup effort along a roadside, the conservancy’s new wildlife impact calculator lets you plug in different types and amounts of plastics you’ve kept from reaching our oceans and seas.

“Then the calculator uses our science to output the amount of animals that you helped protect had they eaten this plastic,” said Ocean Conservancy Ocean Plastics Research Manager Dr. Erin Murphy.

The science to which Murphy refers is a study conducted by researchers with the nonprofit environmental advocacy group who reviewed the results of more than 10,000 necropsies of animals recorded to have died by ingesting plastics.

The peer-reviewed study published last November focused on dozens of species of seabirds, all seven species of sea turtles, and 31 species of marine mammals from across the globe.

“From these 10,000 animals from around the world, we found that nearly half of sea turtles had plastic in their gut, a third of seabirds, and 12% of marine mammals,” Murphy said. “And then we found that these actual lethal thresholds for these animals were much smaller than we expected.”

For example, seabirds like Atlantic puffins that consumed less than three sugar cubes’ worth of plastics were found to have a 90% mortality rate.

Loggerhead sea turtles experience, on average, that same rate of death if they ingest just over two baseballs’ worth of plastics. For every one in two harbor porpoises, the threshold is about a soccer ball’s worth, or 60 inches, of plastics.

Scientists found that soft plastics like grocery bags and fishing debris are especially hazardous for marine mammals. In fact, 28 pieces of plastic smaller than the size of a tennis ball is enough to kill a sperm whale.

Rubber and hard plastics were found to be the largest threat for seabirds. Both soft and hard plastics are of particular harm to sea turtles.

Some of the animals autopsied and included in the study were found to have entire garbage bags in their digestive systems. These bags block food from being able to move through an animal’s intestinal tract, leading to starvation and death.

An albatross was found to have died from eating an entire disposable water bottle.

Larger animals, like sperm whales and manatees, had died from eating numerous fishing lures, ice cream wrappers and, in one case, a fully intact three-gallon bucket, Murphy said, adding, “all sorts of things that we frequently find in our beach cleanup.”

Since 1986, more than 400 million pounds of trash has been picked up from beaches and waterways across the world through Ocean Conservancy’s annual International Coastal Cleanup.

The wildlife impact calculator aligns with the organization’s Clean Swell mobile app, which allows users to record each item of trash collected off a beach, in a park or neighborhood.

Information recorded through Clean Swell is plugged into an international database shared with scientists and policymakers around the world. The app allows the user to track the amount of trash that person has collected and share cleanup results with friends on social media.

Murphy said the organization hopes to eventually streamline its wildlife impact calculator with the Clean Swell app.

“We do encourage people to use (the calculator) as a learning tool so even if they’re not able to go out and participate in a cleanup that day, they can absolutely put in numbers and try to understand the relationship between what’s on the beach and how that could affect marine wildlife,” she said.

More than 11 million metric tons (8 million tons) of plastics enter the ocean each year, according to the conservancy.

“Ocean Conservancy does a lot of advocacy work to reduce the amount of plastic we produce and to improve waste management,” Murphy said. “But the third prong in this global effort to address plastic pollution is really cleanups, and every single person going out on the beach and picking up what they see does make a difference in help protecting our ocean animals.”

Before accepting the Trump administration’s $1 billion taxpayer buyout, TotalEnergies fostered a campaign that its wind energy project off the coast of Brunswick County would eventually generate enough electricity to power 300,000 homes in the Carolinas.

“Our team is passionate about creating a clean energy economy and the new opportunities it brings to our local communities,” reads an excerpt from TotalEnergies Carolina Long Bay website. “Our partnerships in the Carolinas are making renewable energy a regional priority, building a stronger future for us all.”

TotalEnergies Carolina Long Bay, a wholly owned subsidiary of the France-based global energy company, “will harness the power of offshore wind to generate abundant energy and significant economic growth for the communities of the Southeast.”

The Interior Department’s announcement Monday that TotalEnergies had accepted a federal buyout of its wind energy leases off the New York and North Carolina coasts is a sharp pivot from the company’s previous narrative on offshore wind in the United States.

TotalEnergies’ chief executive officer and chair of the company’s board of directors said in a Department of Interior release that the decision to relinquish offshore wind development in the United States was made because such projects are “not in the country’s interest.”

Instead, TotalEnergies will invest the refunded money in a liquefied natural gas export terminal in Texas and other fossil fuel projects.

The Trump administration lauded it as an “innovative agreement,” one that is a major win for President Donald Trump, who has made offshore wind the biggest bullseye in his target to dismantle renewable energy projects and replace them with fossil fuel and nuclear power.

“Offshore wind is one of the most expensive, unreliable, environmentally disruptive, and subsidy-dependent schemes ever forced on American ratepayers and taxpayers,” Interior Secretary Doug Burgum said in a release. “We welcome TotalEnergies’ commitment to developing projects that produce dependable, affordable power to lower Americans’ monthly bills while providing secure U.S. baseload power today – and in the future.”

Shortly after taking office in January 2025, Trump issued an executive order barring new offshore wind leases and requiring reviews of existing and permitted wind projects.

Last December, the Trump administration, citing risks to national security, ordered work to stop in five offshore wind energy areas on the East Coast, including Dominion Energy’s 2.6-gigawatt project based in Hampton Roads, Virginia.

Courts have since allowed all five of the projects to operate for the time being until final judgments are rendered in those cases.

Monday’s announcement drew immediate rebuke from opponents who argue the deal sets a dangerous precedent and limits alternative energy production as Americans face rising electricity bills and concerns mount about the amount of power artificial intelligence data centers use.

“Donald Trump truly can’t leave a good thing alone,” BlueGreen Alliance Vice President of Federal Affairs Katie Harris said in a release. “His never-ending vendetta against offshore wind shows that he either doesn’t understand the affordable energy crisis or that he just doesn’t care. Either way, it’s clear he’s never paid his own electricity bill, and he’s determined to raise bills for working people.”

Southeastern Wind Coalition Senior Program Manager Karly Brownfield said that the agreement “feels really counterproductive” at a time when people are closely watching their energy costs at home and at the pump.

“The whole thing is unprecedented and it’s also completely unprecedented to take a lease payment and then refund it in exchange for investment in the natural gas industry. That has never happened before,” she said in a telephone interview earlier this week. “Whether you’re investing in offshore wind or you’re investing in solar or whatever it might be, it’s not a great feeling to know that just because you have a project that’s permitted or a project that’s received all the stamps of approval that it still runs the risk of the plug being pulled halfway down the line. Certainty is what drives business and the more uncertain we make our energy market the more complicated this is all going to become in the long term.”

North Carolina is investing in natural gas, but the gas turbine industry is facing years-out backlogs on turbine orders. Nuclear power, from permitting to production, can take upwards of 15 years to build.

“And the leg up we had with offshore wind was that these projects were leased. Permitting had started. The sites were secured. There was some sort of headway that was made on those projects,” Brownfield said.

The Carolina Long Bay wind energy area spans a little more than 110,000 acres roughly 22 miles offshore, south of Bald Head Island.

The area is split into two leases.

In May 2022, Duke Energy paid $155 million for what equates to a little more than half of the total wind energy area.

In June of that same year, TotalEnergies Renewable USA paid more than $133 million for the adjacent lease.

Projects in the Carolina Long Bay area were anticipated to generate up to 3 gigawatts of electricity, enough to power about 675,000 homes, and estimated to provide more than $4 billion in net economic impacts.

According to information on its website, Duke Energy was collaborating with TotalEnergies on “early development activities.”

When asked for comment, Duke Energy spokesperson Bill Norton responded to Coastal Review by email, writing in part, “Large offshore wind projects involve substantial capital investments and extensive development timelines. It’s reasonable that policy makers question cost-exposure of such projects to customers. We continue to evaluate next steps as it relates to the Carolina Long Bay lease, which is currently maintained by Duke Energy’s nonregulated subsidiary, Cinergy.”

Duke Energy prioritizes energy sources “proven to be the most cost-effective while meeting the growing needs of our customers,” he wrote. “A diversified energy mix is essential to meeting the moment of high demand under all conditions.”

Offshore wind, Brownfield said, offers just that.

“What offshore wind is really, really good at is providing that really stable and predictable energy during extreme weather, and especially at nighttime, when solar is not really working, or when either gas is really constrained or you’re looking at scarcity pricing,” she said. “And, with wind being a free resource, yes, it’s an upfront investment, but it’s a very predictable cost of the project.”

There are still active leases for a wind project off Kitty Hawk that’s owned by Avangrid Renewables and Dominion Energy.

“As far as I know, Avangrid is still very much firm on engaging in North Carolina and they’re still looking at a longer-term future for their lease,” Brownfield said.

As she sees it, the Interior Department’s agreement with TotalEnergies is perhaps less of a setback to offshore wind energy production in the U.S. but rather increases the need for other energy resources.

“Not saying that we don’t need natural gas. SEWC is a very technology-neutral organization,” Brownfield said. “We don’t want to shoot down other resources by any means. But your grid is a lot more balanced when you’ve got a little bit of everything on it. And, right now, we’re on track for our grid to be about 50% gas by 2034, and that’s a lot of gas.”

Elected officials in Leland seek to tighten language related to the town’s purchasing guidelines following a highly contentious, well-publicized investigation into one of their own.

The Leland Town Council voted Wednesday night to direct the town attorney to consult with the North Carolina Local Government Commission about the town’s procurement policies and ask for suggestions on amending those policies with respect to the role of elected officials.

The unanimous vote was cast in a special-called meeting to discuss a legal advisory opinion the town’s attorney released following his investigation into Councilman Frank Pendleton, a relative newcomer to the town board.

Attorney Steve Coggins determined in his 175-page report that Pendleton’s effort earlier this year to expedite the delivery of a laptop the town signed off on buying him did not break any laws.

But Pendleton’s attempt did violate the town’s policies, Coggins concluded, telling council members Wednesday night that the matter was a “learning lesson.”

After he highlighted his findings to the council, Coggins thanked Pendleton for taking the time, one-on-one, to explain his side of the story.

“I appreciate it very much his willingness to do that and his candor with that,” Coggins said. “It certainly made this most unpleasant task more palatable and for which I extend my gratitude for that, as well as to staff who spent time in educating me.”

Pendleton, who asked for an opportunity to speak when the mayor asked for a motion to adjourn the meeting, did not reciprocate, instead rebuking Coggins and Town Manager David Hollis.

“When you look at this entire situation, if it weren’t for the fact that this process has needlessly wasted a huge amount of time and, more importantly, a great deal of taxpayer monies, it would be laughable,” he began. “This entire situation speaks volumes to the professionalism on the part of this council, the council attorney and especially the town manager.”

Pendleton refuted various points Coggins identified as undisputed facts in his report, disputing he called the laptop vendor on Jan. 21 to try and expedite the time in which the laptop would be delivered. When he made that call, he was under the impression that the delivery time would be up to 13 weeks.

“I called simply to verify the lead time from the vendor and to see if the town manager had lied to me,” Pendleton said. “As it turned out, someone was lying because the vendor told me that the computer would be delivered between January 30 and February 4, which would have been two weeks from the delivery date or from the order date. So, someone was indeed lying. Either the town manager was lying to me, or the vendor was lying to the staff.”

“What actually happened, but was conveniently left out,” of the report, he continued, “was that the vendor called me back two days later on January 23 to tell me that the delivery would actually be pushed back two additional weeks. This would put it at four weeks from the original date, not 13-plus weeks.”

Pendleton said he did not ask or attempt to authorize canceling the town’s laptop order.

“The question that should have been asked when the town manager was made aware of the conversations between myself and the vendor, why didn’t he handle this situation like the CEO he claims to be?” he continued. “Why didn’t he act like a man and pick up the phone and call me? He could have said, ‘Mr. Pendleton, you shouldn’t be speaking with the vendor and, going forward, please director those questions to me.’ Why didn’t he tell me about the procurement policy that applies to town employees regarding purchases when he provided me the name of the vendor and the specs on the computer? No, he chose to attempt to discredit me by implying that I did something that I didn’t do. It certainly appears that this was a case built on entrapment, political meddling, violations of employee code of ethics and insubordination on the part of the town manager.”

Meeting attendees sitting in the council’s chambers broke out in applause when Pendleton, who was sworn in last December to serve his first term on the council, finished speaking.

They jeered when his fellow Councilman Bob Campbell fired back, “I absolutely agree somebody was lying. And, in my opinion, just from what I read, sounds more like you.”

Mayor Brenda Bozeman repeatedly hammered her gavel to quiet the audience as other council members questioned Pendleton about his actions.

“I was hoping this was going to be put to bed tonight,” Bozeman said. “I’m tired of it. It’s an issue we need to get rid of.”

Councilwoman Veronica Carter reminded the board of a previous discussion it had about how, in the town’s 37-year history, nothing like this issue had occurred until now.

“I think we all want it to end, but we don’t want it to come back to bite us later,” Carter said. “We haven’t put it to bed if we haven’t come up with any change.”

It’s been nearly a month since a video first aired of Wilmington’s mayor invoking residents to voice their opposition to one town’s plans to pull millions of gallons of water daily from the Cape Fear River.

“Today this vital resource is under threat from growing water-hungry communities upstream,” Mayor Bill Saffo says in the clip as he stands along the city’s downtown Riverwalk.

Fuquay-Varina, a town about 30 miles south of Raleigh, wants to move more than 6 million gallons of water each day from the Cape Fear River to the Neuse River, he explains in the video made in collaboration with the Cape Fear Public Utility Authority.

“That’s 6 million gallons gone, each day, forever. It is important that you make your voice heard now for your family and for future generations. Add your voice to those of your neighbors and friends who already are telling the state to say no to Fuquay-Varina’s permanent taking of our water,” Saffo concludes.

Only a couple of more weeks are left until the public comment period on Fuquay-Varina’s request for an interbasin transfer, or IBT, certificate closes.

Maya Holcomb, a Division of Water Resources representative, told members of the state Environmental Management Commission’s Water Allocation Committee last week that she anticipated receiving comments all the way through to the April 1 deadline.

In her presentation to the committee Thursday, Holcomb provided an update on the numbers of correspondence she’d received in the days since she initially crafted her report, when the email count was at 283.

Related: Opponents say river water transfer puts Cape Fear in peril

“But I just keep getting so many emails, which — we’re hearing from the public, that’s great — but I have received an additional 42 emails since this PowerPoint was created last week,” Holcomb said.

Holcomb said she had also received 41 resolutions from cities, towns, counties, homebuilders, substations and public utilities.

She did not say how many of those resolutions oppose the IBT, but instead highlighted what she described as the “newest” issues of concern: loss of water for agricultural purposes, nutrient concentration in the Neuse River Basin, such as those that cause algal blooms, per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances, hypoxia, drought vulnerability and chemical export of industrial pollutants from the Cape Fear River.

Those concerns mirror some of arguments made by dozens of people who spoke out against the transfer during a series of state-hosted public hearings in December.

Fuquay-Varina projects that the water supply, from which it currently buys from Raleigh and Harnett and Johnston counties, will fall short of demand by 2030.

Under the proposed preferred alternative identified in a draft environmental impact statement for the transfer, Fuquay-Varina would source its entire water supply from a water treatment plant in Sanford, which is in the Cape Fear River Basin.

Once water pulled from the Cape Fear River is used by residents and businesses in that town, the treated wastewater would then be discharged into the Neuse River Basin.

This would permanently subtract 6.17 million gallons each day from the river flow that currently serves about 900,000 residents of counties, cities, towns and communities from Fayetteville to Wilmington.

“Put in perspective, 6.17 (million gallons per day) of raw water from the river is enough to provide treated drinking water to more than 27,000 homes,” according to Cape Fear Public Utility Authority’s website.

In the weeks and months leading up to CFPUA’s campaign against Fuquay-Varina’s plan, several local governments and utilities adopted resolutions and sent letters of opposition to the state.

New Hanover County, Wilmington and Brunswick County and more than a dozen Brunswick County municipalities have officially gone on record opposing Fuquay-Varina’s request.

Holcomb explained last week that, after April 1, state environmental officials will respond to comments on the draft environmental impact statement and then formulate a hearing officers’ report, which will be finalized sometime between July and September.

After that, the Environmental Management Commission will determine whether the EIS is technically adequate. Following that determination, the Department of Environmental Quality will issue its record of decision.

Another round of public hearings will be held before the EMC makes its final determination.

If approved, the transfer would occur after 2031, according to the draft impact statement.

Comments may be submitted to Maya Holcomb, Division of Water Resources, 512 N. Salisbury St., Raleigh, NC, 27604, or by email to maya.holcomb@deq.nc.gov.

In a matter of weeks, more than 20 North Atlantic right whale mothers and their babies will begin swimming hundreds of miles up the East Coast to their feeding grounds.

Their offshore route from the northern Florida and Georgia coasts north to New England slices through waters heavily traveled by seagoing vessels, making the journey for these critically endangered whales particularly dangerous.

Ship and boat strikes, along with fishing gear entanglement, are the leading killers of North Atlantic right whales, of which there are roughly 384 on the planet.

To reduce the strike threat, vessels 65 feet or longer are supposed to heed speed limits of no faster than 10 knots when traveling through federally-designated seasonal management areas, or those where right whales and heavy vessel traffic overlap. Though not required, vessels shorter than 65 feet in length are encouraged to slow to speeds of 10 knots or slower within those areas.

Last week, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s Marine Fisheries Service announced in an advanced notice that it is considering scrapping the 2008 speed rule and replacing it with technological strike-avoidance tools.

Wildlife conservation groups are bristling at the suggestion.

“It’s incredibly sadistic to destroy a solution that helps shield endangered whales from being killed by speeding ships. Trump officials are attacking one of the only protections North Atlantic right whales have against extinction,” Center for Biological Diversity Oceans Policy Specialist Rachel Rilee said in a release. “This is a brutal blow to right whales, who need and are legally entitled to far more help than they’ve been getting. I’m disgusted to see the Trump administration going after these beloved animals.”

Oceana Senior Campaign Director Gib Brogan in a telephone interview last week with Coastal Review defended the speed rule and argued that current vessel strike-reduction technologies are inadequate.

“The one weakness in this strategy is, so far, the technologies that do this, that allow the whales to be seen by the boats and allow the boats to steer and get away from the whales, it’s not proven to reduce the risk to the whales, or it’s not scalable to the amount of boat traffic that’s happening in the U.S. Atlantic,” Brogan said. “So, for the time being, slowing down is the best tool and most effective tool that we have, and there’s been no evidence that there’s a technological fix that is ready to take the place of speed zones. By no means should it be repealed or weakened in any way.”

If anything, the speed rules need to be more stringently enforced, he said.

“The fishery service told us a few years ago that we need nearly 100% compliance with the mandatory zones and 100 percent cooperation with the slow zones if we’re going to give the whales the full value of the existing protections. So, there’s a need to do better on the water,” he said.

Researchers have identified 22 North Atlantic right whale calves this calving season, making it the highest number of births in 15 years.

Under normal circumstances, 20 newborns in a calving season, which runs mid-November through to mid-April, would be relatively fruitful one, according to NOAA Fisheries.

But, because of the estimated rate at which North Atlantic right whales are dying and being seriously injured due to human causes, approximately 50 or more calves must be born each season “for many years” to halt the population’s decline and allow for recovery, the agency says.

“The only solution is to significantly reduce human-cause mortality and injuries, as well as stressors on reproduction,” NOAA Fisheries’ website states.

There are believed to be only about 70 breeding females in the right whale population. The gestation period for these females, which reach sexual maturity around age 10, lasts more than a year.

Though the normal interval between births is considered to be between three to four years, reproductive North Atlantic right whale females are having calves every seven to 10 years, according to NOAA.

Biologists attribute those lower birth rates to stresses from vessel strike-induced injuries, entanglements, and changes in food availability because of climate change.

In its announcement last week, NOAA Fisheries stated it is considering deregulating the speed rule to cut down on “unnecessary regulatory and economic burdens” on the maritime industry.

The agency is seeking feedback on several specific areas, including the efficacy of the speed rule, the effectiveness of vessel strike-reduction technologies, vessel-size specific risk assessment, alternative management areas, safety deviation provision improvements, economic impacts on industry, and outreach.

Brogan said the federal notice is not a foregone conclusion that protections for right whales will be weakened.

“They’re framing it as a deregulatory action, but as we dig more into this there is an opportunity here and we’re going to be pushing for the fishery service to make improvements to the existing rules and those protections that are out there,” he said.

There are two specific areas where large groups of North Atlantic right whales are being observed that do not fall within a speed zone, including an area south of Cape Cod and Martha’s Vineyard in Massachusetts, and mid-Atlantic waters off the mouth of the Chesapeake Bay in Virginia.

Brogan said researchers are also learning more and more about the importance of coastal Georgia and northern Florida for mothers and calves.

And while entanglements remain another leading threat to right whales, “we are seeing innovation and expanded use of ropeless or on-demand fishing gear, both in the northeast and the southeast, including the black sea bass fishery off Georgia and North Carolina,” he said. “This gear was theoretical a decade ago, and now it is being used commercially and has shown that it works. We’re working across the U.S. Atlantic to expand the use of this on-demand gear and include that in the fisheries as a way to reduce the risk that the whales will be entangled.”

NOAA Fisheries is accepting public comments through June 2.

“Anything they do will need to be supported by science and careful analysis,” Brogan said. “We have a critically endangered species and so the bar is very high and we’re going to be pushing that any changes are justified and well though out and can be shown to support the recovery of North Atlantic right whales. That is the challenge in front of us.”

Though it snakes 50 miles through Onslow County from start to finish, the New River is, in a practical sense, two distinct parts.

The upper river begins northwest of Richlands, a small but increasingly developing town that’s roughly 10 miles from the Duplin County line. From there, the river cuts a narrow path through largely rural agricultural land southeast to Jacksonville, where it widens, its fresh water transitioning to salt water.

The lower river then forms into a tidal estuarine 2 miles wide before ultimately opening into Onslow Bay in the Atlantic Ocean.

Plans have been in the works some two years now to ensure the river’s distinguishing parts get the attention they need. This year, Coastal Carolina Riverwatch, with the support of the North Carolina Department of Environmental Quality, is finalizing the Lower New River Watershed Restoration Plan,  one that focuses on areas where saltwater creeks drain into shellfish-harvesting waters and tributaries including bays and creeks.

One river, two plans.

Plans are being designed through a wide-reaching collaborative effort to work in unison to restore and protect the river’s water quality.

“We felt that, even though this a river that begins and ends in Onslow County, that it would be a great opportunity for us to separate it into two different plans so that we are spending as much time as we can in those two sections and really delve into the issues and the concerns and things that are affecting water quality and things that could potentially improve water quality through the watershed restoration plan,” Coastal Carolina Riverwatch Executive Director Lisa Rider told Coastal Review in an interview earlier this month.

Next year, the upper New River plan is expected to be complete. That plan addresses inland freshwater systems that flow through neighborhoods, farms, and paddle trails, she added.

At their cores, the plans espouse the connections shared by water, land and people. Essential to both missions is bridging people, whether it be those who live along it, recreate on it, or fish in it for sustenance, with organizations and agencies “needed to respond at the scale the river demands” to improve and protect it, Rider explained.

“It’s definitely a collaborative effort and I think that’s what makes this process a little bit unique for the watershed water management planning,” she said. “We’ve been really spending a lot of time connecting with community members, leadership in the community, folks that really have a unique grasp of what’s going on in the area.”

Riverwatch has worked through the New River Roundtable, a collaborative group of scientists, regulators, academics, government representatives and stakeholders, Rider explained. The organization has also worked closely with the county and with state partners.

The organization took a boots-on-the-ground approach, setting up at local festivals and other public events and speaking at various homeowners’ associations and community meetings.

The watershed restoration plans are a first for Coastal Carolina Riverwatch, an organization that has for years been monitoring the New River to try and determine sources of bacteria detected in the river.

The plans are rooted in the idea that, by creating one set of watershed restoration plans for the river, “we may get some really great projects out of that” to fill in gaps in areas of the river where water quality improvements and protections are needed, Rider said.

“That sort of initiated us into starting to work with the North Carolina Land and Water Fund to start funding the lower part of the New River plan, and we talked to them quite a bit about the reasoning for separating those plans out, knowing that eventually we would be working in unison,” she said.

The North Carolina Division of Water Resources has been key in helping the organization make the lower river plan sustainable through continued use and updates.

The plans in the agency’s watershed improvement projects, or WIPS, tool, which maps water quality improvement projects reported by residents, organizations and local governments.

“Even after the plan is complete it’s not really complete because we’re going to be continually using the watershed improvement tool to gauge what the public sees, what’s being requested in terms of projects by stakeholders and community members, and then looking to help connect funders with the projects that are being prioritized,” Rider said.

Severe pollution closed the New River to the public in the 1980s.

Things were so dire in the river that when 25 million gallons of waste flowed from a breached hog lagoon into its waters, no fish kills were recorded.

Three years after that spill, Jacksonville closed its downtown wastewater treatment plant to cut off the predominant source of pollution that had been sickening the lower river, where the riverbed between Wilson Bay and Stones Bay was covered by soft organics like ammonia and phosphates that, when in excessive amounts, choke out aquatic life.

City officials urged those at Marine Corps Base Camp Lejeune to stop its wastewater facility from discharging into the river.

The river was reopened in 2001.

Since then, both the city and Onslow County have been taking further steps to improve and protect the New River.

Jacksonville took on a multiyear project installing artificial reefs on either side of the river between Wilson Bay and Stones Bay to grow millions of oysters. The final phase of the $1.6 million Oyster Highway Project, which has helped usher marine life back into the river, wrapped a couple of years ago.

In 2024, the city’s elected leaders signed off on a grant awarded to Jacksonville’s stormwater department to develop a New River Nutrient Management Plan.

That plan focuses on nutrient loading from nonpoint sources — stormwater that flows from streets, subdivisions, commercial and industrial areas — into the city’s drainage system.

Last December, the Onslow County Board of Commissioners adopted a resolution that supports using low-impact development strategies in all new or significantly renovated county-funded facilities “when they are fiscally responsible and practical,” according to a county notice.

The resolution also encourages the county school system and Coastal Carolina Community College in Jacksonville to adopt similar strategies, such as bioretention areas, swales, pocket wetlands, impervious surface removal, cisterns, green roofs, and permeable pavement, for new and renovated projects.

“As Onslow County continues to grow it will be increasingly important to meet the needs of future development through sustainable means,” according to a county release.

Onslow County residents who would like to help Coastal Carolina Riverwatch identify flood-prone areas, streams in need of restoration or stabilization, areas where stormwater runoff causes erosion or water quality problems, and flood mitigation projects may contact the organization by email at waterkeeper@coastalcarolina.org.

Community-based organizations, including homeowner associations, civic and church groups, environmental and conservation clubs, paddling and fishing organizations, business associations and school groups may request a presentation by Coastal Carolina Riverwatch – or offer a project idea, or talk about an area where there are problems with flooding, at one of the group’s regular meetings.

“The collaboration, I think, really reflects how the river itself works,” Rider said. “Water doesn’t recognize those jurisdictional lines so the solutions themselves are more effective when the planning reflects that reality. This approach, we fell like, helps ensure that the investments are targeted, the support is local, and that it’s designed to deliver real benefits for both water quality and the quality of life across the watershed.”                                                                                                               

The North Carolina Division of Coastal Management has objected to the proposed Wilmington Harbor project, concluding that a federal study of the plan is too scant on details and that, as presented, deepening and widening the channel would have “significant adverse impacts to coastal resources.”

The Army Corps of Engineers’ review lacks an evaluation of PFAS in the sediment in the lower Cape Fear River, fails to adequately assess cumulative flooding impacts or thoroughly detail areas where dredged material would be placed, and does not sufficiently account for potential effects on fisheries habitat, freshwater wetlands, shorelines, or state, historic and other properties along the river, the division concluded.

The draft environmental impact statement, or DEIS, the Corps released last September also falls short in analyzing the project’s economic benefits and evaluating “potential economic losses associated with environmental degradation,” Division of Coastal Management Director Tancred Miller wrote to the Corps’ Wilmington District in a 15-page letter dated Feb. 24.

A Corps spokesman, in a statement Wednesday, called the state’s objection “disappointing” and highlighted what the Corps describes as offering “numerous opportunities” to engage with the public and work with state and federal agencies.

The Corps “felt we had been working hand in hand with all our State and Federal partners and resource agencies since we began coordination regarding this project nearly 3.5 years ago,” Jed Cayton, a public affairs specialist with Wilmington District, said in an email. “Given all the integration and engagement throughout this process, the objection provided at this late stage in the process is disconcerting.”

The Corps and North Carolina State Ports Authority are reviewing the division’s letter “to determine how we will proceed,” Cayton said. “Since we are very early in this review, we cannot yet give a specific date for completion.”

The Corps may pause the project and work with the state to try and resolve the state’s concerns or initiate a formal dispute resolution process.

The division’s objection comes a little more than a month after the division granted the Corps’ request to pause its review of whether the proposed project was consistent with state coastal management program laws, regulations and policies.

Miller wrote that, during that pause, the division “detailed its concerns along with possible paths forward to address the information deficiencies.”

On Feb. 16, the Corps asked the division in an email to resume its review of the project, one that has been highly scrutinized for its potential effects to the environment, shorelines and historic and culturally significant areas along the shores of the lower Cape Fear River.

“Our objection was based on a combination of lack of sufficient information to determine the impacts from PFAS and flooding and anticipated significant adverse impacts to fisheries resources, wildlife habitat and cultural and historic resources,” Miller told the Coastal Resources Commission during its meeting Wednesday in Atlantic Beach.

In his letter, Miller wrote that the lack of information regarding per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances was “of particular concern.”

“The DEIS does not evaluate the potential for contaminant resuspension during dredging and the resulting fate and transport of these chemicals into nearby water bodies and land areas,” the letter states. “This is of particular concern since extensive scientific research has documented the presence and persistence of PFAS over the past decade within the [Cape Fear River Basin], including a growing body of research indicating significant negative ecological implications of PFAS in fish, birds, and reptiles.”

The proposal calls for extending the entrance of the federal navigation channel farther offshore, deepening the channel by 5 feet and widening portions of it from the mouth of the Cape Fear River more than 25 miles to the Wilmington port.

The ports authority says the project is needed to accommodate larger ships, which will attract more import and export business to the port, ease shipping congestion on the East Coast and keep the state’s ports competitive.

But opponents of the proposed project argue it will accelerate erosion and exacerbate flooding, destroy habitat, disperse PFAS in the riverbed’s sediment into marshes and onto public beaches, is not economically justified, and threatens historic and cultural resources along the river.

One such historic site is Orton, a privately owned property that spans some 14,000 acres off the lower Cape Fear River’s western bank in Brunswick County and that includes a former plantation.

Orton owner Louis Bacon has spent millions restoring an expansive rice field system and earthen dike that enslaved Africans built more than two centuries ago to protect the rice fields from the river.

In a statement to Coastal Review on Wednesday, Bacon said the Division of Coastal Management’s objection to the proposed harbor project, “is proof that facts and persistence matter.”

“My concern has always been simple: this project, as proposed, puts undue and unacceptable risk on important historical and ecological sites,” Bacon stated. “The corps has not provided the analysis or safeguards the law requires. At Orton, dredging so close to a 250-year-old earthen dike creates a very real risk of catastrophic failure according to two separate expert firms – collapsing and flooding 350 acres of freshwater rice fields and exceptional wetlands with Atlantic saltwater, thereby eradicating the legacy of enslaved African Americans who built these systems over centuries, a monument to their efforts that I have spent years restoring.

“My objection is rooted in the fact that the project cannot be considered ‘consistent’ with North Carolina’s coastal protections if it causes this much damage,” he continued. “Large infrastructure decisions must be grounded in rigorous scientific evaluations, transparent disclosure, and enforceable protections, because these valuable resources cannot be rebuilt once lost.”

Several towns in Brunswick and New Hanover counties have adopted resolutions urging state and federal agencies to protect a series of islands within the lower Cape Fear River that support 30% of the state’s coastal shorebird population. Those towns have also asked for the creation of a comprehensive, long-term, and fully funded environmental and adaptive management plan to cover costs related to monitoring and mitigation to prevent and repair environmental harm.

Last month, the Wilmington City Council unanimously adopted a resolution calling for state and federal decision makers to further review the proposed project.

In his letter, Miller noted that an overwhelming majority of the written comments the division received last year regarding the proposed project opposed it. And everyone who spoke at a public hearing the division hosted in downtown Wilmington last November opposed the project.

Kerri Allen, coastal management program director of the North Carolina Coastal Federation, which publishes Coastal Review, was one of the 72 people who expressed their concerns about the proposed project at that meeting.

“I’m encouraged to see DCM thoughtfully consider the many strong public comments submitted on this project,” Allen said in an email on Wednesday. “The level of engagement from coastal residents, local leaders, and partners shows how much people care, and it matters when that input is reflected in decisions. Our public trust waters belong to everyone, and transparent review like this helps lead to better, more resilient outcomes for our coast.”

Southern Environmental Law Center Senior Attorney Ramona McGee echoed similar sentiments in a release Wednesday.

“This decision is welcome news for the people of Wilmington and beyond who cherish the lower Cape Fear River and its surrounding natural areas,” McGee stated. “This $1.3 billion project would put at risk the communities and wildlife that call this region home by exacerbating flooding, destroying habitat, and damaging wetlands. The Lower Cape Fear is already threatened by sea-level rise and industrial pollution – we shouldn’t be further damaging this special place with an unnecessary and costly project.”

This story has been updated to include a corrected description of land ownership. Information initially provided to Coastal Review had incorrectly identified the owner.

More people moved to North Carolina last year from different parts of the country than any other state in the nation.

North Carolina’s population grew by almost 150,000 people, trailing behind only Texas and Florida, according to U.S. Census Bureau estimates released last month.

As political leaders grapple with the demands that growth is placing on essential services like water and sewer, public safety and education, pressure is mounting on conservation groups to acquire, conserve and preserve land.

This month, more than 2,000 acres in coastal counties have been secured for permanent protection from development.

These newly protected areas are filled with natural landscape features that reduce flood risk, improve water quality, and provide habitat for plants and animals that are increasingly getting squeezed out by encroaching development.

In Brunswick County, one of the fastest growing in the state, North Carolina-based conservation nonprofit Unique Places to Save acquired land that serves as a corridor between two protected natural areas, bridging what amounts to nearly 10,000 acres of conserved landscape.

“We really want to be able to maintain large, connected natural areas for habitat for species and to maintain biodiversity of our natural areas,” Unique Places to Save Executive Director Christine Pickens told Coastal Review in a recent telephone interview. “And, particularly, in the southeast of North Carolina, we have some really cool endemic species and really wonderful habitats that you don’t find anywhere else.”

Within the 1,040-acre tract nestled between the towns of St. James and Boiling Spring Lakes are forested wetlands, Carolina bays, sandy pine and wet sandy pine savanna.

The tract, referred to as Boiling Springs Wilderness, specifically connects thousands of acres of privately conserved land including Orton with the North Carolina Boiling Spring Lakes Plant Conservation Preserve.

“When you connect these large areas, you’re connecting a mosaic across the landscape and there’s tiny variations of habitat availability,” Pickens explained. “What that does is allow species that use that area for habitat or refuge or migration to use those slight variations of habitat. When we experience extremes in weather, precipitation or drought or big storms, having just a little bit of wiggle room in terms of available habitat goes a long way to allowing species to be resilient to some of these extremes and some of these changes.”

Habitat that is free from being sliced up by ditches or roads is valuable to species that rely on that habitat, she said.

Take the red cockaded woodpecker, for example. These birds, which were reclassified in late 2024 from endangered to threatened, live in groups, or clusters, helping each other raise their young.

They depend on large, connected natural areas – typically anywhere from 125 to 200 acres – where living pine trees, preferably mature, longleaf pine forests, grow.

Boiling Springs Wilderness includes varying types of soils that support different sets of plants, trees, shrubs and forbs, more commonly referred to as herbs.

A good deal of pond pine and a “little bit” of young longleaf pine grace its landscape, Pickens said.

The headwaters of Orton Creek are within the project area, as are wetlands that blanket the Castle Hayne aquifer, a drinking water source for thousands of Brunswick County residents and tens of thousands in other coastal North Carolina areas.

“That’s a long-term way to protect water quality,” Pickens said. “The areas around streams act as buffers to absorb nutrients, runoff, excess components in surface water that soak in, and they get absorbed by the plants and the roots and the soils around streams. That prevents excess nutrients getting into waterways.”

Then there are the wetlands, which function like nature’s sponges, absorbing stormwater that might otherwise flood developed properties.

“Every chance we get to conserve wetlands is really important right now,” Pickens said.

That’s because state lawmakers decided to align North Carolina’s definition of wetlands with that of the federal government, which is in the process of changing the interpretation of waters of the United States that may omit protections for millions of acres of wetlands in the state.

“It may result in more wetlands being nonjurisdictional, therefore a lot more likely to be converted to uplands through ditching and draining. These conservation easements are perpetual. Once we protect it, that’s it,” Pickens said.

The Boiling Springs Wilderness project was funded through a $3.68 million North Carolina Land and Water Fund grant.

Unique Places to Save will own and manage the tract, while the state will hold the conservation easement. The Coastal Land Trust will steward that easement.

Last year, Unique Places to Save applied for another state Land and Water Fund grant to protect about 500 acres of predominately wetlands between the town of St. James and N.C. Highway 211.

“We’ve got a provisional award from the Land and Water Fund so if they have enough funding we may get funded this year for that effort,” Pickens said.

She touted efforts among other groups that work to conserve land throughout the state, including the North Carolina Coastal Federation, which publishes Coastal Review, The Nature Conservancy, North Carolina Plant Conservation Program, North Carolina Coastal Land Trust, and Cape Fear Arch to name a few.

Tyrrell County parcel transferred

Last week, national nonprofit The Conservation Fund finalized the transfer of ownership of about 1,550 acres of coastal wetlands and forestland in Tyrrell County to the Coastal Federation.

“This partnership reflects years of careful conservation planning and cooperation,” Coastal Federation Executive Director Braxton Davis stated in a release. “This acquisition protects important coastal wetlands that help filter water, support fish and wildlife habitat, and provide natural flood buffering in on the of the state’s most ecologically significant regions.”

Portions of the Tyrrell County property, which is valued at an estimated $1.7 million, are in the Land and Water Fund’s Stewardship Program, one designed to establish, monitor and enforce perpetual conservation agreements.

The property will be included as part of the Coastal Federation’s Land for a Healthy Coast program, which focuses on protecting estuaries, reducing polluted runoff, buffering floods, and boosting long-term coastal resilience.

“Some lands are simply too important to risk losing,” Coastal Federation founder and senior adviser Todd Miller said in the release. “When a property protects water quality, supports fisheries, and strengthens the natural defenses of the coast, we believe it’s our responsibility to step forward and ensure it is permanently conserved and well managed.”

A North Carolina court has ruled that the state’s lead environmental agency has the authority to set 1,4-dioxane discharge limits for public wastewater utilities.

The ruling reverses a 2024 administrative law judge’s determination that the North Carolina Department of Environmental Quality did not follow the proper process when it established discharge limits for a handful of municipal wastewater treatment plants in the piedmont.

DEQ followed state Environmental Management Commission and U.S. Environmental Protection Agency “protocols in creating the 1,4-dioxane limits and created the criteria for the purpose of protecting the health and wellbeing of North Carolinians,” Wake County Superior Court Judge A. Graham Shirley wrote in his Feb. 5 decision. “Compliance with regulations and a desire to maintain or improve public health cannot be said to be a ‘patently in bad faith’ decision.”

Shirley wrote that the agency “did not err” in considering 1,4-dioxane, a substance used primarily as a solvent in chemical manufacturing, as a carcinogen.

“Because 1,4-dioxane is a pollutant likely to cause cancer in humans, permit limits are necessary to protect North Carolinians’ drinking water and their health,” DEQ Secretary Reid Wilson stated in a release the agency published Thursday. “The court vindicates DEQ’s decision to impose limits to protect downstream communities from this harmful carcinogen.”

Discharges of the chemical substance into North Carolinians’ drinking water sources has gained attention in recent years, with downstream public water suppliers and communities calling for tighter regulations and that pollution be controlled at the source.

DEQ’s Division of Water Resources attempted to do that when, in August 2023, it issued Asheboro’s wastewater treatment plant a National Pollutant Discharge Elimination System, or NPDES, permit that capped its releases of 1,4-dixoane.

Asheboro sued, challenging the state’s authority to include a water quality standard for 1,4-dioxane in the permit and arguing the new limits created an excessive financial burden.

The cities of Greensboro and Reidsville joined the lawsuit. Both had been ordered to include limits in their draft NPDES permits after they received notices of violation for 1,4-dioxane discharges in November 2019.

Asheboro’s wastewater treatment plant discharges into Cape Fear River basin, where some 900,000 North Carolinians receive their drinking water downstream of the plant.

Brunswick County, Cape Fear Public Utility Authority and Fayetteville Public Works Commission intervened in the case, asserting that upstream 1,4-dioxane dischargers placed an undue financial burden on them to sample drinking water sources for the chemical and try and reduce the level of consumption of it to their customers.

In a September 2024 ruling, then-Chief Administrative Law Judge Dr. Donald van der Vaart sided with the upstream municipalities and revoked the permit limits set by DEQ.

“The Superior Court was right to uphold DEQ’s ability to limit chemicals in our water, and my office will continue working with DEQ to make sure people have clean drinking water,” North Carolina Attorney General Jeff Jackson stated in a release.

Cape Fear Public Utility Authority Executive Director Kenneth Waldroup said in a statement to Coastal Review Thursday afternoon that the utility is pleased with Shirley’s decision.

“CFPUA’s raw water intake is the last on the Cape Fear River. We rely on State regulators to set and enforce reasonable discharge standards upstream of our intake to protect our region’s raw water supply,” he explained. “While CFPUA’s Sweeney Water Treatment Plant is able to treat drinking water for 1,4-dioxane, that treatment process carries an expense and our ability to treat this pollution has its limits. Reducing the amounts of 1,4-dioxane and other emerging contaminants being released upstream also reduces the financial burden on downstream customers and communities.”

Last October, Waldroup joined representatives of other public water utilities and residents in asking the EPA to uphold its earlier objection to the proposed NPDES permit excluding Asheboro’s discharge limit for 1,4-dioxane.

As of this report, the EPA had not made its final determination.

Emily Donovan, co-founder of Clean Cape Fear, said in an email that the Superior Court ruling, “is a win for public health and every downstream community threatened by Asheboro’s irresponsible leadership.”

“It’s a shame cities like Asheboro prefer squandering tax dollars defending industrial polluters rather than protecting the public’s drinking water supplies,” she said. “It’s also a devastating reminder that until North Carolina creates strong source control measures for toxic chemicals, we will always be one discharge away from the next preventable crisis.”

Earlier this year, the state Environmental Management Commission voted to push proposed monitoring and minimization rules for 1,4-dioxane and three per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances, or PFAS, to the public this month.

Critics of the proposed rules argue they lack any real enforceability because they do not include water quality standards, specify what best management practices dischargers must follow, or how facilities must minimize their discharges.

The public comment period had yet to be announced as of this report.

In June of last year, the Southern Environmental Law Center filed a lawsuit on behalf of Cape Fear River Watch and Haw River Assembly against Asheboro and the city’s industrial customer StarPet Inc., to stop their discharges of 1,4-dioxane into the Cape Fear River basin.

“Asheboro, Greensboro, and Reidsville have spent years arguing for downstream communities to shoulder the health and monetary costs of the cities’ pollution,” Jean Zhuang, a senior attorney with the center’s Chapel Hill office, stated in a release. “The Wake County Superior Court saw through the cities’ arguments and restored a key tool that can be used to protect families, communities, and drinking water utilities downstream.”

According to that release, the cities have filed a motion to suspend the court’s decision and an appeal is pending.

Ocean Isle Beach hopes to pump tens of thousands of cubic yards of sand onto the beach at the easternmost tip of the island by this spring as an erosion stopgap.

The Brunswick County town has asked the Army Corps of Engineers Wilmington District for authorization to have up to 70,000 cubic yards of sand placed east of its terminal groin where erosion has been chipping away at the shoreline in front of a luxury neighborhood.

The Corps announced late last week that it is accepting public comments through March 8 on the town’s application to modify the federal permit it received in 2016 to build the terminal groin at Shallotte Inlet. 

As it stands, that permit does not allow sand to be placed east of the terminal groin.

A terminal groin is a wall-like structure built perpendicular to the shore at inlets to contain sand in areas with high rates of erosion.

Proposed modifications to the permit include placing sand along an 1,875-foot stretch of shoreline at The Pointe, a gated community whose oceanfront property owners have been desperately trying to hold back an encroaching sea.

Under the terms of the proposed permit changes, this would be a one-time beach nourishment project.

The town is also asking for its permitted sand borrow source in Shallotte Inlet to be expanded from about 83 acres to a little more than 117 acres, to add a new borrow area within the Atlantic Intracoastal Waterway and be allowed to work outside of the environmental window for dredging from April 30 to June 15.

Ocean Isle Beach Town Manager Justin Whiteside said on Tuesday that the town wants to get the modified permit as quickly as possible in hopes that the sand placement project would coincide with a federal dredging project.

The Corps announced last September it had awarded a nearly $8.5 million contract to maintenance dredge several areas along the Intracoastal, including at the Shallotte Inlet crossing.

Whiteside explained that Ocean Isle Beach anticipates receiving 25,000 cubic yards of sand “that the town is paying for” from the Corps through the inlet crossing project.

“The hope is to get this permit modified within the timeframe that the Corps’ contractor is here on site and then we could contract with them possibly to dredge more in that federal channel or go into that inlet borrow area to put that additional sand there,” he said.

Whiteside said the town does not yet have an approximate cost of its proposal to nourish the beach east of the terminal groin.

Ocean Isle’s east end had for decades been losing ground to chronic erosion, the worst of which occurred along about a mile of ocean shoreline beginning near the inlet.

An encroaching ocean claimed homes, damaged and destroyed public utilities and prompted the North Carolina Department of Transportation to abandon state-maintained streets there.

To stave off further erosion, the town in 2005 was permitted to install a wall of sandbags to protect public roads and infrastructure from getting swallowed up by the sea.

In 2011, Ocean Isle Beach was, along with a handful of other beach communities, allowed to pursue the option of installing a terminal groin at an inlet area after the North Carolina General Assembly repealed a law that banned hardened erosion control structures on the state’s ocean shorelines.

Five years later, the town received state and federal approval to build a 750-foot terminal groin.

But before construction could begin, the Southern Environmental Law Center in August 2017 filed a lawsuit on behalf of the National Audubon Society challenging the Corps’ approval of the project.

More than three years passed before the lawsuit, which later included the town, concluded after an appellate court affirmed a lower court’s decision that the Corps fairly considered the alternatives included in an environmental impact statement examining the proposed project.

Construction of the $11 million project was completed in the spring of 2022, the same year the final plan for The Pointe, a 44-lot subdivision, was approved for development.

By fall 2025, The Pointe’s oceanfront properties were suffering significant erosion.

Last November, the North Carolina Coastal Resources Commission unanimously agreed to grant permission to the owners of eight lots in that neighborhood to install larger than typically allowed sandbag structures waterward of their land.

Whiteside said Tuesday that those sandbags had not been installed.

Sand in the area east of the terminal groin, he said, appears to be “recovering a little bit.”

“We think over the past month and a half or so that we’ve gained, just looking at aerial photographs, approximately 5,000 cubic yards of sand that’s deposited east of the groin, so some of the beach is building back up in that area,” Whiteside said.

He explained that in 2022 the town’s federal beach nourishment project took place in conjunction with the construction of the terminal groin.

“The dredger came through and we had a huge spit on the east end of the island and that contractor came through and just dredged right through that spit and took it down to a negative 15-foot elevation,” Whitesaid said. “It’s kind of filled back in now and we’re thinking that’s why we’re seeing the growth back east of the groin. We’re hoping this shows that that’s some of what contributed to it, that it was maybe our own nourishment project through the Corps.”

“But, in the meantime, we know this is a short-term solution that we’ve got to figure out some type of long-term solution to, so our engineer firm is going to be doing some modeling to see what kind of modifications, if any, need to take place to the existing groin,” he continued.

Comments on the proposed project should refer the permit application number (SAW-2011-01241) and may be submitted to the Corps electronically through the Regulatory Request System at https://rrs.usace.army.mil/rrs or by email to Tyler Crumbley at tyler.a.crumbley2@usace.army.mil. 

Written comments may be mailed to Commander, U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, Wilmington District, Attention: Tyler Crumbley, 69 Darlington Ave., Wilmington, NC  28403.

The Corps will consider written requests for a public hearing to be held to consider the proposed application modifications.

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

The call from the North Carolina Attorney General’s office late last year relayed news of a victory.

A federal judge in Boston on Dec. 11, 2025, sided with Jeff Jackson and 19 other state attorneys general in their case against the Federal Emergency Management Agency, informed the caller.

U.S. District Court Judge Richard G. Stearns ruled that FEMA unlawfully terminated a federal grant program under which roughly $200 million had been awarded to North Carolina communities, including Pollocksville, to tailor projects to reduce and prevent storm damage.

Stearns issued an immediate, permanent injunction restoring the Building Resilient Infrastructures and Communities, or BRIC, program.

“And, that’s all we’ve heard,” Pollocksville Mayor Jay Bender said. “We’ve never heard anything official from FEMA saying yay or nay. We have not heard anything from North Carolina Emergency Management saying yay or nay.”

FEMA funnels BRIC grants to state emergency management offices, which are responsible for managing and passing funds on to grant recipients.

N.C. Division of Emergency Management’s Justin Graney, chief of external affairs and communications, said in an email that the agency had not been notified by FEMA as to when funding would be released.

“NCEM continues to work closely with FEMA to determine the next steps and looks forward to a resolution,” Graney said.

But any such resolution could be, at a minimum, months away.

The federal government still has time to appeal Stearns’ decision. The 60-day window to challenge his ruling closes before the middle of next month.

The N.C. Department of Justice’s communications office confirmed in an Jan. 26 email that FEMA had, at that time, not filed an appeal in the case.

“We are closely monitoring FEMA’s compliance with the court order,” the email states.

FEMA’s news desk at its regional office in Atlanta did not respond to requests for comment. 

The agency announced without any forewarning last April it was canceling the BRIC program, one created under President Donald Trump’s first term in office.

But just three months or so into Trump’s second term, an unnamed FEMA spokesperson stated in the announcement that the agency considered BRIC to be “wasteful” and “political.”

FEMA later clarified only projects that had been completed would be fully funded, erasing congressionally appropriated funding for more than 60 infrastructure projects in North Carolina.

Jackson joined a lawsuit filed last July by a coalition of state attorneys general who argued FEMA’s termination of the program was unlawful.

The court agreed, concluding that FEMA did not have the authority to end BRIC because Congress, not the federal agency, appropriated funds for that program.

“The BRIC program is designed to protect against natural disasters and save lives,” Stearns wrote.

“Our towns spent years doing everything FEMA asked them to do to qualify for this funding, and they were in the middle of building real protections against storms when FEMA suddenly broke its word,” Jackson said in a release following the court ruling. “Keeping water systems working and keeping homes out of floodwater isn’t politics – it’s basic safety.”

Pollocksville and Leland were selected to each receive about $1.1 million through the BRIC program.

Leland plans to relocate the town’s sewer system away from Sturgeon Creek from which floodwaters rise often after storms and natural disasters.

Jessica Jewell, Leland’s communications manager, said in an email that the town is exploring other grant opportunities to help fund their project.

At the time of FEMA’s announcement last April, Pollocksville had already paid out about $18,000 in legal, advertising and procurement fees ahead of the project the Jones County town had secured to raise six commercial buildings in its downtown next to the Trent River.

“I mean, this is a project that we thought was done,” Bender said. “We had a contractor. That was probably one of the most frustrating things. We were already under contract.”

Before the state attorneys general filed their lawsuit, town officials were contacted by the state and encouraged to submit their project proposal through the Hazard Mitigation Grant program. The HMGP is federally funded, but managed by the state Division of Emergency Management.

“Having to file all the same paperwork over – I don’t know that I can convey to you the complexity of the paperwork,” Bender said. “The positive thing about this, going through HMGP as opposed to going through FEMA, is that HMGP will be at no cost to the town. There’s no match and so that will obviously make it a more financially attractive proposal than FEMA.”

He went on to say that the town will take “the best deal that comes the quickest.”

“I will feel much more confident when there is an actual piece of paper to sign and when I see people on the street preparing elevate a building,” he said.

Nature-based coastal shoreline erosion control structures that successfully attract and grow oysters can better defend shores from waves, according to a study led by East Carolina University researchers.

The study, published late last year in the journal Scientific Reports, found that the more oyster-dense a breakwater designed to recruit and grow those shellfish is, the better that structure is at dissipating waves.

“We actually found that wave attenuation increased or improved as the structures recruited oysters,” said Georgette Tso, a doctoral candidate in ECU’s Integrated Coastal Sciences Program and co-author of the study.

As more and more oysters grow on a surface, their shells building layer by layer, those shells alter that structure’s surface, making that surface rougher and less permeable.

After documenting two seasons of oyster recruitment, researchers found that living shorelines constructed with living oyster breakwaters absorbed wave activity by an increase of 10-15%.

Their findings are based on observations of living shorelines at two private properties along Bogue Sound in Newport in Carteret County.

The structures were installed between May and June 2022 by Native Shorelines, the coastal resiliency division of Davey Resources Group, using concrete-based breakwater systems called QuickReef.

QuickReef is built from materials primarily of natural calcium carbonate formed into concrete slabs. Those slabs are installed to allow water flow and attract oyster larval, which attach to and grow on the structures.

Living shorelines are becoming increasingly attractive for coastal waterfront property owners seeking ways to curb erosion of their land.

“I think there’s been a lot more awareness within coastal North Carolina about living shoreline options as an alternative to a hardened shoreline, like bulkheads or some other vertical structure, which oftentimes actually costs more over time to repair. And, they’re not as resistant to hurricane damage because of that vertical profile,” Tso said.

The benefits of living shorelines, including their resiliency against the effects of rising sea levels, have been documented through research spanning back more than a decade.

But Tso said that there is little data how smaller-scale living shoreline projects like the ones she and her fellow scientists observed for this study actually change the way waves interact with shorelines.

Their observations proved to be “an exciting finding,” Tso said, because they prove what researchers have suspected for some time.

“Oysters grow vertically and they increase the roughness on the surfaces that they grow on. They also can grow within interstitial spaces and reduce porosity in that way. So, we hypothesized that the amount of wave attenuation a structure could provide would increase with the recruitment of live and healthy oyster populations,” she said. “This additional factor that’s not been explored, of it actually improving the wave attenuation potential and reducing the wave energy that hits the back of your shoreline over time, is something that we should communicate more to homeowners because they’ve actually bought into a solution that has increased benefits over time that they may not have anticipated when they first put in the structure.”

And while it’s fair to say the longer these structures recruit oysters the more protection they may offer to a shoreline, Tso said there is one important caveat.

“This is just a two-year study so we’re not capturing the point in time where the oyster population will eventually plateau. The size of the structure and the amount of food available to the oysters in the water is limited, obviously, so the oyster population will eventually plateau. So, though we’ve observed increases in wave attenuation potential, probably it’s going to cap off at some point,” she said.

It is also important to note that oyster recruitment and growth will not be the same at every shoreline.

Shorelines bend and curve, leaving pockets where water does not circulate to deliver oyster larvae.

“What we found is only relevant if your structure can actually recruit oysters, and that’s not true on all North Carolina shorelines,” Tso said. “If you don’t have baby oysters being delivered to your shoreline, you’re not going to be able to recruit oysters. If you’re in a site where that’s not possible then the wave attenuation potential that you have at construction is what you’re going to have. It’s not going to improve because you’re not recruiting oysters.”

Successful oyster larval recruitment and growth also depends on things like water temperature, salinity, and tidal variation.

Tso is in the process of analyzing data researchers collected last summer at more than a dozen QuickReef living shoreline sites. Scientists during that time also revisited their two original study sites, which continued to recruit oysters, Tso said.

The other researchers on this study include Dr. Siddharth Narayan, assistant professor in ECU’s Integrated Coastal Programs, Megan Geesin, a doctoral candidate at ECU, Dr. Matthew Reidenbach, professor and chair of environmental sciences at the University of Virginia, Dr. Jens Figlus with Texas A&M’s Ocean Engineering Department, and Dr. Rachel Gittman, assistant professor with ECU’s Department of Biology.

The Army Corps of Engineers wants more time to mull over concerns that have been brought up on the proposed project to deepen and widen portions of the Wilmington Harbor channel.

The North Carolina Division of Coastal Management announced late Tuesday afternoon it had granted the Corps’ request, indefinitely pausing the division’s review of whether the proposed project is consistent with state coastal management program laws, regulations and policies.

“The decision to pause allows time for the Corps to review and consider issues raised by DCM and the public before DCM completes its review,” according to a release. “A timeline has not been established for when the pause may be lifted.”

The pause follows a series of deadline extensions that have been made in recent weeks on the proposed project, one that is being highly scrutinized for its potential effects to the environment, shorelines and treasure of historic and culturally significant areas along the shores of the lower Cape Fear River.

The N.C. State Ports Authority says the project designed to accommodate larger ships would attract more import and export business to the port, ease shipping congestion on the East Coast, and keep the state’s ports competitive. The proposal calls for deepening the harbor channel by 5 feet and widening portions of it from the mouth of the Cape Fear River to the Wilmington port.

In late December, the division announced that the Corps’ Wilmington District was giving the division more time to complete its review of the federal determination, pushing its deadline from Jan. 5 to Jan. 19.

The Corps requested the pause on Jan. 16, just days after state fisheries and wildlife resources officials sent the division memorandums saying those agencies continue to have concerns about impacts to fish and wildlife resources within the proposed project area.

A Corps spokesperson did not respond to a request for comment by deadline for this report.

In its Jan. 14 memorandum to the Division of Coastal Management, the N.C. Division of Marine Fisheries reiterated its concerns about the proposed project’s effects on habitat essential to fish in the river, wetlands connected to the river, and the overall water quality in the river.

Deepening and widening the harbor as planned “will have significant adverse impacts to fisheries resources due to the permanent loss of state-designated nursery and anadromous fish spawning areas along the Cape Fear River estuary and its tributaries,” the memorandum states.

“There is also potential for significant adverse impacts to wetlands, (submerged aquatic vegetation), shellfish resources, and water column habitat due to insufficient mitigation plans and uncertain impacts associated with the proposed actions that are not adequately discussed,” in the federal letter report and draft environmental impact statement of the Wilmington Harbor 403 navigation project released in September. The figure 403 refers to the relevant section of the Water Resources Development Act.

N.C. Wildlife Resources Commission officials raised similar worries, stating in a Jan. 15 memorandum to DCM that while it had been involved throughout the project’s development process, “our agency still has concerns regarding impacts the proposal will have on wildlife resources in the project area.”

“These comments include concerns regarding the proposal’s direct impacts to wildlife habitats, whether impacts to these habitats have been adequately assessed, inadequacies of mitigation proposals, the need to consult appropriate agencies prior to moving forward with the proposal, and the subsequent impacts to wildlife and their habitats (particularly nesting waterbirds and shorelines) from larger and increased vessel use.”

A number of towns in Brunswick and New Hanover counties have adopted resolutions urging state and federal agencies to protect a series of islands within the lower Cape Fear River that support 30% of the state’s coastal shorebird population.

Those towns are also calling for the creation of a comprehensive, long-term, and fully funded environmental and adaptive management plan to cover costs related to monitoring and mitigation to prevent and repair environmental harm.

A Corps official earlier this month confirmed to Coastal Review that the agency was implementing a programmatic agreement with the North Carolina State Historic Preservation Office, the General Services Administration, the state Ports Authority, “and possibly the Advisory Council on Historic Preservation” to review historic and culturally significant areas along the river that may be impacted by the proposed project.

The agreement must be signed before the agency finalizes project plans, which would occur after the Corps releases its final environmental impact statement.

The final environmental impact statement is expected to be released sometime this summer, according to a tentative timeline released by the Corps. It is unclear how the Corps’ request of the state to pause its review may affect that projected timeline.

Once the review process resumes, DCM must decide whether to concur with or object the Corps’ determination.

“If DCM objects, it can offer alternatives or conditions that, if agreed to by the Corps, would allow the project to proceed,” according to the division.

Construction on the proposed project would begin no earlier than 2030 and take about six years to complete, a schedule Corps officials have said is optimistic.

A group of North Carolina State University researchers has created a model that simulates wind, waves, tides and currents to help pinpoint areas that are likely best to install offshore energy facilities.

The model, called a portfolio optimization framework, also identifies what combination of wind and marine hydrokinetic technologies, which capture energy through water flow, may work together in an area to produce the greatest amount of power.

“It’s not about only one type, but multiple sources of generation that can somehow work together to generate a more stable output of your portfolio,” explained Dr. Anderson de Queiroz, co-author of the study and associate professor of civil, construction and environmental engineering. “For example, if you think about the single source, let’s say offshore wind or wave energy, they have lots of variability with respect to their supply because it depends on natural conditions. It depends on wind speed or the ocean heights and in periods, so it’s variable.”

By locating areas where different offshore energy technologies can work together, a phenomenon researchers refer to as “complementary behavior,” power companies can get the most bang for their buck.

For context, picture an offshore field of 50 wind turbines. Within that field are marine hydrokinetic devices such as wave energy converters or underwater kite turbines that generate electricity from ocean currents and tidal streams.

“When you’re collecting the electricity, instead of collecting only from wind with transmission lines, you can also collect electricity from this other source. So, the electricity that you’re bringing to shore in that situation will be more stable because of the complementary behavior between the sources,” de Querioz said.

For the developer trying to explore and analyze where they can get the most power output possible, this model could help reduce their financial risk.

“For government analysts and planners, they can also see strategically where there are regions that would be beneficial in terms of most electricity that they are able to get to at a reasonable cost and that’s away from, for example, protected habitat areas or away from strategic areas” used by military forces, de Querioz said.

The team of researchers, with support from the North Carolina Renewable Ocean Energy Program, conducted an analysis for the North Carolina coast, focused on wind turbines and marine hydrokinetic kites.

But de Querioz points out that the model they have developed can be used globally and with any combination of technologies. And, he said, it may be applied onshore.

The research team is in the process of expanding its analysis to other regions, including the coasts of New Jersey and Virginia.

The project, which is through the Atlantic Marine Energy Center and funded by the U.S. Department of Energy, will use the portfolio optimization model to support bringing electricity to the East Coast through the Eastern Interconnection.

The Eastern Interconnection spans from central Canada east to the Atlantic Coast, south to Florida and west to the foot of the Rockies. It is one of two major power grids.

Researchers will pair the portfolio optimization framework with another model known as Tools for Energy Model Optimization and Analysis, commonly referred to as Temoa, which produces long-term analyses of energy systems.

“We are going to combine analysis from this offshore portfolio with the long-term energy planning for the Eastern Interconnection,” de Querioz said. “Basically, we’re looking at the entirety of the Eastern Interconnection, and then deploying not only offshore energy, but also looking at natural gas potential, new nuclear or the potential to have energy storage, onshore solar, and things like that.”

The team is also working with the North Carolina Renewable Energy Program this year to develop an adapted design for a wave power buoy called Reference Model 3, or RM3, that converts wave energy into electrical power.

“On these, we’re going to do more specific and detailed analysis for the North Carolina coast with this new design of wave energy converters,” de Queiroz said.

He is extending an invitation to collaborate with industry, government and other scientists with an interest in the model. The model is expected to be released sometime this year. Anyone interested may contact de Queiroz by email at ardequei@ncsu.edu.

“Fused Portfolio Optimization for Harnessing Marine Renewable Energy Resources” was published in the journal Energy earlier this month.

N.C. State doctoral student Mary Maceda is a corresponding author of the study. Co-authors of the paper include Rob Miller, a doctoral student, Victor de Faria, a recent doctoral graduate, Dr. Matthew Bryant, professor of mechanical and aerospace engineering at the university, and Dr. Chris Vermillion with the University of Michigan.

Note: This story has been updated to correct the misspelling of Louis Bacon’s first name.

Restoring land as close to how it was more than two centuries ago is by no means a cheap venture.

Just ask Louis Moore Bacon.

Since 2012, Bacon has invested more than $100 million in the property on which his ancestor, Roger Moore, founded Orton Plantation in 1725 off the lower Cape Fear River’s western bank in Brunswick County.

Nearly a third of that cost has gone toward restoring an expansive, historic rice field system and an earthen dike enslaved Africans built some 250 years ago to protect the fields they planted, grew, and harvested Carolina Gold rice from the river.

If the state green lights a proposed project to deepen and widen portions of the shipping channel from the Atlantic Ocean to the Port of Wilmington, all of it – the dike, 350 acres of historic rice fields and hundreds of acres of freshwater wetlands – will face threat of “irreversible damage,” according to Bacon.

In a 22-page letter he submitted to the North Carolina Department of Environmental Quality’s Division of Coastal Management late last year, Bacon detailed how the proposed Wilmington Harbor 403 navigation project “threatens the failure” of the earthen dike.

“The structural integrity of the dike is Orton’s number one concern,” Bacon wrote. “The Project poses a real and unacceptable risk of catastrophic failure of the dike system. Failure of the dike will result in a cascading series of events including saltwater intrusion into the historic rice fields, rendering them incapable of growing rice and destroying the freshwater ecological water system at the Orton Property. Failure of the dike would flood the rice fields and freshwater ponds with saltwater, erasing what stands today as a preserved monument to enslaved African Americans dating back centuries.”

He closed the Nov. 24, 2025, letter with an ardent request of the division: Object to the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers’ determination that the proposed project aligns with the state’s coastal policies and rules.

The Corps, Bacon wrote, failed to analyze how the proposed project to deepen and widen the harbor channel might affect historic and cultural resources along the river.

His objections echo those of other individuals and groups voicing concerns about how the project the N.C. State Ports Authority says is needed to keep the Wilmington Port competitive might impact those sites along the river.

Deepening the river channel from 42 feet to 47 feet and widening it along areas throughout the river will allow larger vessels to travel to and from the port, attracting more business, according to the authority.

But opponents of the proposed project say that, in addition to threatening historic and cultural resources along the river, it will accelerate erosion and exacerbate flooding, destroy habitat, disperse contaminants in the riverbed’s sediment into marshes and onto public beaches, and is not economically justified.

Like Bacon, their hope is that the Division of Coastal Management rejects the Corps’ determination.

The determination

Two days before the New Year, NCDEQ announced that the Corps was giving the Division of Coastal Management more time to complete its review of the federal determination, pushing the division’s deadline from Jan. 5 to Jan. 19.

Division officials have until then to determine whether the proposed project is consistent with the state’s coastal rules, including those under the Coastal Area Management Act, or CAMA.

The division must decide whether to concur with Corps’ determination, concur with conditions, or object.

Related: Wilmington residents see no good in proposed harbor project

If the division decides the latter, that could shutter the proposed project altogether.

“An objection generally prevents the federal permit or approval from being issued unless DCM and the project proponent negotiate a resolution that would allow the project to go forward,” according to the division’s Dec. 30 release notifying the public about the extension.

The Corps “may be entitled to certain mediation/appeal privileges” with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s Office for Coastal Management, which heads programs including the National Coastal Zone Management Program and Estuarine Research Reserves and works with coastal states, territories and partners to manage resources and address impacts from climate change.

The division has to render its decision months before the Corps wraps what it says will be a detailed examination to identify all historic and cultural properties within the project study area.

“To ensure historical and cultural sites are identified and evaluated properly, the Corps is executing a study specific Programmatic Agreement (PA) with the North Carolina State Historic Preservation Office, the General Services Administration, the North Carolina State Ports Authority, and possibly the Advisory Council on Historic Preservation,” Jed Cayton, public affairs specialist with the Corps’ Wilmington District, said in an email responding to questions.

The programmatic agreement, he wrote, is a “commonly applied strategy to protect cultural and historical resources.”

“It facilitates more informed decision-making by allowing time for additional data collection and formal coordination efforts to extend beyond the feasibility study phase,” Cayton said.

The agreement, which is currently being reviewed, must be signed before the agency finalizes project plans, which would occur some time after the Corps releases its final environmental impact statement on the proposed project.

Under a tentative timeline the Corps has shared with the public, the federal agency is expected to release the final EIS sometime this summer.

Construction on the project would not begin until 2030 and take about six years to complete, a schedule Corps officials have said is optimistic.

‘Necessary analysis’

Today, the Orton property spans about 14,000 acres. More than 830 acres of that land, including 6,800 feet of restored and repaired earthen dike and coinciding system of canals, roads, dams, and ditches, around the rice fields is listed on the National Register of Historic Places.

In his letter to the division last year, Bacon argued that CAMA protects the historic resources on his land “from irreversible damage and it protects the Property’s significant ecological resources from adverse impacts.”

The draft environmental impact statement, or EIS, the Corps released last September, “does not disclose these obvious impacts,” Bacon wrote.

“There is no analysis in the Draft EIS about the effects of the Project on the Orton Property or the CAMA-protected resources at Orton. None. This analysis cannot be deferred. The Corps’ consistency determination must be supported by ‘comprehensive data and information.’”

“The Corps’ failure to undertake the necessary analysis is the simplest reason that Division should object to the consistency determination,” he continued.

His land is among nearly 30 historic sites and properties the N.C. Department of Natural and Cultural Resources’ State Historic Preservation Office lists as being within the proposed projects area of potential effects.

Last October, that office penned a letter to the Corps requesting the programmatic agreement, “so as to address effects on known and potentially National Register-eligible historic properties to be adversely affected by the proposed undertaking and the regularly scheduled maintenance dredging, spoil placement, and environmental mitigation measures following the proposed undertaking.”

While Corps studies of historic properties that may be affected by the proposed project “appear to have focused solely on the physical impacts of dredging the river-bottom, placement of dredged materials, and locations of mitigation measures, we believe from nearly two decades of observation and monitoring erosion at historic properties along the channel that we can expect other effects will result from the proposed project,” the letter states.

Dark Branch

Among the list of 28 sites and properties identified in that letter is Dark Branch, a community in unincorporated Brunswick County where land remains largely owned by the descendants of emancipated slaves.

Dark Branch, also known as Kendall Chapel, was founded in the early 1870s by a handful of formerly enslaved people, including Robert “Hooper” Clark, who’d been forced to work the rice fields of Orton, Lilliput, and Kendal plantations.

The land they purchased between those plantations became “a thriving hub of Black farming, entrepreneurship, and civil rights activism,” according to the Historic Wilmington Foundation.

Dr. Charles Chavis Jr., Clark’s fourth-great-grandson and executive director of the Dark Branch Descendants Association, explained in a telephone interview that there is a direct connection between the cultural resources that have been restored at Orton and those members of the Dark Branch community have taken upon themselves to preserve.

“Everything that Mr. Moore Bacon has sought to preserve is the work of our ancestors and those who were enslaved on the various plantations,” Chavis said. “For us, this is not only about protecting our cultural resources, but also about protecting our community.”

Chavis, an assistant professor at George Mason University and founding director of the university’s John Mitchell Jr. Program for History, Justice, and Race, started the association about three years ago to preserve the community’s history.

There are about 20 historical structures in Dark Branch, including homes, a store, and sharecropping and slave cabins.

Some of those structures, as well as the community cemetery, one Chavis calls one of Dark Branch’s most sacred sites, are under threat of riverine flooding.

“We just can’t afford for it to get worse and we’re working with local organizations to try and get resources around historic resource preservation,” he said. “We’re concerned that any potential harm or more work done to the river is going to make our job as an organization harder to protect the cultural resources that we have. Based on the assessments and our conversations with those we’ve consulted with, it’s not going to get better. It’s going to get worse.”

Dark Branch is a member of the National Park Service’s Reconstruction Era National Historic Network.

According to the Division of State Historic Sites, the Dark Branch Community Historic District was added to the National Historic Preservation Study List in 2024.

Sites that make that list are good potential candidates for the National Register.

The association continues to pursue a nomination for the National Register of Historic Places.

The Dark Branch community lies within the Gullah Geechee Cultural Heritage Corridor, which encompasses 12,000 square miles of coastal area that runs up the southern Atlantic Coast from St. John’s County, Florida, to Pender County.

The corridor links places of historic significance to the Gullah Geechee, West Africans torn from their native land and enslaved on plantations along the southern Atlantic Coast, and tells stories of their lives on the plantations and in the coastal plains after abolition.

Efforts are underway to build the North Carolina Gullah Geechee Greenway Blueway Heritage Trail that will run from Navassa to Southport.

Last summer, the North Carolina General Assembly authorized the trail’s construction.

Veronica Carter, chairwoman of the heritage trail and member of the Leland Town Council, also raised concerns about how the proposed project might affect land within the trail. Carter is also board member with the North Carolina Coastal Federation, which publishes Coastal Review.

“Deepening the Cape Fear River will negatively impact our culturally significant, state-established North Carolina Gullah Geechee Blueway portion of our trail by increasing saltwater intrusion, worsening erosion, and degrading water quality, thereby threatening sensitive habitats,” she wrote Col. Brad Morgan, the Corps’ Wilmington District commander.

The Corps acknowledges that “more surveys are needed to determine the presence of additional historic and cultural properties within the study area,” Cayton said by email. “We have already included conservative cost estimates for this work, based on known resources identified within Wilmington Harbor and experiences at other similar projects, to ensure these resources are properly managed and respected.”

Proposed rules that would require hundreds of industrial manufacturers and public sewer plants across the state to test the wastewater they discharge into rivers, creeks and streams for three types of PFAS and 1,4-dioxane will go out for public comment next month.

The North Carolina Environmental Management Commission last Thursday voted to push proposed monitoring and minimization rules for per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances PFOA, PFOS and GenX, and for 1,4-dixoane, an industrial solvent, to the public in February.

Commission Chair JD Solomon indicated that more than one public hearing will be scheduled during the comment period, which is to be held through April. As of publication, neither specific dates for the comment period, nor dates and locations for hearings, had been announced.

Solomon told fellow commissioners he anticipates the state will receive thousands of comments on the proposed rules packages, which do not set specific discharge limits or penalties for violations.

Those omissions from the proposed rules were the basis of lengthy, at times contentious, discussion among members of the commission.

A majority of commissioners ultimately rejected Commissioner Robin Smith’s motion to inject federally enforceable limits on a half-dozen individual chemical compounds and a mixture of those compounds into the proposed rules package for PFAS.

Amending the rules to include the Environmental Protection Agency’s enforceable levels of PFAS, including PFOA, PFOS and GenX, Solomon said, would substantially change the proposed rule, triggering the need for a new regulatory impact analysis to examine projected costs associated with the rule.

PFAS are a mixture of chemicals used in a host of consumer products from nonstick cookware and food packaging to stain-resistant carpets, water-repellant attire, and makeup.

These chemicals have been found in a number of drinking water sources in North Carolina through discharges from industrial manufacturers, landfills, firefighting facilities and publicly owned treatment works, or POTWs, that accept industry effluent.

Ongoing research into human health effects of PFAS, of which there are upwards of 15,000 related compounds, continues. Some of the more well-studied substances, including PFOA and PFOS, have been linked to health issues including weakened immune response, liver damage, increased cholesterol, high blood pressure, lower infant birth weights, and higher risks of certain cancers.

The Trump administration’s EPA announced last year that it would retain current National Primary Drinking Water Regulations for PFOA and PFOS and extend deadlines for public water treatment plants to come into compliance with the federally established limits for those PFAS.

EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin also announced plans to rescind regulations and reconsider regulatory determinations for the other PFAS, including GenX.

Solomon said the commission will start talking about legally enforceable limits, also known as numeric standards, for PFAS at its March meeting.

“That is the intention and that will continue to be the intention,” he said, later adding, “Everybody on this panel wants a numeric standard. The question is more, what level are those numeric standards and for what compounds. That’s what we’re going to talk about when we get to the numeric standard part.”

The Environmental Management Commission voted 10-3 to move the proposed PFAS monitoring and minimization rules package to public comment and hearing.

60-day deadline

Under the proposed rules, industrial manufacturers and publicly owned treatment works, which officials call POTWs, will be contacted by the N.C. Department of Environmental Quality’s Division of Water Resources and given 60 days to conduct baseline sampling for the three PFAS from the time the rules become effective.

Testing would be done quarterly for one year, with results reported to the division. Division officials would then determine whether ongoing sampling is needed based on practical quantitation limits, which are considered the base line in testing laboratories.

The division would decide whether a business or POTW has to develop a minimization plan, one that would take about 2.5 years to be implemented.

When asked how minimization would be measured, Division of Water Resources Deputy Director Julie Grzyb said, “There is nothing in the rule that defines a set level or set goal in the particular case. So, there is some left up to who is reviewing it.”

Minimization, she said, is determined by a number of things, including training and education equipment and seeing whether one product could be substituted for another.

“However, usually we have a water quality standard that we are shooting to meet and that defines the minimization much more clearly. I’ll leave it at that,” Grzyb said.

The proposed rule also does not specify what best management practices a facility must follow or how that facility must reach minimization.

Smith, who voted against moving the proposed rule to public comment, warned the rule may not pass the Rules Review Commission because, among other things, it lacks such standards.

“I think that one of the concerns is this could be an ongoing perpetual monitoring machine that doesn’t result in significant reductions,” she said, adding that a rule should not be sent out for public comment that “has basic drafting problems and gaps in essential decisions.”

“I cannot vote for this motion to be sent to public notice and comment the rule as it currently stands because I think there are too many issues that need to be resolved,” Smith said.

Commissioner Michael Ellison, who seconded the motion to move the rules to public comment, argued that the rules “help us as a state, statewide, reduce our uncertainty as to where the problems are and how bad they are while science continues to advance, while EPA continues whatever research they’re going to do and whatever standards they’re going to promulgate.”

After the vote to move the proposed rules on PFAS to public comment, the commission also agreed to ask for comments on whether industrial businesses and sewage plants should report to the division all 40 PFAS they are required to test for under federal requirements.

Smith made similar arguments against the proposed 1,4-dioxane monitoring and minimization rule that the commission voted 7-6 to move to public comment.

She said that while the proposed rule pertaining to 1,4-dioxane is a “pretty good monitoring rule,” it is “not a good minimization rule.”

“What I don’t want to do is create an impression out there that we have a serious minimization program if we don’t have any teeth in it. I think we need to be honest with the public about what this rule does. I’m not for something that calls itself a minimization rule that doesn’t have any enforceable attachment to it,” she said.

Early in what turned out to be a more than two-hour discussion leading up to their vote on the proposed PFAS monitoring and minimization rules, Solomon reminded commissioners that the votes they cast Thursday would not be their final, saying that getting the rules out for public comment is an incremental step in a process aimed at ultimately reducing PFAS discharges.

The North Carolina Department of Environmental Quality has suffered the highest percentage of staff cuts of any state, with nearly one-third of its workforce eliminated between 2010 and 2024, according to an environmental watchdog group.

A whopping 32%, or 386 DEQ staff positions, were wiped out during that 14-year period, according to an Environmental Integrity Project report released earlier this month.

Those staff cuts, the report concludes, leave the state agency responsible for administering regulations to protect water, air quality and the public’s health “ill-positioned to confront” pollution from the state’s growing factory farming industry, climate-driven storms and flooding in coastal communities.

The report notes how the agency was downsized when former Gov. Pat McCrory signed the 2015-16 state budget into law, triggering a shift of several divisions from what was then the Department of Environment and Natural Resources to the Department of Natural and Cultural Resources.

The Republican governor, who also renamed the agency the Department of Environmental Quality, said the move aligned with his vision for government efficiency.

Josh Kastrinsky, DEQ’s deputy communications director, said in an email last week that it is “difficult” to directly compare present staffing levels to those in 2010 because of the changes that were made to the department in 2015.

“However, for several regulatory divisions that existed in 2010 and 2025, staffing levels declined by at least 25%,” he wrote, adding that, “The EIP report focuses on regulatory work and does not include DEQ’s non-regulatory work, which affects the total numbers of staff shown.”

As of the week that began Dec. 8, the departments vacancy rate was 8%, Kastrinsky said.

“This includes an engineer vacancy rate of 14% and an environmental specialist vacancy rate of 9%,” he said. “Several DEQ programs have larger workloads and several programs have less staff than they did in 2010.”

North Carolina’s population has increased by more than 11.5% since 2010, according to USAFacts, a nonprofit organization that gathers data from federal, state and local governments.

The state’s population growth corresponds to an increase in environmental permit applications filed with the department.

Since 2010, the department’s Division of Mitigation Services has seen a 200% increase in projects.

During that same time period, the number of erosion and sediment control project applicants filed with the Division of Energy, Mineral, and Land Resources has jumped by nearly 60%, and the Division of Waste Management has received a 62% increase in underground storage tank applications.

“The 2010-2025 period also includes several destructive hurricanes, and DEQ staff have been heavily involved in recovery and long-term resilience in impacted communities,” Kastrinsky said. “DEQ’s ability to hire and retain sufficient staff levels has a direct effect on its ability to provide permit oversight, technical assistance to businesses and customer service to North Carolinians.”

The department’s “roughly 1,700 staff members remain dedicated to providing science-based efforts to ensure clean air, water and lands by managing applications, conducting inspections and permit oversight, investigating complaints and taking enforcement measures as appropriate under law,” he continued. “DEQ also continues to focus on a variety of funding and assistance programs to maintain critical infrastructure and make communities’ aging systems more resilient to increasingly severe natural disasters.”

The Environmental Integrity Program analyzed the budgets, annual expenditures and staffing levels from 2010 through to 2024 of the environmental agencies of all 50 states.

North Carolina topped the list of 31 states found to have cut jobs at their environmental agencies from 2010 to 2024. Connecticut experienced a 26% cut during that same time, followed closely by Arizona, which saw a 25% reduction in its environmental agency’s staff.

Seven states, including Texas, Mississippi, South Dakota, and Connecticut, reduced their pollution control funding by at least a third, the report concludes.

The impacts of such cuts will likely only be exacerbated by the Trump Administration’s plans to downsize the Environmental Protection Agency, the program warns.

“The Trump Administration is attempting to dismantle EPA and rollback commonsense federal pollution rules, claiming that the states can pick up the slack and protect our communities – but that’s not the case,” Jen Duggan, Environmental Integrity Project executive director, stated in a release. “The implementation of our environmental laws depend on both a strong EPA and state agencies that have the resources they need to do their jobs. But our research found that many states have already cut their pollution control agencies and so more cuts at the federal level will only put more Americans at risk.”

The report highlights North Carolina’s factory farming industry, which includes the production of nearly 1 billion chickens annually for sale as meat. And, as of March, there were 8.1 million hogs in concentrated animal feeding operations, or CAFOs, in the state.

Poultry waste at these CAFOs is sometimes dumped in open-air heaps and, when it rains, washes into nearby streams, discharging harmful nutrients into waters downstream, including those in the Cape Fear River Basin, which has the highest density of CAFOs in the world, according to Cape Fear River Watch.

“The unchecked expansion of hog and poultry farms has left the state environmental agency unable to even evaluate the cumulative impacts,” Drew Ball, director of Natural Resources Defense Council’s Southeast Campaigns team, states in the report. “At this point, policy experts and advocates can’t even get the information they need to protect the public. You can’t respond if you don’t know what’s coming online. We need to think a lot harder about keeping track of potential pollution and what it could mean for downstream communities.”

Coastal Review will not publish Wednesday, Thursday and Friday in observance of the Christmas holiday.

New Hanover County commissioners have approved the purchase of more than 28 acres along the Cape Fear River’s western bank across from downtown Wilmington.

Commissioners on Monday afternoon unanimously agreed to the $2.24 million land deal, one that includes two undeveloped tracts that will remain preserved once under county ownership.

The purchase signals the county’s commitment to protect land along the western bank, which has in the past several years been eyed by developers who have come to the county with proposals to build a hotel and spa and a luxury high-rise condominium complex.

All that remains before the purchase is finalized are the results of soil and groundwater samples taken on one of the properties where an oil storage facility was operated for roughly a decade until the mid- to late 1990s.

Soil found to have been contaminated by fuel leaks in an area of the 17.13-acre tract west of U.S. 421 was excavated more than a decade ago and stacked on the property, where it is being remediated onsite in bioreactors. A 2007 environmental study of the site concluded that contamination was not flowing into the river.

The county expects to receive the results of the latest soil and groundwater samples no later than next week. County staff have indicated they do not expect the results to give them cause for concern.

“We have heard the public tell us repeatedly how important preservation is in our community,” Commission Vice-Chair Dane Scalise said Monday. “This is another example of us doing it.”

He pointed out that County Manager Chris Coudriet recently emailed commissioners saying that, if they moved forward with the purchase, the county will have acquired more than 100 acres for preservation within the past seven months.

“We have heard the community over and over again tell us that they want preservation and particularly in that area and we are committed to doing that,” Commission Chair LeAnn Pierce said. “That is something that we’ve pivoted on and we have decided that that is what we want to do is preserve open space and green space and mitigate some of the building that’s going on in New Hanover County. And this is the only way we can do it is by buying that property when it becomes available to us.”

The latest purchase also includes an 11.42-acre riverfront tract just north of Point Peter, an undeveloped area that was a few years ago the subject of a highly controversial proposed development.

Look back: New Hanover Board denies new zoning district

Point Peter is a plot at the confluence of the Cape Fear and Northeast Cape Fear rivers along an area already feeling the effects of sea level rise.

Environmental, historical and cultural preservation groups, and community members banded together in opposing a request by developers to rezone roughly 8 acres so that they could move forward with plans to build a complex of three high-rise condominiums overlooking the river and adjacent downtown Wilmington.

Commissioners ultimately denied the rezoning request in late 2021 and pursued revising an amendment to the county’s 2016 comprehensive land use plan to create a new conservation “placetype” specifically for the western bank at the confluence of the rivers. “Placetype” is a planning term used to describe the mix of compatible uses within an area.

The riverfront tract at 1450 Point Harbor Road that the county intends to buy includes a little more than six acres within the Cape Fear River waterline.

The plot was once used as a railroad terminal yard. The land has not been identified as having known environmental conditions by any regulatory agency, according to county staff.

The tract across the highway at 1209 N. U.S. 421, is adjacent to the New Hanover County Sheriff’s Office’s target shooting range. This property would prevent encroachment to the shooting range and provide river access for the sheriff office’s marine unit.

Funding to buy the tracts will be pulled from reserves from the county’s revenue stabilization fund, which will be replenished through annual reimbursements of $266,130 from the county’s general fund for the next 10 years.

The purchase is expected to be complete by Dec. 31.

A Piedmont town’s request to permanently pull millions of gallons of water a day from the Cape Fear River would raise the risk of water shortages during periods of drought, undercut utilities’ ability to keep up with growing demand, and result in higher levels of contamination in the raw drinking water source for downstream communities, opponents of the plan say.

Of the dozen people who spoke Tuesday night during a public hearing in Raleigh, none supported Fuquay-Varina’s call for transferring 6.17 million gallons per day from the Cape Fear River Basin to the Neuse River Basin to meet that town’s projected water demands.

Similar opposition was expressed during a hearing held in Fayetteville last week by the North Carolina Environmental Management Commission and the state Division of Water Resources. A third hearing was scheduled to be held Thursday in Pittsboro.

Both elected officials and heads of public utilities in the lower Cape Fear region on Tuesday continued pressing the commission and division to host a public hearing in that area.

“None of the hearings for the Fuquay-Varina request are being held in the lower Cape Fear region, even though our communities will feel the downstream impacts,” said New Hanover County Commissioner Rob Zapple. “Residents in the city of Wilmington and the counties of New Hanover, Brunswick and Pender would have to spend four to five hours on the road just to attend the public hearing. Most residents simply cannot do that. Holding a hearing in the lower Cape Fear region in Wilmington would reduce frustration, encourage public trust, and allow our communities to be hearing in a constructive manner.”

As of Wednesday, more than 20 counties, municipalities, environmental organizations, businesses and drinking water providers have adopted resolutions opposing Fuquay-Varina’s request for an interbasin transfer certificate, or IBT.

Officials in Fuquay-Varina, which is about 30 miles south of Raleigh, project that the amount of water the town currently buys from the capital city, and Harnett and Johnston counties will fall short of demand by 2030.

Under the proposed preferred alternative identified in a draft environmental impact statement for the IBT, the town would source its entire water supply from a water treatment plant in Sanford, which is in the Cape Fear River Basin.

Once water pulled from the Cape Fear River is used by residents and businesses within the town, the treated wastewater would be discharged into the Neuse River Basin. This would permanently subtract more than 6 million gallons each day from the river flow that currently sources more than 500,000 residents with drinking water.

“We have absolutely no problem with Fuquay-Varina wanting to continue with their development,” Zapple said. “But if you take the water, just return it. That’s all. That’s the way the system works. And, if it costs more, well maybe that’s the price of doing business. We need our development down in the lower Cape Fear region as well and we can’t afford to lose 6.17 million gallons a day.”

The Cape Fear River is Brunswick County’s “primary and only reliable water source,” said Christopher Giesting, Brunswick County Public Utilities deputy director of water operations.

The utility supplies drinking water to 19 municipalities and serves more than 350,000 residents and seasonal visitors.

Giesting said that Brunswick County has invested more than $183 million to expand its Northwest Water Treatment Plant and upgrade to a reverse osmosis system designed to remove per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances, or PFAS, discharged into the river by upstream polluters.

“These investments were made with the expectation that the full safe yield of the Cape Fear River at the intake would remain available,” he said. “Any IBT that removes water without returning it means that safe yield volume is reduced, ultimately making these major infrastructure investments unable to function as planned and designed. Our county alone has more than 50,000 planned housing units already built, under construction, or in the works. Without reliable access to the full safe yield of the Cape Fear, we cannot meet future water demands for these communities.”

The IBT proposal also threatens water quality, Giesting continued, because the requested daily transfer would lessen the amount of water available to dilute contaminants, including PFAS and 1,4-dioxane, discharged by upstream polluters.

The Lower Cape Fear Water and Sewer Authority, which provides wholesale regional raw water to treatment facilities that serve more than 550,000 customers in a five-county area, has sourced from the Cape Fear River more than half a century.

Authority Executive Director Tim Holloman said the river is already being substantially used as a water resource in the region.

“For a river that’s already maxed, we just ask that that be considered. If the IBT is granted, that (water) be returned to the Cape Fear River Basin because the need is not going to go away. It’s only going to increase over time,” he said.

Fayetteville Public Works Commission Chief Executive Officer and General Manager Timothy Bryant said that the commission would be forced to spend millions more each year to ensure safe drinking water to its more than 250,000 customers.

“I would argue very strenuously that no one with any legitimacy can claim that removing over 6 million gallons of water per day isn’t a foreseeable detrimental effect on the river basin and the 900,000 downstream residents of North Carolina who depend on this water every day,” he said. “To be clear, growth in Fuquay-Varina should not come at the expense of other communities. There are multiple reasonable alternative options presented that are not only consistent with the intent and letter of North Carolina law, but also squarely place the cost burden on Fuquay-Varina and not the customers downstream of it.”

Cape Fear Public Utility Authority Executive Director Ken Waldroup asked that the Environmental Management Commission look into what he said are “critical technical shortcomings” associated with models presented by the town.

The commission will make the final determination on whether to grant Fuquay-Varina’s request.

If approved, the IBT would occur after 2031, according to the draft impact statement.

No announcement had been made at the time of this publication as to whether a public hearing will be held in the lower Cape Fear region.

A district court judge has ruled that Chemours and its predecessor company cannot conceal thousands of pages of documents from the public.

The manufacturing giant failed to provide sufficient evidence the documents include commercially sensitive information that, if released, could competitively undermine the companies, Judge James Dever III concluded in his Dec. 3 ruling.

Information the companies requested to keep under seal are among 25,000 pages of documents lawyers representing public utilities and local governments downstream of Chemours’ Bladen County plant submitted to the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of North Carolina as part of lawsuit those entities brought against the companies in October 2017.

Related: EPA seeks reporting rollback as new study finds hidden PFAS

Cape Fear Public Utility Authority, or CFPUA, Brunswick County, Lower Cape Fear Water & Sewer Authority, and Wrightsville Beach aim to recover costs and damages associated with the Fayetteville Works’ plant’s discharges of per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances, or PFAS, for decades into the Cape Fear River. The river is a drinking water source for tens of thousands of residents.

PFAS are a group of more than 14,000 chemicals used in everyday consumer products including food containers, stain-resistant carpet and water-repellant gear. These human-made chemical compounds are persistent in the environment and have been found to accumulate in humans and animals. Exposure to these substances has been linked to weakened immune function, reproductive and development issues and increased risk of some cancers.

Last February, attorneys for Chemours and its predecessor company DuPont filed a motion requesting that the court keep thousands of pages of those documents under seal, arguing information in those documents contain internal communications about chemical production that, if made public, could give a leg up to their competitors.

Dever denied that request. He also rejected a second motion by the companies’ attorneys seeking to keep from the public an April 2018 report of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency detailing its inspection the Fayetteville Works facility.

“Defendants’ second motion to seal fails for the same reason as defendant’s first motion to seal. Defendants provide insufficient evidence to demonstrate that sealing the [Toxic Substance Act Compliance Monitoring Inspection] report serves a compelling interest which outweighs the public’s right of access,” Dever wrote in his 13-page ruling.

A document’s “status as confidential or commercially sensitive alone does not justify its sealing,” he continued.

“We thank the Court for its wise ruling in denying the motion to seal,” Cammie Bellamy, CFPUA public information officer, said in an email responding to a request for comment. “CFPUA will oppose every attempt by Chemours to delay, obfuscate, and deny the public its right to access the facts of this case. The documents that Chemours and its codefendants wanted to hide from the public include records of its decades of wrongdoing. The people of Southeastern North Carolina deserve better. CFPUA continues to work to hold Chemours accountable for its decades of polluting of the Cape Fear River – the source water for 500,000 North Carolinians.”

Dever also denied requests submitted to the court last April by environmental and community organizations, and the NAACP New Hanover County Branch, to intervene in the case and object to the companies’ motion to keep the documents sealed, ruling those motions are moot.

The Southern Environmental Law Center filed a motion to intervene in the case on behalf of Cape Fear River Watch, the North Carolina Coastal Federation, which publishes Coastal Review, and the Environmental Justice Community Action Network.

“We think that this is absolutely the right outcome,” Jean Zhuang, a senior attorney with the center’s Chapel Hill office, said in a telephone interview Friday morning. “In this case, the companies have concealed decades of pollution in southeastern North Carolina and harmed drinking water from the Cape Fear River for 500,000 people.”

The release of the documents comes at a crucial time, she said, because Chemours wants to expand its production of vinyl ethers, which are a class of compounds used to create a variety of products used in a range of technologies from semiconductor chips to aviation components.

The company’s permit application for that expansion is under review by the North Carolina Department of Environmental Quality.

“Chemours is expecting the public to just trust them while they are planning a massive expansion of their facility,” Zhuang said. “After all these decades of harm they have caused on North Carolina communities, secrecy is not an option anymore.”

Tests commissioned by the SELC and Cape Fear River Watch showed that Chemours is releasing “extremely high levels” of ultra-short chain PFAS, which are highly mobile and difficult to remove from raw drinking water, into the Cape Fear River.

The results of those tests, released last October, confirmed earlier test results published by CFPUA, which has spent tens of millions of dollars upgrading its Sweeney Water Treatment Plant in downtown Wilmington to filtrate PFAS from reaching its customers’ taps.

CFPUA officials, along with those from other downstream facilities, are calling on the state to enforce polluters to treat chemicals at the source and set enforceable limits in discharge permits.

Anne Harvey David, chief counsel for environmental justice for the Southern Coalition for Social Justice, which asked to intervene in the case on behalf of the NAACP New Hanover County Branch, said in a release, “An effort to conceal information that details with the health and safety of thousands of North Carolinians cannot go unchallenged. We are happy to see this decision in favor of protecting public access to these documents. Information and transparency around the extent of the pollution is fundamental for the health and safety of the impacted communities.”

NACCP New Hanover County Branch President LeRon Montgomery said last week’s ruling “is one win in a long battle for our community to live free from harmful contamination of our air and water,” according to the release.

“The importance of this decision goes far beyond who it will impact today,” he stated. “The pollution of the Cape Fear River will impact generations to come, but so will having access to this information.”

As of this publication, it was unclear when the documents would be made public or whether the companies’ attorneys would appeal the ruling.

Jean Beasley was one of those people seemingly born to lead, happy to work in the trenches with a fervor and tenacity that magnetized others to her.

It was her charisma, her penchant to teach others about sea turtles, her drive to protect the iconic ocean dwellers, and her determination to carry out her daughter’s vision that led to the founding of the beloved Karen Beasley Sea Turtle Rescue and Rehabilitation Center on Topsail Island.

Beasley died early Tuesday morning “in the company of loved ones,” according to a center Facebook post. She was 90.

As word has spread of her passing, the center has received an outpouring from former interns expressing how Beasley’s passion and guidance shaped not only their career paths, but also their lives.

“I can attest to that because my life was completely changed after I met her,” Terry Meyer, the center’s deputy and conservation director and Beasley’s longtime friend, said Wednesday morning.

Meyer was introduced to Beasley in 1995 at Topsail Beach’s annual Autumn With Topsail Festival. Tucked somewhere among booths featuring handmade arts and crafts was Beasley’s stand, where she explained the Topsail Turtle Project Nesting Program to any interested passersby.

“She mentioned that there was a nest in front of her house if we wanted to go look at it. She lives about a block away from my house so I did walk down there, and she came charging out of the house in a very protective mode, which I would later learn the turtle people do,” Meyer said.

Those initial, brief encounters would later prompt Meyer to attend a volunteer meeting of the Topsail Turtle Project.

“She’s so charismatic. When I left that meeting, I thought protecting sea turtles was the most important, noble thing I could do with my life. I mean, she’s just, it was like three hours of brainwashing, and I never looked back,” Meyer laughed.

By that time, Beasley had long established a home in Surf City.

The native North Carolinian grew up in Henderson, a small town a little more than 40 miles northeast of Raleigh. She was awarded a full scholarship to Duke University, where she earned a degree and received her teacher certification in 1958.

She first moved to Topsail Island with her husband, Fred, after he received orders to Camp Lejeune, according to a 2005 report in the Wilmington Star-News.

The couple lived on the island two short years before Fred Beasley got out of the Marine Corps and took a job in Ohio, where they lived for 20 years. There, they raised sons, Barney and Kevin, and daughter, Karen.

Each year, the family would vacation in Topsail Island. Jean and Fred returned to Topsail Island to live full time in the early 1980s after he retired.

Less than 10 years after their move to Surf City, Karen, 29, died in 1991 from leukemia. Jean picked up the torch and carried forward Karen’s plans for the turtle project.

Within five years of Karen’s death, Jean struck up a deal with Topsail Beach to lease a small, waterfront lot nestled along Banks Channel and just behind town hall for $1 a year.

The new sea turtle hospital opened in 1997.

“A lot of groundbreaking, excellent work went on in that 900-square-foot building and that’s where our heart was,” Meyer said. “When I tell people we literally fished off the end of the dock to feed the turtles, that is a true story. Those are our humble beginnings. It was all running on a dream and it was running on Jean’s charisma.”

Beasley “had a big smile, and she had a hug for everybody, but she also had an iron will and she ran the program from a position of strength,” Meyer said.

Patient demand pushed the hospital to capacity, and then some, on a recurring basis, and, in 2013, a new, 13,000-square-foot center was opened on Surf City’s mainland.

“Our success over the years and being in this building today is because of Jean’s stewardship and leadership and our ability to properly manage our funds while saving hundreds of turtles,” Meyer said.

As of Wednesday, the hospital had cared for “at least” 1,701 turtles, she said. Of those, 1,290 had been rehabilitated and released.

In its Facebook post announcing Jean’s death, center officials thanked her “for sharing your dreams with us.”

“You inspired us to create a better world – for the turtles, for Mother Ocean, and for all. We will do our best to carry forward your legacy. Swim in Peace.”

Beasley was awarded Lifetime Achievement Award from the International Sea Turtle Society in 2017.

She stepped down as the center’s executive director in 2021 and later moved to Tennessee to live with one of her sons and daughters-in-law, Meyer said.

Up until this year, Jean would return in the summers to visit the center.

“It was very important to us and to her to have her meet with our interns and just impart some stories and some history,” Meyer said. “We followed her because she demonstrated every day what it took to save sea turtles because she did the work. She was down and dirty doing the work every day, and she didn’t shy away from any task. I watched her – from medical treatments on sea turtles to gluing PVC together, to repairing a pump – she did all things and she led by example. You know, it’s like she was our beating heart.”

To get a sense of just how severe Battery Island’s shoreline is changing, look no farther than its trees.

As waves lick away at the fringes of this little island in the middle of the Cape Fear River near Southport, trees rising off its shores are toppling.

“The mature trees that the birds nest in are being lost along the shore,” said Lindsay Addison, coastal biologist with Audubon North Carolina.

Each tree that plops into the river is one fewer on an island that is globally significant for nesting white ibis and home to one of the largest wading bird colonies in North Carolina.

To Battery Island’s east rests Shellbed Island, a large marsh system edged by elevated banks of old oyster shells called shell rakes.

In good condition, these rakes do not flood at high tide or during storms, making them a crucial and rather niche nesting habitat for American oystercatchers.

“The Cape Fear River supports almost 30% of the state’s nesting American oystercatchers. And about half of the American oystercatchers that nest on the Cape Fear River nest in these types of habitats. So, it’s a very important habitat type for American oystercatchers and they are a state listed species,” Addison said.

Like Battery Island, waves have altered Shellbed Island’s edges, where the elevated shell rakes have been flattened out and pushed back into the marsh by coastal storms.

In an effort to protect the threatened bird habitat on these islands, Audubon and its partners, Sandbar Oyster Co. and the North Carolina Coastal Federation, have teamed up to design and install two pilot living shoreline projects and test their effectiveness at protecting the low-lying islands on the river.

The Coastal Federation, which publishes Coastal Review, is contributing $13,800 in cost share for the $51,500 projects. Of the Coastal Federation’s contribution, $5,250 has been set aside for Battery Island and $8,550 for the project at Shellbed Island.

Georgia Busch, a coastal specialist in the Coastal Federation’s Wrightsville Beach office, said these projects, “align with our mission for preservation of critical habitats in our coastal and estuary systems.”

“But, particularly in the lower Cape Fear River, there’s a need for some extra reinforcement of those habitats there. Historically, the birds have used this area for a long, long time and we just want to make sure that stays intact. These sites were chosen for both their exposure and their critical points in the river,” she said.

Battery Island’s shores have for years been battered by waves from large vessels that navigate the river to and from the Port of Wilmington, recreational boats that skim the waters around Southport, and the Bald Head Island ferry.

“What makes Battery Island special for the nesting birds is it’s relatively small, it’s far enough away from the mainland that it doesn’t have any mammalian predators on it, and so that allows this colony to have a lot of success,” Addison said.

There’s also little human disturbance on the island. The island, which is managed by Audubon, is closed to people March 1 to Sept. 15 each year.

A test section of about 70 linear feet of living shoreline will be installed along the roughly 100-acre island’s southwest corner, which has experienced some of the most severe erosion.

A reef constructed of Sandbar Oyster Co.’s Oyster Catcher reef building substrates, which are made with plant-fiber cloth, infused with different cement mixtures, and molded into different shapes to promote sediment accumulation and marsh growth.

The test project at Shellbed Island has been designed to prevent shell rakes from washing away.

Power hurricanes, including Florence in 2018 and Dorian in 2019, pushed the shell rakes back into the marsh and flattened them out. And the oyster reefs that at one time provided an abundance of oyster shell in the river are not as plentiful because of overfishing, pollution and habitat degradation.

“There’s still plenty of spat, larval oysters, in the water, but there isn’t a lot of substrate for them to settle on because oysters typically grow on other oysters,” Addison explained. “When you put in a living shoreline-type of material, or almost any hard substrate, you’ll get oysters recruiting onto it. What we would like to do is to help jumpstart some oyster populations in areas of these shell rakes.”

The project at Shellbed Island includes installing roughly 67 feet of living shoreline in front of the shell rakes and material behind the shell rakes, “so that when nature moves those loose shells around, it can build back up into a more sustainable nesting habitat where the oystercatchers are not losing so many of their nests to overwash,” Addison said.

Audubon has a received a grant for a separate project to place loose oyster shell directly on the existing rakes.

Busch explained the test projects are a first-of-their kind because they will be at isolated islands “where we’re really only looking at habitat and this will be really helpful for testing out the strength and feasibility of the Sandbar Oyster Company’s products and of living shorelines.”

“These sites were chosen for both their exposure and their critical points in the river,” she said. “We want to see how this product will work somewhere where we get a lot of wave energy. We’re going to find out.”

Addison said she has “high hopes” for the living shorelines in curbing erosion at the islands.

“If it turns out to look like it’s working well then we could seek larger pots of money and expand our permit to be able to do this at a larger scale,” she said.

Audubon is continuing to fundraise for the projects. Donations may be made by contacting Addison by email at lindsay.addison@audubon.org.

BEAUFORT – Owners of vacant oceanfront lots being chewed by erosion at the eastern tip of Ocean Isle Beach have been permitted to install larger than typically allowed sandbag structures at the beach to protect their properties.

The North Carolina Coastal Resources Commission unanimously agreed last week to grant permission to the owners of eight lots in The Pointe, a luxury gated neighborhood built east of the town’s terminal groin, to have sandbag structures that are 40 feet wide and 12 feet tall placed waterward of their land.

Current commission rules limit sandbag revetments to a 20-foot base width and a 6-foot height. The rules also stipulate sandbags may be placed only in areas where erosion scarp is within 20 feet from a structure.

The new, larger sandbag structures will connect to two revetments installed along developed lots this past summer, creating one, long contiguous sandbag wall along at the eastern tip of the Brunswick County barrier island at Shallotte Inlet.

Charles Baldwin IV, the Wilmington-based attorney representing the property owners, explained Wednesday during the meeting in Beaufort Hotel that his clients want to “simply connect the dots” and “try to avoid irreparable harm.”

“It needs to be a unified wall,” he said. “You can’t throw one person out and expect this project to go forward and work.”

Baldwin’s clients attribute the plight of their properties to the terminal groin the town had installed more than three years ago to stave off erosion that had battered Ocea Isle’s east end for decades.

“Obviously what we have is a unique situation here,” he said in his initial remarks to the commission. “We have these lots that are being affected negatively by the terminal groin.”

Terminal groins are wall-like structures built perpendicular to the shore at inlets to contain sand in areas of high erosion.

Baldwin noted that both state law and the town’s permit to build the terminal groin “say that if the groin doesn’t perform, and it’s required to monitor, has adverse effects, it has to be modified or removed.”

“That’s because that’s the law,” he said.

Baldwin went on to argue that a decision by the United States Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit said the terminal groin might contribute to “some short-term erosion” east of the structure, “but that within year one it’s going to stabilize.”

“That has not happened,” Baldwin said. “Their lots are already being substantially diminished, but this structure out there is just simply failing.”

Ocean Isle Beach officials have refuted that claim.

In a letter Coastal Review published last month, Ocean Isle Beach Mayor Debbie Smith wrote that The Pointe’s developer went before the town’s planning board in June 2015. The developer purchased the property in September of that same year.

By that time, both a draft and final environmental impact statement on the terminal groin had been published, and a public workshop on the terminal groin had taken place, Smith wrote.

The town received a Coastal Area Management Act, or CAMA, permit in November 2016 to build the structure.

But construction was pushed back years after the Southern Environmental Law Center, on behalf of the National Audubon Society, filed a lawsuit challenging the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers’ approval of the project.

The lawsuit claimed that the Corps failed to objectively evaluate alternatives to the terminal groin, including those that would be less costly to Ocean Isle residents and less destructive to the coast, particularly what was then the undeveloped area on the island’s east end.

In March 2021, a panel of judges with the Fourth Circuit, affirmed a lower court’s decision that the Corps fairly considered the alternatives.

Construction of the $11 million terminal groin was complete in April the following year.

The final subdivision approval was granted to The Pointe’s developer in 2022, after which time construction began in the 44-lot neighborhood.

A series of offshore coastal storms that have skirted the East Coast the latter half of this year have further contributed to the threat to The Pointe’s oceanfront properties.

Erosion has swiped away chunks of the private road that rounds to lots at a cul-de-sac nearest the ocean entrance to the inlet. Piles of debris, including wood from an old bulkhead unearthed by the erosion, has been described as a scene akin to that of a war zone.

In a presentation to the commission Wednesday, North Carolina Department of Environmental Quality Assistant General Counsel Christy Goebel said that comparisons of the shoreline east of the terminal groin show that the line is moving landward.

The use of temporary sandbags “is to buy time” for existing, threatened structures while a longer-term solution can be figured out to protect those structures, she said.

Goebel noted that there have been no plans to relocate Shallotte Inlet, that the terminal groin already exists, “and the likelihood of success of beach nourishment placement so close to the inlet being dredged by the Corps’ shallow draft program and the associated available funding is uncertain.”

Baldwin rattled off a list of possible solutions, including reducing the profile of the terminal groin, removing rocks, using different size rocks to make the structure “more leaky,” modifying its location, or removing it altogether.

The commission’s motion approving the variances were made with a stipulation that the public area of the beach remain unimpeded by the sandbag wall.

Four critically endangered North Atlantic right whales were spotted last month off the coast of Ocracoke.

The aerial sighting triggered what is known as a dynamic management area in the vicinity where the whales were spotted Nov. 18 during an aerial survey. Dynamic management areas are voluntary and used by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, or NOAA, to notify vessel operators to slow down to avoid right whales.

“Maintaining speeds of 10 knots or less can help protect right whales from vessel collisions,” according to NOAA’s website.

Vessel strikes and entanglements in fishing gear remain the leading causes of death and serious injury to North Atlantic right whales, of which there are fewer than 400.

The 2024 population is estimated at 384 individual whales, a slight, 2.1% increase over the 2023 estimate, according to numbers released in October by the North Atlantic Right Whale Consortium.

And while the latest estimate shows a continued slow, upward trend in growth over the last four years, marine scientists caution that strong protective measures are crucial to the recovery of the species.

“The North Atlantic right whale is in such peril that even a single human-caused death threatens the recovery of the species and its chances at avoiding extension,” Michelle Bivins, Oceana Carolinas Field Campaigns representative, said in an interview on Thursday.

Right whales migrate seasonally, spending their spring and summers in waters off New England and farther north into Canadian waters, to feed and mate.

In the fall, the whales travel south, sometimes more than 1,000 miles, to their calving grounds off shore from the Carolinas to northeastern Florida.

In 2008, NOAA created a speed rule limiting vessels 65 feet or longer to travel no more than 10 knots in seasonal, mandatory and voluntary slow zones.

“I think it’s important though to emphasize that history does show boats smaller than 65 feet can also harm and kill North Atlantic right whales,” Bivins said. “In February 2021, a calf died from propeller wounds, broken ribs, and a fractured skill from a collision with a 54-foot recreational fishing vessel that was not subject to the speed requirement.”

That calf was found off the Florida coast.

In March 2024, a dead calf washed ashore on Georgia’s coast with fatal injuries caused by a boat estimated to be between 35 feet and 57 feet in length, Bivins said.

Earlier this year, NOAA announced its withdrawal of a proposed speed limits for vessels under 65 feet in length through designated North Atlantic right whale seasonal management areas in the northeast, mid-Atlantic, and southeast. The agency “encourages” smaller vessels to 10 knots or less.

In the meantime, scientists are calling for additional measures to aid in the right whale population’s recovery, including the use of ropeless or on-demand fishing gear for crab fishing to reduce whale entanglements.

WILMINGTON — Deepening the Wilmington Harbor would disperse PFAS now mingling in the riverbed’s sediment into marshes and onto public beaches, accelerate erosion, exacerbate flooding, destroy habitat, and is not economically justified, area residents said during a state-hosted public hearing.

Many who spoke at the North Carolina Division of Coastal Management’s hearing in downtown Wilmington Monday night argued that the federal draft environmental statement released by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers earlier this fall fails to fully examine potential impacts associated with the proposed project.

The draft study examines different alternatives for the North Carolina State Ports Authority’s aim to accommodate larger container ships at the Wilmington port.

The preferred alternative selected in the study calls for deepening the harbor from 42 to 47 feet, widening the channel in multiple areas, and extending the ocean entrance to the river. These changes would accommodate vessels that can carry 14,000 20-by-8-foot shipping containers, ports officials say.

But several of the nearly 20 people who spoke argued that the proposed project would not benefit the local economy, and its environmental harms would drastically overwhelm any associated economic benefits. About 70 people attended the hearing.

“This project is a poor economic decision given the massive cost compared to the miniscule benefits,” said Jessica Hardee, an attorney with the Southern Environmental Law Center. “The cost of deepening the harbor and the channel is projected to be over $1 billion. However, the only noted benefit of this project are cost savings to international shipping companies who use the port, not North Carolina or local communities. This project provides little benefit to the Wilmington area and North Carolinians while also threatening significant damage to the coastal region.”

One striking absence from the study is how churning up and moving per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances, or PFAS, in the sediment of the lower Cape Fear River might affect the environment, animals that rely on that environment, and human health, some speakers said.

“Even though we all know that there’s PFAS in the sediment of the river, the Corps says we can’t consider that because it’s not a regulated chemical,” said Wilmington resident and geologist Roger Shew.

But PFAS, or similar chemical compounds of which there are more than 14,000 used to make a host of consumer goods from food containers to stain-resistant clothing and carpet, will be regulated by the time the channel would be deepened in the early to mid-2030s, he said.

“And since 15 million of the 35 million cubic yards of dredge material will be used as beneficial placement in marshes on our area beaches, we should know the content of that sediment and potential impacts with sediment placement,” Shew said. “A core function of an (environmental impact statement) is consideration of potential harm. Therefore, they should and must include PFAS in the study.”

A study published late last month found concentrations of 56 PFAS in blood samples obtained from 119 Wilmington residents between 2010 and 2016.

Two chemical compounds – TFA and PFMOAA – were the dominant PFAS in the samples, “despite their likely short half-lives in the human body,” according to the study.

TFA, or trifluoroacetic acid, and PFMOAA, or perfluoro-2-methoxyacetic acid, are ultrashort-chain PFAS, which are the smallest type of PFAS and hardest to remove from drinking water sources.

The blood samples examined in the study were obtained before the public was made aware in 2017 that an upstream industrial facility had been discharging PFAS directly into the Cape Fear River, the drinking water sources for tens of thousands, since the 1980s.

“While current TFA and PFMOAA levels have likely decreased substantially from those in the historical blood serum samples evaluated here as a result of mandated discharge controls at the upstream fluorochemical manufacturer, this study, along with other recent studies, highlights the importance ultrashort-chain PFAS can play in determining the overall human PFAS burden,” the study states.

Wilmington resident Kaiti Sheehan said the fact that PFAS is not considered in the draft environmental impact statement, or DEIS, “is a slap in the face to residents who are paying for a $42 million granulated active-carbon filtration system and still facing the health consequences that have come from 40 years of contamination from our upstream bad actor.”

“I do genuinely hope that you will look and you will see how much the community has come out tonight in recognition that this is bad for Wilmington and this is bad for North Carolina,” she said.

Others raised concerns about how deepening the harbor to allow for larger ships to travel the 28 miles upriver to the port would increase erosion on the string of bird islands that pepper the lower Cape Fear River and the riverbanks themselves.

The Cape Fear River supports almost 30% of the state’s nesting American oystercatchers.

Audubon North Carolina’s Lindsay Addison, a coastal biologist, said she and her staff are on the Cape Fear River two to three days a week between March and August and at least once during each of the other months of the year.

“We have seen progressively the impacts of the larger and larger classes of ships coming up the river,” she said. “We saw larger, more severe wakes. The DEIS does not take this into account. The Corps, in its beneficial use plan, talks about maybe putting sediment on 2 miles of the shoreline.”

Birds nest on high-tide lines, Addison said. Waves created by a large ship’s wake push water “like a tsunami” over nests and sweep nests away.

“There is no model in the DEIS that accounts for this,” Addison said. “There is no data collection in the DEIS that accounts for this. In fact, there’s no new data collection in the DEIS. They’re relying on data that was already collected. They told us in the stakeholder meeting, flat out, that they’re not going to collected new data so impacts to the migratory birds in the DEIS are not taken into account.”

Officials with the Division of Coastal Management, which is under the N.C. Department of Environmental Quality, announced Monday night that the public comment period on the draft study has been extended from Dec. 5 to Dec. 20.

Written comments may be mailed to Federal Consistency Coordinator, 400 Commerce Ave., Morehead City, NC  28557, or emailed to Federalconsistencycomments@deq.nc.gov with “Federal Consistency: USACE Wilmington Harbor 403 Navigation Project” in the subject line.

More information on the proposed project is on the Corps’ website.

Plastic may be cheap to make and convenient to use, but it comes with a staggering economic cost to the United States — possibly more than $1 trillion a year — according to a new report.

The study, released Thursday, estimates that the economic cost of the life cycle of plastic – from how it’s made, to its conversion into products, to its use and disposal – ranges anywhere from $436 billion to $1.1 trillion annually.

That figure is likely a significant underestimate, according to Duke University researchers who authored the report.

“We, from the beginning, wanted to focus on the harms and costs of the entire plastic life cycle, not just focus on plastic pollution,” said Dr. Nancy Lauer, a co-author of the report and staff scientist and lecturing fellow with the Duke Environmental Law and Policy Clinic. “That was because there really is this entire life of plastic product that has now-well-documented harms at every single stage that we are paying for. It was important for us to make those harms and those costs more transparent to consumers so that they understand this is not just a problem when plastic escapes into the environment and becomes litter or marine debris.”

The team of researchers was able to explore this concept after the university in 2023 awarded it a small grant. That grant led the researchers to host a workshop in early 2024 that brought together experts from across different fields with experience in analyzing the social costs of plastic from its production to its disposal.

Those experts were given a list of studies examining economic costs associated with plastic’s life cycle compiled and initially reviewed by a team of graduate students. The experts then advised researchers on what categories of studies were missing from that list and whether there was additional research that could be examined.

In the end, researchers reviewed 13 existing studies focusing on plastic’s harms and costs on the environment, human health, and the economy.

The report breaks down the economic impacts of plastics by several categories, from greenhouse gas emissions associated with plastic production to human health effects.

The largest cost, by far, is human exposure to toxic chemicals in plastics.

Researchers estimate that increased disease and mortality from plastics use is between $410 billion and $930 billion each year.

“These high costs are driven largely by the value of IQ loss and reduced productivity associated with exposure to plastic activities,” the report states.

Exposure to chemicals such as phthalates, per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances, or PFAS, bisphenol A, or BPA, and those found in flame retardants are linked to a host of adverse health outcomes, including cancer, cardiovascular disease, reproductive disorders and neurological damage.

Lauer explained that only within the last couple of years studies on the economic impacts of human health-associated harms from plastics use have “really taken off.”

“So that was certainly a category that we, in those initial searches and before the workshop, did not have as great of a handle on, but that research has just really continued to take off in these last two years or so,” she said.

And while studies of the economic effect on human health have come a long way, Lauer said there’s still a long way to go.

“The studies that we found document the harms and costs from exposure to just a tiny fraction of the chemicals that are in plastic. There’s thousands of chemicals in plastic, several of which have known health effects, and several of which we don’t know enough about to know if they have health effects,” she said.

There is also lack of research on the cumulative effects on human health from chemical mixtures in plastics.

“If we take in a plastic particle, we’re not just taking in one or two chemicals, we’re taking in that mixture of chemicals,” Lauer said. “How those chemicals interact together to spur health impacts, we don’t have a good sense of that at this time.”

The report highlights other research gaps, including economic costs associated with plastic recycling and incineration, the effect of plastic on property values, and the cost associated with loss of terrestrial environment.

“When plastics get into the environment, often our first thought is when it ends up as marine debris and the harms that it causes in the ocean, entangling animals and creating these great garbage patches that need to be cleaned up,” Laure said. “Plastics also impact the terrestrial environment. They get into streams and lakes, along our roadsides, and studies have documented that plastics also cause harm to terrestrial animals like invertebrates and freshwater fish. But, there’s not estimates in the literature for that loss of terrestrial ecosystem services in the same way that the literature has begun to document the cost of the loss of marine ecosystem services.”

According to the report, the estimated cost of the loss of marine ecosystem services ranges from $1.4 billion to $112 billion a year.

Other categories and estimated annual costs detailed in the report include the following:

• Greenhouse gas emissions produced from fossil fuel extraction and manufacturing: $6.4 billion to $15.9 billion.
• Increased disease and mortality from oil and gas extraction: $2.9 billion to $31.9 billion.
• Landfill disposal: $2.9 billion.
• Plastic litter cleanup: $9.8 billion to $13.3 billion.
• Loss of tourism: $2 billion.
• Damage to fisheries and aquaculture industry: $88 million.
• Damage to marine shipping: $909 million.

Lauer said that a motivation to make these costs more transparent to the consumer is to highlight that, though products we buy that are made of plastic tend to be relatively cheap, “that’s just the price we’re paying right there on the spot.”

“There’s so many other costs that we may not necessarily realize we’re paying when we use that plastic,” she said.

And while plastics are important for certain industries, including the medical industry, “we’re still using a lot of plastic in places that we don’t necessarily need to be,” Lauer said. “The patchwork of state and local laws on the books are important to reduce plastics on that local and state level, and they’re important to have proof of concept and build momentum towards something that is more comprehensive. But I think what that more comprehensive strategy needs to look like is really focusing on reducing plastics at the source, and that can be through phasing out needless plastics.”

Think of it like a menu, one brimming with choices on how to slow the loss of tree cover and grow greener, healthier canopies in urban and rural communities.

Alliance for Cape Fear Trees has designed a guide offering just that, a policy resource to help local planning departments and governments, developers and community advocates shape green development.

“Code & Canopy” is 45 pages chock full of policies and practices that aim to create and maintain robust tree canopies, a core mission of the Wilmington-based nonprofit.

“Local planners, elected officials, they can look at this and see what is most applicable to their community and their community’s needs,” Alliance for Cape Fear Trees Executive Director Isabelle Shepherd said. “Cities and counties regularly update their land development codes and we plan to, piece by piece, introduce some of these ideas into our local codes and ordinances. This is a full menu of possibilities.”

The guide, which officially dropped Oct. 14, is a culmination of nearly a year of investigating codes and ordinances that shape development in the Lower Cape Fear Region, specifically Brunswick, Columbus, New Hanover and Pender counties.

But Shepherd, who, with the support of the alliance’s board members and senior advisers, researched and wrote the guide, believes that what she set out to create as a local effort can be extended to other regions throughout the state.

“We wanted to make sure that it was all well-researched, but also that it was presented in a way that’s easy for the public to understand and for local governments to enact,” she said. “Fundamentally, we’re trying to make it easy for local governments to stand up for trees.”

The guide entails a variety of policies and rules that municipalities and counties can adopt to promote slow tree canopy loss, boost healthy canopy growth, and strengthen existing protections.

For example, communities may establish “tree save areas,” which require developers to preserve a percentage of undisturbed, natural areas and protect significant trees, or those that hold particular importance because of their size, age, cultural significance, or rarity, within a building site.

The city of Charlotte has such a requirement in its unified development ordinance, or UDO.

Wilmington and New Hanover County have regulations protecting certain species of mature trees, but Shepherd said the alliance would like for the city and county to include protections for all species of trees that are 24 inches in diameter at breast height or larger.

“That said, other municipalities and counties across the region do not have any protections for mature trees. That’s something that we are pressing for,” she said.

The guide suggests ways municipalities and counties can incentivize developers to preserve natural areas.

It also highlights several policies local governments can implement to protect and grow tree cover, including establishing conservation resource areas, revising performance subdivision rules, identifying high-value nature areas and strengthening zoning protections, and requiring annual training that focusing on tree protection protocols for general contractors and site supervisors.

“Code & Canopy” includes samples of resolutions municipal and county boards may adopt and letters those boards can send to the North Carolina General Assembly to advocate state legislators restore local zoning powers.

In December 2024, legislators amended Senate Bill 382, known as the Disaster Recovery Act of 2024, restricts the authority of local governments to “down-zone,” or rezone a property to reduce the density or intensity of a how a piece of land may be developed.

Alliance for Cape Fear Trees was founded 10 years ago as an advocacy organization for urban forestry depleted by coastal storms such as hurricanes, rapid development, and climate change.

The organization planted more than 3,000 native trees and distributed more than 15,000 throughout the region. It also offers educational programs and events that teach residents how to care for newly planted trees.

Since 2016, Wilmington’s tree canopy has shrunk from covering 48% of the city to about 40% today.

In unincorporated New Hanover County, more than 3,000 acres of canopy disappeared between 2014 and 2022.

Shepherd attributes those losses in what she described as a collision of climate stress and development pressure.

“Absolutely hurricanes like Florence play a major role in that, but development is also a primary driver of this loss and the costs go beyond aesthetics,” she said. “Mature forests intercept hundreds of millions of gallons of stormwater, reducing flood risk and improving water quality. Their roots stabilize soils. Their shade cool streets. When large trees and natural areas are removed without adequate replanting, the region loses vital green infrastructure.”

As part of their researcher, the alliance reached out to municipal and county planners, as well as developers who “demonstrated care toward the canopy,” for feedback.

A New Hanover County spokesperson said in an email that “Code & Canopy,” “will serve as a resource guide for the county’s Sustainability Manager to collaborate with departments in developing or updating policies that advance the county’s Strategic Plan goals for Sustainable Land Use and Environmental Stewardship.”

McKay Siegel, a partner with Chapel Hill-based development firm East West Partners, a sponsor of Alliance for Cape Fear Trees, lauded the organization for extending an invitation to developers to get their input.

“Developers don’t wake up and think about cutting down trees,” he said. “Whenever you take something from raw land to build, it’s not as though all you consider are the trees. There’s a whole lot of other factors – zoning, parking, stormwater. I think that ACFT is really doing their best to wrap their heads around some of the compromises that can be made in all the different areas, and what’s really best for the trees. I think ‘Code & Canopy’ is a good start. At least they’re giving us an opportunity to tell our side of the story, which is really neat and I think that the document reflects a lot of those conversations and hopefully it’s a good launch for the future.”

North Carolinians from cities, towns and communities throughout the Cape Fear River Basin urged the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency to uphold its objection to a municipal wastewater treatment plant’s proposed permit that excludes an effluent discharge limit for 1,4-dioxane into their drinking water sources.

One after another, speakers at a public hearing the EPA hosted last Wednesday night asked the agency to force the state to reissue a permit that will limit discharges of the likely human carcinogen into surface waters that flow into tributaries of the Haw and Deep rivers, which converge to form the Cape Fear River.

Residents from Wilmington northwest to Fayetteville, Sanford, Pittsboro, Siler City, and Asheboro joined representatives of environmental organizations and downstream public water utilities at the hearing at Randolph Community College in Asheboro, the very city that fought to get 1,4-dioxane limits removed from its permit.

“Frankly I’m embarrassed that Asheboro is polluting the drinking water of as many as 900,000 people who live downstream from us,” longtime Asheboro resident Susie Scott said. “The solution, to me, seems simple. Our city should hold the companies producing this pollution to account and insist that they clean up their waste before we accept it into our treatment plant. People living downstream from us deserve safe drinking water.”

In August 2023, the North Carolina Department of Environmental Quality’s Division of Water Resources issued Asheboro a National Pollutant Discharge Elimination System, or NPDES, permit limiting the city water treatment plant’s release of 1,4-dioxane.

The city sued, challenging the state’s power to include a water quality standard for the clear, odorless chemical solvent used in manufacturing processes.

In September 2024, the Chief Administrative Law Judge for North Carolina at the time, Donald van der Vaart, ruled in the city’s favor and revoked permit limits of 1,4-dioxane.

In his ruling, van der Vaart said that DEQ officials did not follow the letter of the law written in state statutes when they calculated discharge limits and established an enforceable water quality standard for 1,4-dixoane. He also noted anticipated high costs associated with monitoring and treatment of the chemical compound.

DEQ’s appeal of that ruling is pending in Wake County Superior Court.

Costs to treat 1,4-dioxane will fall on the backs of downstream water utilities customers if the pollutant is not controlled at the source, Cape Fear Public Utility Authority Executive Director Kenneth Waldroup said.

“The presence of 1,4-dioxane in our source water is just the latest example of how gaps in regulation can lead downstream communities exposed to risk,” he said. “1,4-dioxane is a synthetic, highly mobile compound that resists natural degradation and conventional water treatment. Once it enters our watershed, it is persistent and travels far downstream, all the way to our drinking water intakes. Removing 1,4-dioxane from our drinking water requires advanced and very costly treatment technologies. We’re talking millions of dollars in systems and additional millions in operations costs over a period of time.”

Waldroup said DEQ “took appropriate action” when it included 1,4-dioxane limits in Asheboro’s NPDES permit, but that the state Office of Administrative Hearings “inappropriately and inaccurately invalidated that move.”

“EPA is obligated to assume permitting authority if the state fails to comply with federal permits, and EPA must require the state of North Carolina to address this pollutant and protect 900,000 downstream users,” he said.

Public water utilities, including CFPUA, and businesses downstream of Asheboro’s wastewater treatment plant were notified by DEQ last January that the plant had discharged substantially high concentrations of 1,4-dioxane into Hasketts Creek, which empties into the Deep River.

Misty Manning, Fayetteville Public Works Commission’s chief operations officer for water resources, recalled to EPA officials last week of the Jan. 24 sampling results reported by the state and Asheboro.

“Asheboro’s own sampling result from that day was 3,520 parts per billion. This is more than 10 times higher than EPA’s calculation of what Asheboro’s discharge should be to protect public health at 22 parts per billion. Without enforceable limits, the city of Asheboro’s pretreatment program has yet to be successful in limiting 1,4-dioxane discharges to levels that meet water quality goals for a pollutant with a reasonable potential to cause or contribute to an excursion above state water quality standards,” Manning said.

She was one of several speakers at the hearing to point out that other municipalities in the state have successfully reduced 1,4-dioxane discharges through industrial pretreatment processes without bearing economic hardship.

“And Asheboro has the responsibility to do likewise, using its permitted authority over their local industrial users,” Manning said. “Downstream communities should not bear the financial burden of treating and removing pollutants introduced by unchecked upstream discharges.”

Last June, the Southern Environmental Law Center filed a lawsuit on behalf of Cape Fear River Watch and Haw River Assembly against Asheboro and the city’s industrial customer StarPet Inc., to stop their discharges of 1,4-dioxane into the Cape Fear River basin.

“As part of its antiregulatory fight, Asheboro has raised the absurd argument that it should not be the one that has to pay to control the cancer-causing pollution that it dumps upstream of drinking water supplies,” SELC attorney Hannah Nelson said. “I want to be clear. Asheboro could stop this pollution today by requiring its industries to treat for 1,4-dioxane, but it has chosen not to. In making that choice, Asheboro forces us, the families, the drinking water utilities, the local businesses, the schools, all of those who live downstream of the city, choose us to have to pay for their pollution.”

Stephen Bell, an attorney with Cranfill Sumer law firm’s Wilmington office and outside counsel for Asheboro, said that the city he represents believes steps DEQ took in implementing the August 2023 permit “set dangerous precedent with far-reaching implications.”

“Asheboro is not asking for no water regulation. They’re asking for regulation in accordance with the state law. As it stands today, based upon the court’s ruling, there is no water quality standard for 1,4-dioxane. The courts, our environmental rulemaking agency, they’re currently addressing this issue of limits for 1,4-dioxane and the EPA should respect that state-level process,” he said.

Once everyone at the hearing who signed up to speak addressed EPA officials, a member of the audience asked when the agency expects to make a final determination on the permit. The EPA may reaffirm its objection to the permit, require that the state modify the permit, or withdraw its objection of the permit.

Paul Schwartz, associate regional counsel in the Water Law Office at EPA’s Atlanta region office, said there is no statutory or regulatory timeline in which the agency must decide.

“In terms of specifying a date, certain that it would be done by, I don’t think we can do that,” he said. “And it doesn’t make it any easier that we’re operating during a period of government shutdown. But I think we want to give it immediate attention and focus on it so it doesn’t drag on too long.”

If the EPA decides to reaffirm its objection or require the permit to be modified, DEQ will have 30 days to submit a revised draft permit to the agency. If DEQ does not do that, the EPA will become the permitting authority.

The EPA is accepting public comments through Oct. 31 via email to R4NPDESComments@epa.gov or by mail to US EPA, NPDES Permitting Section, Water Division, 61 Forsyth Street, SW, Atlanta, GA 30303-8960.

The North Atlantic right whale population increased slightly in 2024 from the previous year, but marine scientists warn that federal protections are crucial to the recovery of the critically endangered species.

The 2024 population is estimated at 384 individual whales, a 2.1% increase over the 2023 estimate, and a continued slow, upward trend in growth over the last four years, according to the latest numbers released by the North Atlantic Right Whale Consortium earlier this week.

The modest increase follows a year in which researchers documented five right whale deaths, 16 entanglements, and eight vessel strikes, according to the consortium.

So far this year, no deaths have been logged. Scientists have documented one whale that has been injured in 2025 from being entangled in fishing gear, and one whale injured in a vessel strike.

“The slight increase in the population estimate, coupled with no detected mortalities and fewer detected injuries than in the last several years, leaves us cautiously optimistic about the future of North Atlantic right whales,” North Atlantic Right Whale Consortium Chair Heather Pettis said in a release Tuesday announcing the latest population estimate. “With small population increases year to year, we still need strong protective measures for continued growth. We don’t want to take our foot off the gas when it comes to management and conservation efforts.”

Though this year has thus far proved to be a better year for right whales, researchers were hoping for more than the 11 calves born in 2025.

Scientists note that of those, four were born to first-time mothers.

“In recent years, right whales have been delaying giving birth to their first calf until they are older,” Philip Hamilton, a senior scientist with the New England Aquarium’s Anderson Cabot Center for Ocean Life, said in the release. “It is encouraging to see four of these older females join the reproductive pool this year. The future of the species rests on their broad backs.”

Scientists from the aquarium’s center and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, or NOAA, work together to calculate annual population estimates.

Vessel strikes and entanglements in fishing gear remain the leading causes of death and serious injury to North Atlantic right whales.

Last December, a 3-year-old male spotted about 40 miles off the North Carolina coast was among at least three right whales observed to be entangled in fishing gear that month.

The juvenile male (Catalog No. 5132) was “observed with rope wrapped around its head and mouth, with lines attached to two marked buoys and a single line was trailing the animal by a distance of about three body lengths,” according to information provided by the Canadian government.

That whale, still entangled, migrated to waters hundreds of miles north of Canada’s East Coast, according to an update shared at the consortium meeting.

The yearly updated population estimate is revealed in coordination with the consortium’s annual meeting, which was held through Thursday in New Bedford, Massachusetts. The consortium was started in 1986 and includes research and conservation organizations, shipping and fishing industries, technical experts, U.S. and Canadian government agencies, and state and provincial authorities.

Nora Ives, a marine scientist with Oceana, took a quick break from the meeting Thursday to speak with Coastal Review by telephone.

“These protected species have huge ecosystem benefits to all of us on the planet,” she said. “Large coastal whales like the North Atlantic right whale fertilize our oceans. They kick off the oxygen cycle of the planet. We can all benefit from their recovery.”

Right whales migrate seasonally, spending their spring, summers in waters off New England and further north into Canadian waters to feed and mate.

In the fall, the whales travel south, sometimes more than 1,000 miles, to their calving grounds off shore from the Carolinas to northeastern Florida.

The modest increase in the 2024 population estimate, “proves how resilient these whales are and that they can recover if we let them,” Ives said.

“But we cannot do that without a fully staffed and funded NOAA and a strong Marine Mammal Protection Act, which is the underpinning of all this important work to recover our large coastal whale, the North Atlantic right whale.”

The Marine Mammal Protection Act, enacted in 1972, requires the federal government to safeguard the life and well-being of all marine mammals within U.S. jurisdiction.

President Donald Trump’s proposed 2026 budget includes massive layoffs at NOAA, slashing the administration’s Fisheries division by up to a third of the workforce that oversee the protections of marine mammals, and reduces funding for conservation of marine mammals and endangered species.

“That would be devastating for these programs,” Ives said.

Notably missing from this year’s meeting, Ives said, are NOAA employees, absent because of what is now the second-longest government shutdown in United States history.

“We have colleagues from the federal government who are not able to join us at this annual meeting to discuss the latest research and work toward solutions for the recovery of the North Atlantic right whale,” she said. “Our federal colleagues are doing their best to share their research remotely with prerecorded talks.”

Scientists are calling for the implementation of additional measures that would aid in the recovery of the right whale population, including the use of ropeless or on-demand fishing gear in crab fishing to reduce whale entanglements.

“That would be implemented only in places where whales are detected or expected, so really allowing for this dynamic and adaptive management that can both protect American livelihoods and our American fisheries while also protecting our coastal large whale as they migrate up and down the East Coast,” Ives said.

Scientists support existing federal rules that mandate vessels 65 feet or longer travel at 10 knots or less through designated North Atlantic right whale seasonal management areas in the northeast, mid-Atlantic, and southeast.

Earlier this year, NOAA announced its withdrawal of proposed similar speed limits for vessels under 65 feet in length those management areas, though it “encourages” those vessels to slow to 10 knots or less.

“Another year of modest population growth is certainly better than a year of sharp decline, and we should celebrate that while also keeping our eyes on the work ahead,” Jane Davenport, a senior attorney for Defenders of Wildlife, said in a statement. “We need new initiatives to reduce vessel strike and entanglement risk in the U.S. and Canada, and the current legislative attacks on the Marine Mammal Protect Act must end, or this iconic species’ extinction is all but guaranteed.”

Chemours’ air permit application to expand production at its Fayetteville Works plant excludes emissions data that should be disclosed to the public, environmental lawyers say.

The company “improperly withheld vital emission data from the public” in its Aug. 14 application to the North Carolina Department of Environmental Quality’s Division of Air Quality, according to a letter Southern Environmental Law Center attorneys sent the department last month.

“We urge the Department to require Chemours to re-submit its application with disclosed emissions data,” the Sept. 19 letter states. “North Carolina law clearly states that emission data cannot be kept secret.”

Jess Loizeaux, Chemours’ communications leader, refuted that claim, writing in an email responding to a request for comment, “our permit application fully disclosed the projected emissions associated with the expansion.”

“Certain details included in the application submitted to DAQ – such as production capacity, operating hours, and emissions factors – were redacted from the public version because they are considered confidential business information and, if made public, could harm our competitive position,” Loizeaux said. “Protecting confidential business information is standard practice and does not affect transparency regarding environmental impacts.”

Attorneys for Chemours and its predecessor company DuPont made a similar argument earlier this year when they filed a court motion to keep under seal thousands of pages of documents they say include “non-public facts” that largely pertain to chemical production.

Lawyers representing public utilities and local governments downstream of Chemours’ Bladen County plant submitted 25,000 pages of documents to the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of North Carolina as part of lawsuit those entities brought against the companies in October 2017.

Cape Fear Public Utility Authority, Brunswick County, Lower Cape Fear Water & Sewer Authority, and Wrightsville Beach aim to recover costs and damages associated with the Fayetteville Works’ plant’s discharges of per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances, or PFAS, for decades into the Cape Fear River. The river is a drinking water source for tens of thousands of residents in the region.

The court had not rendered a decision on Chemours’ request as of this story’s publication.

In 2020, Chemours submitted an application to renew its Title V permit, which applies to major source of air emissions, for its Fayetteville Works plant to the state Division of Air Quality.

Two years later, the company applied for a separate permit to expand its production of vinyl ethers and IXM.

Chemours revised and resubmitted that permit application to expand only its production of vinyl ethers last August. Vinyl ethers are a class of compounds used to create a variety of products used in a range of technologies from semiconductor chips to aviation components.

Vinyl ethers are used to create a wide variety of products, including polymers for adhesives, coatings, and plastics

The expansion would pertain to the plant’s two existing vinyl ethers production units, Loizeaux said.

“As outlined in the revised permit application, additional abatement technology will be installed alongside each expansion and is projected to decrease the site’s overall fluorinated emissions by approximately 15%, despite an increase in production,” she said. “A timeline for the expansions has not yet been set.”

Southern Environmental Law Center attorneys argue in their Sept. 19 letter to DEQ that Chemours is violating provisions within the state law that outlines protection and disclosure rules for confidential information.

The application, “blacks out emission rates from stack testing, uncontrolled emission factors, hours of operation, maximum hours of operation, historic production, and post-modification production capacity. The information is necessary to verify and fully understand the emissions and authorized emissions at the facility and cannot be withheld from the public,” according to the letter.

The letter goes on to state that Chemours previously disclosed similar information in previous submissions to DEQ.

“Chemours’ about-face from its past submissions further confirms that this information cannot be treated as confidential,” the letter states.

Last April, the SELC, on behalf of Cape Fear River Watch, asked DEQ to deny Chemours’ request to expand production at its Bladen County plant, arguing that the company’s air permit application was riddled with flaws.

As part of 2019 consent order with DEQ and Cape Fear River Watch, Chemours installed a thermal oxidizer to capture and destroy PFAS from emitting into the air. The order also requires the company to test tens of thousands of private drinking water wells for PFAS contamination throughout the region.

In a 20-page letter to DEQ, SELC attorneys argue Chemours questioned the efficacy of thermal destruction technology on PFAS.

“Investigating Chemours’ thermal oxidizer specifically, [the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency] determined that, due to a lack of data, ‘removal processes for products of incomplete combustion or of destruction of potential compounds not studied … are still unclear.’ In other words, it is possible that the company’s thermal oxidizer does not fully destroy many PFAS. Some may break down into other harmful chemicals, and others may not be destroyed at all,” the letter states.

DEQ Interim Deputy Communications Director Shawn Taylor said in an email earlier this month that while air quality officials deem the latest version of Chemours’ application administratively complete, “the Division may require additional information from the applicant to conduct its technical review.”

“The Division plans to schedule a full public engagement process, including a public comment period and public hearings, to be announced at a later date,” he said.

Anne Edwards’ grandmother rarely spoke about the young man wearing a Navy “Crackerjack” uniform in the photograph displayed on a table in the living room of her New Bern home.

As a child, Edwards would hear her mother occasionally refer to him as “uncle.” From what other relatives said, he was a sociable, kind man.

“There’s not a whole lot,” Edwards said. “My mother and grandmother really didn’t talk about it a lot. All I knew was that he died in Pearl Harbor.”

His photo from the table has since gone missing. The Navy does not have an official photo.

His death was untimely, violent — his remains could not be identified and returned to his family for burial. The pain of it all was likely too much for them to convey in conversation, Edwards assumes.

Last week, Edwards attended her great-uncle’s burial with full military honors at Arlington National Cemetery. The Oct. 8 ceremony was held more than 80 years after he was killed in the attack that thrust the United States into World War II.

Navy Fireman 1^st Class Edward Bowden was aboard the USS California on the morning of Dec. 7, 1941, when the Imperial Japanese Navy launched a surprise attack on Pearl Harbor near Honolulu, Hawaii.

Early in the raid, two Japanese aerial torpedoes slammed the ship’s forward and aft, ripping a 40-foot hole in her hull. She would later be hit by a bomb that further opened her insides to flooding.

The attacks claimed the lives of 103 of her crew, including Bowden, a 29-year-old New Bern native. Bowden bore a striking resemblance to his sister who had raised him from the time he was roughly 10 or 11 after their parents died.

That would be about as much as Edwards would know about her late great-uncle, who died about three years before she came into the world, until a letter from the U.S. Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency arrived at her Onslow County home more than six years ago.

Edwards called the agency, which works to identify the remains of unknown prisoners of war and those missing in action. She wanted to make sure the letter, one that requested a sample of her DNA, wasn’t some kind of a hoax.

It wasn’t.

This past April, Edwards got the call that Bowden’s remains, long since buried as an unknown at the National Memorial Cemetery of the Pacific in Hawaii, were officially identified as those of her great-uncle.

She now has a document some two inches thick that contains details about the young man in the black-and-white photograph that was a staple in her grandmother’s house.

Bowden was 28 when he enlisted in the Navy on Aug. 28, 1940, in Raleigh. He reported to the USS California by November of that year.

His sister, who was 18 and married when he moved in with the young couple, signed an affidavit as his guardian, according to the paperwork provided by the casualty office.

Records do not reveal where in the ship Bowden was when it was hit and eventually sank to the bottom of the harbor three days after the attack.

Navy personnel recovered the remains of the ship’s crew between December 1941 to April 1942.

“The problem with identification came because their remains were comingled and so they didn’t really know who they were,” Edwards said.

In all, there would be 20 unresolved casualties from the USS California and 25 associated unknowns buried at the National Cemetery of the Pacific.

Remains of servicemembers yet to be identified in the cemetery were all exhumed by March 2018. As of August, 10 had been identified as being from the USS California.

Edwards was given the discretion to decide where her great-uncle’s remains should be buried.

“Now he can always be found,” she said. “That’s the reason I chose Arlington. I want any family that might be out there related to him to be able to trace him and find out about him.”

Bowden’s military awards include the Purple Heart Medal, Combat Action Ribbon, and World War II Victor Medal.

Edwards was joined by more than a dozen relatives for the Oct. 8 burial. Nieces, nephews, their children, cousins and their spouses traveled from New Bern, Greenville and Maryland to the exceptionally manicured grounds of the cemetery marked by rows and rows of glistening white crosses.

“It was unbelievable,” she said. “Everything was perfect. I was very, very pleased that the young people from the family came. I was very pleased that they felt like they should honor him. I felt a sense of closure for him. He’s not just a name anymore.”

A development company proposing to build a neighborhood on land in New Hanover County that includes a forest of centuries-old trees will “continue to fight” to see its plans through, the company’s founder said.

Copper Builders founder Wade Miller earlier this week called out what he referred to as misconceptions about Hilton Bluffs, a neighborhood proposed within a 4,000-acre tract that includes a nationally threatened forest.

In front of a crowd of opponents of the proposed development, Miller stressed at a New Hanover County Board of Commissioners meeting that trees in Sledge Forest would not be cut, wetlands would not be developed, 1,000 acres would be reserved as open space, and he reiterated a desire to conserve more than 1,100 acres on the tract.

“This means over 60% of the property will be protected if we achieve this goal,” he said. “We know this path comes with tradeoffs. We lose some density. We lose our golf course. We will lose one home per acre conserved. This is our preferred plan. This is what we are trying to do. We’ve invested considerable time, resources and energy into all this and we will continue to fight for it.”

Miller, as well as several people opposed to the development proposed for Castle Hayne, addressed commissioners during the board’s public comment session Monday afternoon.

Prior to the meeting, nearly 150 people gathered outside of the county’s historic courthouse in downtown Wilmington for a Save Sledge Forest rally.

The board meeting came on the heels of an announcement late last week that the North Carolina Department of Natural and Cultural Resources had rejected a nonprofit’s multimillion-dollar grant request to purchase hundreds of acres of wetlands in Sledge Forest.

Unique Places to Save, in partnership with the Charlotte-based development company, had applied for a $15 million North Carolina Land and Water Fund grant to purchase 1,160 acres.

Opponents of the proposed neighborhood argue that the entire tract should be spared from development.

Sledge Forest rises from the banks of the Northeast Cape Fear River in northern New Hanover County and is part of the river floodplain, one of the largest landscape corridors in the southeastern part of the state.

More than 20 years ago, the Natural Heritage Program of North Carolina identified the forest as a significant natural area, one that includes bald cypress trees up to 500 years old, longleaf and loblolly pines older than 300 years and some of the Southeast’s largest remaining Atlantic white cedar.

The forest was added to the Old-Growth Forest Network’s national list of threatened forests earlier this year.

“With abundant wetlands and rising waters, the entirety of this site, not just a portion, must be preserved to maintain the site as a nationally significant heritage area,” geologist Roger Shew said during the commissioner’s meeting.

Shew, a senior lecturer in the University of North Carolina Wilmington’s Ocean Sciences and Environmental Sciences department and a conservationist, warned that developing the upland area of the tract would impact adjacent wetlands with stormwater runoff “or subsurface flow that may exacerbate flooding and contaminant movement.”

“We already know that contaminants have moved off the GE site into the wetlands,” he said. “In fact, Copper Builders is petitioning to have a small brownfield site designated there.”

The tract being eyed for development is adjacent to a state-designated inactive hazardous site contaminated from drums of calcium fluoride and lubricants that were stored in unlined trenches during the 1960 and 1970s.

That contamination spread across two parcels, including one owned by General Electric, and the other owned by Nuclear Fuel Holding Co. Inc., a GE affiliate.

Miller did not address concerns raised about contamination. He did, however, point out that development would occur in areas that are farmed regularly for timber.

The current owners of the property have the right to clear cut all of the land, he said.

“We don’t want that to happen,” Miller said. “We want to save Sledge Forest through honest conversation efforts, not through an ask for legal or regulation changes. I’m an outdoorsman. I want to protect it. I care deeply about it.”

A petition of more than 13,000 signatures of those fighting the proposed development was presented to commissioners.

Because the proposed development is on land that does not have to be rezoned, the project does not require approval from a public body, effectively omitting the opportunity for public comment.

“It’s been a year since we learned about that project, since we learned that a developer had found a loophole in our ordinance that would allow him to build perhaps the largest residential project in the history of New Hanover County, while also allowing him to block any input or review by you, our elected officials, or by us, the community that will be impacted,” Castle Hayne resident and Director of Save Sledge Forest Kayne Darrel said Monday. “Due to this loophole, we were told by that developer that this massive project was a by-right development that gave us no voice in the decisions. Our ask is that you make a decision to join us in being part of the solution because we believe, and we want you to believe, that together we can fix this mistake and we can save Sledge Forest.”

A new steel manufacturing company’s plans to open a factory in Hertford County will be “transformational” for the area, according to a state senator who worked behind the scenes to help land what is anticipated to be a nearly $1 billion investment project.

Sen. Bobby Hanig, R-Currituck, said he expects an official announcement from U.S. Forged Rings Inc., “coming very soon and it will be a very large event.”

“There’ll be folks from (Washington) D.C. coming down for this event,” he said.

USFR did not respond to requests for comment.

Hanig spoke to Coastal Review in a telephone interview a few days after the General Assembly on Sept. 23 advanced to Gov. Josh Stein a bill to appropriate $51 million to construct a public dock with access to the Chowan River and another $11 million to build a public road “capable of accommodating industrial loads” to the dock.

Stein signed House Bill 358 into law on Tuesday, stating it “makes helpful investments across the state” and that it “supports the state’s broader economic efforts.”

The bill does not specifically name the business for which the dock and road would be constructed, but states the company “is a manufacturer of steel forgings and large diameter steel fabrications” that would be required to invest a minimum of $947 million in the project site and create no fewer than 835 new jobs.

USFR on its website advertises itself as the country’s “only integrated One-Stop-Shop Manufacturer of Steel Forgings and Large Diameter Steel Fabrications.”

“What it’s going to do for Hertford County and all of northeastern North Carolina is transformational,” Hanig said. “This is going to be probably the biggest economic development project in decades. What’s happening here with these folks coming to town and this dock and barge … it’s going to explode into a major economic area. It really is.”

Hanig called what he said was a teamwork effort that included Hertford County commissioners, the county’s Economic Development Director Kelly Bowers, and state Rep. Bill Ward, a Republican who represents Camden, Gates, Hertford, Pasquotank counties, “magnificent.”

“We’ve been laughing, we’ve been crying, we’ve been yelling,” Hanig said. “You name it, every emotion over the last couple of years to get this thing to happen.”

Hertford County officials did not respond to requests for direct comment, instead issuing a statement by Andre Lassiter Sr., chairman of the county’s board of commissioners.

“Hertford County officials are excited at the prospect of a major industrial company considering locating a manufacturing facility in the county,” Lassiter stated. “Discussions with the company, and state and federal lawmakers and officials, have been occurring for more than a year, and are ongoing. The $51 million appropriation by the N.C. General Assembly, and the assistance and cooperation of the Economic Development Partnership of N.C., the N.C. Department of Commerce, and the Office of the Governor of North Carolina, all have been and remain critical to this endeavor.”

According to its website, USFR aims to operate three plants, including a piping facility, a fabrications facility and a forging and ring-rolling facility, all by the end of 2029.

“We are developing a state of the art Atlantic Coast based heavy industry components manufacturing hub with three co-located facilities,” the website states.

The fabrications facility, which the company plans to have up and running by the second quarter of 2028, will produce annually up to 100,000 metric tons of steel cylinders and shells up to 26 feet wide and up to 200 feet in length.

“The factory will have direct access to a wharf for shipment of large sections directly to end users or downstream fabrication yards,” the company website states. “It will support the energy & infrastructure sectors, supplying critical shell components and containment vessels for a wide range of applications.”

USFR has a supply chain partnership with Charlotte-based Nucor, a steel production company that has a plant in Hertford County near Cofield, a small village off the Chowan River.

Nucor’s Hertford County mill has been in operation since September 2000 and employs some 500 people. According to a recent WRAL report, Nucor has purchased hundreds of additional acres in the county this year.

Nucor did not respond to a request for comment.

Hanig said the General Assembly fund-appropriated dock will be utilized by more than one company and that “multiple companies” are inquiring about nearby property.

“There will be an agreement with USFR that they use it a certain amount of time and then other businesses will be able to use it as well,” he said. “That’s what is attracting other businesses to the location. As soon as this project starts it’s going to fill up so fast it’s going to be incredible. This is just a springboard to what’s going to happen over the next several years in Hertford County. I just can’t even put it into words how excited I am for everybody involved.”

OCEAN ISLE BEACH — When the Army Corps of Engineers issued its final decision on the terminal groin project here more than eight years ago, the document conveyed a prescient warning.

A terminal groin “may increase erosion along the easternmost point of Ocean Isle Beach, down-drift of the structure.”

Today, the shoreline east of terminal groin is being gnawed away, vanishing beach in front of a neighborhood of grand, multimillion-dollar homes built shortly after the $11 million erosion-control structure was completed in spring 2022.

A wall of sandbags fends off waves from reaching some of the waterfront homes on the ocean side of the gated community that’s advertised as “luxurious coastal living.”

Several lots remain vacant because the properties no longer have enough beachfront necessary to meet the state’s ocean setback requirements.

“I would have never developed the property if I had known this was going to happen,” said Doc Dunlap, a developer with Pointe OIB, LLC. “It’s just devastating to tell you the truth. I even had plans myself to build there, have a summer home.”

The caveat written in the federal record of decision all those years ago, one that was a central argument in a lawsuit to try and stop the terminal groin from being built, was not explicitly pointed out to the developers of The Pointe, they say.

In an email responding to Coastal Review’s questions, the Division of Coastal Management said it, “is not aware of any specific notification to those property owners other than the standard (area of environmental concern) hazard notice.”

“We were just under the impression that all of this was going to be extremely positive and help protect this part of the beach,” said Jimmy Bell, who contributed to the planning and implementation of the community. “And then, once we started experiencing this massive erosion, I started researching groins more. We had engineers and other people that were helping, and we were informed and under the impression that it was going to all be good, and now it’s turning out to not be quite as good.”

Ocean Isle Beach Mayor Debbie Smith pushed back on those claims.

“My heart breaks for them, but the developers knew that that groin was going in,” she said. “They knew it was not designed to protect that area. It was not designed to harm it, but they also know that adjacent 2,000 feet west of them was a line of sandbags and most of them had been there for years.”

The developers are now seeking legal representation as they continue to try to figure out how to protect the oceanfront properties within the 44-lot neighborhood.

“Mr. Dunlap is extremely disappointed in the decisions made that resulted in the placement and construction of the terminal groin and the erosion damages it has caused,” John Hilton III, corporate counsel to Pointe OIB, stated in an email. “He is committed to holding those who made these decisions legally accountable and also seeking a remedy to correct the ongoing erosion.  We are working to obtain local legal counsel to explore and pursue all available options.”

Erosion-battered shore

The east end of the island at Shallotte Inlet historically accreted and eroded naturally as the inlet wagged back and forth between Ocean Isle Beach and Holden Beach up until Hurricane Hazel hit in 1954.

When the powerful hurricane – likely a Category 4 storm using the Saffir-Simpson scale developed in 1971 – made landfall in October 1954 near the South Carolina border, it caused the inlet channel to move in a more easterly direction, accelerating erosion at the east end of the barrier island.

Erosion has remained persistent in that area since the 1970s, according to N.C. Division of Coastal Management records.

The worst of the erosion occurred along about a mile of oceanfront shore beginning near the inlet. An encroaching ocean claimed homes, damaged and destroyed public utilities, and prompted the N.C. Department of Transportation to abandon state-maintained streets.

In 2005, the town was permitted to install at the east a wall of sandbags to barricade private properties and infrastructure from ocean waves.

Sandbags revetments are, under state rules, to be used as a temporary measure to hold erosion at bay.

In 2011, the North Carolina General Assembly repealed a decades-old state law that prohibited permanent, hardened erosion-control structures from being built on North Carolina beaches.

Under the revised law, a handful of beach communities, including Ocean Isle Beach, get the option to pursue installing a terminal groin at an inlet area.

Terminal groins are wall-like structures built perpendicular to the shore at inlets to contain sand in areas of high erosion like the east end of Ocean Isle Beach.

These structures are controversial because they capture sand that travels down the beach near shore, depleting the sand supply to the beach immediately downdrift of the structure, stripping land that is natural habitat for, among others, sea turtles and shorebirds.

Ocean Isle Beach Sea Turtle Protection Organization Island Coordinator Deb Allen said that beach conditions east of the terminal groin have hindered turtles from nesting there this season. Escarpment, sandbags and debris that Allen believes is coming from the development have impeded turtles from accessing the sandy areas they seek to lay their eggs.

As of early September, the organization had recorded four false crawls, which is when a female turtle crawls onto a beach only to return to the ocean without laying eggs, and three nests east of the terminal groin, Allen said.

The potential for that type of impact to wildlife was argued in a lawsuit the Southern Environmental Law Center filed on behalf of the National Audubon Society in August 2017 challenging the Corps’ approval of Ocean Isle Beach’s project.

The lawsuit claimed that the Corps failed to objectively evaluate alternatives to the terminal groin, including those that would be less costly to Ocean Isle residents and less destructive to the coast, particularly to what was then the undeveloped area on the island’s east end.

The lawsuit, which later included the town, came to an end in March 2021 after a panel of appellate court judges affirmed a lower court’s decision that the Corps fairly considered the alternatives included in an environmental impact statement, or EIS, examining the proposed project.

“As we went through and talked about the impacts of terminal groins in the EIS, this was the central argument – will the land east of the groin erode at a more rapid pace? And, everything we could point to, all of the science, said yes,” said Geoff Gisler, program director of SELC’s Chapel Hill office. “There’s only so much sand and the way that these structures operate is they keep more of it in one place and necessarily take it from somewhere else. That’s why we have seen over and over again that when you build a groin towards the end of an island, what happens is the island erodes at the end. That there is less sand going to the east end is not an accident.”

‘Righting this wrong’

Gisler said the SELC will be following how the town and the Corps respond to the erosion that is occurring east of the terminal groin.

“The town committed and the Corps committed to righting this wrong if it occurred and that’s what we’ll be looking at,” he said.

Under conditions in the town’s federal permit, the town is required to monitor the sand spit east of The Pointe as well as the town’s shoreline and that of neighboring Holden Beach to the west.

Should those shorelines erode past boundaries identified in 1999, “consideration will be given to modifying the structure to allow more sediment to move from west to east past the structure,” according to final EIS.

The town also has the option to nourish an eroded shoreline.

“In the event the negative impacts of the terminal groin cannot be mitigated with beach nourishment or possible modifications to the design of the terminal groin, the terminal groin would be removed,” the EIS states.

The Corps and the Division of Coastal Management are reviewing the monitoring report submitted by the engineering firm hired by the town, Coastal Protection Engineering of North Carolina.

That report indicates that erosion “has exceeded the 1999 shoreline threshold for the area immediately east of the groin.”

“However, the applicant is working on a modification request to alter this threshold as the shoreline had eroded landward of part of that threshold prior to construction of the groin,” according to the division.

A beach maintenance project scheduled for fall 2026 to inject sand west of the terminal groin is anticipated to increase the rate of sand that bypasses the terminal groin and “would serve to ‘feed’ the shoreline immediately east of the groin with additional material,” according to the town’s engineer.

But The Pointe’s developers and property owners say they can’t wait another year.

“There’s got to be an exception to the standard application restrictions (i.e., sandbag placement and height) the (Coastal Area Management Act/Coastal Resources Commission) process has today to protect near term east of the groin due to emergency status and a path longer term that can get us to a point of evaluating what we can do for the groin from a redesign standpoint that would protect all both west and east of the groin,” property owner Brendan Flynn said. “What we’re dealing with now in my view is we need to have another review of what could be done to enhance the groin’s performance to benefit and protect the other part of this island.”

Smith said that the terminal groin is doing what it was designed to do.

“It is building up right adjacent to the groin,” she said. “It just has not built anything far enough down to protect this new development. I wish Mother Nature would reserve herself and build it up right now instead of taking it away. I wish I had some magic bullet for them too, but I don’t today. It’s really up to them to take some action.”

Kerri Allen, director of the North Carolina Coastal Federation’s southeast office in Wrightsville Beach, called the situation “heartbreaking,” but not surprising. The Coastal Federation publishes Coastal Review.

“When you alter the natural movement of sand with a hardened structure like the terminal groin, you might protect one stretch of beach, but you inevitably put other areas at greater risk,” she said. “And, unfortunately, the erosion we’re seeing east of the groin is exactly what experts warn could happen.  That being said, the purpose of this groin was to protect existing infrastructure that was already at risk. Instead, new homes were built in an area that’s incredibly vulnerable and these homeowners are now facing devastating losses. Moving forward, we need to focus on solutions that don’t just shift the problem from one place to another and ensure that public resources aren’t used to subsidize these risky, short-term development decisions.”

“I think this is a pivotal moment for Ocean Isle and for other coastal towns,” she continued. “We have an opportunity to step back, look at the science, and commit to managing our coast in a way that protects both our communities and the natural systems that sustain them. That means resisting the temptation to build our way out of these challenges because, ultimately, the ocean always wins.”

An overwhelming majority of litter captured over the course of three years by in-stream traps set up in watersheds throughout the state was plastic waste, according to a recently published study.

About 96% of litter North Carolina waterkeeper organizations and their volunteers removed from trash traps between June 2021 and November 2024 consisted of plastics, said Dr. Nancy Lauer, lead author of the paper published in the journal Community Science.

“Plastic is lightweight, it’s buoyant, it floats easily,” Lauer, a staff scientist and lecturing fellow with the Duke Environmental Law and Policy Clinic, said in a recent telephone interview. “The plastic items, they can very well make their way through the stormwater system, through the stream and end up in the trash trap before they are ever going to biodegrade.”

During the course of the three-year study, 150,750 pieces of litter were removed from 21 traps.

The litter traps were funded through a 2020 North Carolina Environmental Enhancement Grant as part of a statewide microplastics research and pollution-prevention infrastructure project sponsored by Waterkeepers Carolina, a group of 15 licensed waterkeepers in the state.

By removing and documenting the litter that gets caught in the traps, waterkeeper organizations are able to get an understanding of the most prevalent types of litter entering North Carolina rivers. They are also able to look at correlations between litter accumulation and characteristics such as development, impervious surface, road density and human populations within different watersheds.

Using the data collected by those waterkeeper organizations, researchers can provide a big picture of riverine litter in the state and use that to shape policy.

For this study, seven waterkeeper organizations and their volunteers were tasked with separating and organizing the trash they removed from traps into categories.

Those categories included plastic film, hard plastic, polystyrene foam, metal, glass; and paper covering items, such as drink containers made of plastic, glass and metal, plastic straws and stirrers, cup lids, bottle caps and food wrappers.

Fragments of polystyrene foam from consumer products like Styrofoam cups, food takeout containers and packing materials were removed from all 21 traps in “very high” loads, Lauer said.

Those fragments and single-use plastic bottles made up about 83% of the litter that was collected and documented.

“If you do a cleanup of a roadside, you’re going to find a lot more plastic bags, a lot more food wrappers and we would find those occasionally,” Lauer said. “But I think that those just tend to snag on branches or get weighted down in the stream banks before they would ever be able to reach the trap. It was sort of eye opening to realize which of these plastic items, when they get into the environment, are extremely mobile. It seems like the trash traps are telling us that Styrofoam fragments and plastic bottles can really effectively be transported by surface waters downstream just because they made up such a large fraction of what we were finding in the traps.”

The paper is the latest to highlight single-use plastic pollution in the state.

A 14-page report published last March and created through a collaboration of nonprofits and the policy clinic concluded that state agencies, local governments and nonprofits spent more than $56 million in 2023 cleaning up more than 7,000 tons of litter.

Related: State’s fix for costly litter problem ‘not efficient or sufficient’

That same year, legislators injected language into the state budget prohibiting counties and cities from adopting rules, regulations, ordinances, or resolutions that restrict, tax, or charge fees on auxiliary containers.

The provision stopped locally elected officials in Asheville from voting on a proposed ban of single-use plastic bags and Styrofoam food containers. The law also barred local elected officials in Durham from deciding whether to require retailers tack on a 10-cent fee for each plastic bag given to customers in restaurants, grocery stores and shops.

That law “dealt a huge blow” to North Carolina, Lauer said.

The volume of single-use plastics removed from riverine traps clearly indicates that type of pollution is a huge issue in the state, she said

“I think what this data really highlights is that there’s still work that needs to be done and that work now, because of that preemption law, can’t necessarily be done on the local level in the same way that it could before,” Lauer said. “But there are state-level actions like banning Styrofoam, or a bottle bill that would incentivize people to return their bottles to receive a small deposit. Those could be really effective at reducing stream litter.”

She said it is important to keep in mind that there are types of litter that aren’t being captured in trash traps.

“These traps have a lot of positive aspects, but ideally we want to live in a world where we don’t need them because that trash is never ending up in our streams,” Lauer said. “I feel really strongly that there needs to be action by the corporations and the businesses and the government to stop these items from being provided in the first place. We go through life and you can make choices as an individual, but single-use plastics are still so prevalent that it can feel impossible to avoid them, no matter how hard you try.”

If you want a sense of just how complicated and drawn-out state rulemaking can get, look no further than the North Carolina Environmental Management Commission’s water quality committee.

More than a year has passed since the committee began kicking around a rule that would, as initially proposed, limit industrial discharge of forever chemicals across the state.

Any such rule has been passionately debated time after time, meeting after meeting, only to be tabled again and again, heightening the collective frustrations of thousands of North Carolinians and the water utilities that serve them.

Now, if adopted by the full commission, the rule will also have to get the General Assembly’s approval.

The proposed rule would trigger a threshold established under House Bill 402, known as the “Regulations from Executive in Need of Scrutiny (REINS)” Act, a new law that has drawn sharp criticism from environmental and health advocates who argue it will stifle an already daunting rulemaking process and create significant obstacles to addressing pollution.

The North Carolina Department of Environmental Quality, which recommends rules to commissions, including Environmental Management, echoed similar sentiments in an emailed statement responding to a request for comment late last month.

“The Department of Environmental Quality and its Commissions’ rules provide essential public health protections. They help ensure that our air, water and land are clean and safe throughout North Carolina while giving businesses and municipalities the certainty they need to make fiscal decisions. The new law will make it significantly more difficult, and it will take longer, to create new protections against environmental harms like PFAS and other forever chemicals. These rulemaking changes also add significant uncertainty for businesses, municipalities and our residents.”

The REINS Act establishes a tiered system for rules based on their projected financial impact. If a rule exceeds a certain threshold, that rule can no longer be approved simply by a majority vote of a rulemaking board or commission.

Rules projected to cost $1 million over five years must receive a two-thirds majority vote of the rulemaking body. Any rule with an impact of $10 million or more over five years must receive unanimous approval. If a proposed rule is expected to cost $20 million or more over five years the rule must be formally approved by the General Assembly before it can take effect.

Since 2020, the North Carolina Office of State Budget and Management has reviewed fiscal and regulatory impact analysis of 31 proposed rules that exceed REINS Act thresholds.

In all, 15 of those proposed rules OSBM has reviewed in the last five years were projected to have impacts of $1 million or more over five years, according to information provided by that office.

Seven proposed rules had projected costs of $10 million or more and nine rules had projected financial impacts of $20 million or more.

The Environmental Management Commission, Commission for Public Health, Building Code Council, and Wildlife Resources Commission were among the rulemaking bodies who considered those proposed rules.

North Carolina has more than 300 boards and commissions that oversee a range of issues that will be affected by the law, one Republican leaders have argued would enhance government accountability and protect residents and businesses from overregulation.

The state is one of the latest to adopt measures modeled after the federal Regulations from Executive in Need of Scrutiny Act, which establishes a congressional approval process for a “major rule,” including one likely to have an annual effect on the economy of $100 million or more.

“I think what we’re looking at is a lot of gridlock around topics that have not made as much progress as they should have so far,” said Grady O’Brien, North Carolina Conservation Network’s water policy manager.

One of the starkest examples of that, he said, are rules relating to per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances, or PFAS.

DEQ’s initial rule proposal to the Environmental Management Commission included health standards for eight PFAS in groundwater and surface water. The commission’s committees pared down that number down to three chemical compounds – PFOA, PFOS, which the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency lists as likely carcinogens, and GenX, a compound specific to Chemours’ Fayetteville Works facility in Bladen County.

Under the proposed rule DEQ initially presented to the water quality committee, the state would have been given the ability to enforce limits on dischargers for PFAS. Critics of the current proposed rule argue it lacks the teeth the state needs to be able to ensure industries are actually reducing releases of the chemical compounds into surface water including the Cape Fear River, the drinking water source for tens of thousands of North Carolinians.

The proposed draft rule, which could go to a vote of the full commission in November, would require industries that discharge PFAS into surface water and industries that discharge those chemicals to publicly owned treatment works to monitor for PFOA, PFOS, and GenX.

As is, the proposed rule’s projected financial impact is $129.5 million over the next six years, which means the rule requires both a unanimous vote of the full commission and legislative review.

“So, things have gone from frustrating and slowed down to looking almost impossible when you’re going to need a unanimous vote, which kind of empowers one person on whatever board or commission in question, one person can shut something down that has this $10 million threshold over five years,” O’Brien said.

The law excludes economic benefits associated with a proposed rule and, critics point out, as current rules go up for periodic review, rules that have been on the books for decades that fall within the new thresholds could be stripped from the books.

Braxton Davis, executive director of the North Carolina Coastal Federation, which publishes Coastal Review, said rulemaking “already involves an extensive process, including fiscal impact analysis and public input.”

“It often takes a year or more from the time a rule is drafted until it becomes effective – even when rules are being relaxed,” Davis said. “If the commissions’ rulemaking process becomes even more challenging, it may force the General Assembly to act on new issues and information to an extent that would be much better suited for the executive branch to address, at least initially.”

Davis, former director of DEQ’s Division of Coastal Management, said that, in his experience, regulatory commissions have members that bring different expertise, experience and perspectives to the table.

“And, as with any board, it will be very difficult to achieve a unanimous vote on any significant rule changes,” he said.

Mary Maclean Asbill, senior attorney with the Southern Environmental Law Center’s Chapel Hill office, said the law will “pretty much shut down” environmental rulemaking.

“We’ve already seen over the past few years the erosion of separation of powers in North Carolina, where the conservative majority of the General Assembly has legislated changes to the composition of boards and commissions, taking away authority from the governor, or the executive branch, and giving it to themselves,” she said. “We have seen appointees to any number of environmental boards and commissions mimic the ideology of the legislature. By that I mean they are anti-regulation, anti-protection, anti-environmental protection and so it has already been difficult for the past few years for state agencies who are charged with protecting the health and environment of North Carolina to promulgate any rules or regulations that are protective of health and the environment. This is going to make it exponentially more difficult.”

Gov. Josh Stein vetoed the law, writing in his June 27 rejection of House Bill 402 that it would, “make it harder for the state to keep people’s drinking water clean from PFAS and other dangerous chemicals, their air free from toxic pollutants, and their health care facilities providing high quality care.”

The law, he wrote, would “impose red tape” and would make agencies, boards, and commissions, “less effective at protecting people’s health, safety and welfare.”

The General Assembly voted to override Stein’s veto.

JACKSONVILLE – When the proposed flood insurance rate maps for Onslow County were released back in 2016, Jacksonville officials were surprised to say the least.

The preliminary maps created under North Carolina’s Flood Plain Mapping Program shifted more than 800 additional structures in downtown Jacksonville into a high-hazard flood zone.

“Jacksonville had the highest number percentage-wise increase of anywhere in the state,” said Ryan King, the city’s director of planning and inspections. “That was an eye opener for us because, if you look at it, we don’t have a lot of areas that flood. We don’t have a lot of structures that flood. Now, we have some, don’t get me wrong, but we don’t have a lot.”

King spoke with Coastal Review last week during an open house the city hosted for residents and business leaders to review and discuss proposed updated flood studies and revisions to the maps that have been made following the city’s appeal.

Special flood hazard areas, or SFHAs, are identified as areas with a 1% or higher annual risk of a flood. Unlike moderate to low-risk areas, where flood insurance is recommended, but optional, flood insurance and federally backed mortgages are required in high-risk zones.

Jane Sutton and her husband have opted against buying flood insurance, telling Coastal Review that their property, two blocks from the New River, does not have a history of flooding.

“I can tell you as long as I’ve lived here and as many hurricanes as I’ve lived through our neighborhood has never flooded,” Sutton said.

The couple were among the first area residents who trickled into the open house last Wednesday. They were relieved to learn their property will not be affected under the proposed revised maps.

Under the 2016 preliminary maps, which were largely based on storm surge modeling, many downtown homes would have to have been elevated, some as much as 10 feet. That would be on top of the city’s 3-foot freeboard requirement above base flood elevation.

“In the downtown area, which is an area that jumped out at me, you went to an elevation of 10,” King said. “I think that area should be in a flood zone because the houses do flood. But I think the number seemed off at 10 feet.”

There were other things that raised city staff’s concerns. Some properties in Carolina Forest, a residential neighborhood of townhomes and single-family homes roughly 5 miles from downtown, were included in a flood zone based on data from 2000, King said.

Construction of that neighborhood didn’t get underway until after that year.

After city staff shared their concerns with Jacksonville City Council, the board agreed to hire design, engineering and consulting firm Applied Technology & Management Inc. to take a deep dive into some of the discrepancies being pointed out by staff.

The city formally appealed 33 blocks, or areas of land divided into smaller sections on flood maps, identified in the revised maps the Federal Emergency Management Agency released in 2016.

North Carolina received FEMA’s approval some two decades ago to take over the state’s Flood Plain Mapping Program, a move supported by those who believed map updates are best handled at the local level by people who are familiar with the areas under review.

Revised preliminary maps were released in late March 2024.

The maps incorporate newer data, including information gathered using LiDAR, or Light Detection and Ranging, which uses laser light to measure distances and create detailed models of the environment.

The proposed revised maps do not, however, factor in sea level rise.

“And we know, from what I’ve been told, the next revision will incorporate sea level rise so we want to make sure that we get it right this time because I think it’s just going to stack on top of it as we move forward. So, this is almost like the new baseline,” he said.

Beginning Sept. 18, property owners will have 90 days to appeal the 2024 revisions. That appeal period closes on Dec. 18.

King encourages Jacksonville property owners to contact their insurance agents to inquire about flood policies.

“It’s worth reaching out to find out to protect your property, but that’s a conversation the homeowner needs to have with the insurance company,” he said.

He was a lawyer, Vietnam veteran, military judge, retired Marine Corps colonel, commercial fisherman, photographer, volunteer, mentor, advocate and, to some, an adversary.

Above his extensive resume, above all else, Rick Dove was a family man, one whose devotion to his wife, children and grandchildren ran as deep as the waters he fought decades to protect.

Dove, one of the first Riverkeepers in the Southeast and the original Neuse Riverkeeper, died Aug. 22. He was 86.

A memorial service will be held at 2 p.m. Saturday at Cotten Funeral Home in New Bern, the riverfront city Dove called home. Visitation will be held an hour prior to the service.

In professional circles, Dove was regarded as a no-nonsense, straight shooter who unabashedly took on any industry, whether it was concentrated animal feeding operations, or CAFOs, or wastewater treatment plants, responsible for polluting the Neuse River.

Advocating for water quality protections is a hard job, he would say. Polluters are powerful, well-connected and well-funded, he advised. Fighting for clean waterways requires thick skin and unyielding tenacity, he stressed.

“One of the things I remember most about Rick is that he did not sugarcoat things,” said Coastal Carolina Riverwatch Executive Director Lisa Rider. “He said exactly how things are and that was incredibly beneficial for the folks who worked alongside him. We have a lot of tough Riverkeepers out there today because of how he taught.”

His connection to the water spanned back to boyhood, when he dreamed of being a fisherman.

Dove’s shot at doing just that came in the mid-1980s when he retired after 25 years in the Marine Corps.

He wasted no time tucking away his spit-shined shoes for what he described in a Sound Rivers publication as “the dirtiest clothes I could find and became a commercial fisherman.”

“Things were great until about 1990,” Dove said.

That was the year he and his son, Todd, who fished with him, started to notice their catch sick with sores.

Dove got out of the commercial fishing business. He couldn’t justify selling sick fish, he’d later tell people.

He returned to practicing law, opening R.J. Dove and Associates offices in Havelock and Jacksonville in 1991. Two years later, a job listing advertised in a local newspaper caught his eye.

It was a newly created position called Neuse Riverkeeper. In 1993, Dove became the first to bear that title, one he carried until 2000 when he became the Southeastern representative for Waterkeeper Alliance.

Larry Baldwin distinctly recalls his first impression of Dove after taking the job of Lower Neuse Riverkeeper in 2002.

“I first got to know Rick and it’s like, dang, this guy’s going to be tough to deal with,” Baldwin said. “At that point he still had a lot of the Marine in him. Not that that was bad, but it was just different and, with Rick, it was either you’re going to get into this full-speed ahead or you might as well not get in it at all. Rick would take you at face value, but you also had to prove yourself. You couldn’t just tell him, ‘This is what I am.’ He wanted to see it and he had a way of seeing it, even when you didn’t know he was looking. He could really kind of sense who you were. If you came at Rick trying to overly impress him, you were fighting a losing battle.”

But the sometimes gruff-speaking mentor quickly became a friend, and Baldwin got to see a side of that Dove perhaps revealed only to those whom he was closest.

Dove was a prankster at heart. He was, not surprisingly, also a good arguer.

He was a private man, reserving conversation about his family unless and until he was asked about them. He rarely spoke of his time as a Marine, but faithfully met with a group of fellow Marine Corps veterans well into his golden years.

If he loved you, you knew it. He and his wife, Joanne, shared 60 years together.

“His top priority was the love of his life, Joanne Dove,” Rider said. “His commitment to his family was incredibly important to him.”

They raised two children, Todd, who preceded them in death, and a daughter, Hollyanne.

“Everything for Rick came back to family,” Baldwin said. “That was his reason for being. He loved his family and seeing him and Joanne together, you could tell they just had fun.”

Dove was a “very warm” person, one who was as tenacious on the racquetball court as he was a waterkeeper, Baldwin said.

“I am a blessed individual for having spent almost 23 years with him,” he said. “I’m not sure it has hit me yet. Never has there been somebody in my life that impacted me the way Rick impacted me, and still does. There’s never been one like him and I don’t think there ever will be. In my point of view, we have the obligation to continue what Rick started and what he continued to do. That’s my promise to not just him, but to myself, that we’re not going to let his legacy end just because he’s not here.”

Updated at 11 a.m. Friday, Aug. 29, to include link for public comment.

The Trump administration’s move to repeal a federal rule that prohibits logging within large swaths of U.S. national forests would strip protections for tens of thousands of acres of public lands in North Carolina.

U.S. Secretary of Agriculture Brooke Rollins announced earlier this summer the department’s intentions to rescind the 2001 Roadless Area Conservation Rule, one the administration calls outdated, saying it restricts the Forest Service from being able to properly manage for fire risk, and that it suppresses the country’s economic development in the forestry sector.

The U.S. Department of Agriculture announced Wednesday that it will publish the notice in the Federal Register on Friday, beginning a public comment period on the potential environmental effects that ends Sept. 19.

“For nearly 25 years, the Roadless Rule has frustrated land managers and served as a barrier to action – prohibiting road construction, which has limited wildfire suppression and active forest management,” Forest Service Chief Tom Schultz said in a release. “The forests we know today are not the same as the forests of 2001. They are dangerously overstocked and increasingly threatened by drought, mortality, insect-borne disease, and wildfire. It’s time to return land management decisions where they belong – with local Forest Service experts who best understand their forests and communities.”

Lifting the rule, commonly referred to as the “Roadless Rule,” would align with President Trump’s initiatives to expand U.S. timber production and boost energy production on federal lands.

In North Carolina alone, more than 170,000 acres of the National Forest System are designated “roadless areas” under the rule.

Logging, mining, energy development, and road construction are, with a few exceptions, largely prohibited in these areas because they have been identified as possessing at least some of a number of natural features the forest service classifies as “roadless area characteristics.”

Those include attributes such as high-quality or undisturbed soil and water, diverse plant and animal communities, habitat for threatened and endangered species and species dependent on large, undisturbed areas of land, recreation, and traditional cultural properties and sacred sites.

In all, there are more than 58 million acres of inventoried roadless areas in the national forest system, one that includes 154 national forests and 20 national grasslands covering more than 190 million acres in 43 states, the U.S. Virgin Islands, and Puerto Rico.

More than 1.2 million acres of national forestland fall within North Carolina’s borders.

The two largest national forests, Nantahala and Pisgah, make up an overwhelming majority of those lands in the state’s mountain region. Uwharrie National Forest, the smallest in the state, sits in the south-central part of the state.

And then there’s the Croatan National Forest, one the Forest Service refers to as the “only true coastal forest in the East.”

The 160,000-acre forest is bordered on three sides by tidal rivers and Bogue Sound. The land there is peppered with pine forests, saltwater estuaries, bogs, swamps and pocosin.

Within those swamps lies all of the more than 20,000 roadless acres designated in the Croatan, which means those areas are not conducive to road construction, according to Adam Rondeau, public affairs officer for the National Forest Service in North Carolina. 

“Whether it’s next month, or 10 years from now, the moment something of value is worth extracting from that forest, roads will be built, pocosin or no,” Erin Carey, state conservation policy director of the North Carolina Chapter of the Sierra Club, said in an email response to Coastal Review. “The only way to ensure the Croatan is protected for future generations is to keep the Roadless Rule in place.”

Environment North Carolina Research & Policy Center Advocate Emily Mason in a statement Wednesday urged that national forests be naturally maintained.

“It is more important to protect these areas than to get a little more wood or to build one more mine or one more road,” she said. “Let’s keep our wild forests wild.”

During a telephone interview last week, Carey said the Croatan is a place of escape for residents who live in the region around it.

“The folks in that region have a very close connection to that forest, at least the ones I’ve worked with, and I think the idea of their forest being cut in two will motivate folks in the area to try and stand up and protect it,” she said.

The Sierra Club has launched a campaign of sorts to inform the public of the administration’s aim and what’s at stake if the rule is rescinded – the fragmentation of natural habitat, the prospect of fewer open, wild areas for people to enjoy, and the harvest of land that is increasingly crucial in combating the effects of global warming.

“Americans love their national forests,” Carey said. “They love their parks. They love these open spaces and they’re very protective of them. That is what’s at risk is the ability for not only us, but for future generations to be able to wander out into the wild and really experience wilderness and experience wildness.”

She also argues that national forests offer a line of defense against floods.

“In the coastal plain, we’re experiencing a lot of flooding and we’ve developed so much land that the water can’t sink in, and the water does sink in (in) forests,” Carey said. “Trees hold water. Trees hold carbon. So, the idea that we can go into these forests and cut roads and cut down trees is just, it’s horrifying for me on a personal level, but also it just doesn’t make any sense from a public safety standpoint, from an economic standpoint, from a habitat-preservation standpoint.”

In her June announcement, Rollins argued that revoking the rule will open “a new era of consistency and sustainability for our nation’s forests.”

Nearly 30 million acres of inventoried roadless areas in the forest service system are in areas at high or very high risk of wildlife, according to the USDA.

“Rescinding this rule will allow this land to be managed at the local forest level, with more flexibility to take swift action to reduce wildfire risk and help protect surrounding communities and infrastructure,” according to an agency release.

But some question how the Forest Service, which already faces a lengthy backlog in maintaining existing roads within the forest system, will be able to adequately manage additional roads.

Limited resources, aging infrastructure and increased public use have delayed the Forest Service in regularly maintaining its roads, bridges, buildings and dams. The agency faces an estimated $8.6 billion in deferred maintenance costs.

Critics of the plan to erase the rule also point out that more roads could lead to more fires.

Nearly 85% of wildland fires in the U.S. are caused by humans, according to the Forest Service.

“Easier access to these places is not going to prevent fires,” Carey said. “It’s probably going to make it worse. In fact, fires are 90% more likely to be started within a half-mile of a road, so we probably should not be punching roads into places where we don’t want fire.”

Sooner than two months after announcing plans to rescind the Roadless Rule, Rollins issued a memorandum directing the Forest Service to prioritize energy projects on national forestlands based on output per acre.

“America has the resources and ingenuity to power our future without depending on foreign adversaries,” Rollins said in an Aug. 21 statement. “Under this memorandum, we are putting America First, ensuring that every acre of federally managed land is used wisely, balancing the needs for energy security with our responsibility to safeguard natural resources. We will no longer allow foreign-made solar panels or inefficient energy projects to undermine our national security.”

Environmental groups argue that paving the way for oil and gas production on national forestlands would unnecessarily put rich, biologically diverse forest areas at risk and create the potential for pollution and oil spills.

Plants on land are increasingly absorbing more carbon, while Earth’s oceans are taking in and storing less, according to a study released earlier this month.

The study published Aug. 1 in Nature Climate Change found a strong upward trend of global photosynthesis on land between 2003 and 2021.

That trend, however, is partially offset by a decline in photosynthesis occurring in oceans.

“At the global scale, if we put land and ocean together, it shows an enhanced photosynthesis, so that means, currently, our nature ecosystem is still showing an ability to absorb more carbon dioxide in the atmosphere,” said Yulong Zhang, a research scientist at Duke University’s Nicholas School of the Environment and primary author of the study. “Overall, this is encouraging news.”

That’s because, as the climate is warming, the system of plants, animals and microorganisms that referred to as the land ecosystem, still functions as a potential carbon sink to offset the carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, he said.

Plants on land and algae in oceans absorb carbon dioxide through photosynthesis, a crucial process that uses sunlight to create the base of the food chain.

But, it should be noted, Zhang said, that photosynthesis is a driver of carbon cycles because the ecosystem, like humans, can breathe out CO2.

Scientists have largely studied the net primary production, or the rate at which plants and phytoplankton store energy and make it available to animals, by focusing their research on either the land or sea.

Zhang primarily focused his research on the land until this study, one that treats both the land and ocean as two components of one global system and how those parts, together, are responding to climate warming through photosynthesis.

To conduct their study, the team of researchers used sets of data collected from satellites and large-scale climate information to create models to try and simulate various environmental factors, such as air and water-surface temperature, light and precipitation.

Scientists then compared year-to-year fluctuations in photosynthesis with the long-term trends on land and, separately, in oceans. The research team included scientists with the University of Iowa, Oak Ridge National Laboratory in Tennessee, University of New Hampshire, University of North Carolina Chapel Hill, and U.S. Forest Service.

“We found that, globally, the photosynthesis on land showing a strong increasing trend in the past 18 years from 2003 to 2021,” Zhang said. “But, by contrast, the ocean just shows a weak, declining trend.”

The rate at which plants on land store energy and make it available to animals during that 18-year span increased 0.2 billion metric tons of carbon per year, except in the tropics of South America.

During that same time, marine net primary production declined by about 0.1 billion metric tons of carbon per year, with strong declines occurring largely in tropical and subtropical seas, especially in the Pacific Ocean.

The trends show that during those 18 years global net primary production increased at an overall rate of 0.1 billion metric tons of carbon per year.

The changing trend of the land and the ocean are not uniform at the regional scale.

In tropical seas, scientists have found a large-scale decline in photosynthesis.

That’s a worrying pattern, Zhang said, because that decline equates to a decrease in energy that is provided to fish.

“So, the fishery in the tropical ocean may show a decline and it may particularly have influence on the local fisheries and also the economics for the tropical countries,” he said.

What remains unanswered is the question of what happens if this trend continues. Will the decline our oceans’ ability to absorb carbon continue and, if so, how long can the land ecosystem potentially make up for the declines?

To get answers, that will require “us to do long-term, coordinated monitoring of both land and ocean ecosystems as integrated components of our Earth,” Zhang said.

Registered voters of Holden Beach will decide this November whether to approve a multi-million bond that would pay for construction of a new town-owned pier.

Holden Beach commissioners on Tuesday evening unanimously agreed to move ahead with plans to get a $7.3 million bond referendum added to the Nov. 4 ballot.

The board’s decision followed the second public hearing commissioners hosted within the past week on what remains a divisive topic since this Brunswick County town bought the old pier and accompanying property three years ago.

Shortly after the town’s $3.3 million purchase in 2022, officials, citing safety concerns, closed the pier and historic pier house to the public.

An engineering firm contracted by the town would later advise the town that the structures, originally built in the late 1950s, were in significant disrepair.

Last April, the pier house was demolished, leaving a vacancy on land that includes an 80-space parking lot, two public beach access points, an emergency beach access point, and a multisite campground. The property spans more than three acres and includes a 350-foot stretch of continuous oceanfront land.

A chunk of the old pier remains standing beyond the surf off the ocean shore smack in the center of the barrier island.

HDR Engineering Inc. of the Carolinas recommended the town tear down and replace that structure at a cost not to exceed $7.3 million.

Commissioners agreed to pursue a pier replacement option and gave the engineering firm the greenlight to research building a 1,000-foot-long timber pier with a T-shaped structure at the end.

“My bet is if we have a decent engineering company that’s going to construct that pier and it’s going to be wooden then it’s going to be standing here when a majority of us, and most of us in this audience are fairly old, are gone,” Regina Martin said during a public hearing held last Saturday. “But, guess what? My grandchildren and my great-grandchildren will still be here. And, guess what? They will still remember that I used to work at the fishing pier when I was 13, 14 and 15.”

Martin, who owns rental property on the island, reiterated her support for a pier replacement at the hearing late Tuesday afternoon, when those who spoke resumed a back-and-forth debate of sorts about whether the town needs another pier, especially one funded by its taxpayers.

“I hear you all telling me that people don’t want a pier, they don’t want this, they don’t want a tax increase. And, none of us want a tax increase, but we’re talking about a bond referendum here that we may or may not ever use. If we vote for it, it’s another option,” she said Tuesday.

Longtime Holden Beach resident Steve Jenkins said Tuesday that he too wants the town to replace the pier.

“I’ve always had it and I always hope we will have it,” he said. “I’ve always loved this place and I’d like to have it restored to the way it was before.”

But others argue that those who want a new pier are driven by nostalgia and that costs associated with building and maintaining a pier are too burdensome.

Bob Brown said that since he and his wife bought their Ocean Boulevard vacation home a little more than eight years ago, their use of the old pier “has never been too significant.”

“Here we are owners of something that is in a state of significant disrepair, which requires an even more significant investment of property owners, not just voters’ dollars to make what I consider to be slightly flavored water out of lemon,” Brown said on Saturday. “And what is the end here? If we got such a good deal then we should probably be able to see it and break even.”

Jim Bauer said the town’s decision to purchase the property “reckless” and “ill-conceived” and “the most undemocratic thing” because it went against a majority of residents’ wishes.

“We have been saddled with this collection of sticks, which has created nothing but angst, bad feelings and obviously inebriated social media rants that has taken up too much of the town’s time treasure,” he said Saturday. “The same wooden pier at the same location, subjected to the ever-increasing water levels and we are told that we shouldn’t expect the same result. We are told that we are not doomed to repeat the same. That’s nonsense.”

With interest calculated to be at a cost of more than $4.2 million, the cumulative total over the life of the bond is estimated to be nearly $11.6 million.

If voters and the town move forward with acquiring the bond to rebuild a pier, property taxes would increase annually by an estimated $31.60 per $100,000 valuation.

The town would have seven years to issue the bonds if approved by voters.

This story has been updated.

WILMINGTON – Beams of sunlight broke through dark gray storm clouds suspended in the sky above this historic city on a recent August morning.

The local forecast was calling for rain, the kind of weather that drives tourists from area beaches to explore other experiences the area has to offer. The kind of weather that makes for a busy day at the Battleship North Carolina, the iconic floating World War II memorial moored on the Cape Fear River across from downtown Wilmington.

“This parking lot will be full in another hour,” said Terry DeMeo, the battleship’s director of development.

A year ago, DeMeo might not have made that prediction with as much certainty.

Back then, floodwaters overspilling from the Cape Fear River might have swallowed dozens of parking spaces in the western portion of the parking lot and forced visitors to make a decision: wade through water to get to the museum’s visitor center or head for higher ground.

That’s not much of a worry these days.

A wetland has been built in place of the chronically flooded section of parking lot to help absorb high-tide driven water. A tidal creek now meanders through this area of the property to direct water from the wetland back to the Cape Fear River.

A 500-foot-long and 50-foot-wide bioretention area extends through a paved, raised parking lot that has, since its completion Memorial Day weekend, gone untouched by floodwaters.

A bioswale runs the length of the parking lot next to Battleship Road. Living shorelines blend in with the rest of the natural, wild landscape around the ship’s mooring.

These features are all part of the battleship’s “Living with Water” project, one that accommodates the water rather than try and fight it back.

Construction on the project, some seven years in the making, is mostly complete.

Land next to the battleship has become a well-known and well-documented case in point on the impacts of sea level rise.

Since the memorial opened to the public in 1961, flood events on the property have climbed on a near-steady incline. Over the past six decades, a more than 7,000% increase in tidal flooding frequency has been documented at the site.

Flood events spurred by the rising sea created a sense of urgency for the museum’s leaders. The memorial does not receive regular government funding.

Persistent flooding of the property threatened one of the primary sources of the battleship’s funding – admission fees and gift shop sales.

“We actually lost parking, but that’s how committed we are to this project,” DeMeo said as she looked across the parking lot.

The lot sits at an elevation 6 feet above the old gravel one it replaced earlier this year.

The parking lot slopes to a bioretention area that looks as much like a pleasing water feature as it does a functional holding area for stormwater that allows water to percolate down into the soil.

A total of 450 spaces were at the memorial before the project was built. Today, there are 150 fewer parking spaces on the property.

Of those parking spaces, 100 were unusable due to flooding of the western portion of the old parking lot, DeMeo said. Plans are in the works to finish an overflow lot that may add roughly another 55 spaces.

“So, discounting the unusable old spaces, we expect to come out about even,” DeMeo said later in an email.

The loss of spaces has been a small price to pay for the multimillion-dollar project, one funded through federal and state grants, including the National Fish and Wildlife Foundation, National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, and the North Carolina Land and Water Fund, as well as the USS North Carolina Battleship Commission, Atlantic Coastal Fish Habitat Partnership, and numerous individual donors.

Within days of the wetland and tidal creek’s completion, birds moved in on the area, DeMeo said.

“That’s been pretty amazing to see the avian community step in right away, which means fish were in there,” she said. “That’s also when we saw the diminution of walking through knee-high flooding.”

The land, she explained, has been able to recreate itself.

The site now hosts researchers from NOAA as well as the University of North Carolina Wilmington, who are monitoring everything from the physical and vegetative parameters of the area to water quality.

The museum’s leaders are now in the early stages of exploring the creation of a living lab partnership with the university and NOAA.

A living lab is a natural fit, “and it’s a way to keep an eye on the project itself,” DeMeo said.

“This is a long-term project,” she said. “We don’t know where it’s ending. We consider ourselves a model for how this can be done and how it can’t be done. We really see ourselves as an opportunity to use as a case study. We had the opportunity and we had the need. That’s why we feel so strongly about serving as a model.”

BOILING SPRING LAKES – For the most part, work had wrapped on Pine Lake Dam here back in mid-June.

The light at the end of a tunnel of headaches caused since the closure of one of this city’s main traffic arteries, portions of which run atop Pine Lake and North Lake dams, was shining brighter and brighter.

With the dams complete, reconstruction could begin on sections of East Boiling Spring Road that have since the summer of 2023 been closed while crews rebuild and restore the dam system crippled by rainfall during Hurricane Florence nearly seven years ago.

But a swift burst of rain that drenched this little Brunswick County city on June 14 revealed that something was not right about the nearly finished Pine Lake Dam. It did not seem to be functioning properly.

That was the message one of the city’s commissioners relayed in a phone call to town staff that day. Rainwater, the commissioner reported, wasn’t stacking up behind the dam.

“In other words, there wasn’t a lake there,” City Manager Gordon Hargrove said. “It was a significant rainfall and it should have held some water. It did not hold water. It was running right through the dam.”

An investigation found that Pine Lake Dam, the design for which was vetted in multiple reviews by both federal and state agencies, is at an elevation of about 5 feet too low.

More than a month has passed since the city informed its residents of the revelation, one that has drawn a firestorm of criticism and finger pointing in a matter that might very well end up getting hashed out in court.

No timeline in sight

Today, large bright-white and blaze-orange barricades block off a roughly 750-foot stretch of neatly packed dirt and coarse sand imitating a road over top of Pine Lake Dam.

Pine Lake Dam is part of a system of five earthen dams initially built here in the mid-1960s.

Throughout the years, the dams withstood the brute force from powerful coastal storms that have swept through the region.

But the unprecedented rain Hurricane Florence dumped in September 2018 over the area – up to more than 30 inches in some parts of coastal North Carolina – proved too much.

Rainwater filled the 275-acre Boiling Spring Lake to the brink, overtopping Sanford Dam. The breach, paired with substantial embankment erosion, led to the dam’s catastrophic failure.

The breach caused a domino-like effect of failures at all four of the smaller upstream dams in the city, and then the lakes that made up Boiling Spring Lakes were no more.

During the years since, the city secured about $56 million in funding from the Federal Emergency Management Agency, through Department of Defense grants, and Brunswick County to repair and restore the dams it owns and operates: North Lake, Pine Lake, Sanford, and Upper Lake dams. A fifth dam, Middle Lake Dam, is privately owned.

That funding has been spent, in part, on hiring firms to undertake the task of designing and building dams that meet today’s safety codes.

Work to restore Sanford Dam was progressing nicely, Hargrove said, when another coastal storm, one often referred to in these parts as the “unnamed storm,” caught Brunswick County and southern portions of New Hanover County by surprise last September.

Potential Tropical Cyclone No. Eight pummeled Boiling Spring Lakes with more than 20 inches of rain within a short period of time. Rain waters swept away Sanford Dam’s bypass channel, destroying the work that had been completed thus far and forcing construction crews to essentially start from scratch.

“Weather forecast was for 3 inches,” Hargrove said. “We got 22. It flooded out the detour route and so people were stranded in particular pockets in that side of town with no way of getting out.”

The city experienced a similar scenario last May with residents becoming trapped in patches of the community as a wildfire spread through the area and jumped N.C. Highway 87.

East Boiling Spring Road is a primary entry and exit point as a hurricane evacuation route through the city.

“So, yes, there’s a lot of angst involved with getting this road open,” Hargrove said. “I mean, we have looked at every possible alternative short of building a bridge, but by the time we finish a bridge, this project will be done.”

When that might happen remains an unanswered question.

“The setback with Pine Lake Dam, I can’t even give you a timeline of how long it’s going to keep that road closed. It took 12 months to get our permits last time” from the N.C. Department of Environmental Quality’s Dam Safety Program, Hargrove said.

Days after Hargrove met for an interview with Coastal Review in city hall, he returned to the commissioners’ chamber for the board’s Aug. 5 meeting, where he provided an update on the dams.

Work continues at Sanford Dam. Had it not been for the potential tropical cyclone last September, that dam would be finished, he said. Upper Lake Dam is complete.

The section of East Boiling Spring Road atop the newly reconstructed North Lake Dam will hopefully be finished in the next two to three weeks, Hargrove told commissioners.

There was still no word as to when construction to fix Pine Lake Dam might begin.

Hargrove explained that Sequoia Services, LLC, the Greensboro-based construction company hired by the city to rebuild the dams, agreed to build a temporary road atop the dam.

But the city would be responsible for any damages to the site should any occur if the temporary road, one that would cost an additional $175,000, were to be built. Pine Lake Dam is valued at $3.5 million.

Commissioners voted against the proposal, saying it was a liability too steep.

Who’s responsible?

Hargrove didn’t mince words when he sat down for an interview with Coastal Review on a late July morning.

“There’s going to be some things I’ll talk about and then there’s, for liability reasons and that sort of thing, I’m not going to comment on them because this is obviously an issue that could grow larger over time,” he said.

The defunct Pine Lake Dam is not the construction contractor’s fault, Hargrove said. The contractor built the dam to the design the company was given.

“I’m not willing to say where the problem exists and how that problem came about. It’s the city’s position that this is a third-party responsibility,” Hargrove said.

The city hired consulting firms Ashville-based McGill Associates and Greensboro-based Schnabel Engineering to design the project.

Those designs were vetted through a series of agencies, including the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, FEMA and N.C. Dam Safety.

“As it goes up through the line, they’re really not getting into the hydraulics and analysis,” Hargrove said. “They’re just looking to make sure that the math works. So, the primary responsibility for the design of that dam is McGill and Schnabel.”

During the city commissioners meeting July 8, McGill Vice President Michael Hanson said that, unlike the other dams, there were no sufficient surveys or as-built records for Pine Lake Dam.

“We relied on information that was provided by the city, which was the best available information that was the original design plans,” Hanson said at the meeting, according to a WECT-TV report. “We relied on that information and moved forward. That was reviewed and approved by city staff. That was reviewed and approved by Dam Safety.”

This was Hanson’s first update to commissioners in a public setting since June 27 when the city announced in a social media post that Pine Lake Dam was defective.

The public’s response to that update was biting. There were one-word retorts including “Figures” and “Unbelievable” to accusations of “backdoor deals” and at least one call for city tax refunds to residents.

One commenter correctly pointed out, “THE HOOVER DAM WAS BUILT IN 5 YEARS, Y’ALL! In the 1930’s.”

The engineering marvel that spans the Nevada-Arizona border was, in fact, built from 1931-36, but not without disaster. The official number of people who died at the dam site during that time from causes ranging to drowning, blasting, rock slides, falls from the canyon walls, and heavy equipment and truck accidents, is 96, according to the U.S. Department of Interior’s Bureau of Reclamation.

City officials understand the mounting anger and frustration from Boiling Spring Lakes residents.

Hargrove wants them to know that commissioners have and continue to be “very proactive” and have tried to make sure the dam reconstruction cost doesn’t fall on the city’s taxpayers.

Earlier this year, commissioners approved an 8-cent tax hike, revenues of which will cover the costs of the city’s new stormwater department.

“This board does focus and look at the future and how we can improve it,” Hargrove said. “It just takes time. We’re catching up to 30 or 40 years of inactivity, but this board, my administration, are working hard to put that into play.”

A proposal to strengthen and expand building rules in Leland’s flood zone will not be indefinitely sidelined, proponents of the changes say.

“I’m not going to let this die,” said Leland Councilmember Veronica Carter. “I will bring this up at every single meeting until we get some sort of ordinance.”

Carter, who also sits on the board of directors of the North Carolina Coastal Federation, which publishes Coastal Review, and fellow Councilmember Bill McHugh in telephone interviews last week expressed disappointment after a majority of the council on July 17 voted to table proposed updates to the town’s flood damage prevention ordinance.

Suggested amendments to the ordinance included extending building regulations to land within the 500-year flood zone, which includes nearly 280 acres, restricting residential construction fill to elevate property out of a flood zone, limiting density in a flood zone to two units per acre, and increasing freeboard, or the height added to base flood elevation, from 2 to 4 feet.

The town’s planning board unanimously supported the amendments, but the proposed changes were met with fierce pushback from pro-development groups, including builders and real estate agents.

The nonprofit Business Alliance for a Sound Economy in a letter reported in Port City Daily last month argued the proposed ordinance amendments would undermine property values, limit homeowners from making improvements to their houses, and impose “major new costs to home ownership in Leland” while doing “virtually nothing to reduce the impact of flooding.”

“Were one of them (houses) to be significantly or completely destroyed for any reason, the homeowner would be personally responsible for the major added expense of elevating the home to the new standard,” the letter states.

But building in a flood zone is in and of itself an inherent risk, one that is being exacerbated by the strings of coastal storms in recent years that have dumped historic levels of rainfall in the area, proponents of the measure say.

Next month will be the one-year anniversary of the unnamed storm that dumped up to 20 inches or so of rainfall in southern portions of New Hanover County down through Brunswick County over a two-day period.

That storm, widely called Potential Tropical Cyclone 8, surprised the area with flash flooding that washed out roads and inundated homes.

The National Weather Service said the storm approached an event expected to occur, on average, once every 1,000 years.

“It was ugly and if we’re seeing that kind of catastrophic event happening outside of a major hurricane, just some random summer day, I think we need to take a serious look at where and how we’re building and developing in this zone because, let’s not kid ourselves, the more impervious (surface) that you’re building, the more you push that water out,” McHugh said. “Not taking any action to mitigate that risk, to me, is just wildly irresponsible. The idea that these events are remote and rare and some sort of lottery occurrence is just disingenuous.”

As a result of the unnamed storm, areas outside of Leland’s flood zones were swamped, including Stoney Creek Plantation.

“We all know that the bottom line is things are flooding that have never flooded before,” Carter said. “Our flood maps from the federal government are woefully inadequate and outdated.”

Amendments proposed for the town’s flood prevention ordinance do not halt building in flood zones, she said.

“We’re just saying if you’re going to do it, you’re going to take into account it’s going to flood,” she said.

The coastal storm has been just one of a seemingly growing number of significant rain events hitting the state in recent years and exposing more and more flood-vulnerable areas.

Brunswick County officials are also taking notice. The county is commissioning a study on whether to create a stormwater utility. More than 28,000 structures are within the county’s flood zones.

Strengthening building rules within flood zones, McHugh said, is a moral issue, one where elected officials must ensure they are not creating a situation that puts everyone from property owners to emergency personnel in danger.

“When things flood, when things get damaged, the cost of everyone’s insurance goes up. So, if we limit development in danger zones we limit the risk in an area from hurricanes,” he said. “I remain hopeful that we’re going to pass some sort of meaningful change to flood zone development and I think that this is a matter of critical importance to public safety, to the safety of our first responders, to the insurability of the region, and to these folks who are making the largest investment of their lives, which are their homes. You should be able to trust that a home you buy in Leland is built somewhere safe.”

Both councilmembers said the town might benefit from hosting a workshop, one where residents and special interest groups may come together and share their suggestions.

The council is expected to discuss next steps on the proposed amendments during its Aug. 18 agenda meeting. The council’s regular meeting is scheduled Aug. 21.

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

POLLOCKSVILLE – North Carolina’s attorney general is confident federal funding unceremoniously stripped from local governments earlier this year will be reinstated under a court ruling.

“I think we’re going to win in court,” Jeff Jackson said Tuesday afternoon. “I think our argument is very strong.”

Jackson had just wrapped up a short tour of Pollocksville’s Main Street, where the town’s longtime mayor pointed to building after building tapped to be raised higher off the ground and out of the path of future flooding that might spill over the banks of the Trent River.

“This building’s got great potential,” Mayor Jay Bender said as the two men strolled a sidewalk toward the river. One that, in September 2018, rose more than 25 feet when Hurricane Florence dumped more than 30 inches of rain.

Floodwaters forced most of the town’s residents to evacuate and destroyed or damaged more than 80% of its buildings.

“There’s nothing woke, there’s nothing political, there’s nothing wasteful,” Bender said to Jackson.

There’s also nothing left of the federal program that helped communities tailor projects to reduce and prevent damage from future storms.

Four days before Pollocksville officials were to sign contracts to kickstart their project to raise buildings, President Donald Trump’s Federal Emergency Management Agency killed the Building Resilient Infrastructure and Communities, or BRIC, grants program.

The agency said only projects that have been completed will be fully funded.

Gone was the nearly $1.1 million in funding this small Jones County town had worked so hard to secure through a process vetted by FEMA for more than 30 months.

“The rug was pulled out from under us,” Bender said.

A coalition of 20 state attorneys general, including Jackson, filed a lawsuit on July 16 in a federal court in Boston accusing FEMA of unlawfully terminating the BRIC program.

“The basic argument is that was not FEMA money to cancel,” Jackson said during a press conference under a picnic shelter in the town’s waterfront park. “That was congressional money. Congress gave that money to FEMA and told FEMA how to spend it. They said we want you to spend it helping small towns like Pollocksville defend themselves against the next flood. That is exactly what Pollocksville was doing with this money.”

Tuesday’s visit to Pollocksville was his second in recent days to a North Carolina town awarded BRIC funding only to have it ripped away.

Several days ago, Jackson went to Hillsborough to visit a pumping station that flooded when Tropical Storm Chantal swept through parts of central North Carolina early this month. Plans were to construct a new pumping station outside of the floodplain with more than $5 million in BRIC funds.

“We’re going in order of indefensibility,” he said Tuesday in what seems to be a campaign of sorts to raise awareness of FEMA’s decision to cut the BRIC program.

Pollocksville is one of 68 towns, cities and counties in the state that have been awarded BRIC grants since the program officially began its first round of funding in 2020. As previously reported by Coastal Review, almost half of the local governments awarded funding are in the 20 coastal counties.

The only completed BRIC project in the state is a living shoreline in Duck.

Congress approved the program in 2018 with bipartisan support and Trump’s signature during his first presidential term. Since then, nearly $5 billion has been committed to communities across the country for projects to elevate buildings and roads, relocate vulnerable sewer pump stations, control flooding, and strengthen building codes.

“Yes, we want to get this money back to Pollocksville,” Jackson said. “If we’re successful it means we get money back for the entire state.”

He said he expects the court will hold a hearing “within the next few weeks” over a request by the attorneys general for an injunction to lift the funds from being blocked.

“That’s been our request that they treat this as an emergency,” Jackson said. “What we want the court to do is say, while this matter is winding its way through court, which will take six to nine months to fully resolve, the money can continue to flow.”

Jackson said there’s no lack of evidence to support the importance of BRIC funding for communities like Pollocksville that are trying to better protect its residents and infrastructure from floods and other natural disasters exacerbated by the changing climate.

“The flood here, the flood in Hillsborough that happened three weeks ago, there’s fresh evidence with respect to an enormous number of these things,” he said.

More than half of North Carolina’s 20 coastal counties will be represented at the launch of what commercial shrimping advocates envision as an organization poised to fight for the industry in Raleigh.

The inception of the North Carolina Coastal Counties Fisheries Coalition is set to kick off in an Aug. 5 meeting in Morehead City, where coastal-based local and state elected officials and their constituents are invited to converge, discuss and formulate a plan to combat what they deem politically charged threats to commercial fishers.

“Bottom line, simple mission statement: We want to provide fresh, local seafood for our citizens and visitors and protect the livelihoods and families that harvest it,” said Dare County Board of Commissioners Chair Bob Woodard. “We’re going to do everything humanly possible to protect our commercial fishermen.”

The meeting is scheduled for 1 p.m. in the Crystal Coast Civic Center’s main hall, 203 College Circle.

The idea to form a coastwide coalition to defend and protect the state’s commercial fishing fleet sprouted fresh on the heels of a fierce fight that ensued in the North Carolina Legislative Building in late June.

That’s when a last-minute amendment to ban shrimp trawling in inland and nearshore coastal waters was tucked into a House bill originally authored to expand recreational access to southern flounder and red snapper. A companion bill, House Bill 441, was gutted and revised to establish a program that would pay out annual installments over three years to qualifying shrimpers.

In what quickly became referred to as “Shrimpgate,” hundreds of commercial shrimpers and their supporters, backed by coast-based legislators in both chambers and on both sides of the political aisle, flocked to Raleigh to oppose House Bill 442, one they argued would have effectively shuttered the state’s shrimping industry.

After a near weeklong bout, House Republicans announced June 25 they would not take up the bill with the changes senators had added.

It was a victory for what commercial shrimping advocates say is only one battle in a war they believe has not reached an end.

“Heck no,” the fight isn’t over, Woodard said. Senate leader Phil Berger, R-Rockingham, has “already said that. When they go back in session in September, who knows. I’m not sure where they’re going with it, but that fight ain’t over.”

Berger, back in June, called the amendment to the bill “a good provision.”

“It’s our position that continuing to allow trawling in inland waters is detrimental to the state overall [and] detrimental to our aquatic fish population,” he said to reporters from various media outlets. “We’re the only state on the East Coast or the Gulf Coast that allows that kind of net fishing in the inland waters and it’s time for us to change that.”

Groups, including the Coastal Conservation Association – North Carolina, or CCA-NC, and the North Carolina Wildlife Federation, have long argued that shrimp trawling harms other fisheries, including juvenile fish, and degrades essential habitats.

Commercial fishing proponents refute those claims, saying that the state’s fisheries management plan for shrimp already protects sensitive habitat and juvenile fish. Commercial fishing is heavily regulated in North Carolina, where trawlers are required to have equipment on their boats that prevent and reduce bycatch.

Woodard noted that argument in a June 30 letter he penned to Berger, writing in part, “regulations are already in place that significantly reduce bycatch in shrimp nets.”

Woodard also called out the eleventh-hour injected amendment to House Bill 442 as a move that “bypassed due process by attaching negative amendments to this bill without public debate or discussion.”

Three days after signing that letter, Woodard dispersed one to chairs of coastal county commissions announcing his proposal to establish the coalition. In it, he welcomed them to extend an invitation to other counties that may wish to get involved.

As of midday Friday, 11 coastal counties including Brunswick, Camden, Carteret, Craven, Currituck, Dare, Hyde, Onslow, Pamlico, Tyrrell and Washington had appointed members of their boards of commissioners to the coalition.

At least four members of the Carteret County Board of Commissioners plan to attend the Aug. 5 meeting, Chair Chris Chadwick said.

“But I’m hoping to have a whole group,” he said. “You can’t try to ram something down somebody’s throat and eliminate an industry without involving the people where the industry exists. When you have somebody from Winston-Salem trying to tell you what’s best for you on the coast without involving the people on the coast, that’s a problem in my book. We look forward to a productive meeting and the beginning of something strong and a powerful organization that can go to Raleigh and advocate for the coastal counties.”

Onslow County Board of Commissioners Chair Tim Foster expressed similar sentiments.

“I think when it comes to this, the coastal counties really need to come together and show that unified support of what’s taking place,” he said. “When you see decisions that are being made that impact your communities, but you don’t see yourselves as having a voice on this, this coalition becomes that. We have Sneads Ferry that’s historically a fishing village and an industry that has grown and it impacts these families that have been doing this for generations. We just felt like (the coalition) is something we needed to be part of to support them and be their voice on some of these decisions that are being made that impacts their livelihood.”

Sen. Bobby Hanig, R-Currituck, plans to be at the meeting. Local elected officials have praised Hanig for initially sounding the alarm on the trawling ban amendment in a social media post.

“What they attempted to do completely backfired on them and it has given the commercial fishermen the platform that they have never had,” he said in a telephone interview last week. “The issue that we’ve had between the recreational fishermen and the commercial fishermen is the commercial fishermen are busy. They’re working all the time. They can’t afford lobbyists so they’ve never been able to tell their story and tell their side of what the real truth is. As bad as what happened several weeks back, what it has done is it exposed the truth. And, what we have to do is keep telling our story so that people understand what the real situation is.”

Hanig hailed the coalition as one that “is going to propel us to where we need to be to fight this battle,” one, he said, will “never be over.”

“When you have leadership in the General Assembly that is willing to shut down an entire industry overnight, there’s a problem and we need to fix that problem. So, here we go,” he said.

When contractors began cleaning up debris from the grounds of a former wood treatment plant in Navassa last year, they expected they’d be removing old railroad ties, pieces of treated wood and tires.

“We didn’t expect to see a tank there,” Ngozi Ibe said of the underground storage vessel at the property.

The same goes for other unexpected debris contractors found in a section of the former Kerr-McGee federal Superfund site designated as Operable Unit 2, Ibe, senior project manager and environmental justice specialist who manages the Multistate Trust site in Navassa, said in a Thursday night community meeting.

“We just found an extensive amount of material out there,” she said. “It was so much more than we had expected to encounter when we originally planned the work.”

As contractors unearthed the tank, which contained an unknown fluid, bricks coated in an oily sheen, and additional treated timber they did not anticipate finding in the area, it became clear more time would be needed to clean Operable Unit 2, or OU2.

The next round of cleanup is not expected to begin until sometime this fall, with work anticipated to go on for anywhere from six to eight weeks, Ibe said.

OU2 is a 16-acre section of the original 200-acre site where wood was treated for more than 40 years before operations permanently closed in the mid-1970s.

Operations on the land left a legacy of contamination of creosote, a gummy, tar-like substance used to treat wood used for railroad ties and utility poles.

The land was added to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s National Priorities List of federal Superfund sites in 2010.

In order to evaluate the land and get an understanding of the extent of contamination on it to help determine how it may be used in the future, the EPA divided the property into operable units.

The site is comprised of five units, including a 20-acre tract where untreated wood was stored. That unit, or OU1, was removed from the EPA’s National Priorities list in 2021. There are no restrictions on future development of this parcel.

In April 2024, contractors began cleaning up OU2, where both treated and untreated wood were stored, by excavating a little more than 1.5 acres of surface soils contaminated with levels of dioxin and polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons considered to pose an unacceptable risk to people and the environment.

Contractors also removed old tires, treated timber, slabs of concrete and other debris discovered through an initial investigation of the unit.

Workers dug down anywhere from one to two feet, in general, to remove contaminated soil. The excavated soil has been placed on temporary storage sites, lined and covered, in Operable Unit 4.

Contaminated soils removed from OU2 and stockpiled in OU4 are being managed and inspected no less frequently than monthly, as well as after every rainfall.

Backfill suitable for residential use has been injected into the trenches dug to remove the contaminated soil from OU2 and vegetation planted on those areas to prevent erosion and runoff.

Wells have been dug in the unit so officials can monitor groundwater.

OU4, the pond and process area of the former wood-treatment plant site, spans about 32 acres.

The EPA has divided OU4 into two sections: north and south.

Erik Spalvins, EPA remedial project manager, said Thursday night that the northern section of OU4 does not have groundwater contamination or creosote and that officials will decide how to address the two stockpiles from OU2.

There is groundwater contamination in the southern section of OU4. And, creosote contamination has been found as deep as 70 feet below the ground’s surface.

Spalvins said he hopes the EPA is ready to issue a proposed plan to address remediation in OU4 in August. The plan, which will be discussed at a public meeting, will go out for public comment on how residents in the area would like to see than land used.

“What we’re trying to do is provide as much flexibility in our decision-making process so that we don’t tie our hands in the future,” Spalvins said. “So, specifically in the feasibility study, we looked at a residential option and industrial commercial option and we are going to put it out for public comment.”

A feasibility study is currently underway for Operable Unit 3, or the marsh area of the site. Spalvins said the hope is that a draft proposed plan for that unit will be released sometime early next year.

The Multistate Trust plans to donate about 30 acres that was not contaminated for the proposed Moze Heritage Center and Nature Park, dedicated to preserving the stories of enslaved Africans who worked the rice plantations along river banks in southeastern North Carolina.

Claire Morgan, director of community partnerships and redevelopment and senior attorney with the Greenfield Environmental Trust Group, explained Thursday night that the 30 acres donated to the town will be included in a conservation easement to ensure it is used for the public good.

The trust has been working with the North Carolina Coastal land Trust to serve as the easement holder, but the town will own the land.

CURRIE – There have been nights Clint North has lost sleep thinking about his land.

Ten years from now, he knows exactly what he wants the hundreds of acres of land he’s bought up in this unincorporated area of Pender County to look like: exactly the same, if not better.

And, most importantly, natural.

But North has a choice to make and it’s a decision weighing more heavily on him with each passing year.

“What’s going to happen with the land? That’s my biggest fear. It has come to where it is a concern of mine to make sure that it’s preserved. And I’d say, in the last five years, it’s become more important because I’m getting older,” he said.

Earlier this year, North and his wife, Amy, were presented with a certificate that essentially marks a first step toward permanently conserving the mostly forested land he’s purchased in plots and large chunks in this rural area southwest of Burgaw, the county seat.

North has registered 1,988 acres with North Carolina’s Natural Heritage Program, committing to protect and preserve the land’s biological diversity and natural qualities, and maintain it in as natural of a condition as possible.

He is one of only three property owners in the state to register 1,000 acres or more with the program.

But what makes North’s commitment even more unique is that he has spent more than half of his life acquiring land within this quiet countryside perhaps best known as the home of Moores Creek National Battlefield with the sole intent of keeping it natural.

“That is not common that is for sure,” said Scott Pohlman, Natural Heritage Program’s nature preserve property manager. “We’re certainly encouraged by it. We’re really excited to run across folks like Mr. North who are motivated to do this kind of work. I can’t tell you how excited we are to work with him.”

A labor of love

North is a true Wilmingtonian, a rarity these days, born and raised in the state’s largest coastal city.

Before Interstate 40 sliced a four-lane fast track to the Port City, life there was quite different than it is today.

North spent his childhood playing in forests long since chopped away and replaced by neighborhoods and businesses. Those woods introduced him to native carnivorous plants: Venus flytraps, pitcher plants and sundews.

He loved being out in the woods. That drove him to pursue a degree in biology.

Prompted by his father to get to work after graduating from college, North took a job with a large commercial construction company in town. It was far from the field he dreamt of working in, but it paid the bills.

Truth be told, it has funded his pursuit for land, one that stretches back to the late 1980s, when he and his wife, a fellow native Wilmingtonian, shared a desire to move out into the country.

With just a couple of years of marriage under their belts and a one-month-old son, the budding family moved out of Wilmington and into a home nestled in 125-acre tract North bought in Pender County.

The construction business kept him busy, traveling throughout the state and into Virginia and South Carolina.

At home, the sprawling woodlands he called home were his refuge, a place he walked and studied, hunted, fished and paddled with his wife and three sons. This is the land where he taught his sons how to respect and appreciate forests in their natural state.

He spent time bushhogging and learning other forestry techniques in those woods, all the while keeping an eye and ear out for more land prospects in the area.

In 1993, he bought a 525-acre tract across Moores Creek from his homestead.

“That was a big step,” North said. “I didn’t know how far it would go. I mean, it’s still not over.”

Opportunities to buy more land kept coming his way — a hundred acres here, 140 acres there. Much of the land sold to him has been by heirs of expansive land owners back in the day. Sellers seem to appreciate the fact that North wants to keep the land natural.

He’s a card-carrying, certified prescribed burner.

His handy work stands out in neat, patchwork-like blocks of forest carefully thinned out by fire and other land management measures on portions of his land.

What started out as a hobby “kind of turned into a passion,” once North retired from construction.

He’s walked every acre of his land, finding surprises along the way that tease his curiosity about its history.

He’s planted acres of long leaf pine, added native, pollinator-friendly plants to the landscape, and located and documented carnivorous plants. He can point out Carolina bays, those shallow wetland depressions that are often fed by rain or groundwater, on his land.

More than 240 acres of the land has been identified as primary natural areas, or those intact, old growth and natural habitat, by the heritage program. The remaining acreage has been designated as habitat restoration.

A ‘champion’

Chuck Roe, the founding director of North Carolina’s Natural Heritage Program, called North’s efforts to buy and preserve land, “very rare, very exceptional.”

“He is a true champion for conservation and a role model and should be recognized and honored for his conservation good deeds,” Roe said. “And, hopefully, other land owners will learn from his example and be willing to be good stewards of their land as well. The realities are that state and federal agencies are not going to be buying much more land.”

North is keenly aware that the “nice, cleared farmland” in the area, especially along U.S. Highway 421, a scenic byway that stretches through North Carolina from Fort Fisher to the Blue Ridge Mountains, is perfect for development.

He expects the whole area will change.

Conservation easements are the easiest way for him to preserve his land in perpetuity.

He’s talked with members of different land conservation organizations. He goes to meetings hosted by different organizations to learn as much as he can about the different conservation programs that are out there.

“At least that by being in the (heritage) program it kind of gives me, I’m going to say, a leg up if I were to do a conservation easement or get into some other conservation program because some of the work has already been done,” North said. “Yesterday, I got two letters in the mail that want to buy my land. I just throw them in the trash can.”

Aligning North Carolina’s wetlands definition with that of the federal government’s would put the state’s waterways at risk, erase nature’s pollution filtration systems from the land, and increase flooding, speakers at a public hearing said.

More than a dozen people commented during the Thursday night hearing in Raleigh on the revised wetlands definition the North Carolina General Assembly enacted into law two years ago.

In accordance with the 2023 Farm Act, the state’s definition of wetlands must correspond with the federal government’s, which narrows the description of a wetland to having a continuous surface connection to Waters of the United States, or those protected under the Clean Water Act. The federal definition was changed to be consistent with a May 2023 Supreme Court ruling.

In North Carolina, that alignment equates to the loss of protections for an estimated 2.5 million acres of wetlands, according to the state Department of Environmental Quality.

That agency has been implementing the definition since its approval in June 2023, but the state-appointed Environmental Management Commission, which is responsible for adopting rules that protect, preserve and enhance air and water resources, must go through the rulemaking process to amend the state’s existing wetlands definition.

The law legislators enacted two years ago explicitly directs that the Rules Review Commission cannot challenge the amendment.

Those who spoke at Thursday’s public hearing, a mandated step in the rulemaking process, urged the Environmental Management Commission to work with legislators to rescind the amendment. No one who spoke supported the definition revision.

“I think it’s a shame that the EMC does not have any discretion over what this rule looks like,” said Brooks Rainey, a lobbyist for the Southern Environmental Law Center. “Dictating the text of a rule to a rulemaking body takes away the whole point of having a rulemaking body. The North Carolina General Assembly are not experts on wetlands. The Home Builders Association is not an expert on wetlands. The Chamber of Commerce is not an expert on wetlands. But there are many experts on wetlands at DEQ. When rulemaking works as intended, the experts on the subject matter of the rule are involved in crafting the rule. Otherwise, we have ceded environmental rulemaking to political whims and lobby groups.”

Rainey went on to say that the majority party at the General Assembly make “the majority appointments” on the Environmental Management Commission and that the current commission “has greater sway” with this legislature than any in recent memory.

“I urge this EMC to use that influence and ask the General Assembly to stop sending over rules that have been pre-drafted. Take the politics out of rulemaking. Leave it to the experts. It is insulting to this commission, it is insulting to the agency, and it is insulting to the public who are effectively excluded from having any meaningful input at all,” she said.

That lack of input has frustrated residents, environmental advocates and scientists, who argue that ordering a one-size-fits-all definition will be detrimental to a state where wetlands, particularly on the coastal plain, are critical to reducing flooding, cleaning drinking water and supporting fisheries.

“Tying in wetlands protections to federal definitions that change with every administration leaves our communities vulnerable,” said Kerri Allen, a coastal advocate with the North Carolina Coastal Federation, which publishes Coastal Review. “Why should we hand off our responsibility to protect North Carolina’s natural resources to Washington. Wetlands in North Carolina, like pocosins, Carolina Bays and cypress swamps, deserve to be protected under rules written for our state’s needs, not buried under shifting federal priorities.”

Wetlands provide a host of crucial benefits, said Dr. Adam Gold, coasts and watersheds science manager with the Environmental Defense Fund.

They act as natural flood buffers, provide habitat for recreationally and commercially important wildlife, and filter pollution from waterways.

“Just one acre of wetlands can store up to a million and a half gallons of floodwater,” Gold said.

He cautioned that the federal government may further narrow the definition of wetlands. Earlier this year, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s Lee Zeldin announced plans to revise the definition of Waters of the United States, also known as WOTUS.

“As someone who has worked in the intersection of environmental policy and coastal resilience for over two decades, I’ve seen firsthand how wetland loss leads to increased flooding, degraded water quality and disappearing fisheries habitat,” said Coastal Carolina Riverwatch Executive Director Lisa Rider. “These issues are already being impacted and many rural communities and working waterfront communities are already seeing the impact from what’s going on. Stripping protections further will only accelerate harm to ecosystems and the people here in coastal North Carolina.”

Chris Herndon, director of the North Carolina chapter of the Sierra Club, said rolling back wetlands protections will waste millions of taxpayer dollars in flood recovery and contribute to the loss of the state’s natural resources.

“The revised definition freely gives the decision of which wetlands to protect to the federal government. As a result, our state wetlands protections will be determined by federal officials based on federal priorities without any special consideration of the particular importance of wetlands in our state. North Carolinians should decide which North Carolina wetlands should be protected to the benefit of our local communities and local economies,” he said.

Southern Environmental Law Center senior attorney Julie Youngman said that, though the commission has been mandated to pass the rule, there is no deadline in when the rule must be established.

And, since the state’s leading environmental agency is complying with the law, there is “no harm being done to the will of the legislature by slowing it down and working with the legislature to try to fix the mistake that’s been made,” she said.

“It just defies logic that we are putting our fate in the hands of a federal administration that doesn’t seem to care about the same values that we care about here in North Carolina,” Youngman said. “There is not deadline in the statute. Take your time, work with the legislature, see if you can’t come up with a commonsense way to keep the wetland protections that we have in place, in place.”

DEQ will accept public comments through today via email with the subject line “Wetland Definition Amendment” to Sue.Homewood@deq.nc.gov and by mail to Sue Homewood, Division of Water Resources, 1617 Main Service Center, Raleigh NC 27699-1617.

The EMC is anticipated to hear recommendations on the revised rule during its Sept. 11 meeting. The 2023 Farm Act mandates that the rule cannot become effective until after legislative review, which is anticipated to take place during the General Assembly’s 2026 session.

The Environmental Protection Agency has final approval authority over the rule.

There was a time when the distinctive “kiki-do” call of eastern black rails were a common sound rising up from North Carolina marshes.

Masters of secrecy, these little birds are rarely, if ever, seen.

They prefer to skirt through the marsh using tunnels dug by rabbits and other small mammals rather than take to the sky. Their nests are typically well concealed close to the ground in the highest part of brackish, saltwater and inland freshwater marshes.

But the habitat that eastern black rails so skillfully use to maintain their privacy is under growing threat from rising ocean waters, more powerful storms, and development and, if their numbers continue to decline, projections are they’ll disappear altogether within 35 years.

The North Carolina Wildlife Resources Commission aims to help these birds, putting forth a management plan to improve the black rails’ habitat by permanently protecting coastal marshes and assisting private landowners with potential habitat creation.

That’s going to take hundreds of acres of additional inland, shallow marsh and high-elevation coastal marsh.

“We think there’s probably less than 40 breeding pairs in North Carolina right now,” said Kacy Cook, a coastal waterbird biologist with the Wildlife Resources Commission.

The commission is accepting public comment on the Black Rail Management Plan through July 11.

The eastern black rail was listed as threatened under the Endangered Species Act in 2020. The commission lists it as a species of greatest conservation need.

Long gone are the days when eastern black rails were documented in freshwater marshes in the North Carolina mountains and Piedmont. No one has heard their “kiki-do” in the interior part of the state since 2005, Cook said.

Once abundant black rail habitat along the North Carolina has been crowded out by houses, roads and farmed land.

The last remaining pockets of coastal areas where the birds are heard in some places in the Outer Banks (exact locations are kept under wraps to prevent human disturbance) and Cedar Island, an unincorporated area of Carteret County. Even there, surveys reveal a dramatic population decline.

Surveys are conducted throughout the black rails’ breeding cycle by using something called a targeted call-response where biologists play a recording of the “kiki-do” sound and wait for a response from black rails in the survey area.

“You used to be able to hear 70 black rail calling from the causeway,” at Cedar Island, Cook said.

Now, fewer than 10 respond at any given time, she said.

And while that’s not good for the eastern black rail, it’s also indicative of a wider coastal problem.

“Black rails are our signal that our coastal marshes and freshwater wetlands are in trouble, and that makes a difference for a lot of species, and our own wellbeing,” Cook said.

Eastern black rails rely on very shallow water levels in marshes. They have legs that are typically just over one inch long. Their fledglings, roughly the size of cotton balls, are out of the nest within 24 hours of hatching, but they’re not able to fly until about 40 days later.

This is why coastal storm flooding, exacerbated by sea level rise, is a particular threat, because flood waters can wash away the nests, eggs and chicks. One big storm could wipe out the remaining population in North Carolina.

“Those are happening at a rate that is too high for their population to grow,” Cook said.

Lack of fire, which is crucial to maintaining that type of habitat, and agricultural practices that include cutting field borders where black rails like to settle among wet, tall, grassy habitat, are further degrading the birds’ habitat.

“I’m only finding black rails where we have high herbaceous plant diversity. They only use habitats that are very dense herbaceous cover, grasses and flowers with few shrubs and no trees,” Cook said.

The commission’s management plan for black rails includes the creation and restoration of 600 acres of freshwater marsh and 600 acres of additional high-elevation coastal march by 2056.

“What we do for black rails will benefit all of the marsh birds that we have now, including the egrets and the herons and the wood storks. So, working on restoring black rail habitat is going to benefit all of our coastal birds in some way and our seafood. Seventy-five percent of our seafood comes from coastal marshes,” Cook said.

A group of state lawmakers vow they will fight for North Carolina shrimpers to continue trawling in inland and nearby offshore waters.

Several legislators on Tuesday spoke out against a last-minute amendment injected into a House bill originally aimed at expanding recreational access to southern flounder and red snapper. They called the revision an “injustice,” “bad,” “wrong,” and one that would shutter the state’s shrimping industry.

“I have spent a lot of the last few days being very angry, and I admit that,” said Rep. Celeste Cairns, R-Carteret, during the Tuesday morning press conference in Raleigh. “It’s better to be angry than to be sad because I will end up in tears. I have been in tears several times during this last week.”

A week has passed since two Senate committees pushed forward amended House Bill 442, one that has since its introduction to the House in March been “hijacked,” according to the bill’s sponsor.

“We’re used to the Senate acting this way, but not to this degree,” Rep. Frank Iler, R-Brunswick, said. “As much as I wanted a flounder season, I urge everyone to vote to oppose this bill every chance they get.”

Sen. David Craven Jr., R-Anson, introduced the amendment, arguing that it would align North Carolina’s trawling laws with those in Virginia and South Carolina and reduce the amount of bycatch, or unwanted species, captured in nets.

Advocacy groups, including the Coastal Conservation Association – North Carolina, and the North Carolina Wildlife Federation, have long argued that shrimp trawling harms other fisheries, including juvenile fish, and degrades essential habitats.

But lawmakers, who were joined by commercial shrimpers on Tuesday, pushed back on those claims, saying that the state’s fisheries management plan for shrimp already protects sensitive habitat and juvenile fish. Commercial fishing is heavily regulated in North Carolina, where trawlers are required to have equipment on their boats that prevent and reduce bycatch.

“This is not an environmental issue,” said Rep. Pricey Harrison, D-Guilford. “This is an allocation issue. In fact, if we were focused on the environment and the sustainability of fish, we would be talking about water quality. We’d be talking about coastal development. We’d be talking about protecting our wetlands, restoring our buffers,” and about warming sea temperatures.

House Bill 442 was last week sent back to the House, where it and proposed legislation to supplement shrimpers’ income, should the trawling ban become law, now await a vote.

Just hours after the press conference, the Senate voted 43-2 in favor of House Bill 441, which would establish a program that would pay out annual installments over three years to qualifying shrimpers.

The bill includes a provision to temporarily increase license and registration fees for recreational fishers, fishing, and some commercial fishers to cover the cost of the program.

The bill directs the North Carolina Division of Marine Fisheries to establish and administer the program, one that would allow shrimpers to use trip-ticket forms submitted to the state between Jan. 1, 2023, through June 30, 2025. Each month, dealers submit these forms to the division, which uses the information reported on the tickets as a means to help manage fisheries resources.

Iler also sponsored House Bill 441, which, when introduced earlier this year, called for adopting the loggerhead sea turtle as the state’s official saltwater reptile.

“Without getting into the merits of either bill, I’m here because I am very upset about what happened to these two bills,” Sen. Ted Davis Jr., R-New Hanover, said Tuesday morning.

Sen. Bobby Hanig, R-Currituck, called the advancement of House Bill 442 a “disgusting process.”

“This amendment wasn’t discussed with our caucus,” he said. “This amendment was a calculated, precision move by a couple of leadership in the North Carolina Senate. When I came to committee prepared to talk about this I was completely shut down. I was completely shut down by my own party and by my own leadership. Last week, I was ashamed to be a member of the North Carolina General Assembly. This is a couple of people in the Senate that are pushing an agenda, an agenda pushed by money, influence, whatever you want to call it. We can’t stand for it and if we in the North Carolina Senate don’t take a stand against this type of activity then we’re not better than they are.”

Last week, an angry Hanig asked fellow senators why they would not wait for the results from an ongoing lawsuit the Coastal Conservation Association – North Carolina filed in 2020 to ban shrimp trawling and for the results of a study on the state’s fisheries that the General Assembly commissioned three years ago.

Hanig said Tuesday that the study was expected to be presented to the legislature in the coming days.

“They know what’s in that study and they know the condition of our fisheries and they know the false narrative they have been pushing for decades,” he said.

Rep. Keith Kidwell, R-Beaufort, also questioned why the call to ban trawling could not have waited until the report is released.

“Did they get a heads up and find out that maybe they’re wrong and that’s why they’re trying to rush it across before the report gets here,” he said. “There’s something dirty going on here people.”

Kidwell said that, in his district, shrimping is not a career, but a way of life.

“Are we going to shut down the people who go to work every day making an honest living because some branch of the government finally decides, in some slimy backroom deal, that they don’t want to do this anymore,” he said. “Well, by God, Down East, we didn’t ask them what they want to do. We want to fish. We want to have the fruits of our labors. We’re not going to stand and take this.”

Shades of color are deepening in ocean waters, where water is getting greener in the polar regions, and turning bluer at the equator. A change that could have an effect on fisheries, according to a newly released study.

The changing colors indicate that concentrations of chlorophyll in the blue waters of the tropics and subtropics are declining while simultaneously increasing in the green-colored ocean waters at the Earth’s poles, the authors explain in the paper published Thursday in Science journal.

Chlorophyll is the green pigment that give things like plants and algae their color. In the ocean, chlorophyll concentrations are a measure of phytoplankton, or microscopic plants that are the base of the ocean food chain and convert sunlight into energy through photosynthesis.

“This is the first time that we say, okay, if we look at our ocean globally, we would say see, we have high chlorophyll concentration in the north high latitude, but we have low chlorophyll concentration in the subtropical and tropical region,” Dr. Haipeng Zhao said. Zhao is first author of the study and a postdoctoral researcher who worked with Dr. Nicolas Cassar, a professor of biogeochemistry at Duke University’s Nicholas School of the Environment, and Dr. Susan Lozier, a professor of earth and atmospheric sciences at Georgia Tech.

Why this is happening will take further investigation, as does how it may impact coastal fisheries.

For this study, researchers analyzed two decades’ worth of satellite data collected by a NASA instrument that scans the globe every two days.

The team focused on the open ocean.

“There’s still a lot of limitation by using satellite data to observe the coastal change of phytoplankton because, in the coastal border, the sediments, a lot of minerals, they just come to the surface of the ocean and that makes it difficult for the satellite to detect whether it’s the phytoplankton blooms or something else,” Zhao said. “But we think (these areas) are very important.”

More than half of the world’s fish catch comes from tropical and subtropical regions, according to the study. A significant amount of that catch comes from coastal fisheries within those regions.

“Although our study focuses on open ocean waters, any persistent changes in these areas could profoundly affect low- and middle-income nations, such as Pacific Island nations, that rely on fisheries for sustenance and economic development,” the study states. “Future investigations should focus on these regions to provide a more comprehensive understanding.”

The authors note that it will be particularly important to study how climate change may be affecting these changes.  

This study does not correlate the changes in chlorophyll concentrations with climate change.

The satellite records researchers analyzed go back no more than 20 to 25 years, Zhao said. That’s a relatively short amount of time in terms of changes in the ocean process.

Researchers looked at different variables, such as wind speed, water surface temperature, and sunlight, to see how those may be affecting the changes they noted in chlorophyll concentrations.

“But we did find that the water is getting warmer, which is widespread increase in the temperature in the global ocean,” he noted.

The global ocean is complicated to study, he said. It involves currents and the moving of a lot of materials, like sediments, through the water.

“I think we need to get a lot of support to continue the research,” Zhao said.

That will entail getting away from solely relying on satellite observation and physically traveling to the open ocean to collect more data, he said.

“That will increase our confidence and I think that will generate more evidence to support our conclusion,” Zhao said. “At least we have already observed and what has been striking to tell people is our oceans are changing and it has potential impacts to everywhere.”

OAK ISLAND – When Gigi Donovan looks at the dune fronting a row of largely undeveloped oceanfront lots across the street from her home, she sees a false sense of security.

“We’ve seen this dune go away three times in 12 years,” she said.

The sandy mound that separates the public beach from private lots along a stretch of East Beach Drive wasn’t here just a few years ago. It has been built up and planted with dune-stabilizing sea oats through the town of Oak Island’s efforts to restore its oceanfront shore. 

Now there is enough of it to render at least one of the thin slices of long-vacant beachfront lots suitable for building.

That has Donovan and several of her neighbors worried.

Amber and Dean Russell live a few doors down from the Donovans. When the Russells bought their bungalow in 2022, they went ahead and purchased the beachfront lot directly across the street.

“We bought that just to keep our view,” Amber Russell said. “It’s not safe to build on.”

That’s a sentiment a group of homeowners and residents who live in the area of SE 58^th Street and East Beach Drive have expressed to town officials in the days and months since they received notice that a developer had applied for a Coastal Area Management Act, or CAMA, permit to build a house on one of the oceanfront lots.

They’ve made countless telephone calls and sent emails to North Carolina Division of Coastal Management and U.S. Army Corps of Engineers staff.

They’ve posted handmade signs that read “SAVE OUR BEACHFRONT — No Building on Narrow, At-risk Lots!” along their block of East Beach Drive.

They started an online petition that, as of June 13, had more than 600 signatures.

They’ve dug in their heels and pushed back, calling “for the return to responsible, sustainable environmental development on fragile oceanfront properties” in a plea to Oak Island’s mayor.

But even they acknowledge this fight is an uphill battle, one that is likely to rage on as low-lying coastal areas deal with the effects of sea level rise, more frequent, intense coastal storms and shoreline erosion.

Regulatory flexibility

Last month, a CAMA minor permit was issued for 5515 East Beach Drive. Proposed building plans on the 0.17-acre lot include a 2,856 square-foot house.

Town officials in an email responding to questions said they do not have on file when a home last stood on that lot. Aerial satellite images from Brunswick County show that this particular block of East Beach Drive had more homes along the oceanfront in 1989 than today.

The homes captured by satellite imagery in 1989 were gone in 2003, destroyed by nature or demolition.

Today, houses stand on only two of the oceanfront lots along this block of East Beach Drive.

Oak Island officials said the town does not have an overarching designation determining whether a lot is buildable based on oceanfront construction setbacks.

“For building on an oceanfront lot, the developer would submit information to show compliance with CAMA regulations and receive a permit if they meet said requirements,” an official said in an email.

Back in 2023, the North Carolina Coastal Resources Commission rubber-stamped Oak Island’s beach management plan, which gives beachfront builders more regulatory flexibility regarding how far back they must build from the sea.

The year before, the commission repealed regulations that allowed coastal communities to use the less restrictive setback measurement line for oceanfront construction, instead requiring builders to measure back from what is referred to as the preproject vegetation line.

The preproject vegetation line is the first line of stable, natural vegetation that is on an oceanfront before a large-scale beach nourishment project begins, one where more than 300,000 cubic yards of sand is placed on the beach.

But coastal communities that create and follow beach management plans approved by the commission may measure setbacks from the vegetation line rather than the preproject line as long as they meet the obligations detailed in their plans. Setbacks are 60 feet from the measurement line.

Coastal Resources Commission approved beach management plans for five coastal towns: Carolina Beach, Kure Beach and Wrightsville Beach in New Hanover County, and Oak Island and Ocean Isle Beach in Brunswick County. Once approved, plans must be reauthorized every five years.

Oak Island’s authorized plan calls for placing a total estimated 16.2 million cubic yards of sand on the beach over the next three decades. Under the plan, the beach will be nourished every six years.

Oak Island’s most recent sand nourishment projects were carried out in 2021 and 2022.

A nourishment project originally planned for winter 2024-25 was postponed after the town was informed contractor bids for the project “had far exceeded the amounts expected or budgeted,” according to the town’s website.

The project is again out for bids, and town officials anticipate a contract will be awarded and work will begin later this year.

Risky building

“They’re looking to the renourishment as the permanent solution,” Donovan said.

Dr. Gavin Smith, a North Carolina State University professor who researches hazard mitigation, disaster recovery and climate change adaptation, is not a big fan of beach nourishment.

“I think that overrelying on beach nourishment as a way to protect coastal development is fraught with problems,” he said in a telephone interview earlier this month. “It’s extremely expensive. It can take several seasons or it can take one bad storm and it’s gone.”

Smith pointed out that coastal zones, in particular barrier island, are highly dynamic and subject to significant change.

“Thinking about the construction of a house in a highly dynamic area, I think we need to be really careful,” he said. “Builders and homebuyers need to think about the life of that structure. The conditions that that site might face in 40 or 50 years is worthy of consideration. Individuals need to think about and actually ask a question: While you might be able to legally build in a given place, should you build there? I think that’s something that we all need to perhaps be more aware of.”

It’s time governments at all levels, local, state and federal, “do better,” he said.

“How can we recognize or applaud local governments that have the political will to adopt more stringent standards than the minimums? That’s what many governments adhere to is the minimum standards” Smith said. “Our codes are inadequate in the state, yet that’s what we adhere to in many cases. The National Flood Insurance Program should be viewed as a minimum, not the maximum. In an era of climate change we’re moving toward this idea of nonstationary, which we don’t know what the future holds. So, therefore our codes and standards ought to be that much more rigorous to account for the uncertainty. But instead, we’re relying on old data. We’re relying on old codes and that’s a significant problem.”

Sitting at the kitchen table in her home on a late May afternoon, Donovan mulled the many concerns she, her husband Mark, and their neighbors have raised to government officials.

They worry about whether more lights from new construction will hinder sea turtles from nesting on the shore. They worry about how stormwater runoff from new rooftops, driveways and other impervious surfaces may exacerbate flooding on their second-row lots.

They worry what one unwelcome coastal storm, be it a hurricane of any category or a potential tropical cyclone that packs a punch like the unnamed storm that pummeled Brunswick County last year, might do to the dune and any homes standing on the small land plots just behind it.

“We don’t know. That’s the thing. We don’t know what’s going to happen,” Gigi Donovan said.

In a statement to the town’s mayor last month, the Donovans and their neighbors wrote: “While we cannot control the weather, we can mitigate the damage it causes by responsibly managing the development of oceanfront properties.”

Oceanfront lot development “should be based on comprehensive land-use plans that take into consideration beach erosion, turtle nesting habitat, climate change, protection of private and town property, and preserving the legacy of (Oak Island) as a quaint, family-focused beach community.”

They are appealing to Coastal Resources Commission Chair Renee Cahoon, who determines whether or not property owners can make their case in a hearing before the full commission.

“We are very motivated and stubborn,” Gigi Donovan said in a text message. “If we allow them to plow ahead, steam-rolling any local opposition, our entire island beachfront will be irreparably destroyed.”

Coastal communities are inundated more often than previously believed, and floodwaters take longer to recede in rural areas than in urban areas, according to a new study.

The study, published Monday in the journal Communications Earth & Environment, also found that the way government agencies gather data used to predict floods fails to truly estimate how frequently water may get pushed over land.

“To capture the burden on coastal communities and to capture what people are really seeing on the ground, it’s so important to measure flooding on land,” said Dr. Miyuki Hino, a co-author of the study and assistant professor of city and regional planning at the University of North Carolina Chapel Hill.

What people living in Beaufort, Carolina Beach and Sea Level, an unincorporated area of Carteret County, told researchers they are seeing is that it floods “all the time,” said corresponding author Dr. Katherine Anarde, an assistant professor of coastal engineering at North Carolina State University.

“People know where it floods and a lot of people can put numbers to how frequently it floods, but as scientists, we just had no idea what ‘all the time’ meant,” she said.

To find that answer, researchers installed a network of in-house, custom-designed water level sensors in storm drains in Beaufort and Carolina Beach. Sensors were installed next to ditches cut along roads in Sea Level, a rural community about 28 miles northeast of Beaufort.

Each sensor measures when water rises and spills onto a nearby road.

The frequency at which that occurred during the course of the one-year study stunned researchers.

From May 2023 through April 2024, Beaufort experienced 26 days of flooding. Carolina Beach flooded 65 days.

And, “all the time” in Sea Level equated to 128 days of flooding. That’s one-third of the year, or once every three days.

“That was really shocking for me and I think for Miyuki too, just the sheer magnitude of flood days,” Anarde said.

It’s a reality in low-lying coastal areas where flooding is being driven more often by a combination of ingredients rather than large storm events.

The major ingredient, Hino said, is sea level rise. Rising seas strain storm drain systems and infrastructure designed decades ago when the ocean was much lower than it is today.

“And so while that highest tide 50 years ago, 100 years ago, might not have been high enough to get onto the road, now it is,” Hino said.

Sea level rise is exacerbating normal variations in water levels from tides and wind, which play a huge role in flood frequency.

If, for example, it rains on a day when a community’s storm drains are inundated with water from the tide, the rain that would normally drain into that system is pushed out across nearby roads.

But Mother Nature is not solely to blame.

Coastal areas have seen a population boom that has all but erased any semblance of what were once small fishing villages.

“Development definitely plays a role,” Anarde said. “Water has to have somewhere to go, and if the landscape is covered in impervious surfaces — roadways, buildings – then water is just going to sit on top of the road and on top of those impervious surfaces and create deeper, longer floods.”

Even in rural, low-lying areas that have fewer buildings and roads, water is not being absorbed into the ground at the rate it once was because sea level rise is elevating the groundwater table in the coastal plain.

One of the big motivations for installing the water level land sensors was to study how the different ingredients combine to cause flooding and, if you measure flooding from all of those sources, how the information gathered from those sensors compares to that taken from tide gauges.

Forecasters have widely relied on tide gauges to predict flood occurrences. The problem is, that is not what tide gauges are meant to do. And, there are many areas of the coast that are not close to a tide gauge, which are maintained by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

“They do a great job at what they’re supposed to be doing, which is measuring water levels in oceans and bays,” Hino said. “But we knew that they’re not designed to measure flooding and that some of the other forces that influence flooding, like rain and local infrastructure, weren’t being captured there and so we wanted to know how accurate those tide gauge-based indicators are and how well they match up against what people living there are experiencing day to day and year to year.”

Over the course of the past five years, 11 land sensors have been installed in coastal areas of the state.

The information these sensors provide can help guide a community’s plan for a future expected to be only further impacted by sea level rise.

“We get asked a lot about how to fix this problem of more recurrent, chronic flooding in coastal areas,” Hino said. “There are solutions to the problem. They’re going to be different from place to place and many of them are going to involve difficult choices and so having more input from the affect people into what those choices are is really important.”

Jeremy Hardison, Carolina Beach’s director of Community Development, said in an interview last month that the study has “definitely” been a benefit to the town.

“We’ve kind of monitored how much water was in the street before, but not in the storm drains where the water is actually coming up during high tide events,” he said. “I don’t know that we would have come up with flooding sensors within our storm drains to monitor how much water is in our drains. We want to continue planning and we want to do some implementation and try to see what we can do to mitigate the problem so we’re working in that direction.”

Just beyond a wooded area that marks Paws Place Dog Rescue’s east-facing property line, signs of neighbors to come dot the horizon.

Rooftops of two-story houses in various stages of construction peek over treetops in a new development cropping up on one side of the rescue’s land in Winnabow, an unincorporated area along U.S. Highway 17 in Brunswick County.

On a recent May afternoon, Paws Place President Lee VanOrmer looked in the direction from where the steady sounds of building filled the air and mustered up her best, glass-half-full shot of optimism.

“That’s more families that can come here and adopt dogs,” she said.

The reality is that the new neighborhood, like so much of the seemingly endless development occurring in Brunswick County, is not one welcomed by existing residents worried that too much building, too fast, is creating problems.

Here in North Carolina’s southernmost coastal county, it’s not uncommon to read local news stories about mounting traffic-related issues, concerns about flooding exacerbated by stormwater runoff and human run-ins with alligators being squeezed out of the once-secluded areas they prefer.

And, by all indications, development here is not going to slow down.

Years of building to come

Since June 1, 2015, the county has approved 123 developments that call for the construction of more than 45,900 housing units, according to information provided on Brunswick County Planning and Community Enforcement’s website.

Only 13 of those developments are 100% complete. Construction of residences in more than half – 75 to be exact – has not begun.

“It is so much,” Brunswick County resident Christie Marek said. “When I started this I didn’t realize how much I was getting into. It’s like the more you try to change something you learn that we’re several years behind homebuilders. It’s like they almost planned on this.”

Marek founded Brunswick County Conservation Partnership, a nonprofit born out of a coalition of residents concerned about their county’s future. The aim of the partnership is to protect Brunswick’s natural resources and advocate for “responsible” development.

That can look like any variety of measures, be it creating wider buffers between a new development and wetlands or adjacent properties, limiting clearcutting, or implementing stormwater mitigation plans to ultimately keep runoff from flowing into and polluting streams and rivers, Marek said.

Marek lives in Ash, a rural, largely agricultural, unincorporated area along N.C. Highway 130 that she refers to as “the country side of the beach.”

“We don’t have a lot of growth out here,” Marek said.

So, when builders asked the county to approve a sprawling, multiuse development of thousands of homes and commercial space next to her small family farm, she took notice.

County officials in March 2024 approved Ashton Farms, a development that will include more than 2,700 single-family lots, 200 townhome lots and a little more than 20 acres of commercial space.

Early this year, the county planning board approved the 645-acre King Tract, an 1,800-home development through farm and forestland adjacent to Ashton Farms.

Residents persistently raised concerns about potential impacts these developments may have on what equate to hundreds of acres of wetlands in the area.

Months before the King Tract was approved, Marek began asking county leaders to adopt a temporary building moratorium.

“I would love to see a moratorium to just halt development until we get a flood study done and wildlife study done,” she said.

Brunswick County commissioners in a split vote last fall turned down that idea.

The county later posted an explanation on its website that local governments are barred from adopting temporary building moratoria.

“State law provides little to no ability for local governments to issue temporary moratoria on development projects within their jurisdiction,” the website states. “This aspect of state law is important to keep in mind whenever the County receives questions or suggestions to put a moratorium on residential development due to reasons like amending the Unified Development Ordinance (UDO) or writing or updating plans.”

The website goes on to explain that proposed developments undergo “a thorough review process” and that impacts to infrastructure and water and wastewater systems are addressed before proposals go to the county planning board.

Several projects are either under construction or planned to expand capacity at wastewater treatment plants and the county has “dedicated significant time and resources” to updating its 20-year water and sewer master plans and five-year capital improvement plan, according to the county.

Brunswick County Conservation Partnership has applied for a $1 million grant to study the potential effects, including flooding, overdevelopment in the area may have on everything from wildlife to wetlands to trees.

But as the federal government guts grant programs, Marek said she’s not counting on those funds to come through. The partnership late last year launched an online donation campaign to raise funds to cover the cost of the study.

“It’s not that we want to stop all development,” Marek said. “It’s stopping irresponsible development and that’s what’s going on here.”

Wetter ground

There’s a patch of marsh on the grounds of where Paws Place Dog Rescue has operated the last eight years.

“We could count in the summer on it being dry,” VanOrmer said.

That’s no longer the case.

The kennel where dogs are housed in a sprawling building that sits at the end of a gravel road stretching hundreds of yards off N.C. Highway 87 is on 17 acres classified as being of minimal flood risk.

Yet, since the no-kill shelter opened in spring 2017, flooding and the threat of it has been on the uptick. VanOrmer is convinced that is due, at least in part, to encroaching development, despite assurances from officials that developers have to comply with the county’s stormwater management and discharge control ordinance.

Unprecedented rainfall from two coastal storms that swept the area within the span of less than a decade caused historic flooding.

Paws Place’s 7,000-square-foot building was inundated with 3 feet of water following Hurricane Florence’s record rainfall in September 2018.

U.S. National Guard troops were called in to help evacuate the kennel’s inhabitants at the time to dry ground at a local gas station.

Last September, Potential Tropical Cyclone Eight, more commonly referred to in these parts as the “unnamed storm,” dumped more than 20 inches of rain, destroying dozens of homes, washing out roads and causing millions of dollars in damages.

“We had water come up to the door and we used dog food to keep the water out,” VanOrmer said.

But the two people who rode out the storm at the kennel were trapped by floodwaters that cut off the entrance to the property.

The unnamed storm amplified to the rescue’s board of directors the need for an on-site storm shelter, one a quick walk from the kennel that, as of May 20, housed some 35 dogs.

The rescue had just enough money to pay a contractor to pour an elevated concrete slab that will be the base of the storm shelter.

Now the rescue is racing to raise enough money to finish the shelter, the ground level of which will house lawn equipment and a van. Walls of the second level, which will be climate controlled, will be lined with crates ready for dogs that get moved from the main building during storms.

“Really, the situation has become, we need an evacuation-type scenario,” VanOrmer said.

She said $95,000 in pledges have been made to the rescue, closing in on its $150,000 goal. VanOrmer said she hopes construction will begin in early June with the building being finished before September.

Next door, homes will likely continue to be erected in the new neighborhood of Saltgrass Landing, plans of which call for nearly 260 residences.

Another large housing development is planned adjacent the Paws Place property across Town Creek, which winds to the Cape Fear River.

“Unfortunately, we can’t seem to stop development,” VanOrmer said.

With eyes roughly the size of softballs, it may stand to reason that one of the largest mammals on Earth should have exceptionally sharp vision.

Humpback whales have some of the biggest eyes of any animal on the planet, or the oceans in which they migrate thousands upon thousands of miles during their lives.

But their journeys through open seas are done with limited vision, according to a newly published study conducted by researchers at the University of North Carolina Wilmington and Duke University.

These mammoth creatures have to be very close to an object in order to see it in fine detail, which explains why they are particularly vulnerable to getting tangled up in fishing gear.

“Humans have exceptionally high spatial resolution of vision by comparison to most animals,” said Dr. Lori Schweikert, an assistant professor of biology and marine biology at UNCW. “But what is surprising is the fact that whales have the structure of the eye to support even better vision, but they don’t have that.”

Using a specimen of a humpback whale eye archived more than a decade ago at UNCW’s Marine Mammal Stranding Program, researchers were able to measure a humpback whale’s vision at 3.95 cycles per degree, or CPD.

CPD measures the number of black-and-white line pairs that appear within 1 degree of space.

To grasp this measurement of sight, Schweikert gave this example: hold one arm straight out and put your thumb straight up. The width to your thumb is about 1 degree of your visual space. Human eyes can resolve about up to about 60 cycles per degree.

Most animals have low spatial resolution of vision. In animals, the larger the eye, the greater their spatial vision. But for humpback whales, “they are just way off the line,” Schweikert said. “Way off.”

What researchers found when they cut into the eye is that humpbacks have unusually thickened eye walls. Nearly half of the depth of the whale’s eye was filled with its own wall, shortening the distance from the center of the lens of the eye to the retina.

That distance is called focal length.

“The longer the focal length, the sharper the vision that’s possible,” Schweikert said.

Researchers also found that the cell density in humpback whale eye retina was exceptionally low. These cells send visual information to the brain.

Based on their calculation of 3.95 CPD, researchers then modeled how humpback whales might visually perceive things in their natural environment.

The reality is, their vision, or lack thereof, is suited to their environment.

Humpbacks prey on huge bait balls of fish or krill that silhouette against an open light field, or light that is projected directly into a space without being redirected. They have few predators – mainly orcas, or killer whales, false killer whales, and large sharks, particularly great whites. And, when a humpback whale searches for a mate, it can see a potential love match well enough from a distance.

So, humpbacks did not need to evolve with the ability to see fine-scale things, Schweikert said.

Where a humpback whales’ sight gets it into trouble, she said, is when it comes across a structure in the ocean that has more visual fine-scale information, such as a net or gillnet. One of the leading causes of humpback whale deaths is entanglement in fishing gear.

“In our modeling of how they might be able to resolve this detail in the environment is that, at roughly three to four body lengths away would be where they might be able to start resolving the structure of the net. Based on swimming speed, that only leaves them a few seconds to get out of the way,” Schweikert said.

This helps explain why humpback whales get entangled as frequently as they do.

Humpback whales live in every ocean on the planet. They have one of the longest migrations, with some populations swimming up to 5,000 miles, of any mammal on the planet.

In additional to entanglements, vessel strikes are also a leading cause of humpback whale deaths.

To figure out ways to try and mitigate such human impacts to humpback whale, more studies will need to occur.

“I think that understanding how animals will interact with things in their environment is certainly more complicated that any one study or even a mix of studies that would take in all their sensory abilities to detect what’s in their environment,” Schweikert said. “It’s one thing to know if an animal can see it, but it’s totally another thing to know how they will respond. It’s quite possible that they can see some of the threats in their environment, but behaviorally, they are just not making the decision early enough to move out of the way.”

This study could be considered in the larger puzzle of those types of considerations, she said.

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

This story has been updated to include comments from EMC Chair JD Solomon

Federal and state efforts to limit the public’s exposure to “forever chemicals” through drinking water sources seemed to be gaining traction just a year ago.

In a historic move in April 2024, the Environmental Protection Agency set limits on six per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances, or PFAS, including PFOA, PFOS and HFPO-DA, most commonly referred to as GenX.

About three months after the federal drinking water rules were adopted, North Carolina Department of Environmental Quality’s Division of Water Resources introduced proposed groundwater and surface water standards on eight PFAS.

Related: Zeldin says PFAS limits may get tougher, downplays layoffs

But, as of this week, the Trump administration says it intends to rescind and reexamine rules on four PFAS, including GenX, and extend the deadline for public water utilities to comply with rules on PFOA and PFOS by two years.

PFAS are a group of more than 14,000 chemicals used in everyday consumer products including food containers, stain-resistant carpet and water-repellant gear. These man-made chemical compounds are often referred to as “forever chemicals” because they are persistent in the environment and have been found to accumulate in people and animals. Exposure to these substances has been linked to weakened immune function, reproductive and developmental issues and increased risk of some cancers.

The EPA’s announcement Wednesday of its plans to scale back PFAS limits comes on the heels of a recent decision by members of the state-appointed commission responsible for adopting rules that protect, preserve and enhance air and water resources to again defer moving forward monitoring and minimization discharge plans for PFAS and 1,4-dioxane into the state’s surface waters.

Critics of those proposed plans argue the rules, as written, lack any real subsistence in reducing the releases of chemical compounds into the state’s waterways.

And in a new year with a new administration at the helm of the federal government, the impetus for regulation may turn up the pressure on state governments to limit discharges of “forever chemicals” into drinking water sources.

State Division of Water Resources officials were heading in that direction in July 2024 when they presented water quality standards for eight PFAS to committees of the N.C. Environmental Management Commission.

The standards would be used to limit permitted releases of PFAS into groundwater and surface waters, set health thresholds for providing alternative water supplies to residents on private wells whose drinking water exceeds contamination limits, and establish goals for cleaning contamination.

The commission’s groundwater and waste management committee agreed to recommend groundwater health standards for only three PFAS, including PFOA, PFOS and GenX. That proposal went to public comment later in the year.

The commission’s water quality committee deferred a motion to send the surface water rule package on all eight PFAS to the full commission and, since its July 2024 meeting, has also pared down its focus on PFAS to PFOA, PFOS and GenX.

Based on that committee’s vote earlier this month, the commission isn’t expected to see a proposed draft rule on PFAS or 1,4-dioxane earlier than its July meeting.

In an emailing responding to questions from Coastal Review on Thursday morning, EMC Chair JD Solomon said the commission anticipates receiving the hearing officer’s report on the proposed groundwater rules at that same meeting.

Draft rule ‘doesn’t have sufficient teeth’

The current proposed rules for surface water bear little semblance to those the Division of Water Resources presented last July.

The set of rule drafts presented to the water quality committee in March were largely written from input provided by the North Carolina Water Quality Association, a statewide organization that represents public water, sewer, and stormwater utilities.

The water quality standards included in the initial draft rules the division created last year have since been deleted. Without those standards, the state lacks ability to enforce limits on dischargers of PFAS and 1,4-dioxane, critics say.

One of those critics of the current proposed draft rules is Environmental Management Commissioner Robin Smith.

“I think that consistently there has been a concern that, in the absence of a water quality standard, even a minimization plan isn’t enforceable,” Smith told Coastal Review in a telephone interview earlier this week.

Following last week’s commission meeting, Smith raised several concerns in an email that she sent to fellow commissioners.

“My concern is that (the current draft rule) doesn’t have sufficient teeth,” she said. “If you read through the full draft, there’s just nothing there other than the minimization contents, like a table of contents for what the minimization plan would have to be. There are no standards for determining whether what a system submits in their plan is adequate or not.”

In his email, Solomon explained that the regulatory impact analysis, or RIA, which is an evaluation of the potential costs and benefits associated with a proposed regulation, did not sufficiently identify cost-benefits associated with the proposed rules.

Last September, the water quality committee voted to move forward with a proposed monitoring and minimization plan and “continue discussions with federal agencies to make sure the benefits portion of the numeric standard were realistic,” Solomon said.

“The monitoring and minimization approach is seen as a proactive measure by EPA because it addresses potential contamination before it gets into our human and natural systems communities,” he wrote. “Allowing potential contamination into our public water bodies and public sewer systems is also much more costly to clean up.”

But the proposed monitoring and minimization plan would fail to enforce consequences for industries if they increase their pollution, said Southern Environmental Law Center Attorney Hannah Nelson.

“DEQ worked really hard to put together a comprehensive set of water quality standards that would have required polluters to reduce their pollution at the source and they spent a lot of time putting those rules together,” she said. “We don’t see that same thing happening with this set of rules. Instead, the analysis supporting this rule making completely ignored impact to downstream drinking water utilities. They don’t address that because, if they did, we would see that this rule is all about protecting industry and it’s not about protecting the people of North Carolina.”

In an April 17 letter to state environmental officials, Cape Fear Public Utility Authority’s executive director admonished the revised draft rule for 1,4-dioxane.

“After months of research, our consultants determined, as a matter of law, that there is no legal basis by which to create mandatory, legally enforceable 1,4-dioxane minimization requirements without supporting water quality standards for surface waters,” wrote the utility’s Kenneth Waldroup in the letter addressed to Solomon and Division of Water Resources Director Richard Rogers.

“Given that the EMC determined many years ago that 1,4-dixoane adversely impacts the protected use of groundwater, we respectfully point out that the EMC neglects its statutory duty to protect surface waters from the same pollutant. Pollution mitigation plans that have no required or enforceable reduction targets will not garner any tangible results but instead be no more than an action in name only providing empty promises to the people of North Carolina,” the letter states.

There are six known 1,4-dioxane polluters upstream of the drinking water supply for Sanford, Fayetteville, Brunswick, New Hanover and Pender counties, and municipalities that buy drinking water from Sanford.

Waldroup has said that the utility will have to invest millions of dollars to remove 1,4-dioxane, a likely carcinogen, from its raw drinking water source: the Cape Fear River.

Cape Fear Public Utility Authority has already spent millions in upgrades and ongoing treatment of PFAS discharged into the Cape Fear River from, among other upstream polluters, Chemours’ Fayetteville Works plant.

GenX is specific to the Bladen County facility, which is roughly 74 miles upstream of Wilmington.

Since news broke nearly eight years ago that Chemours had knowingly discharged PFAS directly into the river, air and groundwater for decades, the company has spent millions to reduce its PFAS emissions to comply with a 2019 consent order between the company, DEQ and Cape Fear River Watch.

The Cape Fear utility and other public water utilities in the region are calling for regulations that would ultimately shift the cost of reducing PFAS and 1,4-dioxane discharges to the industries that produce those chemical compounds.

“We seek meaningful regulation that acknowledges and rewards the reductions made to date, prevents backsliding, and requires uncooperative industrial dischargers to mirror the work of dutiful municipal partners,” Waldroup wrote.

The Clean Water Act includes “anti-backsliding” provisions advocates say prohibits repealing or weakening the drinking water standard.

“Unfairly” blamed

Water quality committee members pointed the finger at Division of Water Resources staff as the reason for the latest delay in getting proposed rules out for public comment.

Smith, who is not a member of the water quality committee, took issue with that assertion, saying in her email that committee members were “unfairly blaming” division staff.

“DWR was not responsible for the fact that the Office of State Budget and Management (OSBM) did not approve the Regulatory Impact Analysis (RIAs) for these two sets of rules before the May EMC meeting,” she wrote.

Instead, “significant changes” to the rule drafts and the draft regulatory analyses that were presented to the committee in March “led directly to OSBM questions that delayed approval of the RIAs and remain unresolved.”

Changes to the draft rules were made at the direction of a group of commissioners, including the chair and vice chair of the water quality committee, chair of the groundwater and waste management committee, and Solomon. Solomon did not respond to an email request for comment.

During the water quality committee’s May 7 meeting, Rogers said staff had “been engaged in taking direction from a subcommittee of this committee” over the last month.

“We have taken that direction and applied it directly to the draft rules that y’all have before you today,” Rogers said.

Exactly which commissioners had been meeting with staff had not been made clear until the May 7 meeting, Smith told Coastal Review.

“It’s not necessarily inappropriate to have a subcommittee or a working group, a small group of EMC members who work on something between committee meetings, but one of my concerns about this process has been there’s never been any transparency about the fact that was going on and who was involved,” she said. “I do think we need to reach some common understanding of how we’re working on these rules, but that also clearly affects the public, and I’m also not sure we’re on a path toward making great progress in July, depending on how willing some of these water quality committee members are to making changes to satisfy OSBM.”

Solomon said that DEQ staff “asked for a more collaborative approach” with the commission for the monitoring and minimization draft rule.

“Coordination and communication with DEQ divisions is charged to the chair and vice-chair of the relevant EMC committee, and in this case the WQC chair and vice chair interacted with DWR to move this draft item onto the committee agenda for debate and discussion,” he said. “No action has been taken on the draft monitoring and minimization rule, or the RIA, by the WQC or the EMC. Based on OSBM’s response to the draft RIA, the benefits aspect of the draft rule is the primary issue. My direction as EMC chair is to bring the updated draft documents before the committee in July.”

North Carolinians whose raw drinking water sources are contaminated with chemical compounds will have to wait at least another two months before proposed rules establishing monitoring requirements for dischargers go out for public comment.

The North Carolina Environmental Management Commission’s Water Quality Committee unanimously voted earlier this week to wait to present to the full commission draft rules for monitoring and minimizing discharges of per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances, or PFAS, and 1,4-dioxane into the state’s surface waters.

Committee members said Wednesday that while they had hoped to present the draft rules to the commission this month, the N.C. Office of State Budget and Management, or OSBM, needs more time to review and approve regulatory impact analyses of those proposed rules. A regulatory impact analysis, or RIA, is an evaluation of the potential costs and benefits associated with a proposed regulation.

“Only yesterday morning did the department receive comments from OSBM on PFAS and didn’t receive anything yet on 1,4,” Committee Chair Steve Keen said Wednesday afternoon. “Though this was launched to the public through the (Department of Environmental Quality) website two weeks ago, nothing from OSBM until yesterday.”

Committee Vice Chair Michael Ellison alluded to staffing issues at DEQ as one possible reason for the lag in the proposed rules being ready.

“We have heard that some of the economic analysis required for an RIA has been impeded because the department lack sufficient staff trained in economics and that there has been an economist on maternity leave, all of which is fine and wonderful, but this has been going on for over a year,” Ellison said.

Ellison suggested the department turn to universities in the state for help.

“We have had presentation after presentation about the near ubiquitous nature of PFAS in our surface waters statewide and we know they’re there, but we really don’t know all the places that they’re coming from other than Chemours, and we don’t know what tools are available,” he said. “And this draft rule was a step, a critical step, toward this committee, and ultimately the full commission, developing a rule to protect the health and safety and environment of North Carolina and I would hope that the department takes this continuation and makes good use of the time before our next meeting and can get the RIA approved.”

The draft rule for monitoring and minimalizing PFAS targets three chemical compounds: PFOS, PFOA, which are classified as likely carcinogens, and GenX, a compound specific to Chemours Fayetteville Works plant in Bladen County.

The chemical manufacturing facility knowingly emitted GenX and a host of other PFAS into the environment, including the Cape Fear River, the ground and air for decades.

But it is hardly the only industrial polluter discharging such chemical compounds into the environment in North Carolina.

Hundreds of industries in the state pay wastewater treatment plants to take their industrial waste. Those treatment plants do not remove PFAS and 1,4-dioxane, which the Environmental Protection Agency also classifies as a likely carcinogen, before discharging their effluent into the environment, including waterways that are the raw drinking water sources for hundreds of thousands of residents.

Downstream drinking water utilities were notified one week ago that elevated levels of 1,4-dixoane had been discharged from the Asheboro Wastewater Treatment Plant into Hasketts Creek, which drains into the Deep River in the Cape Fear River Basin.

Cape Fear Public Utility Authority, Brunswick County, Fayetteville Public Works Commission and the city of Sandford were notified May 3 that the samples the plant collected April 25 from discharge detected a concentration of 826 parts per billion or ppb, according to a DEQ release. The state Division of Water Resources collected a sample that same day with results detecting a concentration of 730 ppb.

“DEQ, using EPA toxicity calculations for lifetime exposure, has determined that the average monthly 1,4-dioxane concentration protective of downstream water supplies is about 22 ppb for the Asheboro discharge,” the release states.

There is growing public outcry among residents, local governments and water utilities downstream of industrial polluters calling for state regulations to stop discharges at the source.

Critics of the proposed rules argue they do not require industries to reduce their PFAS discharges.

During the Water Quality Committee meeting, Keen said the initial game plan was “to create a narrative” on how the state can identify dischargers, what those dischargers are doing, and how they’re doing it, “and minimize it, if not get rid of it.”

“But the foundation was to start by monitoring and minimizing it,” he said. “That was the motion by this committee and that’s where we began officially. We want to get the right numbers for all of the river basins. We want to know what those are. Now, how do we do it? We have to go through OSBM. We have to get the regulatory impact analysis that has the fiscal note and a lot of things tied to it that’s going to give us answers.”

DEQ’s Division of Water Resources Director Richard Rogers reiterated that staff was under a tight deadline get the rules drafted.

“We will continue to work and hope we can continue to work cooperatively with the committee in this process,” he said.

In comments made early in the full commission’s Thursday meeting, Chair JD Solomon explained to the board that the draft rules were not ready to be put to a vote to go out for public comment because of the RIA.

“Regardless of what did last year or what we’re doing this year, we have to get the cost benefit right,” he said. “I will say everybody did work on it. It is what it is and we just have to resolve to come back in July with the fiscal notes in place and have those debates and whatnot.”

The full commission’s next scheduled meeting is July 10. Committees meet one day prior to the commission.

In an update to the Groundwater and Waste Management Committee on Wednesday morning, DEQ Environmental Program Analyst Jared Wilson said that more than 9,000 homes are expected to be added to those eligible for private water well testing for PFAS.

Well testing has expanded into 10 counties in the vicinity and downstream of Chemours’ plant.

“To date we have not found the edge of contamination,” Wilson said.

State Division of Waste Management Director Michael Scott told committee members that decades of air emissions of PFAS from the Chemours plant infiltrated the ground and migrated to private drinking water wells more than 30 miles away.

“How many plumes do you have in North Carolina that are 35 miles wide?” Solomon asked.

“One,” Scott answered.

Coastal towns and large homeowner associations representing beachfront properties now have the choice to install a controversial alternative to sand fencing on ocean-facing shores.

The North Carolina Coastal Resources Commission last week amended a rule to allow those entities to apply for a permit to place wheat straw bales on ocean shorelines as a means to protect and build up beachfront dunes.

The rule, which will now go to the state Rules Review Commission for final approval, limits the use of wheat straw bales to government organizations and HOAs with more than 1 mile of oceanfront shoreline.

Use of wheat hay bales is restricted to those groups until the state gains a better understanding of their impacts to wildlife, including sea turtles, shoreline environment, and their efficacy.

In a 7-5 vote in favor of the rule, some on the Coastal Resources Commission, or CRC, reiterated concerns that have been repeatedly raised in recent years by wildlife officials and environmental organizations.

Those groups, including the North Carolina Wildlife Resources Commission, N.C. Audubon, North Carolina Wildlife Federation and Southern Environmental Law Center, argue additional studies need to be done to understand the potential impacts of wheat straw bales to shoreline habitat and the animals that rely on that habitat.

“I just would like to say I think we’re opening ourselves up to a lawsuit,” Commissioner Lauren Salter said during the CRC’s April 30 meeting in Manteo. “I think Southern Environmental Law Center is going to definitely pursue it based on the comments that we received.”

The effectiveness of wheat straw bales on an oceanfront shore was initially tested as an alternative to wooden sand fencing in 2015 on Figure Eight Island, a privately owned island north of Wilmington.

The North Carolina Division of Coastal Management issued a Coastal Area Management Act permit to two properties to initial a pilot study on the New Hanover County island.

The bales eventually became covered with sand, but, within a few months, they were washed away in a storm, according to the division.

Wheat straw bales were not allowed on a North Carolina beach again until 2023, after Ocean Isle Beach officials requested approval to place them on a portion of the town’s oceanfront shore.

Ocean Isle Town Administrator Justin Whiteside reminded commissioners last week that the town made the request because sand fencing was hard to acquire in the months following the COVID-19 pandemic.

Town officials noted the pilot project on Figure Eight Island and wanted to mimic it, he said.

“It was successful in some areas,” on Ocean Isle, Whiteside said. “Then we did have a storm and some of it washed away. Others, it’s still covered up and, as far as I’m aware, it’s still there just all covered up with sand.”

Division officials have said they do not expect a significant uptick in the use of straw bales because they tend to cost more than traditional sand fencing and they would need to be replaced more frequently than fencing.

Coastal Resources Commissioner Jordan Hennessy last week said that his position on the rule amendment remained the same as those he had expressed during a previous meeting.

Hennessy questioned whether the rule, by omitting private property owners from being able to apply for a permit to install wheat straw bales, is constitutional.

“I’ll be voting against the rule because I don’t believe it’s constitutional,” he said.

The CRC’s legal counsel, Mary Lucasse, advised that the rule amendment is not unconstitutional.

“I don’t see anything unconstitutional that’s jumping out on me, and I don’t actually understand your argument, commissioner, as to why you think it’s unconstitutional,” she said. “We do a lot of rulemaking that focuses on situational things, and we sometimes try things, as we did with (wheelchair-accessible) mats, with local governments being able to do it first, and we have not drawn any challenges to that based on constitutionality or other things, and I don’t see an issue in that.”

Under the amended rule, wheat straw bales cannot impede public or emergency vehicle access or be installed in a manner that endangers nesting sea turtles, which is similar the sand fencing rule.

Installation of wheat straw bales will require consultation with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and the state Wildlife Resources Commission through permit application review. Ties or bindings on bales must be removed to reduce debris and the possibility of wildlife entanglement.

Straw bales will be limited to 10-foot-long sections, which is the same requirement for sand fencing, and can be no wider than 2 feet or higher than 3 feet. Bales can not be more than 10 feet waterward of the first line of stable, natural vegetation, erosion scarp or toe of a frontal dune.

Sections of straw bales, sand fencing, or Christmas trees, which may also be used to trap sand, must be spaced 7 feet apart. Nonfunctioning, damaged bales or stakes that have moved from their alignment must be repaired or removed from the shore.

It won’t be long before baby fawns are born into the white-tailed deer herd on Bald Head Island.

In the weeks between May and June, the Brunswick County island’s deer population will most certainly rise as pregnant does give birth this spring. By how much? No one can be certain.

The latest white-tailed survey on the island estimates the population at 221 deer. That number has crept up and over the island’s target population, one determined to be “healthy” for white-tail, habitat and people on the island.

On land where deer have no major predators, hunting is not allowed, and the habitat serves up a lush buffet of plants, saplings and grasses. Nature cannot be depended on to manage the herd.

Five years have passed since the last round of contraception was administered to a number of female deer on the island and, as evidenced by the rise in white-tail there, the drug appears to be wearing off. And more years have lapsed since the island last contracted a company to thin the deer population through a process called culling, which is selective hunting.

Now village officials are once again faced with balancing the deer population through a means, and budget, island residents will approve.

Dr. Chris DePerno, a North Carolina State University professor and wildlife biologist whose expertise includes population ecology and management, works with local governments in other states that manage deer populations each year through culling.

He recently met via the web with the village council to discuss their options.

From a management standpoint, DePerno said, 100 to 120 deer seems a reasonable number of white-tail on the island.

“Understand that deer are reproductively efficient,” DePerno said during the council’s April 11 meeting. “They’re good at it and as soon as you’re down to the 120, the next reproductive season, you’re going to be over that. So, I always recommend going a little bit heavier on any culls than you think you might want.”

Even if the decision is made to go with immunocontraception, it will be necessary to cull between 75 and 100 deer early next year to bring down the number of white-tail on the island, village officials say.

Culling was introduced on the island in the early 2000s, when the deer population tipped into the 300s. Annual culls occurred on and off from 2003 on, before a grassroots organization introduced the idea of a nonlethal means of management to the Bald Head Island Conservancy.

One of the roles of the nonprofit, which sponsors and facilitates scientific research, is to oversee and administer deer management projects on the island. The conservancy does not advise the village on which management methods it should choose.

In 2014, the village introduced immunocontraception as a means of managing the island’s deer population, a move that kicked off what became a research study of sorts in testing the efficacy of the federally-approved drug in a wild deer population.

Immunocontraception is labor-intensive and costly management method at about $4,000 a deer.

After a female deer is successfully hit with a tranquilizer dart, she’s given a health check and a sample of her blood is collected before she is injected with the contraception. She’s then tagged and fitted with a tracking collar.

The process takes about an hour from start to finish, “if everything goes according to plan,” Dr. Beth Darrow, chief scientist with the Bald Head Island Conservancy, said in a telephone interview. “They might be able to get maybe three deer in a night if everything goes well and they find their target deer.”

Each female needs two injections, one initial shot and one the following year.

“If everything went according to plan and the deer got both doses, it was 86% effective at preventing pregnancy in the next year,” Darrow said.

That percentage can increase, she said, but the question is how long will the drug last.

“We know basically now that it’s been five years since any deer has had any (injection) and we’ve seen a lot of deer who’ve had it previously with fawns. So, we’re pretty sure that it’s almost completely inactive five years later,” Darrow said.

Does can birth one to two, and in rare cases, three fawns a year. And, they have the potential to have twins.

“If you put those two together, it’s like each mom is more than replacing herself,” Darrow said. “If she survives, then it’s kind of an exponential population growth.”

And Bald Head Island has ideal habitat for deer. The Bald Head Island Club golf course offers acres of nice, healthy grass. There’s the oceanfront dune environment as well as the many “edge” environments throughout the island.

“We have transitions from forest to dunes and forest to marsh and we’ve seen (deer) in all of these areas and using all these areas and eating plants in all these areas,” Darrow said. “So, I do think it’s possible that Bald Head Island can support a higher density of deer in a healthy way than other places might. I think it is very healthy habitat for them.”

That being said, the island also has dozens of acres of sensitive, rare maritime forest that must be protected “from getting mowed down by a hungry deer population,” she said.

The conservancy is in the process of surveying the forest to try and determine whether the deer population is damaging that habitat. Darrow said they hope to conduct a study beginning next year with a forest expert from N.C. State.

In the meantime, village officials are expected to continue discussing deer management at the council’s May 16 meeting.

DePerno told village council members earlier this month that he understands they are “trying to walk the line between doing a cull” and immunocontraception.

“I think you’re trying to make everyone happy and I appreciate that and I’m not being negative,” he said. “I’m just telling you that, in my experience with the communities I’ve worked with, they take on this fight relating to culling and, once they battle it and it becomes a norm within the community, they don’t have these types of discussions. They just remove 40 individuals every year or 50 individuals every year and that helps your budget. It helps your discussions and deer management because it’s consistent.”

Should village officials decide to use immunocontraception to manage the island’s deer population, that would not take place until the next budget, which kicks off July 1, 2026.

Not much has changed in the saga surrounding shellfish farming in coastal waters of Onslow and Pender counties.

That was made clear during a public hearing Tuesday night in the little town of Holly Ridge in Onslow County, where Topsail Island-area residents and aquaculture farmers took turns speaking about the prospect of more shellfish leases in the area.

Perhaps the one consensus among those who oppose additional leases and those who hope to raise shellfish in them is that they are where they are because new leases are not allowed in waters of neighboring coastal counties to their north and south.

Shellfish moratoriums in waters from Cedar Island south to Brunswick County have essentially funneled growers to waters around Topsail Island, prompting what has become an unceasing push to get the state to pump the brakes on new leases in Onslow and Pender counties.

Within the span of one week, the North Carolina Division of Marine Fisheries held two public hearings – one in Pender, the other in Onslow – on lease applications for shellfish farms that would collectively take up more than 30 acres.

That’s more than double the total acreage of shellfish leases in nearby New Hanover County, Topsail Beach resident Tate Tucker said during the Tuesday night hearing, where he reiterated comments he had made at a public hearing in Pender County the previous week.

“Like I said last week, say this whole Eastern Seaboard of oysters is a boat. We’re the hole in the boat, right? And they’re filling it just as fast as they can with leases, as much as they can. I don’t think we can keep going like this if we don’t have an organized plan. If we don’t fill that hole, the boat’s going to sink,” Tucker said.

The Topsail Island Shoreline Protection Commission, or TISPC, which is composed of elected officials from each of the island’s three towns — Topsail Beach, Surf City and North Topsail Beach — has since last year called for a temporary moratorium on new shellfish leases. County officials in Onslow and Pender have made the same request.

“As a commission, we have become increasingly concerned about conflicts between shellfish leases and other uses of our natural resource waters that include commercial and recreational fishing, boating, kayaking and other coastal land and water uses, not to mention the potential impacts on property values and esthetics,” TISPC Chair William Snyder said.

On April 10, Rep. Carson Smith, R-Pender, introduced legislation that would require a statewide study on shellfish leasing and the current lease moratoriums.

Under House Bill 841, the North Carolina General Assembly-created North Carolina Policy Collaboratory would evaluate everything from existing leases and the history and reason for current permanent and temporary moratoriums to economic impacts of shellfish aquaculture expansion on coastal economies and tourism, and the different potential environmental impacts of bottom leases and water column leases.

A final report of the study would be due to legislators by May 1, 2026.

Chris Matteo, acting president of the North Carolina Shellfish Growers Association and East Coast Shellfish Growers Association vice president, said Tuesday that the legislation “thankfully” does not call for a moratorium in Onslow and Pender counties.

He also said the measure is unlikely to pass.

“There’s been plenty of impact studies done over the course of time and, quite frankly, this area may be relatively new to intensive aquaculture, but the rest of the East Coast and West Coast of this country, it’s been in play for a very long time and the positive impacts are irrefutable,” Matteo said.

As he had in previous public hearings, Matteo suggested that residents and local leaders ask state elected officials to lift moratoriums on shellfish leases in other coastal counties.

He rebutted comments made by others who spoke at the hearing that shellfish farms negatively affect property values.

Nelson Bullock, who started Gator Bay Oyster Co. with his wife, mirrored sentiments of other shellfish lease applicants who argue shellfish farming is beneficial to the environment.

The Bullocks have applied for a 3.82-acre shellfish bottom and water column lease in Onslow County’s Ellis Cove.

“I’ve been involved in oyster farming for over 14 years now and have witnessed firsthand all the positive impacts of shellfish aquaculture on both the environment and our communities,” Bullock said. “Oysters naturally filter and clean the water. They create habitat and they also help stabilize the shoreline. Shellfish farming is one of the most sustainable forms of aquaculture offering significant ecological and economic benefits.”

Bullock said he was committed “to being a good neighbor in the water.”

John Eynon, owner of Big Cypress Mariculture, said he understands concerns raised by some local fishermen, who argue leases impede access to fishing spots around the island.

“I’m more than happy to talk with people and try to figure out how I can mitigate whatever those impacts might be, whether it’s by using certain gear types, positioning these gear in certain places, orienting in a certain way,” Eynon said.

He has applied for a 2.73-acre bottom and water column lease in Sneads Creek, a location he said he picked because it is “tucked away.”

“It’s not a navigational hazard,” he said. “It’s not impacting anyone’s views, which I know have been issues with other lease proposals.”

TISPC Vice Chair Larry Strother, who also chairs North Topsail Beach’s Beach, Inlet and Sound Advisory Committee, reiterated that the concern raised by the island towns is that more studies need to be done before additional leases are permitted.

“There are some leases that are going to affect the recreational activity, the fishing and everything else that takes place around the island, which is what we provide when we represent the recreation part of our beach,” he said. “We just want to make sure that our recreational activities and our fishing that’s been going on for all these years is going to be able to continue and cohabitate with the leases. We’re not opposed to shellfish leasing. We are opposed to not having it studied.”

Marvin Nelson routinely takes the state commuter ferry across the Neuse River with whatever scrap metal he’s gathered up to cash in at the recycling center closest to his Arapahoe home.

The 72-year-old hops the Cherry Branch-Minnesott ferry, a roughly 15-minute ride one-way, once or twice a day to get to Foss Recycling in Havelock.

For Nelson, scrapping is a source of income, wages he says will take a hit if he can no longer take the ferry for free.

That’s a prospect he faces after the North Carolina Senate last week approved its proposed $66 million budget, one that includes tacking on tolls for all North Carolina Department of Transportation ferry routes and raising rates at those where tolls already exist.

“That has got people around here all shook up,” Nelson said.

And it has drawn the immediate rebuke of local government officials representing the areas in which these ferries are operated.

“We here consider (the ferry) incorporated into the taxes that we have already paid every single year,” said Pamlico County Commissioner Ken Heath. “That’s the way it’s been since the early ’70s is that our tax money has gone to support all the highways in North Carolina, including our highway that stretches across the river, which is exactly what the ferry is. It’s our highway. We see that as a shared cost across the state.”

But some lawmakers, including Republican Sen. Vickie Sawyer of Mooresville, argue that the revenue the additional tolls would generate is needed to bolster state transportation department funds.

“In an era when we are fighting for every dollar we can for all types of transportation, collecting revenue from tourists using our ferries is a logical step,” Sawyer, co-chair of the Senate appropriations committee for transportation, told the Raleigh News & Observer last week.

And while well over half of Ocracoke-Hatteras ferry riders are tourists, locals depend on ferry service to access things like medical specialists and other services not available on Ocracoke, island resident Randal Mathews said.

The Hyde County commissioner was riding the Ocracoke-Hatteras ferry, returning from a dental appointment, when he was reached by telephone last Wednesday.

“It’s typical of what people of Ocracoke have to do,” he said. “We have to travel. I ride (this ferry) all the time. We can’t pay $40 round-trip for every trip to Hatteras.”

In a text he sent Coastal Review the day following the telephone interview, Mathews reiterated that ferry tolls “will create hardship for all residents.”

“I’m afraid the vendor that removes our solid waste will not serve us after a toll is added,” he said. “Any politician who supports tolling to Ocracoke is making a terrible mistake and is certainly not interested in economic development in eastern North Carolina.”

Under the Senate proposal, vehicles less than 20 feet long would be charged $20. The toll for larger vehicles would be $40 and passengers would be charged $1.

NCDOT would charge vehicles that provide commercial goods and services an annual fee of $150, which would cover priority boarding. Commuters would be charged the same $150 annual fee for a commuter boarding pass. “Only one annual pass per vehicle shall be issued per year,” the budget states.

That would apply to all four car ferries that are currently free, including the Cherry Branch-Minnesott and Aurora-Bayview ferries, whose users are largely commuters — workers at Marine Corps Air Station Cherry Point and employees of the Nutrien phosphate mine in Aurora.

“We have one ferry that goes from Pamlico to Craven (counties) and it’s used by a lot of people who work at Cherry Point, which is obviously a major employer of our county and so, without question, we are not in favor of tolls on the ferry,” Craven County Commissioner Chair Denny Bucher said. “Our DOT highways, the people don’t pay to ride on the highways, except for one spot in the Raleigh area, but they don’t pay to drive on highways and I don’t think they should have to pay to cross a river that happens to be between them and their employment.”

Vehicles 20 feet and under would be charged $5 to ride the Cherry Branch-Minnesott ferry. The price would double for vehicles greater than 20 feet.

The toll for the Aurora-Bayview ferry across the Pamlico River would be slightly less, with vehicles 20 feet or less paying $3, and those over 20 feet paying $6. Passenger riders would be charged $1.

Riders of the now-free-of-charge Currituck-Knotts Island ferry across the Currituck Sound would be charged $3 for vehicles 20 feet or shorter and double that for longer vehicles. Passengers would be a $1 toll.

Fees would double for riders of the Ocracoke Express, the passenger-only ferry, to $15 per person, and for riders of the Cedar Island-Ocracoke and Swan Quarter-Ocracoke ferries across the Pamlico Sound to $30 for vehicles 20 feet and under and $60 for those over 20 feet. Passengers would be charged $2.

Those who pay a vehicle toll would not be required to pay separate passenger tolls for occupants of that vehicle.

The Senate also proposes increasing tolls on the ferry that runs between Fort Fisher and Southport across the Cape Fear River to $10 for vehicles 20 or less, $20 for longer vehicles, and $2 for passengers.

History repeating

Heath said that, though he was led to believe the issue of ferry tolls would not be forthcoming this year, he is not surprised.

Tolling all ferry systems has been an on-again, off-again discussion stretching back to 2011. Since then, including the latest round of ferry toll talks in 2023, local outcry has halted further implementation of toll fees.

“Our population is nowhere near that of Goldsboro-west, and those areas can attract industry due to the large population,” Heath said. “We’re very sparse here so you’re penalizing us and what little bit of economic positives come out of the ferry. There’s a slight attraction for people to come ride, but it’s minor. For our area, tolls will kill that. It’s a negative for us all the way around. Everybody is pulling together and digging in to fight this till it’s taken off.”

Rep. Keith Kidwell, the Republican representing District 79, which includes Pamlico, Hyde, Beaufort and Dare counties, said in an email that he will fight ferry tolls.

“I will again work against ferry tolls,” he said. “Unless of course they want to toll all bridges that cross water in NC.”

Rep. John Torbett, a Republican from Gaston County, also spoke in opposition of the proposed tolls.

“Dear Eastern and all NC friends. Once again the Senate Transportation leaders intend to toll all ferries,” he recently posted on X, the social media platform formerly known as Twitter. “This will cost North Carolinians who have to use the ferries to go to school, work, doctor, pretty much anywhere. The revenue/tax/user fee is not enough to cover much of anything, and it is not worth it for North Carolinians. Standard revenue sources are enough to cover cost.”

Sen. Norm Sanderson, R-Pamlico and also a representative of Carteret, Chowan, Dare, Hyde, Pasquotank, Perquimans and Washington counties, co-sponsored the budget bill. He did not respond to a request for comment.

Sen. Bobby Hanig, R-Currituck, voted against the budget. He did not respond to a request for comment.

“An important link’

A 2020 analysis by North Carolina State University’s Institute for Transportation Research and Education found that North Carolina’s ferry system facilitates more than $735 million in gross business sales and generates more than $32 million in tax revenue.

The ferry system also provides to passengers vehicle cost savings of $18.1 million, $13.9 million in travel time benefits, and $8.3 million in safety benefits, according to the report.

“Furthermore, based on responses collected by the research team, the N.C. Ferry system is an important link connecting residents to work, medical, school, shopping and other destinations on the coast. Ultimately, the N.C. Ferry System is a source of job creation, local revenue and tax creation that benefits the coast and the state. It provides economic and quality-of-life benefits for its ferry passengers accessing communities along the state’s extensive coastline.”

Ferry tolls would “take a lot out of my profit,” Nelson said. Driving his old pickup truck on the all-road alternative route would cost him more gas and time.

“Good gracious in the morning, it would take me half-an-hour to go around to Havelock,” he said.

The chemical manufacturing company that has publicly touted its products, business strategies and chemistries in ad campaigns aimed at polishing its image will further harm North Carolinians if it is successful in keeping thousands of pages of documents sealed in court, environmental organizations argue.

The Southern Environmental Law Center on Monday filed a court motion to intervene in a case brought against Chemours and its predecessor company DuPont, attorneys for which have asked the court to keep up to 21,000 pages of documents under seal.

Those documents, SELC argues in its motion, “will help communities understand the harm the facility has caused, and will continue to cause, to their own health, their property values, and even the lives of future generations.”

The motion was filed on behalf of Cape Fear River Watch, the North Carolina Coastal Federation, which publishes Coastal Review, and the Environmental Justice Community Action Network in U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of North Carolina.

In February, attorneys for Chemours and DuPont requested the court keep from public view what they say are mostly internal communications between company employees about “non-public facts” that pertain, in part, to chemical production and is therefore “competitively sensitive.”

An attorney with Brooks Pierce Law Firm, which represents public utilities and local governments downstream of Chemours’ Bladen County plant, told Coastal Review last month that many of the documents in question are already on public record.

Brooks Pierce was expected on Monday to respond to the companies’ motion to keep the documents under seal. A lawyer with the firm did not respond to a request for comment by the time of this publication.

Cape Fear Public Utility Authority, Brunswick County, Lower Cape Fear Water & Sewer Authority and Wrightsville Beach in October 2017 sued the companies to recover costs and damages associated with Fayetteville Works’ plant’s discharges of per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances, or PFAS, for decades into the Cape Fear River, the drinking water supply for tens of thousands of residents in the region.

PFAS are a group of more than 14,000 chemicals used in everyday consumer products including food containers, stain-resistant carpet and water-repellant gear. These human-made chemical compounds are persistent in the environment and have been found to accumulate in people and animals. Exposure to these substances has been linked to weakened immune function, reproductive and developmental issues and increased risk of some cancers.

“After intentionally hiding their toxic PFAS pollution for decades, Chemours and DuPont now want to conceal essential information that directly affects the lives of half-a-million people,” SELC Senior Attorney Jean Zhuang said in a release Monday. “And Chemours has the audacity to try to hide thousands of pages of information as the company plans to expand its PFAS manufacturing operations. After defiling these communities’ drinking water, air, soil and food for years, Chemours has no right to hide information about its toxic pollution yet ask the public to trust that it won’t harm North Carolina families again.”

In 2022, five years after the public first learned that Chemours had been knowingly discharging PFAS directly into the Cape Fear River for decades, the company announced plans to expand its monomers and Nafion production facilities at the Fayetteville Works plant.

As part of a 2019 consent order with the North Carolina Department of Environmental Quality and Cape Fear River Watch, Chemours has taken steps to reduce its emissions of PFAS into the Cape Fear, the ground and the air. That agreement also deems the company responsible for overseeing the testing of thousands of private water wells in the region and providing a means of uncontaminated drinking water to households with private wells that contain elevated levels of PFAS.

But the brunt of costs associated with removing PFAS from raw water sources ultimately falls on the downstream public utilities that provide drinking water to thousands of customers in the region, including Brunswick, New Hanover and Pender counties.

“The fact that Chemours and DuPont are trying to hide from the public eye 20,000 pages of documents about their companies’ facility and its pollution is almost comically transparent, if it weren’t so dangerous and sinister; and this attempt, in and of itself, should be considered profound proof that this information needs to see the light of day, especially considering Chemours is actively seeking to expand PFAS production at the site,” Cape Fear River Watch Executive Director Dana Sargent said in an email.

Coastal Federation Executive Director Braxton Davis said the public, “which has suffered the effects of this pollution, has a right to review documents that may shed more light on the scope and scale of contamination and the company’s response.”

In its motion to intervene, the SELC lists several categories of documents Chemours and DuPont want to keep under seal, including research into toxicological data, communications about product safety and toxicity studies, environmental assessment and toxicology research, and a list of chemical compounds associated with the Bladen County plant.

“The companies’ own motion admits that the documents are littered with information on Chemours’ and DuPont’s PFAS pollution, sampling data, air and wastewater treatment options, toxicology and health impacts associated with PFAS, environmental and human health concerns, and the public’s exposure to their toxic chemicals,” the motion states. “These and other documents are necessary for the public to understand the impacts to their own health and property values and the potential for subsequent harm from the companies’ past, current, and future air, water, and soil pollution.”

The motion goes on to say that the public “has access to many of the categories of information in the companies’ documents – in large part because the companies have touted their PFAS chemistries, products, and business strategies in public forums as a means of broadcasting their goodwill.”

Late last month, Clean Cape Fear posted an online petition for members of the community to sign in support of unsealing the documents. As of Monday afternoon, more than 1,700 signatures had been collected.

This is not a story about the relief President Donald Trump’s sweeping tariffs are anticipated to give America’s shrimpers.

Yes, shrimpers were cheering Trump’s decision to slap double-digit rates on dozens of countries earlier this week in what they hail as a move that will level prices of domestic shrimp squeezed out of a market flooded by imports.

Shortly after the White House on Wednesday afternoon abruptly paused the tariffs that had gone into effect some 12 hours earlier, and lowering them to 10% on goods for 90 days – minus those from China – the Southern Shrimp Alliance released a statement reiterating its support for tariffs.

“It is encouraging that the Trump Administration’s tariffs have prompted countries to show a new willingness to address trade policies disadvantaging American producers,” Southern Shrimp Alliance Executive Director John Williams stated. “We want to compete in a market where competitors cannot use intolerable practices like forced labor and banned antibiotics to undercut us. For shrimpers, tariffs respond to an urgent need to offset unfair trade.”

And while shrimpers say that will be the case, that’s not where they want their message to end.

Their story goes beyond the call for fair trade. It’s one that entails America’s overseas subsidies of foreign shrimp production and buyer beware warnings that domestic shrimpers say should be, but are not, conveyed to consumers of America’s favorite seafood.

“Ultimately, we’ve gotten sold out by our government because they’ve backed or funded these aquaculture programs in Southeast Asia and South American for more than 30 years,” said Craig Reaves, a member of the Southern Shrimp Alliance’s board of directors and owner of CJ Seafood and Sea Eagle Seafood and Good Eats in Beaufort, South Carolina. “For 40, 50 years, they’ve been developing aquaculture overseas and whether it’s through the World Bank or whether it’s direct grants or subsidies from the United States, we created the monster that is the imported shrimp and imported seafood industry.”

Over the past decade, the U.S. Treasury has supported more than 70 shrimp and aquaculture development projects through international financial institutions, according to the Southern Shrimp Alliance. Billions in funding has flowed largely to India and Ecuador, the group said.

As a result, imports have overwhelmed inventories of shrimp in the U.S., driving market prices for domestic-caught shrimp to record lows.

Shrimpers who have survived have done so because they’ve largely turned to local markets to move their product, many selling directly from the dock to customers eager for fresh-caught shrimp.

“Without that we certainly would not be able to shrimp anymore fulltime as a career,” said Monica Smith. “If we did not sell directly to the consumers and build that clientele over the last, you know, 20 years then we wouldn’t be able to do it.”

Smith runs Miss Gina’s Seafood in Beaufort, the waters of which her father-in-law, now in his 90s, and husband, Thomas, have shrimped for decades.

There was a time when the father-son pair sold the shrimp they caught to fish houses, a standard practice through the 1980s and 1990s.

But that began to change some time around the mid-2000s, Smith said. That’s when shrimpers saw what she describes as a “drastic increase” in imported shrimp inundate the market, driving down the price for domestic shrimp and crowding out space at processing facilities.

In 2021, roughly 2 billion pounds of imported shrimp products valuing $8 billion flowed into the United States, according to the Southern Shrimp Alliance.

An estimated 94% of the volume of shrimp consumed in America comes from foreign nations, according to the U.S. International Trade Commission, or USITC.

Southern Shrimp Alliance says that more than 90% of that came in last year from India, Ecuador, Indonesia, and Vietnam, all of which impose tariff and tax rates of between 13% and 45% on shrimp caught and farmed in the U.S.

In October 2023, the American Shrimp Processors Association, or ASPA, filed anti-dumping petitions on frozen warmwater shrimp from Ecuador and Indonesia. Dumping is the import of goods below normal value.

The group also filed countervailing duty petitions, or import taxes created to offset an exporting country’s subsidies, on frozen warmwater shrimp from Ecuador, India, Indonesia, and Vietnam.

A year later, in November 2024, the USITC affirmed that the U.S. shrimp industry was materially injured from frozen warmwater shrimp imports from Indonesia and that the Department of Commerce determined shrimp from Ecuador, India and Vietnam were being sold at less than fair value.

The Commerce Department issued countervailing duty orders on frozen warmwater shrimp imports from those three countries and an antidumping duty order on imports from Indonesia.

Last month, congressional representatives, including North Carolina Republican Rep. Greg Murphy, reintroduced bipartisan legislation that would halt federal funds from going to international financial institutions to finance foreign shrimp farms.

A house bill known as the Save Our Shrimpers Act, was referred March 11 to the House Committee on Financial Services.

During the past decade, the U.S. Treasury has agreed to support more than 70 shrimp and aquaculture development projects through international financial institutions, according to Southern Shrimp Alliance.

“And those imports come in here, they sell them at a lower price because they’re using cheap labor, forced labor, sometimes child labor, and they’re full of antibiotics,” said Nancy Edens, president of B.F. Millis & Sons Seafood in Sneads Ferry. “There is a big difference in what we catch here in the ocean, Pamlico Sound, New River, than what you would get in a restaurant that serves imported shrimp.”

The Department of Labor added the largest supplier of shrimp to the United States, India, to its 2024 List of Goods Produced with Child and Forced Labor.

The Ocean Outlaw Project, as well as an Associated Press investigative report, highlighted those labor practices. The Ocean Outlaw Project also found that shrimp directed to the U.S. market were contaminated with antibiotics the American government has banned for use in shrimp.

“I think we’re going to always have imported seafood so I would like to see our government stop subsidizing these other countries and let them stand, rise, or fall on their own merit,” Reaves said. “We just want a fair shot. Tariffs, to me, it’s an immediate help, but it’s not a long-term fix because you can negotiate. I think you have to seize the moment while everybody’s talking about the things that’s even more important, which is raising awareness of how bad the imported seafood is and how the government knows that it’s bad.”

Topsail Island leaders are unwavering in their pursuit of stopping new leases of shellfish farms in the waters around them.

Months have passed since the island’s three towns — North Topsail Beach, Surf City and Topsail Beach — and their respective counties banded together to ask state legislators for a moratorium on new shellfish leases in Onslow and Pender’s coastal waterways.

“Of course, we all support aquaculture,” North Topsail Beach Alderman Mike Benson said during a recent town board meeting.

But the rising number of leases, fueled because of moratoriums in surrounding coastal counties, has led to what local leaders say amount to mounting conflicts between recreational uses of public waters and shellfish leases that restrict access to those waters.

Prohibiting all new shellfish leases across Onslow and Pender counties could be detrimental to the state’s growing shellfish industry, one that reportedly boasts an economic impact of $30 million annually in North Carolina.

“This industry is a particularly bright spot for North Carolina in that farming clams and oysters is quite sustainable environmentally,” said Dr. Jane Harrison, a coastal economics specialist with North Carolina Sea Grant. “We’ve seen a huge uptick in production numbers from farming oysters, in particular, over the last decade and we don’t want to lose that momentum.”

North Carolina Sea Grant and the North Carolina Coastal Federation have teamed up in hopes of launching a plan that would result in the creation of a Geographic Information System, or GIS, database that pinpoints areas where leases may or may not be suitable in the waterways behind the 26-mile-long island.

That database would be built by a GIS specialist from North Carolina State University using feedback the organizations aim to get from different focus groups made up of users of those waters, be it shellfish farmers, fishing guides, recreational fishers, or island waterfront property owners.

“We want to bring together many different voices to gather their perspectives and then put their information, their interest, into that GIS database,” Harrison said.

Sea Grant and the Coastal Federation, which publishes Coastal Review, have applied for a grant through the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s National Sea Grant Office to fund the plan.

If awarded the grant, the plan would kick off around September, when the GIS specialist would gather existing data, including information from the University of North Carolina Wilmington’s Shellfish Lease Siting Tool, to work up a baseline of information that will be presented to focus groups. UNCW’s interactive tool assesses coastal conditions in the state to help shellfish growers locate new or expand current operations.

There would be three focus groups: one consisting of shellfish growers in Pender and Onslow counties, one that includes recreational water users and waterfront property owners in Onslow County, and one that includes those groups in Pender County.

Those groups would be initially separated out “because we want folks to feel like they can fully share whatever their concerns or needs are and we don’t want to create an environment of conflict,” Harrison said. “We just want spaces where people can give us every piece of information they have and then we will digest it, compile it, and then have some community conversations.”

Feedback from those conversations would be gathered and used to create a draft resource use agreement and guidelines for equal water access in partnership with the North Carolina Division of Marine Fisheries.

Once finalized, that resource use agreement and guidelines would be published to the public, where it could be used in other coastal regions in not only North Carolina, but other states.

The proposal has gained traction with local officials. The Topsail Island Shoreline Protection Commission, or TISPC, and the counties, has signaled its support for the plan, Harrison said. The commission is made up of elected officials and local government appointees from the island’s three towns.

In an April 2 letter to the Division of Marine Fisheries, North Topsail Beach highlighted the plan as “another justification for a pause” on new shellfish leases.

“A temporary pause would allow us to evaluate the current situation, develop comprehensive management strategies, and ensure that future growth in the shellfish industry is balanced with the needs of our community and the environment,” the letter states.

The North Topsail Beach Board of Aldermen unanimously agreed to send the letter to the division ahead of its April 22 public hearing on six new proposed shellfish leases in Onslow County.

The hearing is scheduled to be held in person at 6 p.m. at the Holly Ridge Community Center and virtually via Webex.

That hearing will follow one on two proposed shellfish leases in Pender County scheduled for 6 p.m. April 15 at Topsail Beach Town Hall, 820 S. Anderson Blvd., and virtually via Webex.

During the April 2 meeting of North Topsail’s town board, Alderman Benson said the consensus of the island’s shoreline protection commission is that the towns and counties continue their request for a moratorium.

A proposed draft bill for a moratorium was not introduced in either the state Senate by its March 25 deadline or the House as of publication of this report. The deadline for the House was extended to April 10. 

“There are 111 leases in Onslow County,” Beson said. “We have 647 acres of land in those 111 leases.”

North Topsail Beach and the northernmost portion of Surf City are in Onslow County.

There are opportunities to identify areas within the waterways of the island that are “truly not well served by shellfish aquaculture,” Harrison said.

“There may be special fishing spots that the charter captains want to make sure they have access to,” she said. “There may be viewsheds that are very important to local residents. We have a lot of successful entrepreneurs in shellfish aquaculture in these two counties and shellfish aquaculture produces seafood that many of us like to eat. At the end of the day, it may be that the industry in Pender and Onslow counties can’t grow at the rate it has been. There might be a need for it to be less expansive because of existing leases and farms. But what I want to steer us away from is just a blanket prohibition, as if no new farm could ever take place in a copacetic way.”

A pilot study tracking a popular saltwater fish was not expected to yield as much information as it did in its first year.

When the North Carolina Division of Marine Fisheries and its nonprofit project partner, the North Carolina Marine and Estuary Foundation, launched its red drum study last year, researchers thought the pop-off point where a satellite tag detached from a fish would be the most important piece of information they would glean.

Even over a short period of tracking time, they got much more.

“We wanted to use year one to learn and be prepared to expand it in year two,” said Cara Kowalchyk, red drum project lead biologist with the division. “We got more data than we originally anticipated. That’s allowed us to expand the project in many ways and the amount of data moving forward can corroborate what we saw in year one. We’ve got a strong, expanded plan moving into year two.”

Last October, the division tagged 10 mature red drum, or those that stretch more than 32 inches long, during its annual longline red drum survey in the Pamlico Sound.

The tagging is part of a study aimed at unlocking some of the unknowns of one of the more popular recreational catches in North Carolina. While red drum studies are not new, there are gaps of information research has yet to fill.

One of the focuses of this project is to track areas in which adult red drum gather to spawn and where they head after they reproduce.

“We know when they come into our areas, but we are not as familiar with when they leave, do they all leave at once? Where do they go? Do they stay offshore during that whole time period? We’re looking at the post-spawning movements to fill that data gap,” Kowalchyk said.

Preliminary information collected from the satellite tags last year show regular movement between inshore and offshore waters.

“What we’ve seen from some of the fish is that they are moving out of the sound into the nearshore ocean,” said Marine and Estuary Foundation Executive Director Chad Thomas.

Other fish tracked last year traveled as far as 25 miles offshore, he said.

The foundation has posted on its website a promotional video that highlights the pilot project.

The solar-powered SeaTag-GEO pop-up satellite tag affixed to each fish last year provided multiple daily positioning coordinates of those fish by sending transmissions to the Argos satellite. The information is then shot from the satellite to computer software. The tags, created by marine technology manufacturer Desert Star Systems, can be programmed to stay attached to the fish for various durations of time.

Once a tag pops off, it floats on the water’s surface, where it collects additional information, such as water temperature and depth.

“The next major step is mining that data, filtering that data and trying to really tell the story on each fish and what it’s doing,” Thomas said.

That story, he said, is crucial in helping future management of red drum, which is the official state saltwater fish, and a species important to the state’s coastal economy.

“It’s a huge economic driver for our coast,” Thomas said.

The foundation approached the division in 2023 with the idea to use satellite technology to learn more about red drum.

The nonprofit has covered the cost of each tag, which run more than $1,000 each, and a $65 per tag, monthly subscription required to transmit recorded data from the tag to the software.

This year, 40 tags will be deployed under the pilot program.

Kowalchyk said Thomas will begin training this month how to attach a tag to a red drum using the top tagging method where the tag is affixed to the dorsal area of a fish.

The division agreed to help connect Thomas with local recreational fishing guides along the coast from Manteo to Wilmington to take him to areas where red drum can be caught, tagged, and released.

Thomas will be responsible for attaching 20 tags. The division will attach the other 20 during its survey later this year, Kowalchyk said, adding that she anticipates all 40 tags to be attached to red drum by October.

While a handful of tags will be programmed to remain on red drum for three months, the remainder will be set to pop off after a year, she said.

“We are going to double our effort and our data thanks to (the foundation) in year two,” Kowalchyk said. “I look forward to continuing that partnership. This is completely new. This is a novel project for both of us and it was a great, great learning year and we feel really strong and prepared for year two.”

WILMINGTON — A proposal to limit commercial fishers’ harvest of blue crabs treads rough waters after advisory committees to the state Marine Fisheries Commission agreed the rule should not move forward.

The North Carolina Division of Marine Fisheries’ recommendation targets catch of mature female crabs. The proposed move comes as fisheries officials are looking to manage a species they say has been on a decline in the state’s coastal waters.

Earlier this month, the commission’s northern and southern regional advisory committees and the shellfish/crustacean advisory committee, voted in separate meetings to keep the current rules detailed in Amendment 3 of the Blue Crab Fishery Management Plan.

Each committee also agreed the commission should wait until its August meeting to take final action on the draft Amendment 3 revision. The plan calls for setting a 10-bushel limit for mature female blue crabs from June through December and restrict any harvest of mature female crabs from January through May. Adult crabs have shells at least 5 inches wide.

The proposal, in conjunction with existing blue crab season closures and other management measures, would reduce harvest by an estimated 21.7%, compared to average landings between 2019 and 2023, according to division officials. That harvest reduction should increase the total weight of blue crabs that are capable of reproducing and boost the numbers of young crabs entering the fishable population, officials say.

But critics of the proposed limits question how the division can propose a revision to the state’s blue crab management plan based on a benchmark stock assessment that uses data from 1995 to 2016. Results of that assessment showed blue crab stock was overfished, and overfishing was occurring in 2016.

In early 2020, the fisheries commission adopted Amendment 3, which included several management strategies to try and end overfishing of blue crab.

Those strategies have been in place since January 2021. But fisheries monitoring programs since then continued to show historically low commercial landings and low abundance in stock, according the division.

Fisheries officials began updating the stock assessment using data through 2022, but the division, with the strong recommendation of peer reviewers, decided against using the 2023 assessment update, citing concerns about its results.

“That to me, as a scientist, that would cause me to retract and say, ‘Man, there’s something missing here,’” said Sam Romano, co-owner of Seaview Crab Co. in Wilmington. “Why not try to figure out a way to get better data? I know you guys have your own set of data and you feel confident about it. I’m not trying to push down anybody’s data, but there has to be some outreach to some of these crabbers where they’re not see it. It affects their lives and they’re not feeling heard.”

Romano was one of roughly 15 people who attended the Southern Regional Advisory Committee’s March 19 meeting in Wilmington, where attendees and some members of the committee argued that, without an updated stock assessment, the division should not further limit blue crab catch for commercial harvest.

Speakers at the meeting also said officials can’t point solely to overfishing as the reason the state’s blue crab stock is in decline. Some challenged the division’s conclusion that the stock is still declining.

Shelby Lewis, 22, whose father has fished commercially for 40 years, said the division needs to look at more than commercial fishing in trying to determine what’s behind the declining numbers of blue crabs.

“I think the environment’s changing,” he said. “I think that there’s runoff from all this building and development. There’s crop wash. All these factors are contributing. I mean, every species we have in the state has basically seen a decline and I don’t think that’s just because of fishing. Some of them are already heavily regulated, but are still declining.”

Southern Regional Advisory Committee member Glenn Skinner said that, without an updated stock assessment, he did not feel comfortable recommending amending the management plan. Skinner is the executive director of the North Carolina Fisheries Association.

“What we want is the whole story,” he said. “We want the uncertainty. We want the certainty. We want all of it. We don’t want y’all to come in here and defend your position. We want you to come in here and educate us as advisers so we can make an educated decision. I’m just struggling without a stock assessment. We need to do better and I know y’all want to do better. We need that information before we take stuff away from people. I can’t get over the lack of data and the high degree of uncertainty we keep talking about over and over again.”

Robert Corbett, blue crab species lead in the division’s Elizabeth City office, said his fellow officials share similar concerns about the data they’re using to base their recommendation.

“However, we’re looking at the long-term trends and we just see the declines,” Corbett said. “There’s a lot of things that are outside of our ability to manage. As fisheries managers, our tool bags are very thin. Pretty much all we have is just reducing harvest, just reducing the number of crabs that we’re taking out of the population.”

Blue crab stock declines are not occurring just in North Carolina waters, he said. A January 2023 status report for the fishery in South Carolina concluded stock there had been in decline for almost two decades. And, in Virginia’s Chesapeake Bay, juvenile abundance of blue crabs remained low, through that stock was not depleted or overfished.

Third in a series

A chemical manufacturer that discharged pollutants directly into the Cape Fear River for decades has asked a judge to keep thousands of documents out of the public eye.

Attorneys for Chemours and its predecessor company DuPont requested the court keep under seal mostly internal communications between company employees about “non-public facts” that largely pertain to chemical production, according to the motion filed Feb. 28 in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of North Carolina.

“The court has recognized that this exact type of information is competitively sensitive because, in the hands of a competitor, it could be used to disadvantage Defendants,” Chemours’ attorneys argue.

Their appeal to the court aims to shield from the public between 5,000 and 10,000 pages of documents the plaintiffs’ lawyers submitted in their case against the companies, according to an attorney representing public utilities and local governments downstream of Chemours’ Bladen County plant.

“We do not believe there is a good basis for the vast majority, if not all, of those documents to be under seal,” said attorney Bill Cary of Brooks Pierce Law Firm.

The firm represents Cape Fear Public Utility Authority, Brunswick County, Lower Cape Fear Water & Sewer Authority, and Wrightsville Beach, which sued the companies in October 2017.

The lawsuit aims to recover costs and damages associated with the Fayetteville Works’ plant’s discharges of per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances, or PFAS, for decades into the Cape Fear River, the drinking water source for tens of thousands of residents in the region.

PFAS are a group of more than 14,000 chemicals used in everyday consumer products including food containers, stain-resistant carpet and water-repellant gear. These man-made chemical compounds are persistent in the environment and have been found to accumulate in humans and animals. Exposure to these substances has been linked to weakened immune function, reproductive and developmental issues and increased risk of some cancers.

Included in the 25,000 pages Brooks Pierce has submitted to the court is a history of dealings Chemours’ West Virginia-based Washington Works Facility has had with PFAS, Cary said.

“Many of the documents that they have identified as wanting to be sealed are already on the public record, which means that there is no reason to seal them,” he said. “They’re already public knowledge. They are either part of the (Environmental Protection Agency) public record or they have been exhibits in other files.”

The Washington Works’ plant historically used synthetic compounds perfluorooctanoic acid, or PFOA, commonly referred to as C8, and GenX, in its manufacturing processes. The plant produces resin used to make the semiconductors that power cellular phones, computers and other electronic systems.

For decades, the plant’s owners knowingly discharged C8 into the Ohio River, the drinking water supply for an estimated 5 million people. High levels of the chemical were found in public drinking water supplies and private drinking water wells downstream of the facility, prompting government intervention and a slew of lawsuits.

Earlier this year, the West Virginia Rivers Coalition, a statewide nonprofit, filed a federal lawsuit seeking a temporary court order for Chemours’ Washington Works facility to reduce its discharges of GenX into the Ohio River. The lawsuit alleges the company is exceeding its permitted discharge limits.

As part of a 2019 consent order with the North Carolina Department of Environmental Quality and Cape Fear River Watch, Chemours has spent millions taking steps to reduce its emissions of PFAS into the Cape Fear, the ground and the air. The consent agreement also charges the company with testing thousands of private water wells in the region and providing a means of uncontaminated drinking water to households with private wells that contain elevated levels of PFAS.

The brunt of costs associated with removing PFAS from raw water sources has fallen on downstream drinking water suppliers, including Cape Fear Public Utility Authority, or CFPUA. The utility has spent millions in upgrades to filtrate PFAS out of the drinking water it provides to customers in the Wilmington area. The average customer bill includes a $7.50 charge associated with the utility’s filtration system.

A CFPUA spokesperson referred questions to Cary.

An upgrade and expansion of Brunswick County’s Northwest Water Treatment Plant totaling more than $120 million is expected to go online late this spring. The project includes the installation of an advanced low-pressure reverse-osmosis treatment system to remove compounds including PFAS and 1,4-dioxane, the latter of which is a likely carcinogen that is also being discharged into the Cape Fear River by upstream polluters.

“The health of the Cape Fear River is of importance to everybody in the watershed and they should be informed about it,” Cary said.

Emily Donovon, co-founder of Clean Cape Fear, said in a telephone interview earlier this week Chemours and DuPont had spent decades “hiding” its discharges of PFAS into the Cape Fear River at the expense of residents living downstream of the Fayetteville Works plant.

“We’re not just talking about monetary expenses,” she said. “We’re not talking about utility costs. We’re talking about the fact that people are dying. People have died. People died not knowing if what that company did and that facility did caused their illness to accelerate or cause them to get sick in the first place. We deserve to know everything that this company did. Out of basic human decency, we deserve to be able to see those files and we deserve to be able to know exactly what was going on. History needs to know this.”

Clean Cape Fear on Thursday afternoon posted an online petition for members of the community to sign in support of unsealing the documents.

Cary described information in the documents the companies want to remain sealed as “embarrassing” internal documents that include communications among Chemours employees.

“Or I would be embarrassed if I was Chemours,” he said.

An attorney with Miami-based Shook, Hardy and Bacon, LLP, the law firm representing The Chemours Co. FC, E. I. Du Pont De Nemours and Co., and The Chemours Co., did not respond to a request for comment in time for publication.

In their request to keep documents sealed, the attorneys argue Brooks Pierce violated electronic filing rules, writing, in part, that the plaintiff’s “indiscriminate inclusion of large swathes of immaterial documents” place “an undue burden on Defendants in responding and preparing this motion.”

Chemours’ attorneys go on to write that it would be impractical to redact the “enormous volume” of documents Brooks Pierce included in its Jan. 17 motion for summary judgment, or a request of the court to rule for one party against another party without a full trial.

Brooks Pierce has until April 14 to respond to the motion.

“We will respond to the motion that day,” Cary said.

In 2023, CFPUA filed a separate lawsuit in Delaware’s Court of Chancery to stop DuPont, Chemours and their related spinoff companies from financial restructuring, a move that would allow the companies to avoid liability for damages resulting from PFAS contamination. The case has been stayed pending the outcome of the 2017 lawsuit.

Second in a series

WILMINGTON – Without a state-set limit for 1,4-dioxane, a public utility that serves an estimated 200,000 people here will have to invest millions of dollars to remove the federally deemed “likely carcinogen” from its raw drinking water source.

The projected cost for Cape Fear Public Utility Authority, or CFPUA, to make additional upgrades to its Sweeney Water Treatment Plant is in the area of $17- $24 million, authority Executive Director Kenneth Waldroup said.

Annual additional costs associated with treating the chemical being discharged into the Cape Fear River upstream of the city are between $1 million and $3 million.

Such costs could be avoided if upstream polluters would reduce the amount of 1,4-dioxane from their effluent by 60-65%, Waldroup said.

But prospects that industry will voluntarily reduce discharges of the chemical are slim.

And efforts to get the state’s rule makers – both the North Carolina General Assembly and the Environmental Management Commission – to set a water quality standard for 1,4-dioxane are not making much headway. The commission is charged with adopting rules to protect the state’s air and water resources.

CFPUA will continue advocating for solutions, Waldroup said to a crowd of about 100 people Saturday.

The World Water Day event, hosted by Clean Cape Fear in partnership with St. Andrews-Covenant Presbyterian Church’s women’s ministry team, highlighted ongoing problems downstream water users face from upstream polluters.

It’s an issue that spans the country, where an estimated 6-10% of 66,000 drinking water systems throughout the country must figure out how to treat certain chemical compounds from their raw water sources.

The Cape Fear River is the drinking water source for tens of thousands of residents in the Cape Fear Region, one rocked nearly eight years ago when the public was first informed Chemours’ Fayetteville Works Facility had been discharging PFAS into the river, air and ground for decades.

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency estimates that there are more than 14,000 of these chemical compounds, which are used to make a host of everyday consumer goods from food packaging to water-resistant gear.

PFAS exposure has been linked to a number of adverse health impacts to people, including thyroid disease, increased cholesterol, liver damage, and different types of cancers.

More than two years have passed since CFPUA completed a multi-million-dollar upgrade to its Sweeney plant, which included the addition of a filtration system to remove PFAS, including GenX, from its raw water source.

Today, the average CFPUA customer bill includes a $7.50 charge Waldroup referred to Saturday as the “Chemours correction surcharge,” one associated with the utility’s annual operation costs associated with the filtration system upgrade.

That upgrade entailed the installation of eight granular activated carbon filters.

The system effectively removes PFAS for which the EPA in the spring of 2024 made the move to set enforceable limits on nearly a half-dozen individual compounds in public water systems.

The cost the utility incurs each year to remove PFAS is about $4.3 million, Waldroup said. The utility’s legal fees have surpassed $10 million in its ongoing lawsuit against Chemours and parent company Dupont to pay for costs and damages related to the companies’ actions.

A trial is not expected until next year.

CFPUA monitors up to 70 types of PFAS, including GenX and other chemical compounds specific to Chemours. The utility is now looking at ultra-short chain PFAS, Waldroup said. Those are compounds with carbon chain lengths of 3 or fewer carbon atoms in sequence

The utility is able to treat “some” 1,4-dioxane from its raw water source, he said, but the activated carbon system does not remove the chemical.

He explained that there is a debate in the scientific community as to the appropriate exposure rate of 1,4-dioxane, specifically whether that rate is 35 parts per billion, or 0.35 ppb. The federal drinking water health advisory level is 0.35 ppb.

“The difference is a one in 10,000 cancer risk a 70-year lifetime exposure and a one in a million,” Waldroup said. “As the downstream water provider, we think one in a million is the right standard.”

Known polluters

In January, CFPUA and other water utilities, including Pender County Utilities, were notified by the N.C. Department of Environmental Quality that a city-operated wastewater treatment plant in Randolph County discharged substantially high levels of 1,4-dixoane into a tributary of the Cape Fear River that month.

The notice came months after a state chief administrative law judge last September revoked 1,4-dioxane limits included in Asheboro’s discharge permit. DEQ appealed the judge’s decision and is awaiting a ruling.

The Southern Environmental Law Center, or SELC, on Wednesday notified Asheboro and its industrial customers, StarPet and Waste Management’s Great Oak Landfill, it plans to sue for failing to stop 1,4-dioxane from “flowing into the drinking water supplies for about 900,000 North Carolinians,” according to a release. The intended lawsuit is being filed on behalf of Cape Fear River Watch and Haw River Assembly.

“Asheboro and cities like it have the ability and responsibility to stop this illegal 1,4-dioxane pollution before it contaminates people’s drinking water,” SELC senior attorney Jean Zhuang stated in the release. “Emboldened by its fight to dismantle North Carolinian’s drinking water protections, Asheboro’s 1,4-dioxane pollution has skyrocketed in recent months. Asheboro’s industries don’t want to pay to treat their own chemical pollution, so the city is protecting their profits over the health and safety of North Carolinians downstream and making their untreated, toxic industrial waste a costly problem for communities who get their drinking water downstream.”

Asheboro discharges upstream of the drinking water supply for Sanford, Fayetteville, Brunswick, New Hanover and Pender counties, and municipalities that buy drinking water from Sanford, according to the release.

Asheboro’s wastewater treatment plant is one of six known 1,4-dioxane upstream polluters, Waldroup said. Of those, the Alpek Polyester USA plant just upstream of Chemours is the highest source of 1,4-dixoane release into the Cape Fear River, he said.

In May, the Environmental Management Commission is expected to be presented with a draft rule to establish monitoring and minimization requirements of PFAS dischargers in the state. The proposed rule was written largely from input provided by a utility association, which has drawn backlash from one of its own members – CFPUA – and environmental groups.

Hannah Nelson, a Southern Environmental Law Center staff attorney and speaker at Saturday’s event, called the proposed rule “offensive” to residents who live downstream of industry polluters.

“This rule was written by polluters and it shows,” she said. “There is no requirement under this draft rule for polluters to reduce PFAS pollution. Polluters will use this rule to hide behind it.”

The commission has instructed DEQ to put together a similar proposed rule for 1,4-dioxane, Nelson said.

That does not prevent DEQ from requiring industries include pretreatment programs in their discharge permits and placing the burden on the polluters, she said.

And the onus of establishing rules that hold the polluter, not water utilities and their customers, may fall even more on the state under the Trump administration, which recently announced plans to dismantle the EPA’s Office of Research and Development.

The EPA’s Research Triangle Park campus is home to labs that study PFAS contamination, air pollution and industrial emissions.

North Carolina also has a group of academic researchers within the North Carolina Policy Collaboratory’s PFAS Testing Network who specifically perform PFAS-related studies in the state. The General Assembly has appropriated tens of millions of dollars for the Collaboratory.

Dr. Jeffrey Enders, a senior research scholar and research assistant professor with North Carolina State University, shared last Saturday the results of a study he conducted on PFAS in sea foam collected along the state’s southern coastal shorelines.

A majority of the 10 foam samples he studied had been 10,000 – 10 million parts per trillion of total PFAS.

People are advised to avoid contact with sea foam on area beaches.

Next in the series: Polluter asks court to keep records under seal

A federal grant awarded last year to improve drinking water quality in hundreds of rural Brunswick County homes made U.S. Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Lee Zeldin’s round of funding cuts earlier this month.

But Zeldin’s plan to terminate the nearly $20 million grant awarded in December to The Working Lands Trust Inc. and its community-based nonprofit partner, Democracy Green, has been halted — at least temporarily.

The grant to assist Brunswick County’s unincorporated communities of Supply, Ash and Longwood is mired in an ongoing lawsuit brought by 22 Democratic attorneys general, including North Carolina’s Jeff Jackson, against President Donald Trump’s administration.

The states and the District of Columbia requested a preliminary junction to block the administration from damming the flow of taxpayer dollars to programs previously allocated by Congress.

A federal judge granted the 22 states’ request March 6, two days after the EPA announced Zeldin, assisted by the Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE, canceled 21 grants totaling more than $116 million. The preliminary injunction issued by John J. “Jack” McConnell Jr., chief judge of the U.S. District Court for the District of Rhode Island, applies only to those 22 states.

The administration is seeking an emergency stay pending an appeal to the 1^st U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals. On March 17 the states filed in opposition. At the time this report was published, a hearing date had not been set.

Zeldin casts the grants he terminated as “wasteful federal spending” in a March 4 release announcing the agency’s third round of cuts that “marks more than $287 million taxpayer dollars saved” since he was sworn in Jan. 19.

“At EPA, we are working in partnership with DOGE to fulfill President Trump’s promise to rein in wasteful federal spending,” Zeldin said in the release. “We will not stop until we ensure every taxpayer penny spent is to advance clean air, land, and water and Power our Great American Comeback for all Americans.”

The grant awarded to The Working Lands Trust in mid-December is for the Clean Water is Safe Water Community Initiative in North Carolina and focuses on improving water quality, restoring ecosystems and removing contaminants from local watersheds.

The program entails removing and replacing lead pipes that route drinking water to the taps of some 500 homes in rural areas of the county and restoring wetlands in the Lockwood Folly River watershed.

The Working Lands Trust did not respond to requests for comment.

Democracy Green cofounder La’Meshia Whittington, speaking on behalf of her organization, told Coastal Review in a recent telephone interview that the grant is not tied to clean energy or diversity, equity and inclusion, or DEI, programs Trump has targeted.

“Our grant is so much about community,” she said. “It is so explicitly about spending and renovating and remediating and restoring actual community that you can’t make this a political issue and you can’t make it a government ‘oh, this is just wasteful spending.’ It quite actually is water contamination and replacing lead pipes, lead drinking water pies and cleanup of a wetland.”

A little more than 100 organizations received funding through the Community Change Grant Award funded by the Inflation Reduction Act.

The program tapped for Brunswick County was one of three the EPA singled out as exemplifying bringing change to a community, thrusting the project and its funding recipients into the public spotlight.

At the time of the award announcement, elected officials including Republican Frank Iler, who represents District 17 – Brunswick County, lauded the program.

“These areas of Brunswick County that are unincorporated in the Gullah-Geechee corridor of the county can benefit greatly from EPA grants such as this,” Iler said in a Dec. 12 release. “This assistance with infrastructure and water systems will be well utilized in these parts of our county.”

Iler’s office did not respond to a request for comment in time for publication.

“We had actually planned on not announcing our award to the press,” Whittington said. “We wanted to get the work done and we wanted to prove we could do the work because we knew there would be naysayers.”

Democracy Green has been the focus of two stories in The Washington Free Beacon, a conservative-leaning publication, “Dedicated to uncovering the stories that the powers that be hope will never see the light of day … Whether it’s exposing cronyism, finding out just who is shaping our domestic and foreign policy and why, or highlighting the threats to American security and peace in a dangerous world, the Free Beacon is committed to serving the public interest by reporting news and information that is not being fully covered by other news organizations.”

The stories put the nonprofit on the defensive with it offering on its website a point-by-point counter to claims ranging from the estimated cost of replacing lead pipes in homes to Democracy Green has no experience with water quality-related projects.

Democracy Green is considering a defamation suit against the publication, Whittington said.

In a letter to Zeldin dated March 6 with the subject line, “Setting the Record Straight – False Attacks on Critical Clean Water Efforts,” Democracy Green Executive Director Sanja Whittington further defended the organization against claims made in the story.

“It is especially troubling that these falsehoods target a predominantly red district – one that turned out in great numbers to vote for President Donald J. Trump – where residents are simply seeking access to safe, lead-free drinking water. This is not a partisan issue. It is a public health necessity, and efforts to undermine it with misinformation do a grave disservice to the people who stand to benefit most.”

These are communities La’Meisha Whittington, Sanja’s daughter, describes as “deeply a melting pot” of the older homeowning class living on land passed from generation to generation. Drinking water in those areas is provided through a mix of private water wells and public utilities.

“Their water has been extremely impacted from legacy contamination. They’ve had years of lead contamination, decades, generations,” Whittington said.

Per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances, or PFAS, have leached from landfills in these areas and into the environment, including drinking water sources, in these areas, she said.

The wetlands area, which has been under the ownership of Democracy Green, is near the communities where lead pipes will be replaced.

“Us being unable to clean it up the way it needs to be, it will continue to push pollutants into the actual groundwater of these homes and their backyards and community centers and churches that are in these unincorporated areas adjacent to the wetlands,” Whittington said.

Under its agreement with the EPA, the organizations are set to receiving grant funding April 1.

“Once April 1 hits, if our funding isn’t made available and our portal is still suspended, if it’s still that way then we will have to go the legal route to challenge,” Whittington said.

A deal between Southport to sell hundreds of acres of land to the North Carolina Wildlife Resources Commission remains on the table after elected officials there recently agreed to extend the city’s contract deadline with the state agency.

Following what was, at times, a contentious discussion March 13 during the Southport Board of Aldermen meeting, members cast a 5-1 vote to push an option agreement with the state from March 21 to July 31 with a closing date of no later than Sept. 5.

The agency anticipates closing before that date, Ben Solomon, assistant chief and land acquisition manager of the commission’s Land and Water Access Division, said in a statement to Coastal Review on Monday.

More than a year has passed since aldermen agreed in a majority vote their intent to sell more than 400 city-owned acres to the commission for just over $637,000.

The Wildlife Resources Commission had been eyeing the property for the past few years with hopes of expanding the game land footprint in the area, a move that would place the land in conservation in perpetuity.

The property is adjacent to the state’s Green Swamp Game Land. The land also borders the country’s largest ammunition port, Military Ocean Terminal Sunny Point, or MOTSU.

The federal government prohibits development of the property because of its proximity to the 16,000-acre port.

Brunswick County land owners whose property is near the 441-acre tract fought a construction firm’s proposal about three years ago to buy or lease no fewer than 50 acres from the city. The firm wanted to mine clay-like material and use the earth to build up eroded berms buffering ammunition and explosive areas within the Army installation.

Under the proposed deal with the state, Southport will keep 10 acres to use to temporarily place hurricane debris. The county will retain another 5 acres, which could eventually be the site of a water tower or some other type of water reserve used to improve water pressure in the area for fire-fighting.

Brunswick County property owners whose land is near the tract asked last week for clarification on how the city and county planned to use the land to be retained by local governments.

The handful of residents, including Ron Madden, expressed relief that the city would move forward with plans to sell the land to the Wildlife Resources Commission.

“We’re concerned to see what happens there,” he said. “This is paradise. Our neighborhood is paradise. We’re just asking you to be the good neighbors that we are to you. We take great pride in our neighborhood as you do in Southport.”

His and others’ comments to the board angered Alderman and Southport native Marc Spencer, the lone alderman to vote against extending the deadline to the commission, who balked at the proposed sale price for the tract.

Spencer said members of the city planning board tried to come up with multiple uses for the site, including a cemetery, but the city got “shook around by our local neighbors who didn’t like what they thought we were going to do so we didn’t do anything at all.”

“Now we’re selling 441 acres for $600,000. Really? I will sell my house today and buy it. I’ll take it. I’ll take it forever. Anybody here would. That’s ridiculous. This was a bad deal from the beginning with a bunch of people from Bethel Church Road (Bethel Road) who didn’t like what we were going to do who haven’t ever paid tax in Southport in your life. You’re not a member of Southport. You talk about paradise? You ruined paradise for me,” he said.

The commission received funding in late 2021 to buy the land, an area wildlife officials say is ecologically important because it supports both federal and state listed species.

The agency received funding in 2021 to buy the land through the North Carolina Land and Water Fund, state Attorney General’s Office Environmental Enhancement Grant Program, and the North American Wetlands Conservation Act Program.

“We’ve already agreed to sell it to them,” Southport Alderwoman Karen Mosteller said. “All we’re doing is agreeing to extend the agreement.”

The city bought a majority of tract 20 years ago with plans to use it as a spray-irrigation site for a new sewer plant. Those plans were eventually scrapped after the city decided to merge its water and sewer with the county.

A proposed rule to establish monitoring and minimization requirements for PFAS dischargers in the state was crafted largely from input provided by a utility association.

A draft of the rule was discussed last week in a meeting of the North Carolina Environmental Management Commission’s Water Quality Committee. The role of the commission is to adopt rules to protect, preserve and enhance the state’s water and air resources.

The draft will likely be presented to the committee this spring, short of any further suggestions from community and environmental groups. The draft then will go to the full commission if the committee decides to move forward.

North Carolina Department of Environmental Quality’s Division of Water Resources Director Richard Rogers told the committee during its meeting Wednesday that while the draft rule includes “some” of the input from those groups, the “full scope of their written feedback has not been integrated in the rule that you have before you today.”

“At the direction of the committee chair, staff used the PFAS monitoring and minimization framework submitted by the North Carolina Water Quality Association to develop the draft rule before the committee today,” he said. He was referring to committee chairman Steve Keen. The statewide association members are from public water, sewer, and stormwater utilities.

Rogers went on to say that he would like to consider a rule on per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances discharges into surface waters that incorporates feedback from the other groups, the full engagement of which would push the division past a May deadline.

The committee instructed division staff to complete and present a draft to the rule and a regulatory impact analysis, which assesses the impacts of a proposed regulation, at its May 7 meeting.

“We need to get this thing through,” Commission Chair JD Solomon said. “We need to get it to public comment. That’s the most important thing right now.”

Community and environmental groups will then get the opportunity to submit their responses to the draft rule, he said.

The language included in the draft presented to the committee last week has already drawn the ire of environmental advocates who argue it does not require industries to reduce their PFAS discharges.

“They moved forward a rule that is worse than doing nothing and that is because it will give cover to polluters to do nothing even if DEQ tries to put protections in permits,” Cape Fear River Watch Executive Director Dana Sargent said in an interview Thursday. “DEQ should be drafting the rule, the EMC should be there for review and obviously it should not be drafted by industry.”

The Cape Fear region became ground zero for PFAS contamination in the state after news broke in 2017 that Chemours Co.’s Fayetteville Works facility, some 70 miles upstream of Wilmington, had for decades been discharging PFAS into the Cape Fear River and groundwater, contaminating the drinking water sources for tens of thousands of residents.

But Chemours is not the sole discharger of these chemical compounds, which are used to produce everyday goods like food containers, waterproof clothing and stain-resistant carpets, into the region’s drinking water sources.

According to DEQ, there are hundreds of industries in North Carolina that pay wastewater treatment plants to take their industrial waste, the Southern Environmental Law Center said in a March 10 release.

Those treatment plants do not remove PFAS, but “have the authority and obligation to stop their industrial customers from sending toxic pollution like PFAS to their wastewater plants in the first place,” the release states.

Jean Zhuang, a SELC senior attorney, stated in the release that the draft rule presented last week “is offensive to families throughout North Carolina who deserve clean, safe drinking water.”

“Under this rule, PFAS-polluting industries could do absolutely nothing to reduce their toxic waste for the next century and face no consequences,” she said. “This rule protects over 600 industry polluters above communities and abandons the 2.5 million North Carolinians drinking water contaminated with harmful forever chemicals. The Environmental Management Commission cannot move this rule forward.”

During last week’s meeting, committee members discussed various language in the proposed rule, including the frequency with which dischargers would have to collect samples to test for PFAS contamination.

If an industry exceeds a certain PFAS discharge threshold, it would be required to implement a minimization plan and submit that plan to the state or publicly owned treatment works, or POTWs, within a timeframe established in the rule. A minimization plan would be reviewed every two years until the PFAS reduction goals set in the plan are met.

The committee also instructed the Division of Water Resources to complete a draft rule pertaining to 1,4-dioxane and present it in May.

The commission is expected to decide at its May 8 meeting whether to approve a rule outlining health standards for three compounds, PFOA, PFOS, and GenX, in groundwater.

If the rule is approved it will be presented to the state Rules Review Commission this summer. If that commission approves the draft rule, it would become final in July.

The cleanup of more than 7,000 tons of litter in North Carolina cost state agencies, local governments and nonprofits more than $56 million in 2023, according to a new report.

Those figures highlighted in “The Cost of Litter in North Carolina,” a 14-page report created through a collaboration of nonprofits and the Duke University Environmental Law and Policy Clinic, are just the tip of the trash pile.

“That’s a severe undercount,” said Rob Clark, Cape Fear River Watch Water Quality Programs manager and a coauthor of the report. “The issue is much, much worse than this report was able to convey.”

The figures included in the report were pulled together from information obtained through public records requests, informal requests, and budgets from the North Carolina Department of Transportation and 44 nonprofits. Of nearly 40 of the municipalities requested to provide information, 19 responded. There are more than 500 municipalities in the state.

Even on the low, low end, the pounds of litter and costs associated with removing it from roadsides, ditches, and creek and river banks, to name a few, conveys a narrative that North Carolina has a costly, statewide litter problem.

But the economic impacts of litter are only part of the story, one the report’s authors hope to place into the hands of state legislators.

That’s because the basic approach to addressing litter in the state — spending money to clean it up — is not efficient, Clark said.

“It doesn’t address the issue properly,” he said. “It addresses the byproduct of the litter issue, but not the sources. It’s like you’re Band-Aiding over an artery. It’s not efficient or sufficient.”

That’s why the report, which was also compiled by North Carolina Conservation Network, Haw River Assembly, and MountainTrue, includes recommendations aimed at reducing litter at the source, keeping it out of the environment, and saving tax dollars.

One of the report’s main recommendations, Clark said, is that the North Carolina General Assembly reinstate the ability of local governments to regulate auxiliary containers, specifically single-use plastics such as grocery bags, cups, bottles and other types of food packaging.

In a last-minute move, legislators injected into the 2023 state budget language that prohibits counties and cities from adopting rules, regulations, ordinances, or resolutions that restrict, tax, or charge fees on auxiliary containers.

The provision stopped locally elected officials in Asheville from moving ahead on a vote to ban single-use plastic bags and Styrofoam food containers.

“We were really close for that to come up to a vote here locally and then the General Assembly put that provision into the state budget,” said coauthor Anna Alsobrook, French Broad Riverkeeper and MountainTrue’s French Broad watershed science and policy manager.

The law also squashed local elected officials in Durham from deciding whether to require retailers tack on a 10-cent fee for each plastic bag given out to customers in restaurants, grocery stores and shops.

“It’s really unfortunate that the state legislature took away the right of local governments to regulate pollution in their own jurisdictions,” Alsobrook said. “We’re hoping to change that.”

North Carolina Sen. Julie Mayfield, D-Buncombe, and Durham Democrats Sen. Natalie Murdock and Sen. Sophia Chitlik, last month introduced a bill that would repeal limitations on auxiliary containers.

The same year legislators banned a ban on single-use plastics, a survey conducted by Mason-Dixon Polling & Strategy showed that more than 80% of some 650-700 North Carolinians polled across the state supported regulations on single-use plastics, Alsobrook said.

The report found that the amount of single-use plastic litter – everything from cigarette butts, Styrofoam, bottles, bags, and food wrappers – picked up throughout the state has steadily climbed since the late 1960s.

In the ravages left in western North Carolina from Hurricane Helene, there is one rather ominous, tell-tale sign illustrating the abundance of single-use plastics in the environment.

“There’s a ton of devastation all over the place, but there’s tons and tons of plastic films and bags hanging from trees in any given direction,” Alsobrook said. “I think that was one of the most stark things we saw for a really long time. It’s very apocalyptic looking.”

And there is ongoing research about the potential human health effects of microplastics, which are considered ubiquitous in the environment because they have been found in every ecosystem on the planet.

Other recommendations in the report include the statewide implementation of a bottle deposit system where residents would receive a deposit for returning empty, single-use bottles, using the Clean Water Act in waters declared federally impaired as a result of litter pollution, and boosting funding the state transportation department’s litter cleanup efforts.

The North Carolina Department of Transportation “by far” carries the burden for litter cleanup in the state, the report concludes.

NCDOT spent more than $25 million of taxpayer funds to clean litter in 2023, according to the report. The department has spent about $270 million on litter cleanup over the past 15 years.

Recommendations included in the report are not new, “crazy ideas,” but rather policies that exist in other states and countries, Clark said.

“We’re just trying to take good policies and procedures that have worked in other places and implement them in our state,” he said. “Litter is, I think, viewed as an individual issue in our society. It’s seen as a failure of an individual, a litterbug. But really the reality of the situation is it’s a production issue, especially with plastic. There’s just so much production that we’re essentially drowning in it. We need to seriously address force reduction if we’re really going to get a handle on it.”

Campers, cyclists, hikers, birding enthusiasts and other outdoor recreationalists would be required to buy an annual pass to access game lands in the state under a proposal floated by the North Carolina Wildlife Resources Commission.

The “conservation access pass” proposal targets those users because they are increasingly visiting game lands and utilizing state Wildlife Resources boating-access areas, commission officials say.

“The more people you put out there, the more activities they’re doing,” said Wildlife Resources Commission Land and Water Access Division Chief Daron Barnes. “You see a general degradation of those habitats’ infrastructure and it can impede management activities. So, there is a need for additional funding to address these types of impacts on land.”

Barnes explained to an online audience during a public meeting Tuesday night that hunters, anglers and trappers would not have to buy a pass because they are already “paying in” to access and use game lands, while outdoor recreationalists are increasingly using game lands free of charge.

“We see that number of people increasing year after year,” he said.

The prospective pass program was met with mixed feedback during the meeting, where participants raised concerns about a pass fee potentially affecting outdoor programs, particularly in low-income communities, and safety issues during hunting seasons.

If implemented, conservation access passes would apply at a minimum to commission-owned game lands, which include roughly a quarter, or more than 542,000 acres, of the 2.1 million acres of game lands the agency manages.

In an email responding to questions following the meeting, Carrie Ruhlman, policy manager with the commission’s Office of Conservation Policy & Analysis, said the passes “may also apply on game lands owned by partner agencies/entities.”

“Once a decision is made on whether to move forward with a Pass, the WRC will reach out to those partners to see if they would like the Pass to apply to their property,” she said.

Roughly half, or 1.26 million acres, of game lands Wildlife Resources manages are owned by the U.S. Forest Service. A mix of other state agencies, local governments, private businesses and residents owns a little more than 299,200 acres.

Wildlife Resources owns 70 game lands, 37 of which span a total of more than 320,000 acres across the state’s coastal region.

Under the proposal, conservation access passes would be required for use at all of the more than 250 boating access areas that are built and maintained by the state for vessels that do not currently have to be registered with the agency. Those include nonmotorized water vessels like kayaks, canoes and stand-up paddleboards.

Passes would also be required to use five Wildlife Resources shooting ranges.

Franklin County resident William Teague said he doesn’t have a problem with nonhunters, anglers and trappers using the agency’s shooting ranges or with paddlers utilizing boat access areas.

But the state’s growing population and the demands of development that come with it are crowding out lands on which hunters and trappers can go, he said Tuesday.

Private land “is becoming harder and harder to be able to hunt,” Teague said. “And so it’s kind of forcing some of us to hunt exclusively on public land. There’s fewer and fewer opportunities to hunt and trap, for that matter. There’s plenty of other places across the state that if you’re not a hunter, trapper or angler that you can go and do recreational-type things.”

He was joined by others who spoke during the meeting in raising concerns about recreationalists using game lands during hunting seasons.

Jerry Price suggested certain areas within game lands be restricted for hunting and trapping use only during hunting seasons. Those areas could be rotated between that group of users and recreational uses, he said.

“To hunters, there’s very few places that have good quantities of game, mainly big game deer hunting,” Price said.

Haw River Keeper Emily Sutton said she understands the agency’s need to draw additional revenue to maintain game lands resources.

“But I think charging a fee for the general public to access these public lands, especially in a watershed like mine where there’s increasingly less big tracts of open space for people to explore, like the Jordan Lake Game Lands, is not the way to go about this,” she said. “It will discourage people from coming into those game lands and exploring these big tracts of forests that we don’t have a lot of access to in this part of the state anymore.”

Sutton said tacking fees to nonmotorized water vessels could be a huge hit for outfitters, schools and universities, and organizations like hers that offer free paddle events and clinics.

Anna Wheeler with the Dan River Basin Association agreed.

“We do free paddles for Saturday outings once a month,” she said. “This could really be a situation that gets a little bit expensive and discourages people from getting outdoors.”

The prospective pass fee would impact outdoor programs offered at colleges and universities through the state, according to Nathan Rector, director of Duke University’s Outdoor Adventures.

“My program certainly uses some of these boat ramps and we take multiple groups there and if we had to transfer that cost to our participants, a lot of our participants would just not be able to afford it, and we would really not exist,” he said. “We don’t make money off these things. We’re just offering a resource and so I’m hoping that either this would be reconsidered or some sort of educational nonprofit alternative would be offered to universities across the state.”

The agency is considering a $30 pass fee, but commission officials say they have not settled on a price to present to the voting members, who will consider whether to implement the conservation access pass program.

Anyone 16 and older would be required to obtain the pass, which would be good for one year from the date of purchase.

Wildlife Resources is accepting online feedback on the pass proposal through March 28.  All comments are to be complied and presented to the commission.

Additional information about the conservation access pass proposal is available at ncwildlife.org/conservation-access-pass.

If the plan is approved, passes would be effective no earlier than 2026.

You can’t help but wonder what Reaves Chapel’s first parishioners would think if they were around to see the little church in Navassa today.

Would they marvel at the fact that the chapel they’d built more than a century ago on the bluffs of the Cape Fear River in Brunswick County will serve as a testament to their existence?

Could they begin to comprehend the tens of thousands of dollars it cost to painstakingly restore the church to its former glory?

Perhaps they’d share feelings similar to those of the people who’ve devoted years to seeing a project through to preserve one of the oldest African American buildings in southeastern North Carolina.

“Every time we’ve been there this year and walked in with the new floor in and finished, it’s nothing but full body joy,” said Jesica Blake, North Carolina Coastal Land Trust associate director. “Reaves Chapel and other structures in other places that have ties to the history in African American communities are very few and far between. Time and weather and lack of resources have all come in to play in making it so there’s not a lot there and so it’s really important for this original structure that can tell so many layers of history can be protected. Now it will stand for generations to come.”

The chapel in Navassa is set to be dedicated on Friday, marking the end of a long chapter in the building’s storied history, one that enshrines at least some fraction of the lives of those formerly enslaved at Cedar Hill Plantation.

“In terms of history, what really is good about this facility is that it will be a living tribute to exactly what happened and you can tell a story and you will have a visual,” said Henry Robbins, treasurer of the Cedar Hill/West Bank Heritage Foundation.

It’s a story that one of the church’s former congregants, Al Beatty, spent the better part of the last 15 years of his life fighting to preserve.

Beatty helped form the Cedar Hill/West Bank Foundation in 2011 in an effort to save Reaves Chapel. By that time the church had fallen into dilapidation, its doors long since closed to a congregation that filled its pews donning their Sunday Best.

As Robbins put it, “Al had the idea some years ago of restoring the facility, but he didn’t have the finances to do it.”

So Beatty turned to the Coastal Land Trust in 2015 and, about four years later, the land trust purchased the chapel with money from the Orton Foundation, the North Carolina affiliate of The Moore Charitable Foundation, which supports cultural and historic restoration initiatives in the Cape Fear River Basin.

The project faced what seemed like a myriad of obstacles that kept both Blake and Beatty on an emotional rollercoaster-like ride with climbs of anxiety and plunges of laughter.

After the Coastal Land Trust purchased the chapel in 2019, the first of two stabilization efforts ensued. Beatty and Blake watched in agony as the chapel, by then in a significant state of disrepair, visibly shake as its steeple was removed.

The following year introduced the COVID-19 pandemic, one that ultimately shut down much of the world. Fundraising was hard to do because potential donors could not be ushered to the church. The building materials needed to restore the chapel significantly rose in both cost and demand during that time.

This all slowed the restoration process, leaving the chapel vulnerable to coastal storms and hurricanes.

“The church was degrading quickly,” Blake said. “It wouldn’t have remained standing if we’d had a big storm. It was holding on.”

All told, the project cost doubled to more than $1 million. That price tag includes the church restoration, landscaping, parking lot and detached restrooms on the property.

Blake and Beatty met at the chapel just a couple of weeks ago, near giddy as they strode into the finished product of their longtime labor of love.

Beatty will be noticeably absent at Friday’s dedication. He died Feb. 21. He was 74.

In a 2022 interview with Coastal Review, Beatty shared childhood memories of attending Reaves Chapel with his family. On Easter Sundays, he and the other children had to recite from the pulpit short speeches intertwined with scripture.

By then, the chapel had been relocated by its congregation, using logs and a team of oxen, inland on land Ed Reaves, a former Cedar Hill Plantation slave, donated to the church in 1911. The church eventually became affiliated with the African Methodist Episcopal denomination and remained an AME church until its doors closed permanently in the mid-2000s.

Reaves Chapel will not be a regularly functioning church. The heritage foundation and land trust hope the chapel will become a state historic site, one that may be used by the community from time to time.

Beatty was actively planning the upcoming dedication ceremony before his death.

“Really it’s a shame,” Robbins said. “He saw the church come to the conclusion with respect to restoration, but he won’t be able to see the other side of the restoration.”

Blake said she would give anything for Beatty to be there with her Friday.

“But I know he’ll be there anyway,” she said.

The dedication will be part of a series of special events leading up to Leland’s annual North Carolina Rice Festival set for Saturday. For more information visit www.northcarolinaricefestival.org

The Reaves Chapel dedication is invitation-only. Those who would like to reserve a spot at Friday’s ceremony may email Blake at jesica@coastallandtrust.org.

Invitations will be made available on a first-come, first-served basis as limited space is available.

OAK ISLAND — To an unsuspecting eye, it may appear trees have fared well here despite hurricanes and crop rows of houses built on this barrier island over the past couple of decades.

Pines and curvy-limbed live oaks seemingly pepper the landscape on the 12-mile-long island in Brunswick County.

But an inventory of mature live oaks and longleaf pines on town property completed a little more than a year ago revealed that not all is what it seems. The tree canopy that provides respite from scorching summer days and slows wind speeds whipped up during powerful coastal storms has depleted since the mid-2000s.

The town had 59% tree canopy cover, or nearly 7,100 of its 12,000 acres, according to a 2022 assessment, one that has helped shepherd a townwide effort to protect its existing trees and plant hundreds more.

Oak Island’s Tree Preservation Project has prompted the implementation of local rules that require property owners and builders get approval before cutting down any tree, protects hundreds of what are known as heritage live oaks and longleaf pines (those near or at 100 years old), removes Bradford pears on public land and replaces them with new live oaks, and adds hundreds more live oaks to the island.

“We’re going to grow this program,” said Brice Taylor, the town’s stormwater administrator.

He’s eager for that to happen. There is something special, arguably majestic, about old live oak trees with their broad crowns and gnarly branches stoically bowing to the earth.

On a recent, mild February morning, Taylor propped on the tailgate of a pickup truck parked to one side of a street where a Southport-based landscaping crew readied to plant more than two dozen live oaks.

The trees arrive in 25-gallon plastic pots, each stand about 12 feet tall, and are a mere five years old. In time, they’ll grow to what town officials envision as an arch-like canopy, or as one town employee put it, a “tunnel of love” over Oak Island Drive, the main thoroughfare on the island.

This is the latest round of what will be 200 plantings this year along street rights-of-way and town-owned land.

Last year, 100 young live oaks were plugged into the landscape. They are of different varieties with names like George Washington, Hoggard and Wrightsville Beach.

The trees have sprouted from acorns and carefully grown at Penderlea Farms in Burgaw, a town roughly an hour north of the island.

Because the trees are locally sourced, they’ll be more resilient to the southeastern North Carolina climate.

As the trees grow, they’ll form an intricate system of roots that act as super absorbent sponges, soaking up rainfall in a manner that helps reduce flooding.

To ensure the young live oaks consistently get enough to drink, the town has watering bags installed around each tree.

Each bag holds 20 gallons of water, which is time released into the soil at the tree’s base. The bags get refilled every five days in the summer and every four days throughout cooler months.

“It’s a very efficient way of watering,” said Bryan Whitworth, owner of GreenMan Landscape Design & Maintenance, which is planting the trees.

That’s important because watering the trees is expensive.

The town is preparing to launch an adopt-a-tree program in the next couple of weeks where participants will take over responsibility from the town and fill the watering bags.

It’s a program that is expected to be well received in a community that has by and large supported protecting and expanding the town’s tree canopy.

Taylor said a little more than 92% of lots on the island are constructed out, a testament to the growth that has occurred here.

If a property owner wants to remove a tree from his or her land, that person is required to submit a free-of-charge permit application to the town for approval.

The town encourages property owners to remove Bradford pears from their land. These weak-limbed trees are an invasive species, one that’s being targeted by a collaborative of state agencies through a program called N.C. Bradford Pear Bounty.

This program offers a one-to-one tree exchange (one replacement tree for one Bradford pear) to qualifying property owners.

More than 20 Bradford pears have been removed from Oak Island town-owned land.

Since the Oak Island Town Council adopted Town Ordinance Chapter 32: Vegetation in mid-March last year, the town has issued $8,000 in ordinance-related violations.

If a property owner wants to plant a tree, he is allowed to choose from a list of 13 species preapproved by the town.

Oak Island is a Tree City USA, an honor the National Arbor Day Foundation bestowed it 25 years ago.

This year’s Arbor Day celebration will kick off with a tree ceremony 4-5 p.m. April 25 in Bill Smith Park. The following day, the town will announce the name selected from its name-the-tree contest for the park’s main attraction, a live oak estimated to be between 200-260 years old.

“We’re working really hard to ensure (Oak Island’s) not just a name, it’s an observation,” said town communications manager Mike Emory.

​As the hours passed, day turning into night, prospects looked bleak for a research vessel carrying scientists and students hoping to get past the mouth of the Cape Fear River to deeper waters offshore.

The R/V Cape Hatteras had essentially been stuck at the mouth of the river for about 24 hours after leaving the morning of Feb. 10 from its mooring at Cape Fear Community College in downtown Wilmington, thanks to an abrupt change in the weather.

“I won’t lie, I did not think we would make it offshore, which feels like a waste with this large vessel to just be stuck at a spot we could sample fairly easily on smaller boats,” said Dr. Bradley Tolar, an assistant professor with the University of North Carolina Wilmington.

February tends to be a month when the weather serves up less-than-ideal working conditions offshore.

Cold temperatures, whipping winds and rain proved that to be the case during the first several hours of the maiden trip of the TEAL-SHIPS project, a groundbreaking expedition to study shore-to-sea habitats.

TEAL-SHIPS, an acronym for this mouthful: Transect Expedition to Assess Land-to-Sea Habitats via Interdisciplinary Process Studies, will allow researchers the opportunity to get an understanding of the biological, chemical and physical changes in habitats from the mouth of the Cape Fear River to the Gulf Stream’s warm waters.

This particular area of North Carolina’s coast has largely remained understudied since the 1990s. And those previous studies of the area between the 1970s and 1990s focused primarily on nearshore ecosystems.

Now, through a series of cruises (no, not the kind where mai tais are served on the pool deck), researchers of different coastal marine science disciplines hope to build a baseline in understanding how changes in the Gulf Stream flow affect the ocean’s food chain and critical habitats between the coastline and Atlantic continental shelf.

Tolar is spearheading the venture, one that was able to come to fruition through a $1.5 million General Assembly-funded grant through the University of North Carolina System Research Opportunities Initiative, a program that focuses on several research areas including marine and coastal science.

TEALS-SHIPS includes principal investigators from UNCW, the UNC Chapel Hill, North Carolina State University and East Carolina University.

Over the course of the next two years, researchers and some of their students will embark on an expedition about every three months, setting course to a series of stations mapped from the river’s mouth to the Gulf Stream. By going out every three months, researchers aim to capture any potential changes in each season of the year.

“Even though this is only giving us two years, the goal is to write grants to continue sampling further, maybe not to this level or this frequency, but just to have a better understanding of how the coast and offshore are connected,” Tolar said.

The Gulf Stream is a powerful current that originates in the Gulf of Mexico, curves around the Florida peninsula, up the Eastern Seaboard and extends toward Europe where it warms western European countries.

“But for our coastline, we know that it transports nutrients, it transports species up to our coast,” Tolar said.

The Gulf Stream oscillates and there is some thought that rising sea temperatures might actually weaken the current over time.

“We don’t really know what those consequences might be to what it transports up to our coast,” Tolar said. “If it’s transporting nutrients that feed our coastal habitats, which we care about a lot with our state’s blue economy, if it weakens or oscillates farther offshore rather than coming inshore, we would want to know.”

During each cruise, physical oceanographers will collect fine-scale water samples to get a sense of how the Gulf Stream current is moving and any changes in that movement over the course of a year.

Two, 20-minute-long fish trawls will capture as much fish as possible at each of the project’s six major stations, each of which include vastly different types of habitat. Researchers will count all of the species captured during the trawl sweeps, collect 10 of each species, and measure 30 of every species.

“This allows them to get a sense of the diversity of fish, the abundance of fish, and then their variability and size to see basically how fish communities change as we go offshore,” Tolar said.

Dr. Christian Briseño-Avena, a UNCW assistant professor of biological oceanography, plankton ecologist, and another principal investigator on the project, will collect zooplankton and larger phytoplankton to study how those organisms change over time.

“Eventually we’d like to know more about how the zooplankton, or the plankton in general, are changing or not changing for this region over longer periods of time,” he said.

Copepods “change a lot in this region,” he said. But samples of the tiny crustaceans collected from this region are sparse.

Briseño-Avena said he is learning as he goes on each expedition, targeting smaller plankton, fish larvae and zooplankton scooped up from the seafloor to the surface in “bongo nets,” aptly named because they are shaped similar to the open bottomed hand drum.

During TEAL-SHIPS maiden cruise earlier this month, he was met with some surprises when the bongo nets surfaced back aboard the R/V Cape Hatteras, a 135-foot oceangoing research vessel used as a hands-on training tool for marine technology students at Cape Fear Community College.

He wasn’t expecting to see in the winter what turned out to be a large amount of ichthyoplankton, which are the eggs and tiny larvae of fish.

His students have already begun the tedious task of extracting and identifying the different groups and species of plankton he collected. The plankton will be preserved in ethanol and used to build a library-like catalogue of samples that will be available to future coastal marine scientists.

He and Tolar agree the expedition was a success, despite the weather challenges that cut the initial trip by a half day and covered four of the six stations. The ship traveled just under 75 miles offshore, making it to the Gulf Stream where the water temperatures were 30 degrees warmer than those near shore.

“At least we confirmed if we were able to do as much as we did in our 18-hour weather window we’ll be fine for our future expeditions,” Tolar said. “We’ll have no problem getting all the way out there. We learned that we could do it and we learned how to be more efficient about it.”

UNCW’s Center for Marine Science is in the process of acquiring its own, larger research vessel. The 73-foot vessel is expected to be complete in the spring of 2026. TEAL-SHIPS project principal investigators hope to use the new vessel during their final two expeditions covered by the current grant.

Tolar hopes to tap additional funding sources for the program to collect samples beyond two years.

“If we’re able to get more funding in the future we can compare the changes year-to-year,” he said. “Even if not, we have a really nice study that shows this is what’s happening here off the coast of Wilmington and that can connect how other folks along the East Coast are measuring their samples.”

This story has been updated.

A judge has ordered that more than two dozen longstanding rules used to guide coastal development and protect resources be placed back into the North Carolina Administrative Code.

All 30 rules removed from the code in fall 2023, shortly after the N.C. Rules Review Commission kicked them back to the Coastal Resources Commission, must be plugged back into the code, Wake County Superior Court Judge William Pittman ruled last week.

Pittman also affirmed that the Coastal Resources Commission and Department of Environmental Quality have the authority to, through rulemaking, create enforceable guidelines and policies, adopt rules that give context to or aid in understanding those and other rules, and that “adverse environmental impact” is not an ambiguous term used in rulemaking.

“The NC Coastal Resources Commission is pleased that the trial court has agreed with its position that the Rules Review Commission’s objections to thirty of the CRC’s rules were without foundation,” the CRC stated in an email Tuesday afternoon. “The CRC looks forward to a return of its rules to the North Carolina Administrative Code as these rules are important components of this State’s coastal management program.”

Related: Process to restore Jockey’s Ridge protections continues

Should the Rules Review Commission appeal, the state codifier of rules may “prominently notate and identify as ‘Under Appeal’” the 30 rules “or words to that effect,” Pittman wrote in his Feb. 12 decision.

Pittman’s ruling comes more than a year after the coastal commission and the state’s lead environmental agency filed a complaint asking the court to resolve a deadlock over legal interpretations between the two commissions and restore the rules.

The coastal commission adopts rules for the state’s Coastal Area Management Act and Dredge and Fill Act, and establishes policies for the North Carolina Coastal Management Program.

The Rules Review Commission’s objections to the rules in 2023 were largely based on technical wording.

After filing the lawsuit, the Department of Environmental Quality’s Division of Coastal Management and the coastal commission worked to temporarily restore 16 of the rules division officials described as critical to day-to-day operations.

Some of those rules pertain to enforcing protections for coastal landmarks including Jockey’s Ridge State Park in Nags Head and Permuda Island off the shores of North Topsail Beach in Onslow County.

Last November, the 13-member Coastal Resources Commission unanimously adopted a proposed permanent rule identifying Jockey’s Ridge, the tallest active sand dune on America’s eastern sea board, as a unique geological feature area of environmental concern, or AEC. The designation received overwhelming public support and protects the dune from, among other things, sand mining.

AECs are areas of natural importance that the division designates to protect from uncontrolled development.

The coastal commission submitted 132 readopted rules to the Rules Review Commission.

Historically, when the Rules Review Commission objected to a rule, the agency that submitted the rule had to request the rule be returned to make changes. If an agency did not make that request, the objection would be merely noted in the rule and that rule would remain in the Administrative Code.

That changed with the adoption Oct. 3, 2023, of the state budget that includes language giving the rules commission authority to send rules it objects back to agencies.

Shortly after the law went into effect, the Rules Review Commission voted in a special called meeting to return 30 of the Coastal Resources Commission-approved 132 rules.

The 10-member rules commission reviews and approves state agency-created rules. The North Carolina General Assembly appoints commission members, half of which are on the recommendation of the Senate pro tem, and the other half on the recommendation of the House speaker.

“The court did the right thing in reserving the legislatively-controlled Rules Review Commission’s arbitrary repeal of long-standing, common-sense rules that are essential to North Carolina’s coastal communities as they face increasingly intense storms and sea level rise from climate change,” Southern Environmental Law Center Senior Attorney Julie Youngman stated Monday afternoon in response to a request for comment.

The law center filed an amicus brief on behalf of the North Carolina Coastal Federation, which supported restoration of the rules. The Coastal Federation publishes Coastal Review.

In addition to protecting Jockey’s Ridge State Park and archaeological remains on Permuda Island, the rules the judge ordered to be returned to the code designate and manage categories of coastal resources, dictate policies for shoreline erosion control and development of ocean-based energy facilities, and guide permitting for coastal development.

A city-operated wastewater treatment plant in Randolph County discharged substantially high levels of 1,4-dioxane last month into a tributary of the Cape Fear River, the drinking water supply for about 1 million North Carolinians.

Several downstream businesses and water utilities, including Cape Fear Public Utility Authority in Wilmington and Pender County Utilities, were recently notified that the state “grab samples” collected Jan. 24 at Asheboro’s wastewater treatment plant returned a final concentration of 2,200 parts per billion, or ppb.

The plants own grab sample, which was collected the same day, detected a concentration of 3,520 ppb, according to North Carolina Department of Environmental Quality’s Division of Water Resources, or DWR. Grab samples are taken at a single point in time.

The federal drinking water health advisory level is 0.35 ppb for 1,4-dioxane, which the Environmental Protection Agency categorizes as a likely human carcinogen.

“After the initial analysis of the samples, DWR completed quality assurance and control measures to validate the results,” a DEQ release states. “DEQ, using EPA toxicity calculations for lifetime exposure, has determined that the average monthly 1,4-dioxane concentration protective of downstream water supplies is about 22 ppb for the Asheboro discharge.”

The chemical compound is used primarily as a solvent in chemical manufacturing.

DWR’s Jan. 28 notice to downstream drinking water utilities and businesses comes just months after a state chief administrative law judge last September revoked 1,4-dixoane limits included in Asheboro’s discharge permit.

DEQ appealed Judge and Office of Administrative Hearings Director Donald van der Vaart’s decision in Wake County Superior Court. The court has not yet ruled on the appeal.

As it awaits a ruling, DEQ is on a timetable set by the EPA to reissue Asheboro’s National Pollutant Discharge Elimination System, or NPDES, permit and restrict how much 1,4-dioxane it’s wastewater treatment plant may discharge into surface waters.

The federal agency gave the department a 90-day window to submit a proposed revised permit.

DEQ or “any interested person” may request a public hearing on the EPA’s objection to the permit within those 90 days.

If that request is not made and DEQ does not meet the deadline, “exclusive authority to issue the permit passes to the EPA” in accordance with the code of federal regulations, according to the letter.

It is unclear whether the EPA under President Donald Trump will move forward with that mandate.

Trump’s executive order that freezes new regulations prompted the Office of Management and Budget to withdraw a federal rule that would require per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances, or PFAS, manufacturers to monitor and reduce discharges into surface waters under the Clean Water Act.

The elevated levels of 1,4-dioxane recorded last month were found in discharge from the treatment plant to Hasketts Creek, which empties into the Deep River within the Cape Fear River Basin.

“DEQ continues to sample at municipal wastewater treatment plants and in surface waters across the Cape Fear River Basin to identify 1,4-dioxane sources,” Laura Oleniacz, DWR public information officer, said in an email. “In addition, DEQ continues to assist municipalities to minimize or reduce 1,4-dioxane coming from industrial wastewater. DEQ is also exploring other avenues for protecting drinking water.”

The agency “agrees with EPA that limits are necessary to protect North Carolinians,” she said.

There have been “significant reductions” at some wastewater treatment plants in what DEQ says has been a collaborative effort between the agency, Environmental Management Commission and municipal operators.

Residents, local governments and water utilities in the Cape Fear Region have been pushing for tighter limits of 1,4-dixoane and PFAS releases from upstream dischargers.

Proponents for such limits argue that the dischargers should bear the brunt of responsibility in keeping these synthetic compounds out of drinking water sources.

“The primary means to achieve health-based levels is to reduce and minimize the release of the contaminant at the sources,” DEQ stated in a Feb. 7 release. “Industrial best management practices and treatment technologies exist to achieve these outcomes that protect North Carolinians’ drinking water sources.”

Last November, the Cape Fear utility’s executive director petitioned DWR Director Richard Rogers and Environmental Management Commission Chair J.D. Solomon to begin emergency rulemaking to limit 1,4-dioxane discharges upstream.

The petition was returned to the utility later that same month with Rogers stating it lacked appropriate text for a proposed emergency rule.

The utility has not taken further action on the matter.

In an email responding to questions Wednesday, Cape Fear Public Utility Authority Director of Communications Vaughn Hagerty said utility staff had “been monitoring the situation since we received notification” from DEQ regarding the elevated 1,4-dioxane discharge levels from the Asheboro plant.

The utility’s Sweeney Water Treatment Plant treats raw water from the Cape Fear River.

“Treatment technologies at Sweeney, specifically ozonation and biological filtration, are very effective at removing 1,4-dixoane,” Hagerty said.

Additional information about Sweeney’s treatment of 1,4-dioxane and other compounds is available online.

DWR’s Cape Fear River Basin 1,4-dioxance wastewater discharge data is available online.

Dr. Ryan Emanuel does not remember when he first heard the English translation of the word pocosin.

He suspects it came from an authority figure, likely a teacher or professor. No matter. He believed the literal meaning of the Eastern Algonquian word was “swamp on a hill.”

It’s a translation that has been passed from generation to generation, one that Emanuel himself regurgitated in the courses he taught at North Carolina State University before accepting a job at Duke University’s Nicholas School of the Environment.

That changed after the Lumbee and environmental scientist, in preparation for a television interview, took a deep dive into the word’s meaning.

He surfaced with not only the fact there is no evidence to support the longstanding translation, but a broader lesson about humility in accepting the unknown, vigilance in search of the truth, and ethically and responsibly distinguishing between Western academic knowledge and Indigenous knowledge.

Emanuel details the intricacies of why it’s important for scientists to thoroughly vet Indigenous-to-English translations in a paper he authored that was published last fall.

“We all know that, as scientists, we can’t make things up, and we have to cite properly as scholars,” Emanuel said. “And we’re used to doing that with our Western scientific knowledge. Why is it OK to not be careful with something like the translation of an Indigenous term when we’re so careful with other aspects of our science?”

He’s not pointing fingers.

His aim is not to convey a message that scientists, himself included, take the translations of Indigenous words at face value with bad intentions.

“It’s just that we didn’t do due diligence and we were not careful with the use of this word in our science,” he said.

It wasn’t until roughly a decade ago when Emanuel was invited to speak in an episode of “Exploring North Carolina,” a popular PBS program hosted by Tom Earnhardt, that he decided to give in to his own curiosity about the word’s translation.

Indigenous peoples pass along their histories through stories and oral tradition.

“But there’s a conspicuous absence in any of our communities of anything resembling this translation,” Emanuel said.

He started going through a chain of citations back through time. They all converged on a linguistics paper written in the late 1800s, the text of which is in a volume carefully filed at N.C. State’s Hunt Library.

Emanuel opened the old, dusty cover to the volume, read and reread its contents, realizing the paper says nothing about pocosin meaning “swamp on a hill.”

“That’s when the lessons of this paper started to hit home,” he said.

The first lesson? His own irresponsibility at taking the translation at face value and perpetuating “this myth of a translation.”

“I felt bad about doing that, especially as an Indigenous person who had learned the translation through nonIndigenous sources and didn’t even think to put it through our own kind of knowledge verification processes,” he said.

What also struck him as “uncomfortable,” he said, was that “nobody else had either.”

“I do think that this speaks to the humility aspect of the lesson,” Emanuel said. “As scientists who want to know everything, we have to be OK with the fact that there are some things we can’t know and this is one of those things.”

That’s a fact Indigenous communities live with every day. Their ancient languages were taken away, erased in different ways throughout colonial records and government documents.

The frustration or incompleteness someone may feel because they wish they knew the meaning of the word is certainly not lost on Emanuel.

“I’ve got an entire world view that I can’t truly know because all of that language has been taken away. We have to accept the fact that there is nobody around who can tell us any deeper meaning of that word that is used to describe the place that it is,” he said.

By and large, Indigenous communities do not dwell on this fact, he said. It’s not productive, nor healthy.

Instead, they think about what they have been able to preserve. Their strong sense of kinship, their responsibilities to their community, their relationship to the places from which they come, which include pocosin-filled landscapes.

But even those are a fraction of what they once were.

Once extensive in North Carolina, the freshwater wetlands of the Southeastern coastal plain have been destroyed or degraded by logging and ditching and draining for conversion to agricultural land.

Pocosins are sometimes referred to as “carbon sinks” because of their ability to sequester and store carbon dioxide, or CO2.

But even as efforts have in recent years been made to restore some of these areas to their original form, a North Carolina law passed in 2023 strips protections for pocosins, undermining not only their ecological and hydrological value, but their cultural significance to Indigenous communities.

“When you look across Indigenous communities in this part of North America, these landscapes are incredibly important culturally to us, yet that’s not part of the conversation when it comes to whether and how to protect and preserve these places,” Emanuel said.

He doesn’t want the mistranslation to be a distraction to the work that’s occurring in restoring pocosins.

“It’s just a reminder that the words that we use matter and that words that come from Indigenous languages remind us that these names were used for these geographies and other things for centuries, if not millennia, before we took them up and starting using them for our purposes,” he said. “They’re special and unique places and one of my favorite things to do is to take students out into the pocosins and have them tromp around on those organic soils and dig down into the muck and get that sticky soil all over their hands.”

A wild bird rescue organization in Brunswick County is offering a reward for information leading to the culprits who’ve been mangling brown pelicans.

The $10,000 reward, a first in Sea Biscuit Wildlife Shelter’s nearly 20-year history, signifies a breaking point for shelter founder and Oak Island resident Mary Ellen Rogers.

“What I want to do is make them stop,” she said.

No one has been able to pinpoint exactly who “them” is behind what has become a common winter occurrence of dead and severely injured brown pelicans washing ashore on North Carolina’s predominately southernly beaches.

Over the course of a decade, a noticeable number of dead and injured pelicans have been found on shores from Emerald Isle to Topsail Island and down to Brunswick County beaches.

“We get them every year and it’s very depressing,” Rogers said.

The uptick is usually within the same two-month timeframe of each year, January through February, when trawling is closed off other states’ coasts, but remains open off of North Carolina’s beaches. This gives out-of-state commercial fishers two extra months of work they would not have otherwise working off their state shores.

Pelicans are attracted to catch being scooped up in nets from commercial fishing boat trawlers.

Rogers said you can see a “cloud” of these birds gliding overhead of a trawler earning a day’s catch. The problem comes in when a pelican wants in on the catch being hoisted from the sea because this is when it likely becomes caught in the net.

A fisherman, or several for that matter, might use a tool to puncture a hole in the birds’ wing or grab it by the end of its wing, swing it in a circular pattern until the wing breaks, then toss it overboard.

The latter is indicative of an overwhelming majority of injuries dozens of brown pelicans suffered last year, when 60 washed up dead on the shores of the island Rogers calls home.

All but two of the 15 pelicans she sheltered last year had the same injuries to their left wings, just above the elbow.

Rogers describes the visibly graphic injuries as torsion fractures, which occurs when a bone is broken by a twisting motion that leaves it looking like a corkscrew.

A Florida-based wildlife pathologist confirmed one of the critically injured pelicans that washed ashore in Oak Island last year suffered such a fracture, Rogers said.

Though an adult pelican can have a wing span of more than 6 feet, they typically weigh no more than 8 pounds because their bones are hollow, which means, when broken, the bone cannot be pinned.

In other words, there’s no fix to this type of injury in a pelican. So, injured birds that wash ashore alive have to be euthanized.

“We have to do something,” Rogers said. “I can’t just keep complaining about it every year. I just want the injuries to stop.”

She told Coastal Review Monday in a telephone interview that only one dead pelican has been found on Oak Island’s beach since Jan. 1. But she suspects she’ll be getting more calls of reports of dead and injured pelicans as February temperatures steadily hold at those warmer from the previous month.

Rogers hopes the pot of money filled by private donors will entice someone to come forward with evidence needed to nab those responsible for the injuries.

The reward is advertised on posters Rogers tacked up at Oak Island marinas on Oak Island and in Holden Beach fish stores, places where out-of-state commercial fishers might stop to gas up and pick up odds and ends.

The signs were posted in mid-December, shortly after Rogers organized a meeting with local law enforcement, wildlife officials and representatives with the U.S. Coast Guard to discuss the ongoing problem.

Pelicans are a migratory species that fly south in winter and return in late February to nesting areas in North Carolina, including on small islands in the Cape Fear River, and Pamlico and Bogue sounds. They can also be found in the state throughout the year.

Pelicans are protected under the federal Migratory Bird Treaty Act of 1918, which prohibits people from injuring, killing, possessing or harassing these birds without a permit, Miranda Turner, a wildlife health biologist with the N.C. Wildlife Resources Commission’s Game and Furbearer Program, said in an email.

“Penalties for breaking the (act) can vary widely depending on whether the person knew that what they were doing was illegal, how many birds were taken, and more,” she wrote.

Those include misdemeanor charges, fines up to several thousand dollars, and prison.

The reward Sea Biscuit Wildlife Shelter has posted will remain in effect through March 1.

Anyone with information leading to the arrest and conviction of those intentionally harming pelicans in the waters off Brunswick County may report so by visiting NC Wild TIP (Turn In Poachers). Witnesses may dial 911 as a secondary reporting measure.

Less than two weeks after Inauguration Day, the University of North Carolina Wilmington’s Blue Economy Index plummeted to almost 10% of its historical high.

President Donald Trump’s return to the White House, where on Day 1 he immediately began firing off a slew of executive orders unraveling those of his predecessor, clearly spooked investors of ocean-related economic activities.

But that’s not an atypical reaction when a newly seated president is certain to create upheaval in terms of policy changes, according to Dr. Miran Hossain, UNCW’s associate professor of finance.

Hossain doesn’t suspect it will last because, as he puts it, “you can’t deny the ocean.”

“Policy uncertainty does affect the market volatility,” Hossain said. “I totally believe that the underperformance that the index is showing, it’s definitely because of investors panicking and not knowing what’s going to happen for the next four years, at least in terms of the policies.”

The UNCW Blue Economy Index went live a year ago, debuting as a first-of-its kind benchmark that tracks companies that earn revenue through the use of ocean resources. This can be anything from cruise lines to offshore energy companies — oil, gas or wind — to container shipping, marine equipment and construction.

The index was developed in collaboration with the UNCW Cameron School of Business, UNCW Center for Innovation and Entrepreneurship, or CIE, and CIE’s Alliance for the Blue Economy.

The index, ticker: BLUEECO for those of you who check the Bloomberg terminals, specifically focuses on companies that use sustainable practices.

Last September, the index hit a historical high with better than 7% growth.

After screening thousands of companies from around the globe, the UNCW Blue Economy Index’s creators pared down the number to about 90. The index gauges how these companies are performing by combing their stock prices into a single number, which tracks their combined daily value.

The index essentially tells us about the health of blue economy, whether good or bad, and in which direction it’s going, Hossain explained.

“Why it’s going in a certain direction, that’s something to look at even more because it could be because of some policy. It could be because the companies are really not doing well because of some reason that we don’t know,” such as a company’s earnings, he said.

For that reason, it’s too early to conclude why the UNCW Blue Economy Index has been a low performer compared to some of the typical, larger indexes like the MSCI All World Index, S&P 500, and S&P 500 Industrials, since Trump’s election.

Yet there’s no doubt Trump’s second term is having an effect.

Hossain recently provided a snapshot of the index’s performance in pockets of time between Election Day and Trump’s first week back at 1600 Pennsylvania Ave.

The S&P 500, which is a kind of measure of the overall U.S. economy, earned about a 4 to 4.5% gain during the week of Nov. 5, 2024. The MSCI All World Index, one that’s more representative of the university’s Blue Economy Index because it, too, includes the stocks of companies from around the world, had about a 2.3% gain.

UNCW’s Blue Economy Index’s performance that same week eked out at only about 1.5%, making it the worst performer of out of any of its comparable benchmarks.

“It’s just a short time period, I agree, but it is also good to just zoom in and see what happened during that period of time,” Hossain said.

Fast-forward to Trump’s first week back in office, where he signed dozens of executive orders impacting policy on everything from immigration and climate change to offshore energy, the Blue Economy Index showed a return of around 0.6%, compared to the other benchmarks, Hossain said.

“So, certainly not a good picture for the blue economy,” he said. “I’m expecting this policy shift is the major reason, but still not coming to a conclusion before looking deeper at these companies.”

This is where UNCW students enrolled in the Blue Economy Index course come in. They’re being tasked with analyzing and researching individual companies in the index to determine what’s been happening with them during the last two to three months.

Hossain was asked what advice he might have for blue economy investors.

“That’s a tough question,” he said.

The blue economy is not strictly clean energy-producing companies. It’s not purely green.

So the fact that sustainability isn’t expected to be promoted under the Trump administration will not have as much of an effect on the blue economy as, say, a solar company.

“We do need this huge marine transportation system,” Hossain said. “We do need the ports. If we look at in long-term perspective, you can’t deny the ocean. You can’t do business without keeping the ocean and the waterways in your equation. When these uncertainties ease up and we have a better idea about the tariff situation, where the Trump administration is going in that regard, I think we’ll have a better idea and the index would probably start going back to where it was.”

The nation’s burgeoning offshore wind energy industry has created thousands of jobs, boosted work in shipyards and ports, and includes a supply chain that spans 40 states, according to a new report.

Billions of dollars have been invested in things like new and retrofitted vessels for offshore wind developers, ports infrastructure, and the expansion of renewable energy manufacturing facilities that support offshore wind, according to Oceantic Network, a Baltimore-based nonprofit that advocates growing the country’s offshore renewable energy industry and supply chain.

According to the report, “Offshore Energy at Work,” 25 U.S. ports are either taking part in the industry or preparing to support it.

Last February, North Carolina State Ports Authority Executive Director Brian Clark signed a record of decision on a proposed plan to create a multi-use terminal that would support manufacturing and operations for offshore wind and automotive industries at the Morehead City port.

The proposed project entails developing land the port owns on Radio Island. It includes construction of a 300,000-square-foot manufacturing facility with office space for offshore wind, a roughly 60-acre gravel pad for storage, a new rail spur that would tie into the existing rail, roadway improvements, and the installation of a gas line from Morehead City to the island.

The estimated price tag is $250 million to $285 million.

“We have no updates to provide at this time,” Elly Cosgrove, N.C. Ports senior communications manager, said in an email Wednesday. “The Record of Decision signed in February is the latest as it pertains to Radio Island.”

It is unclear how an executive order President Donald Trump signed in his first day back in the White House pumping the brakes on new offshore wind development might affect the ports’ proposed plans, including four lease areas off the North Carolina coast.

Five days after Oceantic Network released its 60-page report, Trump suspended new leases on the entire outer continental shelf. The order will stand until it is revoked.

The order also blocks the federal government from issuing new federal permits to offshore and onshore wind projects, including four lease areas off the North Carolina coast, until the secretary of Interior conducts a “comprehensive assessment and review” of the permitting process.

Oceantic Network joined other renewable energy proponents in immediately rebuking the president’s order, calling the permitting pause “a blow to the American offshore wind industry.”

Trump’s actions threaten thousands of American offshore wind industry-related jobs in shipyards, factories, and ports, and “strand businesses who have reorganized their operations to support the sector,” Oceantic said in a release.

“While under a National Energy Emergency created by an unprecedented rise in energy demand, we should be working to quickly bring generation online instead of curtailing a power source capable of providing base load generation and creating new jobs across 40 states,” Oceantic founder and CEO Liz Burdock said in the release. “We urge the administration to reverse this sweeping action and keep America working in offshore energy as part of its commitment to an ‘all-of-the-above’ energy strategy.”

A spokesperson for Oceantic Network declined to comment further.

In a statement it released following Trump’s order, the Southeastern Wind Coalition called offshore wind “an economic force” in the U.S., investing billions of dollars in reviving previously underutilized ports and creating training programs for the work sector.

“Wind energy is critical to achieving American energy dominance, meeting our growing electricity demand, and creating stable manufacturing jobs across the nation,” Southeastern Wind Coalition President Katharine Kollins said in a release. “Wind energy is a vital part of the global electricity system, and ceding the advancement and development of wind technologies to other nations will only set us back.”

More than 100 companies in the Southeast produce components for the industry, according to the wind coalition.

But at least one of those has turned to the European market to stay afloat.

An official with Nexans, a France-based power and communications cable producer, said in an article published earlier this month that the company’s Charleston, South Carolina, plant — the largest subsea cable manufacturer in the U.S. — is shipping its product to Europe.

Nexans vice president for generation and transmission told renewable energy publication Recharge that high demand for cables in Europe is “a blessing in disguise” for the plant.

Still, all is not all doom-and-gloom for the industry.

In an email announcing the dates and location for the International Partnering Forum, the largest offshore wind energy conference in the U.S., Burdock noted that five commercial-scale, federally approved offshore projects are either under or near construction. Another six projects have received federal approvals.

“Despite misleading headlines, there is no question that the industry is moving forward,” Burdock wrote.

For the first time in more than 10 years, North Carolina land donors may be eligible to receive a tax credit for gifting property to conservation.

But there’s a catch. A few, actually.

The law that went into effect Jan. 1 includes caveats that were not in the original one that legislators repealed in 2013.

This time around, there is a credit cap for qualifying properties, which means donors will not know how much of a credit they will receive at closing. Conservation easements, or those where the landowner can permanently protect the environmental value of his or her land while continuing to own it, no longer qualify. And the program ends after two years.

The law isn’t likely to raise the brows of landowners wanting to donate solely in the name of conservation. But proponents are concerned the law might not be enough to entice property owners who may be looking for more incentive to donate.

Land trusts across the state are working to get at least some of the language in the North Carolina Farm Act of 2024 changed to reflect that of prior guidelines when the legislative session convenes late this month.

“I would say, although it’s not what we would most prefer getting started, having the tax credit reinstated at all is certainly an accomplishment, and we’re pleased for that,” said Harrison Marks, Coastal Land Trust executive director. “I think until a couple of things are addressed it will be somewhat limited. I think it’s a reward for people who probably want to do the right thing for the right reasons anyway. But I would think somebody who is mostly motivated by the tax credit may wait and see what happens in the future.”

Under the old law, landowners would receive a tax credit of up to 25% of the fair market value of their donated property.

Now, a statewide cap of $5 million must be divided between donors with qualifying tracts of land.

Land owners will not be notified until after the close of the tax year, after the state Department of Revenue tallies the year’s donations, how much of a tax credit they will receive.

“If they don’t hit the cap, then every landowner will get the full 25% of the donated value and that’s fantastic, but I can’t tell a landowner that,” explained Rusty Painter, Conservation Trust for North Carolina’s land protection director. “I have to tell the landowner you might get as little as 5% or less, who knows, of the donated value. That’s going to make it hard for them to factor that in, or make that a significant factor in their decision.”

The message he’s likely to relay to prospective land donors is to remind them that a federal tax deduction for conservation easement donations stands. Whatever the landowner may get in a state conservation tax credit would be the “gravy on top.”

“You’re likely to get some kind of state tax credit, but I can’t tell you how much,” Painter said. “Nobody can tell you how much right now. Just wait and hope for good news and enjoy the windfall, however big or small it might be.”

North Carolina was the first in the nation to enact a conservation income tax credit.

Between the time the credit was rolled out in 1983 until its repeal 30 years later, donations and bargain sales of land and easements for conservation purposes led to the protection of more than 230,000 acres of forests, farms, waterways, wildlife habitat, wetlands and other natural areas.

Proponents of the credit point out that neighboring states, including South Carolina, Virginia and Georgia, implemented similar conservation tax credits after seeing the success of North Carolina’s program.

Land donations for conservation “really dropped off” after North Carolina lawmakers repealed the tax credit, Marks said.

Under the current law, eligible lands include those used for forestland or farmland preservation, fish and wildlife conservation, buffers around military installations and training areas, historic landscape conservation, for public trails or access to public trails, and for floodplain protection in counties where a gubernatorial disaster declaration as a result of a natural disaster that occurred five years before the donation.

The law expires Jan. 1, 2027.

“We’re definitely hoping for an update because we need all the help we can get,” Painter said. “The window is closing on the best of the best properties to conserve. Development is rampant now and it’s going to continue to increase and funding for our work is pretty limited. Our hope is that this is the first step toward revamping and improving the program based on what we’ve learned in this two-year period.”

A proposed federal rule designed to add another layer of protection for a critically endangered species of whale has been taken off the table.

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, or NOAA, announced last week its withdrawal of proposed speed limits for vessels under 65 feet long in waters used by North Atlantic right whales.

NOAA’s National Marine Fisheries Service, or NMFS, has been reviewing the proposed rule for more than two years, during which time it received some 90,000 public comments.

In a brief statement, NOAA said those comments reflected “views on all sides of the issues addressed.”

“Despite its best efforts, NMFS does not have sufficient time to finalize this regulation in this Administration due to the scope and volume of public comments,” NOAA said in a release put out days before President-elect Donald Trump’s inauguration Monday.

The decision drew immediate and sharp criticism from conservation groups advocating for additional North Atlantic right whale protections. Opponents of the proposal praised the agency’s decision, saying the speed limit would have resulted in economic losses.

Vessel strikes and entanglement in fishing gear are the leading causes of injuries and deaths to North Atlantic right whales, scientists say.

Only about 370 right whales remain in existence.

Following NOAA’s announcement, Oceana Campaign Director Gib Brogan fired off a statement calling the withdrawal “bureaucracy at its finest.”

“North Atlantic right whales don’t belong on our beaches, and they don’t deserve to die because of political incompetence and a blatant disregard for science-backed solutions,” he said in a release. “We hate to state the obvious but, we need a solution, and we need it now. It’s our sincere hope that the new administration does not want the first large whale to go extinct in centuries in U.S. waters because of federal red tape. The Trump administration must find a solution that keeps fisheries on the water, sustains the marine economy, and supports the recovery of the North Atlantic right whale.”

At least 16 North Atlantic right whales have been injured or killed in collisions with boats and ships since 2020, according to information provided by conservation groups. The fatalities include two females and dependent calves that died last year.

Last month at least three right whales were entangled in fishing gear. One of those, a juvenile male, was seen about 40 miles off the North Carolina coast. The other two, an adult female and adult male, were spotted off the Massachusetts coast.

“The gross inaction and delays by this administration over the past four years to release this rule is inexcusable,” Conservation Law Foundation Senior Counsel Erica Fuller stated in a release. “We exhausted every avenue available to us to move this forward as the right whale body count from vessel strikes continued to grow.”

The Conservation Law Foundation joined the Center for Biological Diversity, Defenders of Wildlife and Whale and Dolphin Conservation in resubmitting a petition calling for National Marine Fisheries Service to beef up its 2008 speed rule. Specifically, the petition asked the agency to apply the rule to additional areas in which right whales are known to travel and include speed limits to smaller vessels.

“Research has shown that a vessel traveling at 10 knots or less is much likely to harm a whale in a collision,” according to a joint statement released by the environmental organizations.

Opponents of the proposed rule argue that right whale injuries and deaths from vessel strikes are caused by ships that fall under the current speed limit rule.

Congressman Greg Murphy, R-N.C., fought the proposed expanded speed limit, one he called “unscientific and ridiculously burdensome” in a statement released by his office last week.

“The Biden Administration pushed this rule even though it knew that the vessels it targeted were not responsible for the death of Right Whales,” Murphy said. “Regardless they pushed it on to the bitter end. Eastern North Carolina understands the importance of being good stewards of our environment while utilizing our God-given resources to help grow our economy and provide for our families. This is a tremendous victory for our fishermen, boaters, and countless businesses in our coastal economy who would have been devastated if this rule went into effect.”

If the rule were to be enforced, it would have affected nearly 16,000 vessels, 810,000 jobs and $230 billion in economic activity, according to Murphy’s office.

Current speed regulations require vessels 65 feet or longer, with the exception of government, law enforcement and some foreign boats and ships, to reduce speed to 10 knots in designated areas and during specific seasons along the U.S. East Coast.

But conservation groups contend few vessels actually comply with the rule.

“NOAA Fisheries has kept the right whale waiting for improved vessel strike protections for years,” Defenders of Wildlife Senior Attorney Jane Davenport said in a release. “In attempting to make everyone happy, the agency turned years of delay into an outright denial of the needs of a critically endangered species. The agency has a mandate to protect the right whale, but ran out the clock, leaving the whale with an out-of-date rule that we know is not enough.”

Kristen Monsell, oceans legal director at the Center for Biological Diversity, called NMFS’s withdrawal of the proposed rule “cowardice and politics.”

“The agency’s inaction means that more right whales will suffer and die,” she said in a release. “The survival of these whales as a species depends on more protections from deadly ship strikes and deadly entanglements in fishing gear. If we don’t curb these manmade threats, these beautiful animals will vanish forever.”

Time is ticking on North Carolina’s environmental agency to reissue a permit that will limit discharges of a likely human carcinogen into the drinking water sources for about 1 million state residents.

The state Department of Environmental Quality was recently notified it has until mid-April to submit to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency a proposed revised permit that restricts how much 1,4-dixoane a municipal wastewater treatment plant may discharge into surface waters upstream of the Cape Fear region.

The department is in the midst of an ongoing legal challenge to reinstate the cap it had placed on the amount of the chemical solvent being discharged by the city of Asheboro’s wastewater treatment plant.

In a letter to DEQ Division of Water Resources Director Richard Rogers, the EPA acknowledged the department’s challenge to a Sept. 12, 2024, ruling that revoked permit limits of 1,4-dioxane. The chemical compound is used primarily as a solvent in chemical manufacturing.

DEQ appealed Chief Administrative Law Judge and Direct of the Office of Administrative Hearings Dr. Donald van der Vaart’s decision in Wake County Superior Court.

The court has not yet ruled on the appeal, which “may affect and complicate NC DEQ’s ability to submit a revised permit addressing this objection,” EPA’s letter states.

“However, the time frames applicable to the objection process are mandatory and no extension can be granted for NC DEQ to wait for outcome of an appeal or to otherwise seek relief from the OAH decision,” the letter continues.

DEQ or “any interested person” may request a public hearing on the EPA’s objection to the permit.

A public hearing must be requested within 90 days from when DEQ received the letter.

“If a public hearing is not requested and NC DEQ does not submit a proposed permit that has been revised to meet our specific objection within 90-days of receipt of this letter, exclusive authority to issue the permit passes to the EPA” in accordance with the code of federal regulations, the letter states.

Division of Water Resources Public Information Officer Laura Oleniacz confirmed in an email that the division had received the letter “and it is under review.”

The state Department of Justice does not comment on pending litigation.

In August 2023, DEQ’s Division of Water Resources issued Asheboro a National Pollutant Discharge Elimination System, or NPDES, permit limiting the city water treatment plant’s release of 1,4-dioxane.

The city sued, challenging the state’s power to include the 1,4-dioxane water quality standard in the permit and argued the new limits created an excessive financial burden.

The cities of Greensboro and Reidsville joined the lawsuit after both were issued notices of violation for 1,4-dioxane discharges in November 2019 and required to include discharge limits in their draft NPDES permits.

Brunswick County, Cape Fear Public Utility Authority and Fayetteville Public Works Commission intervened in the case, asserting that upstream 1,4-dioxane dischargers placed an undue financial burden on them to sample drinking water sources for the chemical and try and reduce the level of consumption of it to their customers.

In his ruling, van der Vaart said DEQ officials did not follow the letter of the law written in state statutes when they calculated discharge limits and established an enforceable water quality standard for 1,4-dioxane and noted anticipated high costs associated with monitoring and treatment of 1,4-dioxane.

He also wrote that the EPA has not characterized 1,4-dioxane as carcinogenic to humans, but that the agency identifies it as “likely” carcinogenic to people.

In its 2023 draft revised risk determination for 1,4-dioxane as a chemical under the Toxic Substances Control Act, the EPA “proposes that exposure to drinking water sources from surface water that is contaminated by 1,4-dioxane released from industrial facilities contributes to the unreasonable risk” to human health.

Since van der Vaart’s ruling, Asheboro has released “extremely high levels” of the chemical upstream of the drinking water supply for nearly half a dozen cities, including Wilmington, and Brunswick and Pender counties, according to information made available by the Southern Environmental Law Center.

An analysis of Asheboro’s wastewater treatment plant showed 1,4-dioxane discharges exceeded 800 parts per billion, “2,322 times the cancer risk level for the chemical,” the center said in a release.

“DEQ tried to do the right thing and protect North Carolinians from toxic 1,4-dioxane coming from the city of Asheboro, but three cities tried to overturn our water protection laws in an effort to shield their industrial customers rather than people downstream,” SELC Senior Attorney Jean Zhuang state in the release. “EPA’s letter sets the record straight that existing law protects people against pollution, making clear that the North Carolina Administrative Law Judge was wrong in siding with polluters and that DEQ must control toxic 1,4-dioxane pollution. Controlling toxic chemicals at the source is the only way to ensure polluters bear the burden of their pollution, not families and communities downstream. We hope that EPA will stand strong to protect people against toxic water pollution and make sure that the city’s 1,4-dioxane releases are controlled in the future.”

There’s almost something deceptive about walking through the newest addition to Holly Shelter Game Land.

Trees rising from sandy ground largely blanketed by a thick cover of pine needles and wind-rippling wiregrass deafen any sense you’re just a short way from U.S. Highway 17.

Ben Jones summed up the experience during a recent hike through a small slice of the tract referred to as the Sleepy Creek property, a 1,616-acre parcel where baby longleaf pine trees sprout in savannas, carnivorous plants thrive and dense brush coats the surface of pocosin wetlands.

“It feels like we are miles from civilization,” he said.

That’s the idea behind rerouting a stretch of the Mountains-to-Sea Trail from the side of U.S. 17 in Pender County near Surf City and tucking it on land safely away from the four-lane blacktop.

Jones is the Friends of the Mountains-to-Sea Trail’s Coastal Crescent project manager and architect of the future section of trail, one that will link with nearly 20 miles of existing North Carolina trail snaking through the vast game land.

On a blustery cold day last week, Jones, Friends of the Mountains-to-Sea Trail Associate Director Betsy Brown and North Carolina Wildlife Resources Commission officials offered a tour of the portion of game land where the new trail is anticipated.

This is a particularly unique project, one where the plan is to steer hikers away from the gravel roadways that cut through the game land and onto natural surface defined by upland sand ridges, longleaf habitat and pocosin wetlands.

“We want to keep it wild,” Jones said.

The exception will be a boardwalk structure planned through a little more than a mile of pocosin. The walkway will be constructed of some type of fireproof material, perhaps precast concrete that can withstand fire from prescribed burns state wildlife officials will administer to manage the land.

The modern method for maintain longleaf pine forests is through controlled burns, which reduce hardwood growth and manage grasses and forbs in the understory. Fires are essential to longleaf habitats for a number of reasons, one being that longleaf pine seeds germinate on bare ground.

This habitat is essential to a variety of plants and animals, including federally threatened red-cockaded woodpeckers.

The Nature Conservancy acquired the Sleepy Creek property about two years ago, permanently conserving land that would have most likely been developed. The Nature Conservancy transferred ownership to the state Wildlife Resources Commission.

Growth along the U.S. 17 corridor between Wilmington and Jacksonville has exploded in the last couple of decades as demand for property along the coast has skyrocketed.

The roughly 64,000-acre game land sits almost half way between the two cities – 25 minutes from Wilmington and 30 minutes from Jacksonville.

While Holly Shelter is a draw for hunters of game ranging from whitetail deer to rabbit to turkey, it’s also a formidable hiking spot.

The new, natural trail will extend a little more than 3.5 miles through the game land addition, which will also be made available for public hunting.

Negotiations are underway to purchase an additional 45-acre tract surrounded by the game land. If plans go accordingly, that property will be the site of a primitive camp ground.

Brown said kiosks and signage explaining trail and hunting etiquette to help educate those groups on how to coexist will be installed at the trail head.

Hikers are urged to plan ahead, make sure they have sufficient supplies, including water, and check for hunting seasons before heading into the game land. Wildlife officials ask hikers to wear something blaze orange, whether it be a hat, vest or other attire, if traversing Holly Shelter during a hunting season.

The Mountains-to-Sea Trail stretches more than 1,100 miles from the Great Smoky Mountains to the Outer Banks.

The Coastal Crescent Trail gives its guests the opportunity to experience a portion of the Cape Fear Arch, an area tapped as having the greatest biological diversity on the East Coast north of Florida.

The Arch spans between Cape Lookout National Seashore, a barrier island system in Carteret County, and Cape Romain in South Carolina, and inland beyond Fayetteville to the Carolina Sandhills.

The Coastal Crescent Trail runs through Johnston, Sampson, Cumberland, Bladen, Pender and Onslow counties.

The segment (there are 18 total) of Mountains-to-Sea Trail included in Holly Shelter Game Land spans a little more than 90 miles. It includes 3.5 miles of trail, just over 9 miles of beach, about 5.5 miles of multi-use path, 19 miles of forest roads and a little more than 53 miles of paved road.

Jones said he did not have an exact timeframe on when the new rerouted trail will be open for hiking, though it is expected to be complete in fewer than five years.

They did it.

The final $1 million grant the North Carolina Coastal Land Trust needs to top off the cash pot necessary to buy the undeveloped southern tip of Topsail Island has come through.

Coastal Land Trust Executive Director Harrison Marks said he anticipates closing on the nearly 150-acre tract known as “The Point” by April.

“We’ve raised the amount of private funds that we said we needed to fund that part of the project,” Marks said during an interview Tuesday morning. “We’re waiting to hear on a final grant and hope to hear in the next few days approval of the last million-dollar grant. If that comes through, then it would appear our funding is in place and we would close on The Point.”

A few hours later, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service sent out a press release that it is awarding a $1 million grant to the North Carolina Division of Coastal Management, in partnership with the Coastal Land Trust and others, to go toward the land purchase.

Fish and Wildlife’s Tuesday afternoon announcement effectively wraps a vigorous and relatively short fundraising campaign Coastal Land Trust launched last spring after entering into a contract with the land’s owners.

In the months since, the nonprofit has received more than $1.5 million in private donations to go toward buying the land, a feat Marks said “is amazing.”

“Close to 800 people contributed,” he added.

Marks has declined to reveal the price tag of the land. He said in an interview last year that the organization expected to spend about $8 million on various expenses, surveys and title searches, and the land itself.

Michele Rivest, vice president of the grassroots organization Conserve the Point, said the pending purchase of the land, which will result in its permanent conservation, is “a dream come true.”

“It’s monumental,” she said Wednesday. “It’s the culmination of decades of effort by the community. It just speaks to the lifelong commitment of so many people who revere this very special place on the planet and have wanted to see it conserved, really left undeveloped and wild for all future generations.”

The Point includes salt flats, maritime shrub and estuarine wetlands providing habitat for federally listed species including red knots, piping plovers, green sea turtles and loggerhead sea turtles.

Conserve the Point initially formed nearly two decades ago after the property’s long-time owners put it on the market in 2005. It was around that same time the Coastal Land Trust tried to buy roughly 45 acres of the property, but a deal fell flat.

The land has been routinely on and off the market since then. Attempts to buy the land, including those by Topsail Beach to keep it free from development, did not pan out.

Efforts to keep the land development free gained traction after the CEO of a Raleigh-based software company and his wife initiated talks with the town to rezone a portion of the property from C4: Conservation – Inlet Area to conditional use. The change would have allowed the couple to build what would have eventually been a family compound, complete with about a half-dozen homes, a private marina, pool and beach and sound accesses.

Their proposal was met with fierce opposition from area property owners, regular vacationers to the town, and environmentalists who’ve enjoyed walking the shores of the land that has accreted as New Topsail Inlet migrates south.

Conserve the Point regrouped, eventually earning official nonprofit status and expanding its reach as far as 8,000 people from 15 states, Rivest said.

In November 2023, the couple withdrew their rezoning application request from the town and pulled the plug on their contract with the property owners, a move that opened negotiations between the owners and the Coastal Land Trust.

“I have to say we’re indebted to the Coastal Land Trust for getting us to the finish line here,” Rivest said. “Without their fundraising efforts and expertise I don’t think we would have made it.”

Rivest, who along with her husband splits their time living at their home in Carrboro and the house they bought in Topsail Beach roughly six years ago, said she believes Conserve the Point will maintain a role as stewards of the property.

“There’s so much more than I think there is to really share with young children and future generations about how special the planet is and this particular place is such a gift to all of North Carolina and beyond,” she said. “Thousands of people come here every year for The Point’s beauty and serenity and wildness and I think our organization and others will want to see it maintained like that. So, I think our role will evolve, but the community will continue to be very active in protecting this property.”

North Carolina is one of 11 states receiving a portion of the $25.7 million from the Fish and Wildlife Service through the National Coastal Wetlands Conservation Grant Program.

This year’s annual funding supports nearly 30 projects that will protect, restore or enhance more than 10,000 acres of coastal wetlands and adjacent upland habitats and more than eight miles of shoreline and streams.

President Joe Biden has permanently closed off much of the nation’s coasts from prospective offshore drilling for oil and natural gas.

The move, announced Monday as Biden wraps up his presidency, includes more than 330 million acres of the Atlantic outer continental shelf, from Canada to the southern tip of Florida, and the eastern Gulf of Mexico, as well as the West Coast, and the remainder of Alaska’s northern Bering Sea.

Everyone from coastal advocates to typically opposite-of-the-aisle politicians representing North Carolina coastal communities, which have overwhelmingly opposed offshore oil and gas exploration and drilling, lauded the president’s action.

Wilmington City Councilman and Republican Charlie Rivenbark introduced a resolution opposing seismic airgun testing and offshore drilling off the North Carolina coast to fellow board members nearly 10 years ago.

The board unanimously adopted the resolution, aligning the Port City with dozens of other North Carolina municipalities and counties opposed to then-President Barack Obama’s administration’s plan to open waters off the Southeast coast to oil exploration.

“I would still be opposed to offshore drilling anywhere, particularly along the North Carolina, South Carolina, Virginia coasts, and I’m glad President Biden’s doing this on his way out,” Rivenbark said Monday morning. “This to me is almost a nonpartisan issue. I grew up on the coast. I know the other side has got terrific arguments and reasons why, but I just can’t take a chance at an oil spill.”

That sentiment has resonated throughout not only coastal North Carolina, but also across the state over the course of the last several years.

Concerns about the potential for oil spills were specifically cited in the North Carolina Coastal Resources Commission’s April 2019 resolution that opposes offshore drilling. 

The resolution, which was adopted unanimously, pointed to impacts from the Exxon Valdez oil spill in 1989, the 2010 Deepwater Horizon oil spill and several scientific studies that raise concerns about seismic testing on marine mammals and fisheries.

“Seismic surveys and offshore drilling are just not compatible with our coast,” North Carolina Coastal Federation Executive Director Braxton Davis said in an email response to Coastal Review Monday. The Coastal Federation publishes Coastal Review.

“Keeping our coast healthy, thriving and free of oil spills is crucial for the survival and prosperity of our communities, and is at the heart of our work at the Federation,” Davis said. “For decades now, North Carolina’s opposition to offshore oil and gas has been largely bipartisan. Even under ideal conditions, drilling operations release a number of dangerous pollutants into the ocean, not to mention the potential for larger spills that can devastate local tourism and fisheries.”

Governors of both Atlantic and Pacific coastal states pushed back on President-elect Donald Trump’s plan to expand offshore drilling during his first tenure in the White House.

In fall 2020, Trump announced he was withdrawing federal waters off the Atlantic Coast from Virginia to Florida from the possibility of drilling for oil and gas. The 10-year moratorium he established ends in 2032.

Michelle Bivins, Oceana’s Carolinas Field Campaigns representative, said Monday afternoon that Biden’s announcement “essentially codifies those protections and makes them permanent.”

“As for Trump reversing this policy once he’s in office, during his last presidency he protected the South Atlantic from the threat of offshore drilling for almost 10 years, following bipartisan support. He knows that coastal economies and businesses depend on healthy, oil-free oceans,” she said.

Shortly after the White House announced the ban Monday morning, the American Petroleum Institute, or API, released a statement calling for the reversal of Biden’s withdrawal the offshore areas from future oil and natural gas leasing.

“American voters sent a clear message in support of domestic energy development, and yet the current administration is using its final days in office to cement a record of doing everything possible to restrict it,” API President and CEO Mike Sommers stated in a release. “Congress and the incoming administration should fully leverage the nation’s vast offshore resources as a critical source of affordable energy, government revenue and stability around the world. We urge policymakers to use every tool at their disposal to reverse this politically motivated decision and restore a pro-American energy approach to federal leasing.”

Two separate but similar letters – one signed by members of the U.S. Senate, the other signed by House representatives – calling late last year for Biden to implement the ban pointed out that presidential withdrawals had not been successfully challenged in court.

Trump in 2017 reversed Obama’s Arctic and Atlantic withdrawals. A district court judge in Alaska ruled presidents do not have authority under the law, in this case the Outer Continental Shelf Lands Act, to revoke prior withdrawals.

“A large-scale withdrawal of the Atlantic, Pacific, and Eastern Gulf from fossil fuel development while maintain the development of renewable energy solutions would provide durable protections for these critical areas,” according to the Dec. 19, 2024, letter signed by nine U.S. senators.

The areas included in the withdrawal encompass more than 625 million acres, the largest in the country’s history, according to the U.S. Department of Interior.

“President Biden’s actions today are part of our work across this Administration to make bold and enduring changes that recognize the impact of oil and gas drilling on our nation’s coastlines,” Interior Secretary Deb Haaland said in a release. “Today, the President is taking action that reflects what states, Tribes and local communities have shared with us – a strong and overwhelming need to support resilient oceans and coastlines by protecting them from unnecessary oil and gas development.”

The withdrawals do not affect rights under existing leases, of which there are about 30 off the southern California coast and about a dozen in the Eastern Gulf of Mexico, according to the release.

In fiscal 2023, production in the outer continental shelf resulted in about 675 million barrels of oil and 796 billion cubic feet of gas. Almost all of that production is in the western and central Gulf of Mexico, “where industry has yet to produce on more than 80 percent of the 12 million acres already under lease,” according to the release.

The current leasing program that runs through 2029 includes three potential lease sales in the Gulf of Mexico planning areas. Those areas are not included in the withdrawal.

Reid Wilson does not disagree with those who tell him he had the best job in state government.

He loved being secretary of the North Carolina Department of Natural and Cultural Resources.

It’s a role he said he’s going to “miss terribly” when he steps in Monday as head of the state Department of Environmental Quality, a position appointed to him by Gov. Josh Stein.

“But I think now is a time of important opportunities and challenges in terms of public health and environmental protection and moving to DEQ brings me back to some of my roots,” he said in a recent telephone interview.

His is a storied environmental career spanning more than a quarter of a century. He’s been an environmental advocate, national political director of the Sierra Club, held three different titles during his tenure of nearly eight years at the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency under the Clinton administration, and a public affairs consultant to national environmental groups.

Outside of work, he’s a husband and father of two adult children. He declares himself the least musically talented in his family. His brother played the French horn in the Toronto Symphony Orchestra for more than 30 years.

Wilson enjoys everything from classical to bluegrass to rock.

And, he loves to do his laundry.

“I don’t trust anyone else not to shrink something,” he said.

Wilson and his wife left the nation’s capital for Raleigh almost 22 years ago, lured by a job he said his wife was doubtful he would get.

She figured the Conservation Trust for North Carolina would not be interested in out-of-state applicants, Wilson said. He applied anyway.

He would go on to lead the statewide nonprofit as its executive director for 14 years. During that time, the organization’s budget nearly doubled and its success in educational outreach to youth in conservation became a national standard.

Wilson has been with the Department of Natural and Cultural Resources, or DNCR, since 2017, first at the department’s chief deputy secretary. He was appointed secretary in 2020.

Today, he is grateful to call Raleigh home. Sure, he misses the friends he made in Washington, D.C., but not life inside the Beltway.

He relishes the fact that William B. Umstead State Park is a 15-minute drive from his home.

There’s a particular spot just off Company Mill Trail where Wilson often goes when he needs to think through something or make a big life decision.

Sometimes he goes there to not think at all and breathe in the tranquility he finds in the sound of water cascading over boulders and rock slabs in a creek that cuts through the park.

“It’s just a very peaceful spot for me to sort things out. It’s just perfect for sitting and watching the water in the creek go by as it tumbles over some very small falls,” Wilson said.

He is a self-described lover of hiking. Nature is his refuge.

And whenever he gets the opportunity, he indulges in both, which married well with his position as DNCR secretary because it afforded him opportunities to hike when he visited a park or preserve on official business.

He knows the terrain he’ll be visiting as DEQ secretary will be a tad different. He’s looking forward to visiting as many of the department’s coastal reserves as he can.

“I do think one of the things I want to do is get out more, to leave Raleigh and see what’s going on with DEQ work around the state and especially with all of the challenges associated with Hurricane Helene,” Wilson said. “I want to see those challenges for DEQ firsthand.”

Hurricane Helene made landfall in Florida’s Big Bend on Sept. 26, 2024, and charged north through western North Carolina, demolishing communities and killing more than 100 people in this state alone.

Wilson did not see the areas hardest hit by the hurricane when he visited portions of western North Carolina with former Gov. Roy Cooper last fall.

“But I did get a good sense of the amazing challenges ahead and the incredible work being done by people in those communities,” he said. “There are piles and piles and piles of debris still in the affected areas. There are water quality issues in lakes and streams. There are challenges with water and drinking water structure that continue so there will be lots of work that DEQ will be doing to help communities in western North Carolina recover from Hurricane Helene. I think it’s important to see that work to understand it so that, back in Raleigh, we can do everything we can to efficiently help those communities. One thing I’ve learned over and over again is you understand an issue so much better if you actually go there and see it and talk to the people involved.”

He knows the work related to water quality issues will not be isolated to those areas of the state ravaged by the storm.

Tens of thousands of North Carolinians living everywhere from unincorporated, rural communities to towns and cities, including those within the Cape Fear Region, have been grappling with the knowledge their drinking water sources are contaminated with per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances, or PFAS.

PFAS are chemical compounds that are used in the manufacturing of a host of consumer goods from food packaging to water resistant clothing.

While research is ongoing into possible human health effects of these chemicals – there are anywhere from 12,000 to upwards of 15,000 – some have been linked to cardiovascular disease, weakened immune function, various types of cancer and decreased liver and kidney function.

Wilson underscored what he said is a firehose of information that is only starting to trickle in as he takes his new role.

“At this point I have a lot more to study on that issue so that I can speak with a deeper knowledge base,” he said. “Having said that, these are dangerous chemicals that settle in the environment. EPA has set drinking water standards for them that local water utilities must meet to protect their customers.”

The state Environmental Management Commission appears to be moving forward with establishing health standards of PFAS in groundwater, but for only three of eight chemical compounds suggested by DEQ.

The commission’s proposal has been met with a flurry of public backlash as residents demand more protections for their drinking water sources.

“I know there’s conflict about the best next steps to protect people from them, but my hope is to be able to bring together different viewpoints and figure out a way that’s equitable, that protects people from these forever chemicals,” Wilson said.

He has an outline in his head of how he wants the first month to go. There will be meetings with staff, briefings, working with members of the North Carolina Senate on the state confirmation process, and making sure he understands the intricacies of big decisions that will need to be made in his early days with DEQ.

Looking back, Wilson said he’s proud of the dramatic expansion of state park land, trails and other outdoor recreational access in the state park system under his tenure.

The department continues to work hard updating old exhibits at history museums, historic sites and other facilities that share history, expanding their online content, and making sure those exhibits include more perspectives.

He’s particularly proud of the Dueling Dinosaurs exhibit at the North Carolina Museum of Natural Sciences in Raleigh. If you haven’t seen it, you must, he said.

The one thing he’ll miss most about DNCR secretary? Introducing bands that perform at the big music festivals DNCR sponsors in the state.

“Let’s just put it this way, introducing The Avett Brothers three years ago at MerleFest was a big highlight,” Wilson said. “That’s not going to happen anymore. But I am excited about (DEQ’s) mission, which is to protect public health by protecting air quality, water quality, our land and soils and that mission is also critical to strengthening our state’s economy.”

Dr. Jordan Poler did not want to create an environmental problem by trying to solve one.

More than a decade ago, the University of North Carolina Charlotte professor decided to focus on chemistry that could be both sustainable and have minimum impact on the environment.

He believes he and his team of researchers have found that sweet spot, a secret sauce of nontoxic ingredients for a recipe that cleans per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances, or PFAS, and other toxins from drinking water at the point of use, think refrigerator filter for tap water.

Earlier this year, Poler was one of two UNCC professors awarded funding from NCInnovation’s grant program, which aims to help researchers at the state’s public universities get their products from lab to market.

And in an age when the idea of safe drinking water weighs heavy on North Carolinians whose water sources are contaminated by PFAS, what Poler said he has to offer could perhaps not come soon enough for consumers.

His research involves a process called ion exchange, which, in the most basic of explanations, works by trading an atom or group of atoms (ions) with ones that do not degrade the quality of drinking water.

Ion exchange is by no means a novel concept. It was initially observed by two English chemists in 1850 and did not become widely used until the 1940s.

The chemistry developed in Poler’s lab is all water-based.

“There’s really no hazardous waste for our processing and the materials that we start with are all sustainable,” Poler said.

Those materials are a cocktail of sorts that include zeolite, an inexpensive and nontoxic, natural mineral that can be dug out of the ground, and cellulose, which comes from plants, trees and bushes.

“All of the agricultural waste and food waste can be turned into that other starting materials,” Poler said. “We’re really happy about that because we started off using materials that were kind of expensive and now we’ve developed this to basically reduce the cost of those types of starting materials to nearly zero relative to where we started with.”

The result are materials that can be packed into canisters made for water filtration in everything from refrigerators to well water systems.

These materials remove chemicals including pharmaceuticals, pesticides, arsenates, chromates, heavy metals such as iron, and, of course, PFAS.

The mix of materials remove very, very low concentrations of PFAS, down to the 4 parts per trillion maximum contaminant limits the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency established for six of the chemical compounds, including PFOA, PFOS, likely carcinogens, and GenX, a compound specific to the Chemours Fayetteville Works facility in Bladen County.

“It does a lot. It’s really quite a lovely hybrid, multi-use solution from a very green and sustainable approach,” Poler said.

PFAS are pervasive throughout North Carolina and the nation where they have been released into the environment by various manufacturing companies. PFAS are used in the production of a host of consumer goods, including food containers, stain- and water-resistant fabrics and firefighting foams.

Tests have detected these compounds in drinking water sources that are tapped by hundreds of public utilities throughout the state. PFAS have also been found in thousands of privately owned wells.

Exposure to PFAS has been linked to health effects including an increase in certain types of cancers, suppression of the immune system, low birth weight in infants and changes in liver function.

“It’s very hard to remove things at extremely low concentrations,” Poler said. “That’s why PFAS is such a challenge because it bioaccumulates. You can be drinking this water for years and then these problems creep in. So, ion exchange is, I think, the way to go.”

Poler founded a startup called naneXPure LLC, a company that is, by all accounts at the moment, a placeholder, but one intended to translate the technology developed in his lab into the marketplace.

He and his business partner are working with Monroe-based Goulston Technologies to broaden the drinking water purification materials crafted in his lab to industry scale.

The materials being developed in his lab are regenerable and reusable. That means that, unlike refrigerator filters that must be replaced every six months or so, what he has developed can be made good as new.

Regenerating materials not only cut down on plastic waste, but they keep used, discarded filters out of landfills and, therefore, out of leaching back into the environment.

Say you have a system that’s good for purifying 100,000 liters of water.

“It’s 100,000 liters of very low-contaminated water, but you don’t want to drink that contaminant so you’d purify it,” Poler said. “And then, when we regenerate it, we have maybe one liter of highly contaminated regenerate that can then be very easily destroyed by other types of technologies.”

The materials developed in Poler’s lab will have to be certified by the National Sanitation Foundation. Funding for that testing will be covered under the $400,000 NCInnovations grant Poler received.

Poler’s idea is that consumers would initially buy two cartridges. When materials in the first cartridge that is used needs to be replaced, that cartridge could be shipped back for regeneration in a mailer that would be provided by the company.

“It might be pie in the sky,” Poler said. “But that’s been my long-term goal.”

The technology has the potential to be used on a larger, water utility-type scale.

Go ahead and call Evan Gadow a Boy Scout.

The shellfish farmer, lifelong North Carolinian, husband and card-carrying Eagle Scout, the Boy Scouts of America’s highest achievement, had a record as pure as the driven snow.

“I pride myself on that,” he said. “I’ve never gotten into trouble before. I’ve never even gotten a parking ticket.”

That changed this past July, when North Carolina Marine Patrol authorities charged Gadow with four misdemeanors, charges he and other shellfish farmers argue are too harsh for what they contend are clerical errors and minor permit violations.

Shellfish farmers, including Gadow, initiated a punishment-doesn’t-fit-the-crime rallying cry last month to members of the North Carolina Marine Fisheries Commission in what is sure to be a push for changes to laws that pertain to the industry.

“Currently (Division of Marine Fisheries) can levy serious criminal charges for what are minor noncompliance issues that should be handled in the civil fashion,” North Carolina Shellfish Growers Association President Chris Matteo said at the commission’s Nov. 21 meeting in Emerald Isle. “It’s our opinion that shellfish farmers should only face stiff criminal charges for egregious criminal behavior.”

One such example, he said, would be a farmer knowingly selling polluted oysters to unsuspecting consumers.

The charges levied against Gadow over the summer stemmed from what he called “clerical oversights” and for not properly marking his lease in Pamlico County’s Bay River. High winds washed away a pole marking a corner of that lease area.

Gadow said he did not know the severity of the charges he faced until he went to court in October. He pleaded guilty to one charge. The rest were dropped.

“Now I carry a black mark on my record equivalent to a DUI, something that will follow me for the rest of my life,” he said to the commission last month.

Shellfish farmers are required to sign each permit for which they apply. Those permits specify that anyone who does not adhere to the conditions of a permit face its suspension or revocation.

The permits do not, however, explain that state Marine Patrol officers have the power to levy “serious criminal charges” for violating a condition, Matteo said.

These charges include Class A1 misdemeanors, the most serious of misdemeanor offenses in the state. They carry sentences of up to 150 days in jail and fines.

Class A1 misdemeanors include an array of assault charges, including those committed using a deadly weapon, those inflicting serious injury, assault on a female, a child under 12, a state officer employee, or pointing a gun.

Zach Harrison, North Carolina Division of Marine Fisheries Habitat and Enhancement Section chief, explained that the commercial sale of any fish is written into law and those laws specifies which charges should be levied against alleged violators.

“Shellfish leases are defined by law and how we can go through that process and grant people leases of public trust water to be able to use for that purpose,” he said. “I think the tough part between being defined in the law, there’s also a lot of trickiness and important pieces that we are looking at to keep the industry going and keep it safe.”

Coastal states must adhere to federal requirements prescribed by the Interstate Shellfish Sanitation Conference, which manages the National Shellfish Sanitation Program. The regulations established under that program are designed to prevent shellfish-related poisoning among consumers.

“There’s a lot of safety pieces that are public health related or otherwise that we have to be very particular about, both to keep that compliance up and also just to generally keep people safe,” Harrison said.

“For the most part, growers are very in tune to that and don’t want to violate (the regulations) because it runs the risk of hurting their business. It’s our role to guide and make sure that the industry is moving in a safe way for growth that isn’t going to have some disease outbreak,” Harrison continued. “Really a lot of those growers, as they build up their industry, it gets a lot further past the farmers markets and local markets. We’re proud that our oysters are showing up in Michelin star restaurants and states like California and all over the U.S.”

Also challenging, he said, is the fact that the division’s marine patrol has less than 50 officers to cover North Carolina’s coast, which includes more than 300 miles of ocean shoreline and more than 12,000 miles of estuarine shore.

The division has hired an aquaculture inspector, a position funded in the legislative budget passed last year, to not only inspect but educate growers “on what those safe methods look like,” Harrison said.

“We felt like it was a better move for the industry to purpose that position toward making sure people are aware of those and being a resource as opposed to simply trying to go after people,” he continued. “The division in general is not interested in trying to go after people. If there’s a law on the books and someone violates that law, marine patrol has no choice but to pursue that. No one who showed up (at the commission meeting) and spoke to us was someone new to us. We all know them and work with them and continue to work with them.”

Harrison said commercial fishers are given paperwork that explains their legally required commercial licenses have a fiscal expiration of June 30.

In the week or two leading up to that date, commercial fishers line up past the doors of the division’s Morehead City office to renewal their licenses, he said.

Gadow said he had recently moved from Burgaw to New Bern when his shellfish license renewal paperwork was sent in the mail. His mail was not forwarded to his new address by the renewal deadline.

“I’ve had the license for the last six years,” he said in a telephone interview. “It’s just an honest mistake.”

Harrison said the division actively works with shellfish growers on recommendations in how to run efficiently.

“We’ve talked to a lot of growers who are appreciative of that,” he said. “The hard part is, we have a complex set of laws that ultimately result in a contract for water that belongs to the people of the state of North Carolina, that our job is as the state to manage. So it’s tough because there’s a line between following the legal processes and making sure that we are doing so equitably and safely and fair while also making it efficient for the growers.”

Matteo told the commission last month that shellfish growers are not asking to go unregulated.

“We’re asking to be treated fairly as we farm the world’s best sustainable protein, clean our estuaries and repopulate our public trust stock of marine species,” he said in a follow-up telephone interview.

He said charges that have been levied against a few shellfish farmers in the past 16 months have “gotten a little out of hand.”

“They’re just civil issues or minor noncompliance issues that a grower would need to be called out on and asked to remedy, or their permit should be suspended,” Matteo said. “Hopefully they’re done charging shellfish farmers like criminals unless they’re doing something way out of bounds that warrants a criminal charge. I have no doubt we’ll end up changing what needs to be changed. These charges should be civil. It’s more a matter of making sure that current laws aren’t misinterpreted and levied against the people and resources they’re meant to protect.”

Black Heart’s sighting wasn’t necessarily unusual, but exciting nonetheless.

The North Atlantic right whale, around 19, made her celebrated debut a little more than 2 miles east of Cape Lookout National Seashore’s High Hills on Nov. 20, five days into the start of calving season.

The mom of one, on the record at least, was spotted roughly 1,000 feet above by a small survey team panning ocean waters off North Carolina’s shores.

And, until April 15, when another calving season comes to an end for the critically endangered species, this same survey team will take to the skies every day. Weather permitting, of course.

It’s been five years since the Clearwater Marine Aquarium Research Institute’s North Carolina Early Warning System, or NCWS, survey team was financially resurrected by the Army Corps of Engineers.

Since the early 2000s, three-person teams collected information and aerial imagery off the North Carolina and South Carolina coasts regularly before the mid-2010s, when funding ceased for the program.

Now survey teams, including one based in Beaufort, one in Georgetown, South Carolina, another in St. Simons Island, Georgia, and a survey team with Florida’s Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission, take to the skies to scour hundreds of miles of the southern eastern seaboard each week through this crucial five-month period for right whales.

“More eyes in the sky has been fantastic,” said Melanie White, a research biologist and North Atlantic Right Whale Conservation project manager. “We’ve seen that there are sightings of whales that are being seen in the past years off the North Carolina coast that have not made their way further south into South Carolina, Georgia and Florida. Every single whale is so vitally important to the population, especially those adult females. Anything that can be done to help give these animals a chance is really, really important because their numbers are so small.”

There are an estimated 370 North Atlantic right whales. About 70 of those are reproductively active females, which carry their pregnancies one year and birth no more than one calf in a season.

Researchers can only hope Black Heart has made her return to warmer waters to give birth this season. It’s simply not possible to tell whether a female is pregnant, White said.

Several hours after White spoke with Coastal Review, Oceana publicly confirmed the first whale calf of the 2024-25 season had been spotted with its mom by a boater off Cape Romain, South Carolina.

The yet-to-be identified mom and calf were first documented four days after Black Heart was spotted by researchers.

“The first calf of every calving season brings hope and excitement for the future of this critically endangered species, with only around 370 remaining,” Oceana Campaign Director Gib Brogan said in a statement. “Unfortunately, this first calf also evokes the fresh and painful memory of the first calf from last season that was killed by a boat strike after only a few months of entering this world.”

North Atlantic right whales migrate hundreds of miles between their northern feeding grounds south during calving season.

Their long-distance treks along the East Coast of the United States make them particularly vulnerable to human activity.

Boat strikes and fishing gear entanglement are the leading causes of right whale deaths.

“So, part of the reason for us to be conducting these surveys is to know their location so that information can be relayed to the maritime community,” White said.

When a whale is sighted, its location is added to a whale map, which is a public site.

Information gathered during each sighting is share between various research organizations, including the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, Georgia and South Carolina’s departments of natural resources, Corps of Engineers, U.S. Coast Guard Atlantic Area Command, U.S. Navy, Duke University and Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission.

“We’re really just trying to keep these animals safe,” White said.

By federal law, vessels must remain beyond 500 yards of right whales.

Seasonal management areas have been designated offshore from North Carolina down to northeast Florida to reduce the risk of vessel strikes. During calving season, vessels 65 feet and longer must maintain a speed of 10 knots or less.

Mariners also play an important role in helping report right whale sightings because they have an advantage aerial survey teams do not. Right whales are capable of holding their breaths for almost an hour at a time, which means they can be submerged and out of sight as a Cessna flying a survey team overhead makes a sweep of the area.

“The more eyes on the water the better,” White said. “Even though there are four aerial survey teams that are conducting work in the southeast each winter, we can’t be everywhere at the same moment so we do rely heavily on any public sighting information that comes in. Every sighting is an important sighting.”

Every good weather day – clear skies with winds 15 knots or less — aerial early warning system survey teams typically remain in the air around six hours at a time before landing, refueling and, as daylight allows, returning to the sky to what are called track lines. There are 107 track lines, well over 400 miles nautical miles of coast line, between North and South Carolina.

These track lines are flown in an east-to-west direction up to 40 miles offshore.

While two members of a survey team look out for whales, the third is a dedicated ground contact, relaying information about the airplane’s location to a field team on the ground.

Each whale that is spotted is photographed and can be individually identified by the callosity pattern on its head. These patterns are similar to human fingerprints.

Right whales are born with these patterns, which are rough patches of skin, on their heads. Within the nooks and crannies of these rough patches live colonies of tiny crustaceans known as cyamids. Cyamids are bright white, which allows researchers to see a whale’s callosity pattern.

And this is how many, but not all, of the whales get named, “based on that kind of pattern on the top of their heads,” White said.

All of the whales are, however, identified by a four-digit code that is referenced for cataloging purposes.

As of last week, Koala and Curlew have been tallied in the sightings this calving season.

Anyone who sees a right whale is asked to call 1-800-WHALE-HELP or go to SCG on VHF Ch. 16. #givethemspace

Not much has changed in Sledge Forest in the more than 20 years since its distinctive features were captured on the pages of a document created to offer guidance for its future use.

That, said geologist Roger Shew, is the beauty of it.

The forest that rises from the banks of the Northeast Cape Fear River and sprawls thousands of acres across northern New Hanover County is still an important part of the river floodplain, one of the largest landscape corridors in the southeastern part of the state.

Towering up from the forest bed are cypress and loblolly pine trees, some of the oldest in southeastern North Carolina, that are hundreds of years old, a “rare old-growth occurrence,” according to a biological survey published in May 2003 by the Natural Heritage Program of North Carolina, which identified the forest as a significant natural area.

The forest’s attributes have in recent weeks been thrust front and center in a rumble that tipped off when a Charlotte-based developer submitted to the county’s planning department preliminary plans to build thousands of homes on about a quarter of the more than 4,000-acre, privately owned site.

Because the land being eyed for the proposed development of more than 4,000 single-family houses, a golf course, trails and a horse farm does not have to be rezoned, the project gets pushed straight through to the county’s technical review process, effectively omitting the opportunity for public comment.

That’s simply unacceptable to Castle Hayne resident and local activist Kayne Darrell.

“It’s a by-right property so they can go in and start clear-cutting any time they want,” Darrell told Coastal Review in a recent telephone interview. “We’re hoping they don’t yet. It’s unconscionable to me that we have no opportunity to get our questions answered or have any input on what’s happening because it’s going to impact so many of us in so many negative ways.”

Attempts to reach the developer, Copper Builders, LLC, were unsuccessful. An engineer listed on the development plan application did not return a call for comment.

The homes of Hilton Bluffs, the name of the proposed development, would be built on about 1,000 acres of uplands that adjoin about 3,000 acres of protected wetlands, those that have a continuous surface connection to the U.S. Supreme Court-defined “waters of the United States” – in this case, Prince George Creek, which connects to the Northeast Cape Fear River.

Sledge Forest is one of the largest tracts along a more than 35-mile stretch of the floodplain corridor running from Holly Shelter Creek, at the north, south to Smith Creek.

Shew, senior lecturer in the University of North Carolina Wilmington’s Ocean Sciences and Environmental Sciences department and a conservationist, said in an email response to Coastal Review that the forest is dominated by hydric soils that are “periodically inundated during high-tide flooding events and storm events.”

Such floods are forecast to only increase with sea level rise, the latest projections of which are a minimum of one foot by 2050.

“High-tide flooding is common along the river and has the potential to inundate much of the site,” Shew said. “And, in the future … most of the area will be inundated fully or partially with river waters. Putting golf courses, horse barns and cabins or single-family homes in this area are ill-advised.”

The roads that will connect those neighborhood amenities will have to be built over wetlands, which will, in turn, block water movement, Shew said.

“And of course, whatever (fertilizer, herbicides, etc.) is put on these areas will runoff into the surrounding wetlands and river,” he wrote.

“The best and most logical use of this land is for it to be left as a natural area that supports wildlife, rich plant communities, corridor connectivity, reduces floodwaters, and maintains all of the ecosystem services of these wetland communities for the benefit of our community in a way too fast-growing area in northern (New Hanover County),” he said. “We need to have a comprehensive plan that maintains large natural areas and this and parts of Island Creek are sights that would be best and be opportune investments for the county for its future.”

Most of the old-growth trees are largely within the project building footprint, Darrell said. A 2003 natural area inventory dated cypress to be more than 350 years old and estimated to be as much as 500 years old, and dated loblollies to be more than 300 years old.

Area residents are also concerned about what is projected to be a significant increase in traffic on rural roads in the area – more than 30,000 additional vehicles per day.

Inactive hazardous site abuts tract

Opponents of the proposed development say they’re also troubled by the fact that the development is being proposed on land that is adjacent to a state-designated inactive hazardous site.

According to information provided by the North Carolina Division of Waste Management, contamination at the site off Castle Hayne Road resulted from drums of calcium fluoride and lubricants being stored in unlined trenches during the 1960s and 1970s.

That contamination spreads across two parcels, one of which is owned by General Electric.

Contamination in groundwater in the northwest corner of GE’s roughly 100-acre tract includes uranium, vinyl chloride and fluoride.

Those contaminants spill over onto a neighboring 1,500-plus-acre parcel owned by Nuclear Fuel Holding Co. Inc., a GE affiliate, according to Securities and Exchange Commission documents.

There are also contaminants in groundwater around the main plant on GE’s property. Those contaminants include tetrachlorethylene (PCE), trichloroethylene (TCE), cis- 1,2-dichloroethene, 1,1-dichloroethane, vinyl chloride, benzene, and naphthalene contaminate, according to the state.

Contamination at the main plant area is contained on-site, but is also close to the northern central property line, said Katherine Lucas, public information officer for the Division of Waste Management, in an email responding to Coastal Review’s questions.

“A portion of the (northwest) Area Contamination has migrated to the adjacent property in the deep groundwater aquifer,” she said in the email.

The site was added to the North Carolina Department of Environmental Quality’s Inactive Hazardous Sites Branch inventory in 1988.

The department’s Division of Water Resources conducted regulatory oversight of all remedial activities at the site until 2008, when site management was transferred to the branch as part of a reorganization between the waste management and water resources divisions.

The site was added to the branch’s Site Priority list in 2008.

“The area of the contamination has not been calculated,” Lucas said. “Ground water contamination is being remediated with a series of hydraulic control wells and pump and treatment of contaminated groundwater.”

More than 3,500 people have signed an online petition to save Sledge Forest.

Darrell, who helped organize Save Sledge Forest, said the ultimate goal is to get the land in conservation.

“That’s where it belongs,” she said. “We’re not giving up. It’s too special a place.”