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.

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.”

Bald Head Island could be the first beach town in the state to have two terminal groins now that the North Carolina General Assembly has amended the law that governs the number of such structures allowed on the state’s coastal shores.

Village officials were quick earlier this week to say that Senate Bill 607 gives them the option to pursue a study on whether a terminal groin would be a viable method of controlling chronic erosion at the east end of the island’s south beach.

Whether the village will move forward with such a study remains to be seen as the bill, which was ratified Friday, awaits Gov. Roy Cooper’s decision to sign, veto or let the bill become law.

Bald Head Island Village Mayor Peter Quinn on Monday sent an email to island property owners explaining why village officials had requested the change in the law, what the change means for the village and next steps.

“Such projects are very expensive and take years,” Quinn wrote. “The Village would not undertake such a study without any basis for a helpful solution. Any structure would be subject to extensive design, environmental study, public input, and state and federal permitting.”

A terminal groin has not been designed, planned or proposed, he wrote, and a multi-year investigation into whether such a structure would keep erosion at bay “will not be rushed.”

A terminal groin, as defined by bill, is one or more structures constructed at the terminus of an island or on the side of an inlet, or where the ocean shoreline converges with Frying Pan Shoals.

“Work to find a viable, financially responsible long-term answer needs to be environmentally sound,” Quinn stated. “Our community has, and hopefully always will, embrace the role of a steward whose actions are in harmony with its natural surroundings. We depend on this mutual idea and agents like the Conservancy to keep us on course.”

He is referring to the Bald Head Island Conservancy, an environmental and educational nonprofit that has publicly opposed the change to the law.

Last month, Bald Head Island Conservancy Executive Director Chris Shank was invited to make a presentation to the village council in which he argued whether a hardened structure would control the movement of sand on the east end of south beach, an area where sand is shifted by storms, which are unpredictable in frequency and strength.

Shank said in an email Monday afternoon that the conservancy was “very disappointed” legislators had passed the law, which also gives the village the option to explore replacing a series of fabric, sand-filled tubes on the west end of south beach with rock structures.

“I don’t believe the Village of BHI leadership or the NC legislators appreciate the monumental shift in approach to managing and protecting NC’s spectacular barrier islands that this legislation could bring,” he wrote. “Our barrier islands have always been one of our state’s most special resources, including our dynamic cape system whose constantly changing sands bring awe and wonder to those who experience them. Further, I doubt that North Carolina citizens want to armor their beaches to protect a limited number of private properties in the short-term in exchange for potentially much longer-term negative impacts to the rest of our beaches. I wish the Conservancy along with our research partners in the coastal physics and engineering fields had been offered the opportunity to discuss the potential consequences of this legislation with those who crafted and voted upon it. Then, at least, this baseline shifting decision would have been given the respect that it deserved for the citizens of Bald Head Island and throughout North Carolina.”

Bald Head Island was the first North Carolina beach community to build a terminal groin after the General Assembly repealed a decades’ old law prohibiting hardened shoreline erosion control structures on North Carolina’s coast.

The 2011 law authorized the Coastal Resources Commission to permit the construction of no more than four terminal groins under a pilot program. Legislators would later add that two additional terminal groins may be permitted. Senate Bill 607, if approved by the governor, will up the allowable number of terminal groins that may be permitted to seven.

Bald Head Island and Ocean Isle Beach are the only towns that have built terminal groins.

Village voters in 2014 overwhelmingly passed an $18 million bond to secure funding to build a 1,300-foot-long terminal groin at the western end of south beach, an area where the widening and deepening of the entrance to the Wilmington Harbor channel exacerbated sand loss.

“Changes in the island’s morphology at Frying Pan Shoals over the past few years have seen dramatic erosion and loss of beach habitat and property on the east end of South Beach,” Quinn stated in his letter to property owners.

The village spends anywhere from $1 million to $2 million about every five years to replace the cloth sand tube groin filed at south beach, he said. That groin field has been there since 1995.

“Replacing the cloth tubes with rock structures would save substantial public funds,” Quinn wrote. “These are not new or disappearing conditions.”

Village Manager Chris McCall described the tubes as, on average, stretching about 300 feet long.

Those tubes have proven to slow the rate of sand flow, he said. The law specifies that the field of rock structures may be groins, including T-head or lollipop groins, or breakwaters. The rock structures cannot be larger than the existing cloth tubes or greater in number.

These structures would have to be approved by the Division of Coastal Management or by variance from the Coastal Resources Commission.

Quinn said the village will dedicate a page on its website to keep property owners updated on its analysis of potential erosion control methods on the beach and when the public can provide input.

Note: Coastal Review will not publish Thursday in observance of Independence Day, a federal holiday.

Storms largely drive sand movement along the Bald Head Island beachfront and sand is being lapped away at the east end, where village officials are considering building a terminal groin to keep erosion at bay.

The unpredictability in the frequency and strength of those storms were among several points of concern raised by the Bald Head Island Conservancy last week over the prospect of additional hardened erosion control structures on the Brunswick County island’s shores.

“So, we’re going to try and control something, which we don’t even know how to predict the future of, and we’re going to try and put something there that says we know what it’s going to do?” Chris Shank, executive director of the Bald Head Island Conservancy, recently asked the village council. “It’s not an easy system to understand. To think, if we put something in the way, can you block sand in that area for a little while? You probably can for a little while. How long will it last? We don’t know that.”

Shank was invited to make a presentation to the village council during its meeting Friday, wrapping up a week when legislation was introduced that would allow the village the option to add a second terminal groin to its shoreline and replace a series of fabric sand tubes with a field of rock structures.

Related: Bald Head Island seeks to change hardened shorelines law

The proposed revision to a statute that lays out the rules for the construction, funding and number of terminal groins permitted on the North Carolina coast bumps the total of allowable hardened erosion control structures from six to seven.

Language added to the law went last week before the Senate judiciary committee, which is expected to take it up for further discussion this week. That language defines a terminal groin as one or more structures constructed at the terminus of an island or on the side of an inlet, or where the ocean shoreline converges with Frying Pan Shoals.

This would give the village the option of building what it describes as a field of rock structures that would replace fabric sand tubes installed along the west end of south beach and a terminal groin at the east end of south beach. The sand tubes have to be replaced every few years.

A state-permitted sandbag revetment installed by a private country club known as The Shoals Club protects it from the encroaching ocean at the east end of the south-facing beach.

Shank played a video of a female sea turtle lumbering under the cover of night along the beach to the sandbag wall. With no place to dig a nest, she eventually turned around and headed back to sea, he said.

“We don’t want something like that to be a long-term measure, especially not in this area,” Shank said, adding that the sandbags are analogy for how rock structures might affect nesting sea turtles.

“We’re sharing the island with our wildlife and, look, I’m not unrealistic about the fact that we have massive erosion in that area. I get that. But we have to be smart about the future.”

Bald Head Island’s beach is federally designated critical sea turtle habitat.

The soft tube groin field rests on the opposite end of the south beach from the 1,300-foot-long terminal groin the village had constructed nearly 10 years ago. The groin, a wall-like structure built perpendicular to the ocean shoreline, is designed to stop the movement of sand.

Bald Head Island was the first to build a terminal groin after the North Carolina General Assembly repealed a 30-year ban on such hardened erosion control structures on the state’s ocean shores.

Bald Head Island Mayor Peter Quinn made clear last week that village officials have not determined whether they want to go the route of having additional hardened structures on the island’s beachfront.

“It needs to be studied before anything is acted on, and this is a step toward making sure that it’s even a possibility before we do anything,” he said. “We’re working with the conservancy. This isn’t something we’re trying to steamroll or anything.”

Shank cautioned council members that, should they decide against building groins at the east end of south beach and the bill amendment passes in Raleigh, the door is opened for a future council to do so.

“I know that there’s a process involved, but it’s complicated,” he said. “By having this legislation passed you have created a pathway for somebody else to walk through and that is a major concern,” he said. “Once that pathway’s open, then what?”

The conservancy is a nonprofit organization that sponsors and facilitates coastal scientific research and offers recreational and educational activities to the public.

Shortly after Shank’s presentation, village council members approved a contract with Marinex Construction of North Carolina Inc. to place more than 1 million cubic yards of sand onto shore at the terminal groin fillet and the east end of south beach. That project is expected to begin later this year.

The village is sending out another round of bids for a project to replace the soft groin tubes on the east end.

OCEAN ISLE BEACH – More than a decade, a lawsuit and a couple of extra million dollars later, the terminal groin on the east end of Ocean Isle Beach is complete.

Construction of the 750-foot-long groin officially wrapped earlier this month.

All that’s left to be done is getting equipment used during construction off the Brunswick County island. That’ll be done by week’s end if not sooner, certainly by the April 30 deadline.

The beach at the east end, where the island rounds to Shallotte Inlet, has a dramatically different look than it had in years past. A robust sand beach stretches some 200 yards or so between homes the terminal groin. Those homes had been dangerously close to the ocean.

A wall of massive rocks extends along shore out into the Atlantic Ocean. The beach here has been built up so that it is aligned with the top of the terminal groin.

The structure has attracted curious beachgoers and fishermen, so much so that the town has posted temporary signs warning them to look, not touch.

“We’ve ordered bigger, permanent signs,” Ocean Isle Beach Mayor Debbie Smith said after hanging up a cell phone call to a town employee.

The call was made on a recent, sunny, clear-sky morning as Smith, who offered a tour of the east end and the erosion-mitigation structure designed to keep an encroaching ocean at bay. She had called to alert the employee that a couple of “Keep off rocks” signs posted along the beach behind the terminal groin were laying on the sand.

Several hundred yards away, a small crew planted sea oats in uniform lines well back from the ocean tideline. Beach grass is to be planted in the fall.

“We’re going to put bales of hay to encourage dune building,” Smith said.

The town originally planned to install sand fencing as a way to build up dunes, but there is none for sale because of supply shortages, she said.

Portions of a wall of sandbags that stretches some 1,500 feet long remain stacked on the beach near homes. The bags are owned and maintained by private property owners. They were notified by letter a few weeks ago that they will now either have to remove the bags or cover them up.

Town-owned sandbags were covered once construction on the terminal groin began.

The bags have been part of an ongoing, seemingly last-ditch effort to keep the ocean from overtaking more properties at the east end.

The N.C. Department of Transportation abandoned the end of East Second Street years ago.

“There used to be a first street out here too,” Smith said as she drove toward the island’s eastern edge.

About a mile of the east end from the inlet down the ocean shoreline suffers most from erosion, Smith said, over the years claiming homes, damaging and destroying public utilities and roads. 

The groin, a wall-like structure built perpendicular to the ocean shoreline, is designed to stop the movement of sand.

This function of terminal groins may be beneficial to the beach immediately behind it, but opponents argue the structures can create erosion problems downstream because they cut off natural longshore drift from reaching those areas.

Ocean Isle Beach is the second coastal town in North Carolina to build a terminal groin since 2011, when the General Assembly repealed a law banning construction of the structures along the coast.

The town’s efforts to install a groin were stalled in August 2017, when the National Audubon Society filed a lawsuit challenging the U.S. Army Corps of Engineer’s approval of the proposed project. The town was later included in the lawsuit.

In late March 2021, a three-judge panel in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 4th Circuit affirmed a lower court’s decision that the Corps fairly considered the alternatives included in an environmental impact statement examining the proposed project.

Ocean Isle Beach had the necessary state and federal permits in February 2017 to have the terminal groin built so, once the court ruling was handed down, the town put out bids to hire a company to build the groin.

Construction began Nov. 16, 2021. At the same time, a joint project between the town and the Corps began to renourish about 1.5 miles of the easternmost beachfront with an estimated 700,000 cubic yards of sand.

Through the town’s 50-year Federal Emergency Management Act, or FEMA, project with the Corps, sand is injected onto the ocean shoreline about every three years.

“The engineering predicts (the terminal groin) will stretch that out every six or seven years,” she said.

It appears that property owners overwhelmingly support the project. When asked, Smith said she could not think of a single property owner who had spoken against the terminal groin. Opponents of the project, she said, do not own property here.

Despite the lawsuit, David Hill said he had a hunch the terminal groin would eventually be built so he bought a handful of properties on the east end.

“I didn’t have anything down here on the east end until two years ago,” he said. “I watched every one of these rocks go in. I always supported (the terminal groin) because I wanted to keep this beach. The people who don’t think it needs to be here probably don’t know the whole story of this end of the island. This is so needed. I wish it had happened earlier for some of the people who couldn’t save their homes.”

Hill said he was initially worried that sand on the east side of the terminal groin would erode, “but it’s building up.”

The $11 million project was originally estimated to cost somewhere between $9 million and $9.5 million.

The town paid for the project through an account designated for beach projects and funded through a portion of an accommodations tax charged to vacation renters

The groin includes a 300-foot-long anchor, a portion of which is covered by sand.

“It’s anticipated that the natural flow of the sand will cover this up,” Smith said, looking at the wall of rocks that were delivered on flatbed trucks from a quarry outside of Rockingham. That’s the case for the terminal groin on Bald Head Island, she said.

The Village of Bald Head Island was the first North Carolina coastal town to build a terminal groin after the state law was repealed to allow up to six groins to be built on the coast.

Bald Head’s terminal groin was completed in early 2016. The latest monitoring report, which tracked the performance of the terminal groin between May 2020 and May 2021, concluded that the structure was performing “as intended – and as predicted.”

The monitoring report was conducted by Jacksonville, Florida-based Olsen Associates Inc.

A village spokeswoman said in an email that Erik Olsen confirmed the groin continues to perform as intended and predicted.

North Topsail Beach in Onslow County is in the process of having an environmental study prepared for a proposed terminal groin at New River Inlet, a project that may be years out still in that town.

A recent court ruling now opens the way for Ocean Isle Beach to build a terminal groin at the east end of its ocean shoreline and plans are underway to kick off construction later this year.

A three-judge panel in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit affirmed a lower court’s decision that the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers fairly considered the alternatives included in an environmental impact statement examining the proposed project. The judges rendered their opinion March 26.

Their decision ends a yearslong fight stretching back to August 2017, when the National Audubon Society filed a lawsuit challenging the Corps’ approval of the proposed project. The town was included in the lawsuit shortly after the suit was initially filed.

Ocean Isle Mayor Debbie Smith said in a telephone interview last week that she expected town commissioners to approve engineering contracts in the coming days.

She said the town will have updated information on the present condition of the shoreline, including surveys and beach profiles, before soliciting bids.

“All that has certainly changed since our original bid opening,” she said.

Smith said the town is aiming to start construction on the project in November.

Ocean Isle Beach had both a North Carolina Division of Coastal Management-issued Coastal Area Management Act, or CAMA, major permit, and the necessary federally approved permit by the end of February 2017.

Those permits remain valid.

The Department of the Army’s authorization is effective through Dec. 31, 2027.

As long as the town adheres to the permit conditions and does not request to modify the permit, the town will not have to reapply for federal authorization, Emily Winget, a public affairs specialist with the Corps’ Wilmington District, said in an email.

The town’s CAMA major permit will expire Dec. 31. A spokesperson with the Division of Coastal Management said the town will not have to apply for a new permit or provide additional information to the state unless the town changes the project from what is currently permitted.

The town had advertised for bids on the project, which will include construction of a 750-foot-long terminal groin of large armor rock, before the lawsuit was filed in U.S. District Court in Wilmington.

The lawsuit claimed that the Corps had approved the multi-million-dollar project without fairly considering other alternatives that would be cheaper for the town’s taxpayers, adequately protect vulnerable properties and maintain wildlife habitat at the east end of the barrier island in Brunswick County.

The Southern Environmental Law Center, which filed the suit on behalf of Audubon, alleged that the Corps failed to fairly evaluate project alternatives in the EIS and secondary effects of the alternatives presented in the study. The lawsuit also alleged that the alternative selected by the engineering firm hired by the town to complete the EIS and approved by the Corps was not the least environmentally damaging alternative and that the Corps did not independently evaluate environmental information submitted by Coastal Planning & Engineering of North Carolina Inc.

Geoff Gisler, senior attorney with the law center’s Chapel Hill office, said the appellate court’s decision is disappointing.

“I think one of the things that is important as we go forward is that part of the reason the decision came out the way it did is that the court deferred to the Corps that there would not be harmful effects on the eastern end of the island,” he said. “If the town chooses to go forward with the project we’ll be watching to make sure that is the case.”

The terminal groin, a wall-like structure built perpendicular to the shore, would be designed to mitigate erosion along 3,500 feet of the town’s oceanfront shoreline west of Shallotte Inlet.

About 264,000 cubic yards of sand dredged from that inlet will be placed behind the structure once it is complete.

A wall of sandbags 15 feet tall and at least 1,500 feet long stretches along the east-end shore to protect private properties, roads and public utilities from erosion, Smith said.

“And I’m ready for them to be covered up and never seen again,” she said. “The town of Ocean Isle has worked diligently for a lot of years to try to make this a reality. They’re proven structures when properly installed.”

Those efforts began more than 10 years ago in a pursuit to get North Carolina legislators to ditch a decades-long ban on terminal groins, hardened erosion control structures that, opponents argue, may cause increased erosion down the beach from where they are constructed.

The North Carolina General Assembly in 2011 passed Senate Bill 110, which repealed a 30-year-old ban on hardened structures and allowed four test terminal groins to be built on the coast. That number was later raised to six.

Since then, only one town – the Village of Bald Head Island in Brunswick County – has built a terminal groin.

North Topsail Beach in Onslow County is in the process of having an environmental study prepared for a proposed terminal groin at New River Inlet.

A lawsuit to stop one southern North Carolina beach town’s federally approved terminal groin project will soon be argued in an appellate court.

The National Audubon Society’s case against the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers and Ocean Isle Beach is scheduled to be heard Dec. 8 in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit.

The court’s ruling may bring an end to a fight that began a little more than three years ago when the Southern Environmental Law Center, or SELC, on behalf of Audubon, filed in August 2017 a lawsuit challenging the Corps’ approval of the proposed project.

The lawsuit claims that the Corps approved the multi-million project without fairly considering other alternatives that would be cheaper for the town’s taxpayers, adequately protect vulnerable properties, and maintain wildlife habitat on the east end of the barrier island.

A district court judge in September 2019 dismissed the case.

Less than a month later, National Audubon Society filed an appeal.

Geoff Gisler, senior attorney with the SELC’s Chapel Hill office, said in an email this week that, depending on the appellate court’s ruling, either side could petition the court for a rehearing or request the Supreme Court take the case.

“Both types of petitions are rarely granted,” he said. “If we win the appeal, the next step would be for the Corps to prepare a new environmental impact statement.”

The Corps approved a permit for the town’s project Feb. 27, 2017.

By that time Ocean Isle Beach had received a Coastal Area Management Act, or CAMA, major permit from the North Carolina Division of Coastal Management for the hardened shoreline erosion control structure.

The project would include construction of a 750-foot terminal groin of large armor rock. About 264,000 cubic yards of sand dredged from Shallotte Inlet would be placed behind the structure.

The SELC is challenging the adequacy of the Corps’ environmental impact statement, or EIS, specifically alleging that the federal agency failed to fairly evaluate project alternatives in the study and secondary effects of the alternatives presented in the study.

The lawsuit also alleges that the Corps-approved alternative selected by the engineering firm hired by the town to complete the EIS is not the least environmentally damaging alternative and that the Corps did not independently evaluate environmental information submitted by Coastal Planning & Engineering of North Carolina, Inc.

“We continue to believe that the Corps failed to uphold its basic obligation to do an objective analysis of options to respond to erosion on the east end,” Gisler said.

The terminal groin, a wall-like structure built perpendicular to the shore, would be designed to mitigate erosion along 3,500 feet of the town’s oceanfront shoreline west of Shallotte Inlet.

For more than two decades, chronic erosion has chewed away at the east end of the island, destroying homes, damaging roads and public beach accesses.

Throughout the years, the town has spent more than $3.5 million in repairs and replacing damaged infrastructure, including relocating water and sewer lines.

A sandbag revetment was installed years ago to curb the erosion.

“So, there’s very much a need for the terminal groin in this area,” said Daisy Ivey, the town’s administrator.

Town officials had hoped to kick off construction of the terminal groin in November of 2017.

At the time, initial construction of the project was estimated to cost around $5.7 million. The 30-year cost of the project was an estimated $45.8 million.

It is unclear whether the proposed project’s estimated cost will be higher now.

“I can’t answer that, but it just depends on how the bids were to come in,” Ivey said.

Audubon officials have argued the proposed terminal groin would be particularly devastating to an undeveloped refuge on the island’s east end, which has long been a haven for boaters, families and wildlife.

It is also one of the few remaining natural inlets available for shorebirds.

In its biological opinion, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service determined the project may affect, but not jeopardize, the existence of several endangered species, including the piping plover and loggerhead nesting sea turtles.

The National Marine Fisheries Services concluded that federally designated essential fish habitat, or EFH, is expected to be adversely affected by the proposed project because habitat would be modified in the groin footprint and during dredging.

A special condition of the federal permit prohibits work on the proposed project being done between April 1 through Nov. 15 to protect fish and protected species during seasonal migrations.

That means it’s too late for the town to move forward with construction this year if the court rules in its favor, Ivey said, adding that the town would move forward with the project as soon as possible pending the outcome of the case.

WILMINGTON – When the long-standing state ban was lifted on terminal groins, a handful of beach towns jumped at the chance to build a case for why a hardened erosion-control structure would be their best line of defense against losing sand.

Nearly eight years after the North Carolina General Assembly repealed the ban in 2011, only one terminal groin has been built.

The ongoing debate over the structures rages – whether they’re more harmful than helpful in the long term and how much beachfront property they protect.

A lawsuit has stalled one proposed project. After years of studies and hundreds of thousands of dollars expended, elected officials in another town stopped short from applying for a federal permit to build a groin. An environmental group-led campaign launched a yearslong fight against proposed plans for a terminal groin at Rich Inlet.

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

When the legislature repealed the decades-old ban of terminal groins on the coast, environmental groups and some of the most prominent coastal scientists in the state spoke out against the rule change.

The North Carolina Coastal Federation went on record opposing construction of terminal groins at any beach in the state shortly after the repeal, which allowed up to four “pilot projects” to be constructed. Months later, the legislature tacked on two more, permitting up to six of the structures to be built on the coast.

The Rich Inlet Fight

Figure Eight Island, the exclusive, private barrier island in New Hanover County, was the first to kick-start its yearslong process of environmental studies required by federal and state regulatory agencies.

The federation in 2011 launched a “Save Rich Inlet” campaign to educate island property owners about the negative effects a terminal groin would have at the inlet, which is one of the last naturally functioning inlets in the state.

Several property owners at the north end of the island where the terminal groin was proposed to be built made clear they had no plans to grant easements to their properties to the Figure Eight Island Homeowners’ Association. Since the island is unincorporated, the association does not have the authority to condemn private property.

The debate over a terminal groin at Rich Inlet raged for six years. The island got as far as completing a final environmental impact statement, or FEIS, that identified a terminal groin as the preferred erosion-control method at the north end.

In November 2017, the island’s homeowners rejected funding the proposed structure.

There are no plans for a terminal groin on the island.

Turning Tide

As the battle to preserve Rich Inlet raged, three beach towns farther south in Brunswick County were in various stages of seeking federal and state permits for their respective groin projects.

One of those, Holden Beach, became the first to formally revoke its permit application to build a terminal groin since the 2011 repeal. In April 2018, the town’s board of commissioners unanimously voted to permanently revoke the town’s application with the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers.

One pivotal moment leading up to the town board’s decision occurred a couple of years before, when, in April 2016, about 150 property owners gathered for an informational public meeting where coastal experts dissected the town’s EIS. That meeting was, for many in attendance, the first time they heard a different side, one that did not promote a terminal groin.

Some property owners attribute the meeting as the beginning of the shift toward opposing a groin.

The FEIS prepared by coastal engineers hired by the town was released by the Corps in March 2018. The study identified a 1,000-foot-long terminal groin as the preferred erosion-control method at the town’s east end.

The following month, after nearly seven years and more than $600,000 on studies examining various ways to mitigate severe erosion at the Lockwood Folly Inlets, commissioners cast their votes.

In their resolution to revoke the permit application, commissioners explained that the total costs to the town, its property owners and visitors “greatly” outweighed the potential benefits of a terminal groin, which would have cost an estimated $34.4 million for construction, maintenance and routine sand injections needed over the course of 30 years.

The town’s Central Reach project, which cost $15 million and pumped about 1.3 million cubic yards of sand along about a 4-mile stretch of oceanfront in the middle of the island, sufficiently nourished the island’s east end, commissioners concluded.

Court Battle

Holden Beach’s barrier island neighbor to the south, Ocean Isle Beach, remains in a holding pattern with its plans to build a terminal groin.

Ocean Isle Beach’s proposed terminal groin project came to halt in August 2017 when the Southern Environmental Law Center filed a lawsuit on behalf of Audubon North Carolina challenging the town’s FEIS.

The lawsuit against the town and the Corps was filed Aug. 28, 2017, with the Eastern Division of the U.S. District Court of North Carolina. The project to install a terminal groin at the town’s east end started about five years prior to the suit.

The town was granted a state Coastal Area Management Act, or CAMA, major permit to build a 750-foot terminal groin, the initial construction cost of which was $5.7 million. The 30-year cost of the project was an estimated $45.8 million.

Construction was expected to begin in fall 2018.

Town Administrator Daisy Ivey said recently that there were no updates in the pending litigation.

So Far, So Good

By all accounts, the first and only terminal groin to be built since the 2011 repeal has fared well through coastal storms, including Hurricane Florence, the most recent storm to directly hit North Carolina.

The Category 1 hurricane made landfall north of Bald Head Island on Sept. 14, 2018, stripping an estimated 215,000 cubic yards of sand from South Beach.

Village Manager Chris McCall said that aerial imagery shows the 1,300-foot-long terminal groin “did well.”

“There’s no appearance of missing boulders,” McCall said. “That shoreline out there and the fillet is still present and stable there. All things being relative, our primary frontal dune system remained intact. The way it came in, (Florence) really hit our friends to the north of us much harder, but our issue in dealing with it really was with the rainfall accumulation over that 72 hours.”

The village is in the midst of mining sand from Jay Bird Shoals and depositing it along South Beach next to the terminal groin completed in early 2016.

The original beach-fill project called for a little more than 1 million cubic yards of sand. After Hurricane Florence, the village added an additional 100,000 cubic yards of sand to the project to make up for sand lost in the storm.

The village’s 2014 federal permit allows for a terminal groin to be built up to 1,900 feet long. Village property owners approved an $18 million bond to secure funding for the project. About $8.5 million has been spent, including the cost of construction. The Bald Head project received state and federal permits to build up to a 1,900-foot-long terminal groin and did not require any easements to private property.

McCall said there had been no talk of proceeding with Phase 2 of the project, which would add another 600 feet to the existing structure.

“I think it’s fair to say we’re relatively fine with just having Phase 1, that it’s working well and it’s providing stability,” he said. “It’s managing (erosion) much better.”

Saving Grace?

North Topsail Beach has been struggling for years to keep sand at its north end on New River Inlet. The Onslow County town has been battling shoreline erosion south of the inlet since 1984, the year the inlet’s bar channel shifted toward an alignment with Onslow Beach.

Erosion has claimed several homes since then.

The town’s channel-realignment project completed in early 2013 failed to curb erosion at the north end.

A huge sandbag revetment some 45-feet wide and 20-feet tall is providing temporary protection for oceanfront homes.

The wall of sandbags connects to a revetment Topsail Reef Condominiums had installed after receiving a state permit in 2012 to build one larger than the maximum the North Carolina Coastal Resources Commission, or CRC, typically allows.

The bags are permitted through 2022.

As the countdown to that permit expiration ticks away, some in the town believe their saving grace will be a terminal groin.

Applied Technology and Management Inc., or ATM, the firm hired by the town to pursue a hardened structure project, recommends a two-phase terminal groin project, similar to that of Bald Head Island.

ATM suggests the town build a 1,500-foot structure with the permits to add an additional 500-foot anchor later if needed.

But plans for the proposed project have been placed on hold.

The devastation from Hurricane Florence forced the town to shift its focus to restoring its dune system, which suffered an estimated $22 million loss.

“There is a draft EIS that is still in the works,” North Topsail Beach Town Manager Bryan Chadwick said. “We’re pursuing this, but it is going to come down to the fiscal responsibility of taking care of priorities. Although this is a priority, we are still in a recovery mode.”

The roofs of several homes remained draped in tarps. Parks and public parking lots must be restored.

Town officials did not have an estimate of when the draft EIS will be ready.

Onslow County commissioners agreed in July 2016 to a $250,000 match to the town’s contribution toward paying for the EIS.

Commissioners made clear their primary interest is in stabilizing the inlet for navigational purposes, raising the question of whether they would support a terminal groin, a structure built to stabilize shorelines.

“We have not talked with them about any type of financial support for construction of a terminal groin,” said North Topsail Commissioner Joann McDermon. “I think it would be premature at this point to do that.”

HOLDEN BEACH – A terminal groin at the east end of Holden Beach was a given.

The town board had unanimously supported legislative efforts to allow the hardened structures at North Carolina inlets as a way to control beach erosion.

In the fall of 2011, the year the General Assembly repealed the decades-old ban on terminal groins, initially allowing up to four be built, town commissioners at the time passed a one-page resolution authorizing the town manager to apply for a state permit to build one at Lockwood Folly Inlet.

Word around the barrier island town was that the structure would cost a mere $1.5 million, that it would be funded by higher government and provide hurricane protection.

“Basically, all our dreams will come true,” recalled Tom Myers, president of the Holden Beach Property Owners Association.

When the organization decided to include the terminal groin as a topic in a 2015 survey of property owners, the feedback was clear – a majority of people could not make up their mind as to whether they supported or objected to a terminal groin. They wanted more information.

So those at the helm of the property owners’ association obliged, setting off on what became a collaborative information-gathering mission that would eventually turn the tide from “this is a must” to “this is not what’s best” for the town.

A Deeper Look

“We did not set out to kill the groin,” Myers said. “That wasn’t our objective. We set out to get to the bottom of the information.”

Ronda Dixon, who owns a home in Dunescape, a gated community at the far eastern end of Holden Beach, was one of the property owners who wanted to learn as much as she could about the proposed structure.

“It took a lot of time and effort of everyone’s part,” Dixon said. “It was a major, major project.”

The draft environmental impact statement, or EIS, on the proposed project was released for public review by the Army Corps of Engineers in August 2015.

The document was compiled by a firm hired by the town to examine the effects on inlet- and shoreline-stabilization alternatives.

It gave property owners their first real look into what was being proposed: a 1,000-foot-long terminal groin with an estimated $34.4 million cost associated with construction, maintenance and routine sand injections needed to supplement the structure over 30 years.

That information was brought to light during an April 2016 public meeting in the town, where about 150 property owners gathered in a local chapel and listened as coastal experts dissected the EIS.

A terminal groin would provide erosion protection to a much smaller number of homes than reported in the EIS, protect less than $1.2 million in tax revenue over 30 years and push chronic erosion at the east end of Holden Beach to spots further down the barrier island, experts argued.

“Honestly, it was the first time a majority of people heard from the other side,” Myers said. “We got criticized for it being one-sided. We invited everybody we could think of on the other side.”

Proponents of the proposed terminal groin, including representatives with Dial Cordy and Associates, the environmental consulting firm that compiled the EIS, did not attend.

“I think that meeting was the very beginning of when the tide started to change,” Myers said. “It started to snowball from there.”

“It was interesting because everybody who started to look at the facts started to come around.”

Tom Myers, president, Holden Beach Property Owners Association

The POA started to record a fact sheet, which included information such as the projected costs and the long-term maintenance and re-nourishment cycles associated with the proposed terminal groin.

“We tied every fact to either the draft EIS or the beach inlet report,” Myers said. “It was interesting because everybody who started to look at the facts started to come around.”

The property owners association’s 2017 survey revealed that about 80 percent of those polled either opposed a terminal groin or were still on the fence. Twenty percent said they supported the proposed project.

The survey results came in before the association hosted its meet-the-candidates forum held before the November 2017 municipal election. The seven candidates running for town commissioner were asked to state whether they supported or opposed a terminal groin.

“The five that came out on record that they were against it were the five who were elected,” Myers said. “I think that’s pretty telling.”

A Final Vote

Through the years, the property owners association has taken its concerns to commissioners related to issues including noise, parking and cabanas left overnight on the beach – typical topics in small beach towns along the North Carolina coast.

“(The terminal groin) was totally different because we were taking on a train that left the station and had taken on a whole lot of momentum,” Myers said. “What we were taking on was the system was against us. To take on something like that around was a lot more work. It took a lot more research on our end and lot more digging into the facts. It was going to have an enormous impact on our property taxes. It was probably the biggest financial impact to our members. We wanted to bring the town to the right decision and we wanted to bring the town to the best decision.”

In April, about a month after the final EIS was released, the town board unanimously voted to withdraw the town’s permit application with the Army Corps of Engineers.

Commissioners concluded that, “the total costs to the Town, its citizens and visitors of the proposed Lockwood Folly Inlet Terminal Groin greatly outweigh the potential benefits thereto, both financially and otherwise,” according to a resolution they unanimously adopted following their vote to revoke the application.

Holden Beach is the only North Carolina beach town to formally revoke its permit application to construct a terminal groin since the ban on the structures was repealed.

Commissioner Peter Freer said the town is not abandoning or ignoring erosion at the east end. The board is making sure there’s budgeted funds to get sand dredged from the inlet by the corps of engineers to place on the east end.

More than a year ago, the town completed the first phase of its $15 million Central Reach project, which pumped about 1.3 million cubic yards of sand along about a 4-mile stretch of oceanfront in the middle of the island.

Commissioners also established in April an inlet and beach protection board to serve in an advisory capacity to the town.

The town, the Holden Beach Property Owners Association and the Dunescape Property Owners Association recently received a North Carolina Coastal Federation Pelican Award for exceptional coastal stewardship.

“When I first got involved it was a foregone conclusion that a terminal groin was going to be built,” Freer said. “It wasn’t solve the problem of erosion on the east end, it was build a terminal groin. It took a long time to change that foregone conclusion to what I felt was an easy decision. From my point of view, it didn’t make sense technically, environmentally or financially. It was actually very satisfying that the process worked.”

Learn More

• Read the Terminal Groin Committee’s report and the town board’s resolution

HOLDEN BEACH – This town would be better off sticking with beach re-nourishment projects and forego the prospect of building a terminal groin, a structure that critics say is too costly a risk with an uncertain outcome.

A majority of those who spoke Friday during a town meeting about the nearly 1,900-page final environmental impact study, or FEIS, which identifies a terminal groin as the preferred erosion control method at the island’s east end, urged town commissioners to drop pursuing the permits to build one.

“Now we’ve come to a moment of truth,” said John Witten, treasurer of the Holden Beach Property Owners Association. “This is too big a risk. There’s a reason the (state) statute calls this a pilot project. We’re the guinea pigs here.”

Witten, one of about a half-dozen people asked to formally address commissioners at the meeting Friday night, was referring to the 2011 state law amendment that ended a decades-old ban on coastal hardened structures.

When legislators initially repealed the ban, the statute allowed for the construction of up to four terminal groins on the North Carolina coast. That number has since been bumped to six terminal groins.

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

Erosion rates on beaches near inlets are often higher than that of other beach areas because of the way inlets naturally oscillate. That natural movement of the Lockwood Folly Inlet, which separates Holden Beach and Oak Island, has resulted in long-term erosion on the east end of Holden Beach.

For 50 years, sand has routinely been pumped onto the eastern end of the 8.1-mile-long barrier island. Sandbags have also been placed along the shore throughout the years as a temporary means to protect homes and properties.

By 1993, 28 properties and structures had been destroyed as a result of erosion.

Some in the town, including longtime Mayor Alan Holden, believe a terminal groin is a long-term solution to protecting properties and infrastructure on the east end shore.

The FEIS, a document that examines potential shoreline erosion control alternatives created by an engineering firm hired by the town, was released last month by the Army Corps of Engineers. The public comment period on the document ends April 16.

The preferred alternative is a 700-foot-long terminal groin with a 300-foot shore anchorage system. The proposed structure would also include a 120-foot-long “T-head” segment centered on the seaward end of the main stem to help minimize the potential rip currents and sand losses during extreme wave conditions.

The estimated $34.4 million project would include a long-term beach re-nourishment plan to supplement the structure.

Commissioners announced during a prior meeting that they would not be taking action Friday.

Coastal engineer and geologist Spencer Rogers with North Carolina Sea Grant said maintaining sand in near-inlet areas like the east end of Holden Beach is challenging because of the high erosion rates in those areas.

“Beach nourishment in some areas clearly is not going to work,” Rogers said.

In high-erosion areas, including near-inlet areas, re-nourishment is not cost-effective, he said, and therefore would benefit from “properly designed” terminal groins, he said.

Rogers, a member of the North Carolina Coastal Resources Commission Science Panel and CRC Advisory Council, said he’s recommending terminal groins be included in the CRC’s permitting kit.

Fran Way, a senior coastal engineer with Applied Technology and Management Inc., the firm that drafted the EIS for the town, said the town would save $12 million over 30 years if it builds a terminal groin.

“The design is increasing the beach nourishment longevity from two years to four years,” he said. “To increase that longevity means that you’re saving money.”

He encouraged commissioners, who last month voted to put on hold pursuing federal and state permits to build a terminal groin, to move ahead with obtaining the permits. Then, he said, the town would have that tool in their pocket should commissioners decide a few years from now to build a groin.

If the town moves ahead with the permitting process, officials there could expect a legal challenge, said Mike Giles, who recently retired as a coastal advocate with the North Carolina Coastal Federation.

“There are better ways,” Giles said. “Look at the beach now. It cost you very little and you have a better beach now than you would if you construct a terminal groin.”

Neighboring Ocean Isle Beach’s plans to build a terminal groin were put on hold last August when a lawsuit was filed on behalf of Audubon North Carolina. The lawsuit, filed by the Southern Environmental Law Center, challenges the Corps’ analysis of the project.

Critics of terminal groins argue the hardened structures come with too big a price tag – both fiscally and environmentally – to justify what they argue benefits a small number of homes.

Andy Coburn, associate director of the Program for the Study of Developed Shorelines at Western Carolina University, said in a written statement to Holden Beach commissioners that a terminal groin does not make fiscal sense.

Coburn wrote, “it is my professional opinion that the public cost of building and maintaining a terminal groin at Lockwood Folly Inlet will exceed public benefits by a factor of ten over the project’s 30-year planning horizon, and any benefits that do accrue will be grossly inequitable in their distribution.”

Funding the construction, maintenance, monitoring and re-nourishment associated with the structure, Coburn wrote, “is fiscally irresponsible and could well be viewed as a breach of fiduciary duty on behalf of the decision makers responsible for the health, safety and public welfare of (the) Town of Holden Beach, its citizens and the many thousands more who visit – often for the primary purpose of using and enjoying the public beaches on Holden Beach.”

If a terminal groin does prevent damage to every property for 30 years after construction, the associated costs would “still be ten times greater than the maximum possible return ($1.8 million) the town can possibly hope to recoup,” Coburn wrote.

Worst-case scenario, he wrote, the groin fails, leaving the town with nothing in return and legal challenges “that will inevitably arise.”

“Even though the actual outcome is likely to fall somewhere between the two extremes, it is clear that the cost of building and maintaining a terminal groin at Lockwood Folly Inlet will exceed maximum potential benefits IN EVERY SINGLE CASE – even if the proposed project works exactly as project proponents and consulting engineers hope AND without one single detrimental environmental impact,” Coburn wrote.

The town should, instead, continue to re-nourish the beach, a method that has been proven beneficial in Holden Beach, proponents of that alternative argued.

Jay Holden, a member of the board of directors of the Dunescape Property Owners’ Association, said the town has not lost a home to erosion since 2001.

“We oppose the groin because it has a very limited and uncertain effectiveness that is far outweighed by the risk and the cost,” Holden said.

The association supports dredging the inlet, nourishing the beach and urging the Corps to keep the inlet ebb channel at a south-southwest orientation.

Geoff Gisler, an attorney with the Southern Environmental Law Center, also suggested the town continue to re-nourish the beach rather than build a groin.

The modeling in the FEIS is based on 10-year-old data, is misleading and inaccurate, he said.

Last year, about 120,000 cubic yards of sand was placed on the east end of the island, Gisler said. The state paid a significant share of the cost, leaving the town to pick up about $76,000 of the $465,000 price tag.

“We also have the beach and we have seen what nourishment over the last 10 years has done to the beach,” Gisler said. “The beach is significantly wider than it was in 2008. It’s in very good shape.”

The town’s most recent re-nourishment project put about 1.3 million cubic yards of sand along about a 4-mile stretch of oceanfront in the middle of the island.

The first phase of the $15 million Central Reach project wrapped in March 2017.

That project is protecting about 450 to 500 homes, Witten said, a far greater number than the 2,500 feet of beach at the east end.

“You, the taxpayers of Holden Beach are picking up the bill for the terminal groin,” he said. “We don’t have the money. We cannot afford to take this kind of risk with our limited resources.”

He reminded commissioners that they all said they opposed a terminal groin in a candidate questionnaire they filled out last fall prior to the town elections.

“We’ve spent $630,000 and what we’ve got is a big stack of books,” Witten said. “It’s a terrible shame that we’ve lost that amount of money. We can’t keep doing this year after year. The time to call into question is now. Now it’s time to move on and protect the east end of the island and keep doing what we’re doing in the channel.”

Learn More

• Holden Beach Property Owners Association’s Terminal Groin Committee Report

BALD HEAD ISLAND – Bald Head Island has applied for a federal permit to tap a portion of Frying Pan Shoals, an area that includes fish habitat protected under federal law, as a future sand mine source.

The shoals, a line of shallow sandbars trailing from the southeastern tip of Bald Head Island some 30 miles into the Atlantic Ocean, has no record of ever being dredged, according to the Army Corps of Engineers.

The proposed sand borrow area includes essential fish habitat, a federal designation that describes waters and substrate necessary for fish for spawning, breeding, feeding, or growth to maturity.

The Corps initially ruled dredging the shoals may adversely affect essential habitat or fisheries managed by the South Atlantic or Mid-Atlantic Fishery Management Councils or the National Marine Fisheries Service.

The agency made that determination after the village submitted its environmental impact statement, or EIS, to build a terminal groin on the island’s western shore.

Bald Head Island received a federal permit in November 2014 to build a 1,900-foot-long terminal groin, a wall-like structure built perpendicular to the shore to mitigate shoreline erosion. Under the permit terms, the groin had to be built concurrently with the Corps’ dredging of the Wilmington Harbor Channel.

Ideally, Bald Head Island will continue to use sand pumped from the channel as groin fillet and for beach nourishment, but that all depends on how often the Corps dredges the channel.

At the time the Corps approved the terminal groin permit, the village’s preferred primary sand source for groin fillet maintenance and beach nourishment was Jay Bird Shoals “in cases where the applicant could demonstrate that dredging the federal channel was not practicable,” according to the Corps.

Bald Head Island Village Manager Chris McCall said the last time the village received sand from the federal dredge project was in 2015 when the terminal groin was built.

The Corps was scheduled to dredge the channel this winter, but lacked the funding and instead pushed maintenance dredging back to 2018.

It may be 2020 before the village receives another round of sand injections from channel dredging, McCall said.

The Jay Bird Shoals site provides a limited sand-mining source. The village received a permit in 2010 to remove up to 2 million cubic yards of sand from that site for a private project in which Bald Head pumped about 1.85 million cubic yards of sand.

McCall said officials estimate there to be 1 million cubic yards in the borrow area – not enough to last well into the future of the terminal groin.

“We’re just working through the environmental assessment and permitting process to have everything in line so that if and when we were to need to go to that borrow site it would be permitted versus waiting further down the road,” he said. “For whatever reason, whether it’s because we didn’t get sand from the shipping channel maintenance project or Jay Bird Shoals, if we needed sand, it would be complete. It would be the long-term sand source for the terminal groin project.”

The village is currently dealing with erosion along a section of the shoreline extending from West Beach up to the north entrance of the Bald Head Island Marina.

Sand being dredged from Bald Head Creek is being used to fill that section of shoreline north and south of the marina entrance, McCall said. Sand is also being pumped onto a section of South Beach, McCall said.

“As far as the terminal groin and its performance, what we’re seeing to date is it’s doing a really good job of mitigating the erosion right at the point where we were constantly struggling to maintain,” he said. “When we survey this coming spring and we take that data and the fall survey and look at and analyze it then we’ll have a much better picture in terms of quantifying the performance of the terminal groin.”

That information will also eventually help them determine whether or not the village will need to initiate a second phase of the project, potentially extending the length of the terminal groin.

Costs to dredge material from Frying Pan Shoals will be higher than pumping from Jay Bird Shoals, which is closer to the island.

The village’s proposed 460-acre sand source is on the western portion of Frying Pan Shoals, about a mile off the island’s southeast shoreline.

Under the terms of the permit application, the village proposes to monitor the borrow site immediately after dredging each year for three years, then every other year after that.

The Corps did not authorize Frying Pan Shoals as a borrow site in 2014 because essential fish habitat consultation and National Historic Preservation Act consultation were not completed.

“We will initiate EFH (essential fish habitat) consultation with NMFS (the National Marine Fisheries Service) and no permit will be issued until all requirements of the Magnuson Stevens Act are met,” Ronnie Smith, project manager with the Corps’ Wilmington district, wrote in an email responding to questions. “We will evaluate all concerns and issues as part of the DA (Department of the Army) permit process. At this time, we do not know when a decision will be rendered.”

When Bald Head filed that application last month it kicked off another assessment of the potential effects dredging may have on the shoals.

The Corps has issued a public notice that it will initiate a formal consultation with the fisheries service once the Corps has completed its essential fish habitat assessment.

The Corps’ Wilmington District is accepting written comments on permit application through March 9.

FIGURE EIGHT ISLAND – The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service is still analyzing the potential effects a proposed terminal groin in Rich Inlet may have on federally listed species.

“We are still trying to make our determination and finish up our analysis,” said Kathy Matthews, a fish and wildlife biologist with the service’s Raleigh field office.

The service’s initial deadline to submit its biological opinion to the Army Corps of Engineers on the project proposed at Figure Eight Island’s north end was more than six months ago.

A biological opinion is part of a process known as Section 7 of the Endangered Species Act, where federal agencies consult with one another to conserve threatened and endangered species. A formal consultation between Fish and Wildlife officials and the Corps ensues when a determination is made that a federally funded or permitted project is likely to adversely affect a listed species.

Fish and Wildlife Service officials have made a handful of requests to extend their deadline, the original date of which was Aug. 18, 2016, in part, because of new information the service received about piping plovers on Figure Eight’s north end.

That information included additional documented sightings of banded piping plovers, including those within the endangered Great Lakes population. Wildlife biologists track these small shorebirds’ place of birth and migratory patterns by placing small, colored bands on the birds’ legs.

“Some of the extension is due to that,” Matthews said.

She declined to go into further detail, saying that a decision has yet to be made.

“We have to look at all the species, all the listed entities separately,” she said.

There are three populations of piping plover, including those of the Great Lakes, Atlantic Coast and Northern Great Plains.

The Great Lakes piping plover population was listed as endangered in 1986. That same year, the government listed the Atlantic Coast and Northern Great Plains populations as threatened.

All three populations have been documented at north end of Figure Eight, where acres of barren sand and shoals on the banks of Rich Inlet attract a host of shorebirds. The area is federally designated critical habitat for the Great Lakes and Atlantic Coast piping plover populations.

Anticipating that the inlet will wag southward and erode the north end as has occurred in the past, the island’s homeowners’ associations’ board of directors decided a terminal groin would be the best way to combat erosion.

The board several years ago initiated the process seeking federal and state permits necessary to build a proposed 1,500-foot-long terminal groin.

In order to cover initial construction costs and associated beach nourishment – an estimated $7.4 million – the board planned to assess each property lot owner up to $8,800.

Property owners late last year ultimately voted down the special assessment. A total of 281.5 votes was needed for terminal groin plans to proceed. The board received fewer than 270 votes in favor of the project.

Figure Eight Island Administrator David Kellam said board members are “just looking at all options, and continue to make the best decisions for a long-term management plan.”

When asked if the board was still trying to obtain several property easements needed to proceed with a terminal groin project, Kellam answered, “We’re still looking at all options.”

The association’s board of directors has not withdrawn its terminal groin permit application, according to Mickey Sugg, project manager with the Corps’ Wilmington district.

Prior to the special assessment vote, the board did not have all easements needed from north-end property owners to build the terminal groin.

The terminal groin, a wall-like structure usually made of rock and steel built perpendicular to the shore, would cross upwards of 12 to 15 properties at the north end.

Some owners of those properties have said they would refuse to grant an easement to their land. Since the island is not incorporated the board does not have the authority to take land easements through condemnation.

State law requires that a Coastal Area Management Act, or CAMA, major permit application include a copy of the deed “or other instrument” claiming title to the property.

A CAMA major permit must be approved before the Corps can move forward with a federal permit.

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• Corps of Engineers’ Major Projects

NORTH TOPSAIL BEACH – The environmental consulting firm being eyed to head the study, design and permitting process of a hardened erosion control structure at North Topsail Beach’s volatile north end will use information gathered from a 2015 feasibility study to cut costs and time.

In a presentation to the North Topsail Beach Board of Aldermen on Wednesday night, Dial Cordy and Associates president Steve Dial said the company’s goal is to fast-track the proposed project.

“Hopefully in two years,” he said. “That’s our goal. Our whole approach to this project is using everything you’ve already paid for. We don’t want to waste any more money. We don’t want to waste any more time.”

The Jacksonville Beach, Florida-based firm, which has a regional office in Wilmington, proposes to use data included in a feasibility study that another firm, Coastal Planning & Engineering, developed looking at possible options for a terminal groin at New River Inlet.

Severe erosion has for years eaten away at the town’s north end, where a state-permitted, massive sandbag wall has been built to deflect ocean waves that could otherwise destroy beachfront homes and a condominium complex.

“We’ll be using alternatives in the feasibility report that have already been done,” Dial said. “We’re assuming that no more modeling will have to be done.”

CP&E’s study, which cost the town $55,000, includes six terminal groin alternatives. The study concluded “Option 5,” a terminal groin that would stretch 1,900 feet, as the preferred alternative.

Initial construction of this structure could range between $7 million and $10 million, according to the report. Those numbers would likely be bumped up to between $9 million and $16 million when adding the cost of re-nourishing the beach in conjunction with the construction of a terminal groin, CP&E stated. The estimated maintenance cost over a 30-year period is $600,000.

If the town board agrees to hire Dial Cordy to develop a draft environmental impact statement, or EIS, for the proposed project, the company’s plan is to get the Army Corps of Engineers to accept the information in the feasibility study as a supplemental study.

“It’s in our benefit to get them to accept the supplemental EIS,” Dial said.

He said engineering and design firm Applied Technology & Management, or ATM, has agreed to accept CP&E’s modeling results from the 2015 study. ATM would use that information to develop modeling and design alternatives for the EIS, which would then be reviewed by the Corps as well as several federal and state regulatory agencies.

Last July, Onslow County commissioners agreed to a $250,000 match to the town to pay for an EIS that would include a variety of hardened structures, not solely terminal groins.

A terminal groin is a wall-like structure usually constructed of rock and steel that runs perpendicular to the shore. Terminal groins are designed to reduce beach erosion.

A jetty, on the other hand, is designed for navigational purposes to maintain an inlet. Both Onslow County officials and representatives with Marine Corps Base Camp Lejeune, which sits across the New River from North Topsail Beach, have expressed interest in a structure that would help maintain the inlet.

Alderman Dick Macartney pointed out during the board meeting Wednesday that CP&E’s study focused solely on terminal groins.

“What are we calling this?” he asked.

The answer: New River hardened structure

“It’s a lot more engineering than just building a terminal groin,” if the county and Camp Lejeune partner with the town to build a structure, Macartney said.

How and if the county or base may partner with the town to build a hardened structure at the inlet is unclear. Representatives with the Corps’ Wilmington District did not return calls seeking comment.

There is talk that an engineering firm could design a hybrid structure, one built with a dual purpose of curbing beach erosion and shoaling in the inlet.

North Topsail Beach Town Manager Stuart Turille said it’s too early to know exactly what type of structural design options the town may be asked to consider in the EIS.

“We haven’t decided on any design at all,” he said.

In a 4-1 vote, the board agreed for Dial Cordy to bring back a contract proposal to develop an EIS. The board will consider that contract upon the county’s approval.

Alderman Walter Yurek, cast the lone “no” vote, saying he would not agree to spend more than the budgeted $500,000 for the EIS.

“I absolutely will not vote for any additional funds to do this project,” he said. “It seems to me like there’s a lot of uncertainty about the cost of this project. We’re not a real rich town here.”

Dial said he doesn’t anticipate a change in the estimated cost of the study unless the Corps directs the firm to start from scratch.

In an effort to boost the town’s bank account, the town next month is hosting a surplus land auction. The lots up for sale range from small, unbuildable parcels to cream-of-the-crop island real estate.

The auction will be held at 1 p.m. March 3 at town hall.

FIGURE EIGHT ISLAND – The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service has been given more time to analyze the effects the proposed terminal groin for Figure Eight Island may have on federally listed species.

This is the second time in recent months that the Fish and Wildlife Service has asked the Army Corps of Engineers for an extension. The agency wants to further study what effects a proposed 1,500-foot-long terminal groin at the north end of the private island will potentially have on threatened and endangered species, specifically, little shorebirds known as piping plovers.

The agency’s request to push back its deadline for submitting a biological opinion on the proposed project was granted by the Corps on Oct. 14.

A biological opinion is part of a process known as Section 7 of the Endangered Species Act, where federal agencies consult with one another to conserve threatened and endangered species. A formal consultation between Fish and Wildlife officials and the Corps ensues when a determination is made that a federally funded or permitted project is likely to adversely affect a listed species.

In this case, Fish and Wildlife officials want more time to analyze the documented populations of piping plovers, including those within the endangered Great Lakes population, at the north end of the island.

Kathy Matthews, a fish and wildlife biologist in the service’s Raleigh field office, said the agency received new information sometime around July about piping plovers on the island’s northern end.

That information included more documented sightings of banded piping plovers than initially received, she said. Small, colored bands placed on a bird’s leg help wildlife biologists track a bird’s place of birth as well as its migratory patterns.

“We received additional data that added more dates of sightings and things like that,” Matthews said.  “It was more than we realized and that’s based on sightings from several different folks. We had to step back and make sure we had the best available information. We’re just trying to use the best information that we can to write the biological opinion.”

She declined to discuss exact numbers.

“I don’t really want to quote a number right now,” she said. “It depends on the year. It depends on the date. It is a little bit complicated.”

Lindsay Addison, a biologist with Audubon North Carolina, said that the organization this fall has recorded 36 piping plovers in a survey at Rich Inlet. That number does not indicate the total number of piping plovers using the site in a given year or season because the birds migrate throughout the spring and fall.

All three populations of piping plover, including those of the Great Lakes, Atlantic Coast and Northern Great Plains, have been documented at the island’s north end.

“We’re concerned about all three, of course,” Matthews said. “We have to analyze all three.”

The Great Lakes piping plover population was listed as endangered in 1986. That same year, the government listed the Atlantic Coast and Northern Great Plains populations as threatened.

There are only about 75 breeding pairs in the Great Lakes population, Addison said. Almost that entire population is banded and Audubon’s surveys here have in the last five years counted at least 28 birds from that population, she said.

In addition to other shorebirds, including least terns, piping plovers use the acres and acres of barren sand and shoals on the banks of Rich Inlet for nesting, resting and eating. The area is federally designated critical habitat for the Great Lakes and Atlantic Coast piping plover populations.

“The counts that we’ve been doing show that Rich Inlet continues to provide high-quality habitat for piping plovers, and they are continuing to depend on it this fall,” Addison wrote in an email.

Rich Inlet supports more piping plovers than any other inlet in the region, including Topsail, Mason and Masonboro inlets, she said.

Environmental groups and conservationists opposed to the terminal groin say land north of the structure will erode away within a few years after the groin is built. That’s also a projection made in an environmental study of the project.

Proponents of the terminal groin argue that the inlet will eventually migrate in a direction that would, without a terminal groin, erode the northern end.

The proposed project, which would include periodic beach nourishment, which will cost an estimated $23.5 million over 30 years, according to the project’s final environmental impact statement.

Each property would be assessed a fee to cover the costs.

Figure Eight Island property owners have until the end of this month to cast their votes in favor of or opposition to the terminal groin.

Under the Figure Eight Island Homeowners Association’s restrictive covenants, only one person per property is allowed to vote. There are 563 lots on the exclusive island in New Hanover County.

At least 48 property owners representing more than 25 properties went on the record opposing the terminal groin. Those property owners support an alternative shoreline erosion control method that would maintain the bar channel of Rich Inlet in a position closer to the north end of the island.

Depending on the outcome of the vote, the association’s board of directors must obtain several property easements before the project can move forward.

The terminal groin, a wall-like structure usually made of rock and steel built perpendicular to the shore, would cross upwards of 12 to 15 properties at the north end.

At least a few owners of those properties have said they will not grant an easement to their land.

Because Figure Eight Island is private and not an incorporated community, the board of directors does not have the authority to take land easements through condemnation.

Per state law, a Coastal Area Management Act, or CAMA, major permit application must include a copy of the deed “or other instrument” claiming title to the property.

Until that permit is approved, the Corps can’t move forward with a federal permit.

“Even if I did have something in hand from Fish and Wildlife Service and were looking at authorizing the work, and we haven’t made that decision, I still have to have the CAMA permit,” explained Mickey Sugg, a project engineer with the Corps’ Wilmington district.

Since it’s unlikely the state would have an answer on a CAMA permit by Dec. 16, which is the new deadline for the biological opinion, the extension has no bearing on the proposed project.

“All it really means is we won’t receive a response from fish and wildlife service until December 16,” he said.

Update: Organizers on Thursday canceled the forum because of the winter storm forecast. Read more.

As the Army Corps of Engineers works toward the release of a final environmental study for a proposed terminal groin at Figure Eight Island, three environmental organizations are giving the public a chance to hear from and question experts on the subject.

The N.C. Coastal Federation, the Southern Environmental Law Center and Audubon North Carolina will sponsor a forum Saturday from 10 a.m. to 1 p.m. at the Poplar Grove Plantation on U.S. 17 just north of Ogden.

It’s free and open to the public, and panelists will be Walker Golder, deputy director of Audubon on North Carolina; Stan Riggs, a coastal geologist at East Carolina University; Rob Young, director of the Program for the Study of Developed Shorelines at Western Carolina University; and Derb Carter, director of the Chapel Hill office of the Southern Environmental Law Center.

“It’s a chance for the public to not only hear from the experts, but also ask them questions, talk to them,” said Mike Giles, coastal advocate for the federation’s office in Wrightsville Beach. “The corps will have a public hearing after they put out the final EIS (environmental impact statement), but at those hearings, you don’t get to ask questions or talk to people one-on-one. This is a real opportunity for people to learn.”

A terminal groin is a small jetty-like structure, typically made of rock, steel or concrete, built to control erosion at inlets. The most prominent feature, a loose-rock structure that extends about 500 feet seaward, is meant to allow sand to wash back and forth, which supporters say helps prevent down-shore erosion. Critics contend that while the structures might prevent erosion on one side, they actually can and often do increase it on the other.

The state banned terminal groins and all other hard erosion control structures along ocean for decades, but the legislature, under pressure from some coastal residents and municipal governments, partly lifted the ban in 2011 with a bill that allowed four terminal groin projects, ostensibly as pilot projects, along the state’s barrier islands. Legislators last year increased the cap to six. Three communities — Figure Eight, Holden Beach and Ocean Isle Beach – are in various stages of permitting for groins. Bald Head Island recently completed the first phase of construction of its groin.

The corps released its preliminary EIS for the proposed 1,500-foot-long structure on the south end of Figure Eight Island in July. According to that document, building the structure and maintaining it for 30 years is estimated to cost $16.9 million, all to protect 19 homes on the north end of the exclusive, private island. David Kellam, president of the Figure Eight Island Homeowners Association, has said residents of the island will pay the entire cost.

But critics at the corps’ public hearing, attended by more than 100 people last summer, focused more on potential environmental effects, particularly on fish and federally designated critical habitat for piping plovers and another tiny bird, the red knot, and on likely alteration of relatively pristine Rich Inlet. The area is also a prime home for sea turtles.

The federation held a press conference on Figure Eight Island in July 2014 about the concerns over the groin, contending it would destroy a sand spit adjacent to Rich Inlet where a half-dozen species of shorebirds come to nest.

Giles said the homeowners’ association had promised a forum months ago, but never came through. He said the groin project is especially troublesome because the inlet is probably the most stable and natural one in the state.

“It’s never even been dredged,” he said. “It’s a natural inlet, and it pretty much stays where it is. It’s maybe moved 800 yards in the last 200 years.”

Rich Inlet, Giles said, is part of a beautiful and productive ecosystem, with extensive mud flats and sand bars that are exposed at low tide and serve as habitat for the dozens of bird species. Humans are also drawn to the spit on Figure Eight’s public beach and to the surrounding sand flats.

“You can go there and throw out your anchor and just relax and enjoy it,” he said. “It’s become increasingly popular as Carolina Beach and Masonboro Island have become increasingly crowded.”

He and others also contend that changing the inlet system could worsen the impacts of storms, because inlets essentially serve as safety valves, allowing waters pushed by summer and fall hurricanes and winter and spring nor’easters to slosh back and forth.

The forum, Giles said, is timely, because officials have said that construction of the Figure Eight groin could begin soon after the EIS is released and the public hearing to allow its discussion is held. Currently, the corps is involved in what is called a Section 7 consultation with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, discussing the project’s potential ramifications under the Magnuson–Stevens Fishery Conservation and Management Act, the nation’s chief fisheries-regulation legislation, and the Endangered Species Act.

The panel Saturday, Giles said, is eminently qualified to discuss the project and its potential effects and to answer questions. Golder is an expert on North Carolina’s birds, Carter is an expert on environmental law and Riggs and Young were among a number of prominent N.C. scientists who weighed in back in 2011 when the legislature was debating the bill that opened the door for terminal groins.

Pre-registration for the forum is required by Friday. Register here, call Giles at 910-509-2838 or email him mikeg@nccoast.org.

Written comments on the project will be accepted until Feb. 14. Mail comments to Mickey Sugg at the corps’ Wilmington Regulatory Field Office, 69 Darlington Ave., Wilmington, NC 28403, or email him at mickey.t.sugg@usace.army.mil.

WILMINGTON – A planned terminal groin on one of North Carolina’s few remaining natural inlets could wipe out a premier nesting area for least terns, a type of small shorebird already endangered by human activity.

The threat comes as least tern populations are showing some signs of recovery here after being nearly wiped out by hunting decades ago and more recently by coastal development.

“The north end of Figure Eight Island is just once again gangbusters,” said Lindsay Addison, an Audubon North Carolina coastal biologist.

The spit of unspoiled beach stretching from the developed north end of the private island to Rich Inlet is critical habitat to thousands of shorebirds, including threatened piping plovers.

It’s also where the Figure Eight Island Homeowner’s Association Board of Directors wants to build a terminal groin to protect homes from beach erosion, a move environmentalists fear would eventually wipe away much of the roughly 60-acre spit.

A supplemental Environmental Impact Statement, or EIS, for the proposed project is expected to be released in the coming weeks by the Army Corps of Engineers.

“We’re reviewing it right now and we’re on the final end,” said Mickey Sugg, project manager in the corps’ Wilmington district office. “We’re pushing for certainly within a month.”

Projections by engineers hired by the island’s homeowners association to design a terminal groin project show that the spit of beach crucial to shorebirds will eventually erode away if a groin is built.

The modeling “assumed a worst-case scenario for inlet dynamics,” according to the association’s board of directors, which argues that a groin may instead help protect nesting habitat.

Figure Eight Island Administrator David Kellam did not respond to a request for comment.

Mike Giles, a coastal advocate with the N.C. Coastal Federation, said that altering the inlet will destroy the natural process vital to shorebirds.

“Rich Inlet represents how Mother Nature can actually take care of our coast,” Giles said. “The spit has grown and has provided an unbelievable piece of habitat for wildlife and for people. This is a public treasure that should be protected and not destroyed by a small, private group of homeowners.”

Last year, 840 pairs of least terns – the largest colony in North Carolina in more than 40 years – nested on Figure Eight’s north end.

“Pretty much all the least terns in the Cape Fear region were at that site,” Addison said.

The numbers, which were not immediately available, aren’t expected to be quite as big there this year primarily because least tern nests are more evenly distributed in other areas, including Lea-Hutaff Island, Fort Fisher and the northern and southern ends of Wrightsville Beach.

This year, 232 nesting pairs of least terns have been documented on the southern end of Wrightsville Beach. That’s well below the 597 nesting pairs documented in 2012, but significantly higher than 2014.

“Last year we had five pairs that tried to nest and failed and they failed primarily due to disturbance from the dredging re-nourishment project,” Addison said. “We’re very happy that they’re back. It’s just so important that they have multiple places that they can use.”

Rich Inlet sways between the north end of Figure Eight and Lea-Hutaff Island, one of the state’s few remaining un-bridged, undeveloped barrier islands.

The U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service designates the land created by the inlet’s movement as “critical nesting habitat” for threatened piping plovers.

There is at least one confirmed piping plover nest on the northern end of Figure Eight Island, said Sara Schweitzer, coastal water bird biologist with the N.C. Wildlife Resources Commission.

“These southern beaches we’ve just had one nest pop up here and there the past several years,” she said. “The southern beaches are much more developed than those further north, including our national seashores. The piping plover seems to be super sensitive to that disturbance.”

Rich Inlet is a “very important” area for nesting and migration, Schweitzer said.

“I’m pretty sure from the resource side of the story we would be pretty concerned with the impacts of a hardened structure on that site,” she said. “Something that’s as permanent as a groin is going to undergo a lot of scrutiny.”

The wildlife commission along with other federal and state agencies that protect natural resources  has yet to have that opportunity.

“That’s a concern,” said Giles.

The corps should have initiated formal consultation with the agencies that oversee the protection of endangered and threatened wildlife long before now, Giles said. The corps released the draft EIS in May 2012.

A final EIS should not be issued without completing the required consultation under Section 7 of the federal Endangered Species Act, according to a federal rule issued by the Council on Environmental Quality, which establishes uniform standards for federal environmental impact statements.

The rule states that “to the fullest extent possible, agencies shall prepare draft environmental impact statements concurrently with and integrated with environmental impact analyses and related surveys and studies required by the Fish and Wildlife Coordination Act, the National Historic Preservation Act of 1966, the Endangered Species Act of 1973 and other environmental review laws and executive orders.”

Sugg said federal consultation “will likely happen” after the supplemental EIS is released.

The corps initiated a supplemental EIS late last year after the HOA board submitted a design not included in the draft EIS. This preferred option is a rock groin 80 feet wide and would extend 1,200 feet across the beach and into the ocean.

OCEAN ISLE BEACH — Two decades of chronic erosion have taken its toll on this beach town’s east end where beachfront properties have been consumed by the ocean and state roads repeatedly repaired.

Town leaders are now banking on the construction of a 750-foot terminal groin to fend off further loss of sand, according to a recently released environmental study by the Army Corps of Engineers.

“The town of Ocean Isle Beach has been planning for this for a long time, long before the law was changed,” Mayor Debbie Smith said. “We knew we had to do something at some point. None of the stopgap measures that we’ve performed have been effective.”

The stretch of beach at the eastern end of the barrier island was left out of the town’s 2001 federal beach nourishment project because of a predicted high rate of sand loss on that section of beach. About 2,000 feet of the eastern tip of the roughly 5.5-mile-long island has remained highly susceptible to erosion.

A sandbag revetment and dunes have been built, public accesses replaced and water and sewer lines relocated, costing the town more than $3.5 million and the N.C. Department of Transportation about $1 million over the past decade, according to the Corps’ draft Environmental Impact Statement that was released Jan. 23.

“Right now we’ve got a 1,500-foot wall of sandbags down there, which nobody likes,” Smith said. “We believe our modeling from our engineers is showing us that not only will this terminal groin protect where we have sandbags in front of our properties, it will probably extend the life of our federal beach re-nourishment project from a three-year cycle to a five or six-year cycle.”

The town considered three lengths of terminal groins, including a 500-foot wall and a 250-foot wall.

Predictions that a 750-foot terminal groin would stabilize the shoreline and save money over the next 30 years by extending the time between re-nourishment projects prompted the town to choose that particular length of wall.

The terminal groin, which would include a 300-foot anchorage section upland, would be designed to control rapid shoreline changes just west of Shallotte Inlet.

The proposed project would include beach fill from the inlet, which separates Ocean Isle Beach and Holden Beach and is where the town gets sand for its re-nourishment project. The sand source would be tapped every five years to nourish a 3,214-foot section of shoreline directly west of the terminal groin.

“It will be built where it is leaky and porous,” Smith said. “Where it’s located we’re not going to rob anyone of sand.”

The proposed terminal groin was “found to not have any significant impact on the shoreline or periodic nourishment requirements of the federal project west,” according to the draft document.

The study states that there are nearly 240 parcels, 45 homes and more than 1,800 feet of roads and utilities vulnerable to damage or loss from erosion over the next 30 years.

Smith said property owners are “on board” with the proposed project.

“Not only the ones who have been directly affected, but the other property owners understand that the publicity of an eroding beach is not good for anyone on the island,” she said.

A terminal groin may not be good for the island either, according to the N.C. Coastal Federation, which is opposed to hardened erosion-control structures.

“We are still in the process of reviewing the draft EIS and will be developing detailed comments for the record,” Ana Zivanovic-Nenadovic, program and policy analyst with the federation, said in an email. “From the first look we can say that this structure will only protect a few homes at a very high cost to the entire community.”

An analysis she conducted for the federation in 2012 looked at land ownership and tax records of property at the eastern end of the island. It revealed that 61 percent of the 631 properties in the hazard area near the inlet at the time was held by three companies owned or managed by the family of Odell Williamson, a longtime civic leader and one of the original developers of Ocean Isle Beach.

More than 300 of those properties are currently not suitable for building and each has a total taxable value of $100, according to the analysis.

The projected cost of building a terminal groin at the inlet and subsequent re-nourishment over a 30-year period is about $46.6 million. The town would pay for about half of the federal storm damage reduction project costs associated with that tab and the government would pick up the other half.

“This structure will put the town on the hook for potential claims of property losses for lands that are currently undeveloped and which can’t be developed at the eastern end of the island,” Zivanovic-Nenadovic stated.

She emphasized the state law requirement that local voters approve funding to build a terminal groin.

Registered voters on Bald Head Island last May approved an $18 million bond referendum to fund that town’s terminal groin project, the first in North Carolina to receive a state permit for construction since the General Assembly in 2011 passed a law allowing up to four such structures along the coast.

Construction of the 1,900-foot terminal groin at Bald Head is expected to begin in the coming months. The groin will be built in two phases, the first of which will be 1,300-foot structure. An additional 500 feet of wall will be added following a two-year monitoring period.

Figure Eight Island in New Hanover County continues to await the release of a supplement to the original draft EIS of the private island’s proposed terminal groin project.

“It’s still being developed and no time has been given as to when it will be released,” said Mickey Sugg, project manager with the Corps’ Wilmington office.

Holden Beach is also pursuing a terminal groin project, though it is unclear where that town is in the process.

The release of the draft EIS of Ocean Isle Beach’s proposed project will be followed by a public comment period and eventual release of a final environmental statement.

“We hope if we can keep it on track and, given all the comment periods and reasonable anticipation from changes made, we’re hoping maybe we can apply for a permit this fall and have construction over the 2015-2016 winter,” Smith said. “That’s a timetable we should be able to meet.”

EMERALD ISLE – Residents of some beach communities along the state’s southern coast are considering small jetties, called terminal groins, to stabilize unruly inlets and stanch beach erosion. You’ve read about. It’s been much in the news a lot the last few years. Little noticed, however, has been the decision of another beach county to exclude such structures for its beach plan because they are expensive and ineffective.

Carteret County’s draft beach-management plan was developed over the past decade and is now under review by the Army Corps of Engineers. It looked closely at the possible use of a groin – a long rock structure that runs into the ocean perpendicular from the land – at Bogue Inlet, which separates Bogue Banks from Bear Island along the central coast.

Greg “Rudi” Rudolph said the detailed study clearly showed that a groin would be too costly and ineffective in an inlet where $11 million was spent in 2005 to move the channel away from the rapidly eroding and high-value residential area in Emerald Isle known as The Point. Rudolph is the shore protection manager for the county and the man who has guided development of the 50-yearBogue Banks Beach Master Nourishment Plan.

“One of our main concerns is that the inlet migrates,” Rudolph said. “If you put one (a groin) in, what are you going to do when the inlet migrates (east) back toward the point? The groin is just going to be sitting there.”

It would then be a useless pile of rocks with no purpose, he said.

Rudolph isn’t necessarily opposed to such structures. He and county and town officials supported legislation  in 2013 that ended the state’s decade-long total ban on hard erosion control structures at inlets by authorizing the construction of four terminal groins. The beach plan, he said, examined the benefits of a groin at Bogue Inlet “with the blinders” of political and philosophical positions “off.” The idea, he said, was to look not only at the costs, but also at what would be in the long-term be best for the inlet, the beaches and the people who use both.

The whole effort actually began in 2001, after Carteret County, like much of coastal North Carolina, went through an uptick in hurricanes. Some caused severe property damage and significant erosion of the Bogue Banks beaches that lure the tourists that fuel much of the county’s economy.

To combat the erosion, the county and the towns on the island began and completed a number of costly beach re-nourishment projects; and Emerald Isle, with the help of a willing legislature, actually moved Bogue Inlet’s main channel to the west and away from the expensive houses. But Rudolph and others realized that it would be better to have a unified plan, one that would identify costs and sources of sand and money, and set up timetables that would be as specific and accurate as possible.

It includes an initial re-nourishment project and periodic maintenance for 50 years to provide Bogue Banks protection from storm damage. The Corps would design the projects. Planners initially thought the money would come from the federal and state governments but that no longer appears feasible, Rudolph said this week, and the county has increased its occupancy tax to generate money for projects. Even if federal and state money is not available, a corps-approved plan will serve as a long-term blueprint for what needs to be done and how it can be done Rudolph said, and will ease the need to constantly seek federal permits for projects.

After the legislature passed its groin bill, Rudolph and his contractor looked at the feasibility of a groin at Bogue Inlet. Groins, they, found are expensive to build and maintain. A groin like the one at Fort Macon State Park in Atlantic Beach, the plan notes, would cost $3,000 to $4,000 a foot – or as much as $5 million – to build. Ongoing beach re-nourishment would still be needed, though at a reduced frequency. The savings from less sand pumping could pay for the groin in 15 to 20 years, the report explained.

“However, given that Bogue Inlet would still have to be relocated to ensure that the terminal groin (would) never (be) undermined and therefore inlet management would still have to be completed, this alternative was dropped from further consideration,” the plan continues. “Given the historical behavior of the inlet and its past history of moving considerably along the inlet corridor from Bear Island to the Point at Emerald Isle, the terminal groin itself could not be counted on alone to provide adequate inlet stability. Given the past behavior at the Point, it would be impossible to say that inlet management would never be required even if a terminal groin were built.”

The plan, instead, focuses on methods – beach re-nourishment and periodic channel relocation – that have worked in the past.

“We’re still thinking that we’ll be doing this (moving the channel) once every 15 years, and that will cost us maybe $10 to $15 million per event, based on past experiences and the state of the industry right now,” Rudolph said. “Between that and our annual monitoring, we’re probably pretty close to $1 million per year, if we amortize the cost.”

Rudolph said that even though he and Emerald Isle Manager Frank Rush had been strong advocates for legislation that would give beach managers the terminal groin option, he wasn’t surprised that the analysis for the 50-year plan ruled out the groin at Bogue Inlet.

“It is huge,” he said of the water body. “There’s a lot of water, and you would have to build a tremendous, long groin.”

He cautioned, however, against making similar assumptions about the feasibility of groins at other inlets in the state.

Other examinations of the question, however, have made much the same conclusion about groins at other inlets in the state. For example, a Western Carolina University study a few years ago, authored by  Andrew S. Coburn, associate director of the school’s Program for the Study of Developed Shorelines, concluded, rather bluntly, that: “Long-term costs of a terminal groin exceed potential long-term benefits at every developed North Carolina inlet.”

Coburn pointed to a study by the state Coastal Resources Commission, the policy-making body of the N.C. Division of Coastal Management, that estimated the cost of building a 1,500-foot terminal groin, similar to the one at Fort Macon, at $10,850,000, with total annual maintenance costs of about $2,250,000.

“Using a 3 percent discount rate and price appreciation rate of 5 percent, the estimated total cost of constructing and maintaining one terminal groin in North Carolina over 30 years is approximately $54,950,993,” Coburn wrote. “This amount is more than ten times greater than the potential long-term fiscal benefit of constructing a groin at Figure 8/Rich Inlet ($4,951,430) and about three times greater than the combined long-term benefit of constructing terminal groins at all fourteen (inlets).”

And that’s just the cost.

Coburn also noted that, “North Carolina contains some of the most unique and biologically rich coastal ecosystems in the United States, providing immeasurable aesthetic, habitat, recreational and economic benefits. In order to successfully – and equitably – balance long-term environmental and sustainability needs with short-term economic development concerns, state and local coastal management policies, rules and laws must be both technically and fiscally-sound.

“Nowhere is this more evident than at North Carolina’s tidal inlets where these dynamic natural features, once used to lure economic development, are now considered the primary threat to the very development they were used to attract,” Coburn said.

Rudolph said he’s hopeful that the Army Corps will finish reviewing the county’s plan within the next few months. It would then go out for public comment.

WILMINGTON – Pressed by environmental groups, the federal agency that oversaw a study of the proposed terminal groin on Figure Eight Island has decided to take another look at the structure after property owners submitted a new design and location that aren’t included in the original study.

The Army Corps of Engineers will update its 2012 draft Environmental Impact Statement, or EIS, of the proposed groin at Figure Eight’s north end. The amended version will give the public the opportunity to review and comment on the new design and location that’s now preferred by the private island’s homeowners association’s board of directors.

“Instead of going out with a final (EIS) as we were planning on doing several months ago we just saw a need to go out with a supplement to the draft EIS,” Mickey Sugg, project manager with the Corps’ Wilmington office, said yesterday. “We felt it was beneficial to the public to give them another opportunity to review the project. Basically you can look at it as an updated draft.”

The decision to supplement the study comes more than a year after the Figure Eight Island Homeowners Association’s board agreed on a revised project alternative well after the public comment period ended for draft study.

Todd Miller

The preferred design is a longer, bigger structure a little more than 400 feet further north from alternatives listed in the original study.

“They (the homeowners) came back with two additional structure options basically moving it 400 feet to the north,” Sugg said. “We looked at that not so much as a new alternative, but a minor variation of an existing alternative. It’s not something that was so brand new and it was not so totally different than what was looked at in the draft.”

The N.C. Coastal Federation and other environmental groups began pressing the Corps more than a year ago to restart the environmental review process to adequately assess changes that they considered to be significant.

Todd Miller, the executive director of the federation, was happy to hear that the Corps was taking another look at the project. “The draft EIS released in 2012 was based upon 2006 data. Over the past eight years the inlet changed dramatically in ways not predicted by the draft EIS, and there is now about 60 acres of new land on the north end of Figure Eight Island,” he said.  “The previously issued draft study is completely obsolete given the changes in circumstances at the inlet.”

The proposed rock groin would be 80 feet wide and extend 1,200 feet across the beach and into the ocean. About 300 feet would cross coastal wetlands.

The federation is working with other environmental groups on the “Save Rich Inlet” campaign, which aims toeducate Figure Eight property owners and surrounding communities about the possible environmental implications a terminal groin would have on the inlet, the island and other shorelines.

In a letter sent to the Corps several weeks ago by the Southern Environmental Law Center on behalf of the federation and Audubon North Carolina, the groups also requested that the Corps start the required consultation with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service about threatened and endangered species that use the inlet as critical habitat.

“We were informed by the Corps yesterday that this review as required by the federal Endangered Species Act will begin shortly,” said Miller. “The results of this review are likely to have a major bearing on what can be allowed at the inlet.”

Among the groups’ concerns is the nearly 60-acre stretch of unspoiled beach that reaches into the natural inlet. This sandy area is critical habitat to thousands of shorebirds, including some that are protected under federal law. According to projections by the engineers hired by the island’s homeowners, the spit will be swallowed by the Atlantic if a terminal groin is built. The north end of Figure Eight Island has been monitored intensely by Audubon in recent years and is rated as some of the most valuable and productive shorebird habitat in the Eastern U.S.

The Army Corps of Engineers will begin consultations with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service on the proposed groin’s effects on endangered or threatened species, such as the piping plover. Photo: Sam Bland

But the island’s homeowners association leaders argue that a terminal groin is the best option to protect the north end from erosion.

David Kellam, administrator of Figure Eight Island, said yesterday that he is confident the Corps “is doing the right thing.”

“It has been our intent to do it the right way and do all the right things throughout this whole process,” he said. “The end product is going to be very beneficial for everyone so we certainly want to ensure that everything is done to the best of everyone’s capabilities.”

Some of the property owners whose land is on the north end of the island have refused to grant the association the easements it would need to build the groin across their property. Figure Eight is unincorporated, and the homeowners association doesn’t have the legal authority to condemn property.

It remains unclear how many of those property owners continue to hold out. Kellam declined to go into specifics.

“We certainly hope that once the members on the island are educated and informed and see the benefit of a long-term management plan for the north end of the island that they will, in fact, be very glad they have a long-term management plan to assist in maintaining the island in the future,” he said.

Sugg said federal regulations do not require applicants to have easements before the Corps issues a permit for a project.

The project will have to apply for a permit that is jointly issued by the N.C. Division of Coastal Management and the Corps, Miller explained. “N.C. regulations prohibit the state from accepting such a permit application until all property owners agree to allow the project to be constructed on their private properties,” he said. “This means that as long as property owners refuse to grant easements for the project, the Corps will not be issuing any permits for a terminal groin at Figure Eight Island.”

The supplemental draft EIS will likely be published sometime before Christmas or shortly after the New Year, Sugg said. Once the draft is released there will be a 45-day public comment period.

“When the supplement goes out what we’ll do is very similar to the draft,” he said. “We’ll receive all the comments, we’ll pore through them and make adjustments to the EIS. Then, after that, we’ll start preparing for the final EIS to be released.”

He stressed that a final EIS is not a permit. “We use our EIS to help us make our permit decision,” he said.

He said the final study may be released by mid-summer next year.

Figure Eight Island is one of four N.C. beach communities planning to build terminal groins since the N.C. General Assembly in 2010 legalized up to four such structures.

The Village of Bald Head Island in Brunswick County was the first to receive a state permit to build a terminal groin there. The N.C. Department of Environment and Natural Resources issued the Coastal Area Management Act major permit in October.

Two other Brunswick County beach towns – Holden Beach and Ocean Isle Beach – are in varying stages of the environmental review required by federal law.

WILMINGTON — The federal review of the possible environmental effects of a proposed terminal groin on Figure Eight Island is nearing completion, though an assessment of what the groin might do to endangered and threatened species has not yet been done. Delaying that assessment, groin critics charge, seems counter to federal law and regulations.

The Army Corps of Engineers in Wilmington expects to complete its environmental study of the Figure Eight groin next month, but hasn’t yet consulted with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service about the possible effects on sea turtles, birds and other animals on the federal endangered species list.

Such an assessment is required by federal law and should have been done concurrently with the environmental study, say critics, which includes the N.C. Coastal Federation.

“Rules and guidance issued by federal agencies say that formal coordination required by the Endangered Species Act should be completed prior to the issuance of a Final Environmental Impact Statement,” said Todd Miller, executive director of the federation.  “This only makes sense because you can’t determine the best alternative until all environmental impacts are fully vetted.” 

Section 7 Review

The redknot, above, and the piping plover are two birds on the federal endangered species list that need the habitats that inlets provide to survive. Photos: Sam Bland

N.C. beach communities trying to make the case that terminal groins are their best defense against shoreline erosion must ensure that their proposed projects will not jeopardize the existence of endangered and threatened species.

This “Section 7” review is named after the section of the federal the Endangered Species Act that requires federal agencies to determine whether permitted projects will adversely affect the habitat listed animals and plants need to survive and recover as a species. Without a Section 7 review, a permit to develop a terminal groins cannot be issued.

While studying the potential environmental effects of groin projects, the Corps must consult with the fish and wildlife service, which determines whether the proposed project may prevent the recovery of any listed species.

Federal agencies “in the early stages of project planning” have to consult with the service if a project “may affect” a listed species, according to the rules. This initial consultation is considered informal.

If the service determines a proposed project will not likely affect any listed species, the informal consultation is over and the project may move forward. If a project may affect a listed species then the wildlife agency may prepare a “biological assessment.”

If this assessment concludes a project “is likely to adversely affect” a listed species, a formal consultation is required.

This review will be critical in the permitting of terminal groin projects because inlets are nesting habitat for sea turtles and critical for foraging and nesting for shorebirds such as endangered and threatened piping plovers and red knots, a bird the service is currently proposing to list as threatened under the federal law.

Inlets as Habitat

Terminal groins are usually made of rock or steel and built perpendicular to shores at the end of islands near coastal inlets to control erosion. They were banned in this state for three decades until 2011.

The N.C. General Assembly’s controversial decision that year to allow up to four “test” terminal groins to be built along the coast has been followed by persistent criticism from environmental groups, which argue these walls will deplete natural habitat for shorebirds.

“Inlets are essential to shorebirds, absolutely essential,” said Walker Golder, Audubon North Carolina’s deputy director. “The inlets have the habitat that shorebirds need critical to the birds’ life cycle. They’re important year-round.”

Four beach communities — Holden Beach, Ocean Isle Beach and the Village of Bald Head in Brunswick County and Figure Eight Island in New Hanover County — are in varying stages to obtain permits to build terminal groins. None has yet to receive federal or state permits.

Walker Golder

Bald Head Island is the furthest along in the process. The village applied for a Coastal Area Management Act major permit Aug. 1, the same day the corps of engineers released its final Final Environmental Impact Statement on the proposed project. Village officials hope to receive a permit by September 30.

The fish and wildlife service issued a biological opinion of the village’s proposed terminal groin project under Section 7 on June 19. The 197-page document concludes that the proposed terminal groin on Bald Head Island “is not likely to jeopardize the continued existence” of the loggerhead sea turtle, green sea turtle, leatherback sea turtle, piping plover, red knot or seabeach amaranth, a threated annual plant found on the dunes of barrier island beaches along the Atlantic Ocean.

The biological opinion also states that the proposed project will not likely destroy or adversely modify critical habitat for nesting loggerhead sea turtles. Bald Head Island does not have a critical habitat designation for shorebirds.

Kathy Matthews, a wildlife biologist in the agency’s Raleigh Ecological Services Field Office, said the formal consultation looked at listed species populations as a whole.

“We had to look at the entire population and talk about impacts to the entire population versus what was being proposed,” she said. “We have well over 100 pages of what’s going on with these species and the recovery goal for these species. We looked at what the village has agreed to do to minimize impacts. There are requirements for time of year for sand placement.”

Erosion has severely depleted the habitat for shorebirds and sea turtles at the mouth of the Cape Fear River where the village wants to proceed with the $18 million project. But the service is still requiring the village to monitor species during and after construction of the proposed groin.

“We felt like the engineering studies that were done that whatever impacts were going to happen on either side of the terminal groin were not going to jeopardize the existence of the species,” Matthews said. “That’s one reason why they’re being required to monitor quite a bit. We have recommended monitoring sea turtle nests for the life of the project. The bird monitoring is required for three full years past completion of both phases of the groin construction.”

After that time, the agency will determine whether to require additional monitoring.

This photo of Rich Inlet taken a few years ago shows the sandbars, spits and islands that numerous bird species need to feed and nest. Photo: Army Corps of Engineers

Figure Eight Groin

Of the four inlets where terminal groins may be built, Rich Inlet at the north end of Figure Eight Island is, environmentalists say, particularly crucial to migratory shorebirds.

“We have lots of data from Rich Inlet that show how important it is to piping plover and lots of other shorebirds,” Golder said. “It’s one of the important hotspots in the state. The thing that Rich Inlet has is it’s a natural inlet. It doesn’t have hardened structures. It has the natural shoals and intertidal sands flats that these birds need. It’s one of the few inlets these birds have in the state.”

The north end of Figure Eight Island is also designated critical habitat for wintering piping plover.
“The species that is at most issue with these terminal groins is the piping plover,” said Derb Carter Jr., director of the Southern Environmental Law Center’s Chapel Hill office.

If the proposed 1,500-foot-long terminal groin is built on Figure Eight’s north end, about 60 acres of unspoiled beach that are critical habitat to shorebirds will eventually vanish, according to a projection made by the engineers hired by the Figure 8 Island Homeowners Association to design the proposed project.

In a July 25 letter to Figure Eight property owners rebutting information publicized by the federation, the association’s board of directors states that the modeling “assumed a worst-case scenario for inlet dynamics.”

“The groin may actually help protect nesting habitat,” according to the response. “For example, a piping plover nested in 2014 in an area that would be south of the proposed groin. This area has been below the high water mark on at least 2 occasions since the north end of Figure Eight has been developed. The groin would protect this area from being inundated in the future.”

Derb Carter

Groins are referred to as a “threat” to piping plovers in a fish and wildlife service publication titled Comprehensive Conservation Strategy for the Piping Plover in its Coastal Migration and Wintering Range in the Continental United States” and in the proposed rule “Endangered and Threatened Wildlife and Plants; Proposed Threatened Status for the Rufa Red Knot.

Shorebirds that use Rich Inlet rely on the inlet’s natural movement back and forth for nesting and foraging.

“Any land behind a solid wall of sheet pilings and rocks would cease to be valuable for the species of birds that currently nest and forage there,” according to the federation’s response to the Figure Eight rebuttal. “That’s because, as has happened at numerous inlets along the nation’s coast, the area landward of the groin will increase in elevation and become vegetated and that is unsuitable for the types of shorebirds that depend on the bare, unvegetated sand for nesting habitat.”

A final EIS should not be issued without completing the required consultation under Section 7 according to a federal rule issued by the Council on Environmental Quality which establishes uniform standards for federal environmental impact statements. The corps released the draft EIS in May 2012.

The rule states that “to the fullest extent possible, agencies shall prepare draft environmental impact statements concurrently with and integrated with environmental impact analyses and related surveys and studies required by the Fish and Wildlife Coordination Act, the National Historic Preservation Act of 1966, the Endangered Species Act of 1973 and other environmental review laws and executive orders.”

Megan McLaurin, an independent legal researcher for the federation and Surfrider Foundation, said the legal argument can be made that fish and wildlife service’s biological assessment of terminal groin projects be made in coordination with the EIS process.

“The language of the law says that the biological assessment needs to be done at the earliest stage possible,” McLaurin said. “What is confusing here is that the Corps knows that and the Corps appears to be delaying on doing that. Why are they continuing to move forward without doing this analysis?”

The fish and wildlife service in a July 3, 2012, comment letter on the draft EIS for Figure Eight’s proposed project states that “Based on our concerns outlined above for potential impacts to trust resources, at this time the Service recommends denial of the DA [Department of Army] permit for the project as proposed.”

Matthews said she has not been given the opportunity to review Figure Eight’s latest proposal.

“The last information that I saw was just scoping information. At this point I’m not sure what they’re going to propose,” she said. “We will look at it with fresh eyes. Every project is different. This process is very project specific. It’s a difficult decision and we have to look at every project on its own merits. The fact that we’ve issued this biological opinion and I may not look anything like another project for a terminal groin it’s hopefully not seen as setting a precedence.”

BALD HEAD ISLAND — The Village of Bald Head Island has applied for a state permit to build a terminal groin.

The village submitted a Coastal Area Management Act major permit application with the N.C. Department of Environment and Natural Resources Aug. 1, the same day the Army Corps of Engineers released a copy of its final Environmental Impact Statement for the proposed project.

With funding for a terminal groin secured through an $18 million bond, Bald Head Island could be the first coastal community in North Carolina to build a groin since state lawmakers in 2011 reversed a regulation banning the construction of hardened erosion-control structures along the coast.

That year, the N.C. General Assembly passed a bill allowing no more than four permits to build terminal groins.

Before building can begin, the village must clear a number of hurdles.

Bald Head Island property owners want to build a terminal groin almost 2,000 feet long at the western end of South Beach to control erosion. They could become the first community to build a groin since state lawmakers in 2011 reversed a regulation banning the construction of hardened erosion-control structures along the coast. Photo: Village of Bald Head Island

CAMA major permits are reviewed by 10 state and four federal agencies. The CAMA process allows the agencies up to 75 days to review major permit applications.

“A decision could be made as early as 75 days from now,” said Michele Walker, a spokeswoman for the N.C. Division of Coastal Management. “Obviously, it could be done before that. I imagine we’ll be taking our time. If we need more time we can extend that for an additional 75 days.”

Reviewing agencies will have to adhere to specific legislative requirements pertaining to terminal groins, including a stipulation that local governments get voter approval to fund the costs of building the structures.

“I imagine the review process will be somewhat different because we have the legislation to follow,” Walker said. “It’s going to be a little bit different from a CAMA major. It’s going to be more involved. This is the first one of these that we’ve done. We’ll be very careful and measured about how we do it.”

Both the Department of Environment and Natural Resources and the Corps have opened public comment periods. The Division of Coastal Management’s official comment period runs through Aug. 21, though comments will be accepted up until the time of the permit decision, Walker said.

The Corps will take comments on the final Environmental Impact Statement through Sept. 21.

The environmental study includes six alternatives. The preferred alternative is to build a 1,900-foot-long terminal groin to reduce sand loss at the western end of South Beach, the Point and West Beach, all of which have experienced persistent erosion over the past two decades.

The plan also calls for the village to maintain a portion of 16 textile tubes filled with sand along the westernmost portion of South Beach. The tubes, spanning anywhere from 250 feet to 350 feet long, were initially built in 1995, then entirely replaced a decade later and again in 2010.

This so-called groin field is one of a variety of erosion-control tools the village has used over the years to fend off accelerated erosion that village officials say is a result of the beach’s proximity to the Wilmington Harbor Channel.

Under the proposal, a groin would be built in two phases. Initially, a 1,300-foot structure would be constructed. An additional 500 feet of wall could be added following a two-year monitoring period.

If approved, the project would begin immediately after the Corps’ routine dredging of the Wilmington Harbor Channel, said Karen Williams, Bald Head’s director of communications.

“The Corps plans on doing a dredging project this winter so this is the time to build the groin structure,” Williams said. “We had originally thought that we would do our construction somewhat overlapping at the same time. We’re just eager for the process to continue moving forward.”

Sand from the federal project “is anticipated to be rapidly impounded by the Phase I groin construction,” according to the final Environmental Impact Statement, or EIS. Sand dredged from the channel will be pumped onto the island’s South Beach.

This is one of 16 geotextile tubes on Bald Head Island. The village has used them over the years to fend off accelerated erosion. Photo: Gerry and Linda Etzold

The final EIS states that construction would begin in April 2015 and continue for four to six months.

If the Corps’ project is delayed, so would be the construction of the proposed terminal groin.

Bald Head Island’s registered voters overwhelmingly supported the village’s $18 million bond referendum in the May primaries, passing the measure in a 96 – 10 vote, according to media reports.

The bond will pay for the construction of the groin, additional sand and sand dunes.

Bald Head Island is one of three Brunswick County beach towns planning to build terminal groins, which are usually made of rock or steel and built perpendicular to shores at the end of islands near coastal inlets to control erosion.

Holden Beach and Ocean Isle Beach are in various stages of the Corps’ environmental review.

Figure Eight Island in neighboring New Hanover County was at one time the furthest along in the process for its proposed terminal groin in Rich Inlet.

The Corps released its draft EIS for Figure Eight’s proposed project in May of 2012. The comment period closed later that August. It is unclear when a final EIS will be released.

In the meantime, the Figure Eight Island’s homeowner’s association continues to seek the nearly dozen property easements it will need to build a terminal groin at the north end of the private island.

Since the island is unincorporated, the homeowner’s association cannot take property through eminent domain.

Members of the media gathered last week at the north end of Figure Eight Island to hear what a terminal groin might do to valuable bird habitat.

Todd Miller, left, and Mike Giles of the N.C. Coastal Federation face the cameras to talk about the terminal groin.

FIGURE EIGHT ISLAND –About 60 acres of unspoiled beach that is critical habitat to hundreds of shorebirds on land bordering one of North Carolina’s few natural inlets will be swallowed by the Atlantic if a terminal groin is built there.

Projections by engineers hired by the Figure Eight Island Homeowners Association to design a terminal groin project show that the spit of white sand beach stretching from the developed north end of the island to Rich Inlet will eventually erode away if a groin is built.

“By their own modeling in five to six years all of this sand spit will be gone,” said Mike Giles, a coastal advocate with the N.C. Coastal Federation’s Wrightsville Beach office. “That’s a huge concern. It should be a huge concern for everybody.”

Giles and representatives with Audubon North Carolina, PenderWatch & Conservancy and the Southern Environmental Law Center met with media last week on the northern tip of the private barrier island to kick-start the “Save Rich Inlet” campaign.

Environmentalists aim to educate the private barrier island’s property owners and surrounding communities about the possible environmental implications a terminal groin would have on the inlet, the island and other shorelines.

Rich Inlet sways between the north end of Figure Eight and Lea-Hutaff Island, one of the state’s few remaining un-bridged, undeveloped barrier islands.

“When that inlet channel wags south, it creates this beautiful spit,” Giles said.

The U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service designates the land created by the inlet’s movement “critical nesting habitat” for threatened piping plovers. More than 800 pairs of least terns – the largest colony in North Carolina in more than 40 years – are nesting on this beach this year.

Derb Carter of the Southern Environmental Law Center in Chapel Hill says he’s never seen a study as bad as the one done for the groin.

The inlet is a haven for these and other shorebirds, which rely on inlets to feed and rest along their migratory journeys.

Least tern need open sand on which to nest, explained Lindsay Addison, a biologist with Audubon North Carolina.

“Right now the birds here are fledgling their chicks,” she said. “Rich Inlet provides several different types of habitat in one place. If the terminal groin were to be put in place all the critical habitat would be gone.”

The island’s homeowners association is in the process of possibly becoming the first of four beach communities in the state to obtain a federal permit to build a terminal groin.

The association has for years been looking at ways to manage the inlet to stop beach erosion at the northern end.

Stakeholders in 2007 initiated a project to relocate the inlet, but that concept was pushed aside when, in 2010, the N.C. General Assembly lifted a ban on new construction of terminal groins along coast. Terminal groins are long, low walls built perpendicular to shore at inlets to reduce shoreline erosion by trapping drifting sand.

The law allows for the construction of four groins that will essentially be test sites to determine how the structures affect inlets and shorelines.

Figure Eight was the first to seek a permit to build a terminal groin. Bald Head Island, Holden Beach and Ocean Isle Beach in Brunswick County are in various stages of the environmental review process required by federal law to obtain permits to build terminal groins.

David Kellam, administrator of Figure Eight Island, has said the experts with which the association has consulted agree that a terminal groin in conjunction with beach nourishment is the most preferred alternative environmentally and economically. He did not respond to a request for comment for this story.

Sand on the northern end has actually accreted, environmentalists say, solving the problem of beach erosion at that end of Figure Eight.

They agree that, if natural erosion occurs again, it can be corrected by relocating the channel within the inlet with “modest” dredging.

This has been a proven method at Bogue and Mason inlets and substantially cheaper than building and maintaining a terminal groin.

Figure Eight property owners have not been told what the proposed project might cost.

What’s also unclear is whether the association will get the easements it will need to build the terminal groin across a series of about a dozen properties. Without all of the easements, the project cannot move forward.

Figure Eight Island is unincorporated, which means, unlike municipalities, it cannot enact eminent domain to seize property for public use.

A small handful homeowners continue to refuse granting easements to their land, according to those who’ve been following the proposed project closely and property owners who spoke on condition of anonymity.

“They couldn’t build it today if they wanted to because they don’t have the land,” said Derb Carter, director of the Southern Environmental Law Center’s Chapel Hill office. “I’m still astonished they’ve been able to get as far as they have without getting these easements.”

The Army Corps of Engineers released in 2012 its draft environmental impact study of the proposed project.

Carter called it “one of the worst environmental documents our office has ever seen.”

No one can predict what the terminal groin will do to Rich Inlet, noted Stan Riggs, a geologist at East Carolina University.

That study did not include the association’s newest alternative, announced to property owners last spring, which lists the preferred spot for a terminal groin about 420 further north than the one included in the draft document. A final study is expected to be released in the coming months.

The proposed groin would be a rock wall 80 feet wide. It would span 1,500 feet, about 300 feet of which would cross coastal wetlands.

Building a wall would block Rich Inlet’s natural function, said Stan Riggs, a coastal and marine geologist and distinguished research professor of geology at East Carolina University.

“Because we have this pile of sand it’s like a natural dike out here,” he said. “Inlets are living, breathing organisms. This inlet is the heart of that organism. It’s the pump.”

During a storm, such as a hurricane, an inlet’s function is to act as a safety valve allowing water from the storm surge to flow into and out of rather than flow over a barrier island.

No one, Riggs said, knows just what the consequences might be if a terminal groin is built at the inlet.

“The other variable in this is, where’s your sand?” he said. “There is precious little sand on the continental shelf. The best sand you’ve got is already on this beach. You start blocking this up with an engineered structure you’re going to send sand somewhere else. We cannot afford to engineer our coast in the state of North Carolina. This is a world-class resource.”

The Figure Eight Homeowners’ Association now wants to build a terminal groin more than 400 feet farther north than originally proposed. Graphic: Figure Eight Homeowners’ Association

FIGURE EIGHT ISLAND — A new location for a proposed terminal groin at the north end of Figure Eight Island will be included in the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers’ final environmental impact study to be released later this year.

In an effort to appease north-end property owners, the preferred spot for a terminal groin is about 420 feet farther north of the one included in the Corps’ 2012 draft environmental study.

The groin is also 100 feet shorter and will cross about 300 feet of coastal wetlands, according to an April 23 newsletter distributed to the private island’s property owners.

Terminal groins are long, low walls built perpendicular to shore at inlets. They are designed to reduce shoreline erosion by trapping drifting sand.

Despite beach re-nourishment efforts, chronic erosion on the island’s north end prompted Figure Eight landowners to search for alternatives.

The Figure 8 Island Homeowners Association has been working on developing a long-term management plan for Rich Inlet to protect the north end of the private island. Coastal Planning and Engineering of North Carolina is developing the Rich Inlet Environmental Impact Statement under the Corps’ supervision.

Several of homeowners on the island’s north end asked the association to consider pushing the proposed terminal groin farther seaward to keep it off of their property.

Some of them have been steadfast in their refusal to grant the association the easements it would need to build a wall. Unlike a municipality or other government body, the homeowners’ group does not have the authority to condemn and take land.

“We are telling people we tried to listen to the various inputs and this is where we are proposing it to be,” said Frank Gorham, the association president and also chairman of the state’s Coastal Resources Commission, “This is just our submittal. We do not know what the Corps will do.”

The Corps’ final EIS, which will be released in the next three to six months, will include the new location, Mickey Sugg, project manager with the agency’s Wilmington office, confirmed last week.

“Upon our evaluation of their new location, our office determined the new location was a minor variation of the existing terminal groin alternatives and within the spectrum of the existing alternatives discussed in the draft EIS,” Sugg wrote in an email. “The new location alternatives are not considered ‘new’ in the sense that our regulatory office will have to develop a supplemental EIS prior to release of the final EIS.”

Public comments will be accepted once the final study is released. If the homeowners’ association applies for a permit to build the groin, a public notice will be issued for comments, Sugg wrote.

Frank Gorham

Derb Carter

Gorham said the association will determine an estimated cost of the proposed project after the Corps releases the study. Property owners must approve the project before the association applies for a permit, he said.

“Once we know the costs, we will schedule extensive informational briefings for homeowners,” Gorham wrote in the newsletter. “The board will then submit a proposed project and corresponding assessment to the full membership. You, the membership, will decide if we proceed with the proposed project.”

Opponents of the proposed terminal groin argue the associationshould have obtained permission from all of the north-end property owners before moving forward with an EIS.

In July 2012, Derb Carter Jr., the senior attorney and director of the North Carolina office of the Southern Environmental Law Center,  wrote the Corps stating that the homeowners’ group had to first demonstrate it has the necessary property rights to build.

“The HOA is the applicant for this project even though they don’t even have HOA approval yet,” Carter said in a telephone interview. “It’s not that the project is close their property, it’s on their property. They don’t have legal permission or the ability to force those homeowners to build a terminal groin on their property. This new location has nothing to do with engineering or environmental impacts. It’s about getting away from the properties and thinking that if they push it further out it would be more acceptable.”

Carter, whose mother-in-law owns a home on the island, said lots on Figure Eight were platted to go to the mean high water mark.

That means that, unless a groin is built off shore, portions of it will be on private property, he said.

He also argues that the corps should allow a public review process of the new alternative and the only way to do that is to issue another draft EIS.

Todd Miller, the head of the N.C. Coastal Federation, last fall urged to the Corps to restart the EIS process upon learning the homeowners’ association was discussing a design and location for a terminal groin not included in the alternatives reviewed in the 2012 study.

He said the corps needs to take into consideration the fact that the draft environmental study is based on aerial photographs of the island from April 2006. Pictures taken in June 2012 show that about 350 feet of new wet sand beach has accumulated in the same area.

The new alternative includes a groin that would span 1,500 feet, beach fill along the ocean shoreline that would extend south about 4,500 feet from the groin and beach fill along 1,400 feet of the Nixon Channel shoreline.

The proposed groin would cross about 300 feet of coastal wetlands on the north end of the island, reducing the footprint by more than 300 feet from the initial preferred alternative.

Moving a groin further north from the new proposed site “would likely have a negative impact and would result in greater environmental concerns,” according to the association newsletter.

Figure Eight Island is one of four beach communities currently planning to build terminal groins since the N.C. General Assembly in 2010 legalized up to four such structures. The others are Holden Beach, Ocean Isle Beach and Bald Head Island in Brunswick County. All are in various stages of the environmental review process required by federal law.

Bald Head Island voters will decide today whether to approve an $18 million bond referendum to fund their proposed groin. Voters across Brunswick County are also being asked today to bump the sales tax by 25 cents, giving county commissioners the authority to raise the rate from 6.75 cents to 7 cents on the dollar, an estimated $3 million in additional revenue that would be split equally between school capital projects and beach projects, including terminal groins.

Figure Eight’s proposed project would be privately funded. If property owners there approve the terminal groin, the homeowners’ association will have to apply for a Coastal Area Management Act major permit. If the state denies the permit, the HOA could ask for a variance, a process that would go before the CRC.

Gorham said if that happens, he would recuse himself as CRC chairman.

BOLIVIA — Proposed terminal groin projects in Brunswick County would receive minimal funding generated from an additional sales and use tax on the county’s ballot next month.

Should Brunswick voters on May 6 approve bumping the tax by 25 cents, giving county commissioners the authority to raise the rate from 6.75 cents to 7 cents on the dollar, an estimated $3 million in additional revenue would be split equally between school capital projects and beach projects, including terminal groins.

Steve Stone

“Specifically, with regard to terminal groins, given the anticipated cost, while that would be an eligible expense it doesn’t appear that the county would be providing relative significant funding,” said Steven Stone, Brunswick’s deputy county manager. “It’s just not a real good fit to provide substantial support for those types of activities.”

As with other coastal counties, Brunswick County officials have been increasingly approached by beach towns seeking contributions to aid in the costs of beach and inlet projects as federal contributions have steadily diminished.

Brunswick County has six beach communities, including the Village of Bald Head Island, Holden Beach and Ocean Isle Beach, all of which are in the process of obtaining permits to build terminal groins, which are usually made of rock or steel and built perpendicular to shores at the end of islands near coastal inlets to control erosion.

All of the proposed projects, including one off the shores of Figure Eight Island in neighboring New Hanover County, are in various stages of the Army Corps of Engineers’ environmental review. None have yet applied for a state permit.

Of the Brunswick beach towns hoping to build these groins, Bald Head Island is the furthest along.

The village is asking the little more than 240 registered voters there on May 6 to approve authorizing $18 million of bonds, plus interest, to pay for the construction of groins, additional sand and sand dunes.

The Army Corps of Engineers has conducted a draft environmental impact statement and, if the voters pass the referendum, the project could begin late this year.

“The corps has told us that they expect to issue a permit in September of this year and that they anticipate doing a maintenance project for the Wilmington harbor next winter,” said Karen Ellison, the village’s communications director. “If all of those things fall into place, theoretically, we could begin construction at that time.”

A groin nearly 2,000 feet long will best reduce erosion, village officials say, on South Beach, the Point and West Beach, all areas that have experienced persistent sand loss for nearly two decades.
Until 2011, hardened erosion control structures were banned on the beach because they tend to increase erosion on nearby beaches. That year, the N.C. General Assembly passed a bill allowing no more than four permits to build terminal groins. The law requires that local governments have to get voter approval to fund the costs of building the structures.

“It has to be specifically voted for,” said Michele Walker, public information officer with the N.C. Division of Coastal Management.

Raising sales tax countywide to pay for re-nourishment and counter erosion projects has been unpopular in other coastal counties.

The 240 or so registered voters on Bald Head Island will vote in May on an $18 million terminal groin project. Source: Army Corps of Engineers

Dare County voters in 2006 overwhelmingly overturned a proposed penny increase in the local sales tax. The outcome was similar in Carteret County years ago when voters there did not support a bond for beach re-nourishment.

New Hanover County’s Tourism Development Authority recently denied a request of beach towns there to use part of the revenue generated from the room occupancy tax to pay for beach re-nourishment projects.

Ocean Isle Beach and Holden Beaches have not yet determined projected costs to build terminal groins. Holden Beach is undergoing the first stages of its environmental study. Attempts to reach the town manager there were unsuccessful.

“We are currently working through the EIS process for the terminal groin application,” Ocean Isle Town Administrator Daisy Ivey said. “We hope to have a draft to the Corps personnel this month and hopefully a draft EIS will come out in late May, early June.”

A terminal groin would be built along the beach’s eastern end, which borders Shallotte Inlet.

Ivey said the town has not decided how to fund its proposed project.

The town later this month expects to wrap up a $7 million coastal storm reduction project in which 640,000 cubic yards of sand is being pumped onto the beach. Federal funds are covering 65 percent of the project. The remaining 35 percent is being split between the state and town.

If Ocean Isle does receive a portion of the estimated $1.5 million that would go to the beaches if the referendum is approved the town will still likely be responsible for funding a significant portion of the project.

“I do think it’s a positive step that the county is taking to realize that beach communities need help,” Ivey said.

If voters approve the additional sales tax and if county commissioners decide to authorize the increase, money going to beaches would likely be used for smaller re-nourishment projects and inlet dredging projects, Stone said.

“It appears there’s going to be more local responsibility and the sales tax seemed a more equitable way to support those projects,” he said. “Our visitors who use the waterways and the beaches clearly participate in generating that revenue. With all the other needs the property taxes continue to be under tremendous pressure.”

The number of building permit applications plummeted during the onset of the recession. Land values dropped.

Properties there were revaluated in 2011 and the tax base dropped from the low $30 billions to about $24 billion, Stone said. The rate has stayed flat and it is not expected to change following the 2015 revaluation.

“I certainly think anyone on staff doesn’t think there’s going to be a significant tax growth,” Stone said. “There is some development going on, but it appears the drops in land values are about netting out with the new residential development.”

The decision of the more than 83,000 registered voters in Brunswick County is anybody’s guess, but presentations county officials have made to various civic group and municipal boards have been received relatively well, Stone said.

Many inland towns have passed resolutions in support of the referendum.

Figure Eight Island is privately owned and construction and maintenance of a terminal groin along Rich Inlet would be privately funded.

“Obviously we are doing an EIS,” said David Kellam, administrator for the Figure Eight Island Homeowners Association. “The EIS will determine the best management strategy for the north end of the island, which could include a terminal groin. The terminal groin is very likely the most preferred environmentally and economical option that’s on the table. We really don’t have a dollar figure, no.”

Kellam said he anticipates the EIS will be released by this summer.

Bald Head Island property owners want to build a terminal groin almost 2,000 feet long to go along with the 16 smaller groins that they built along the South Beach to control erosion. Photo: Village of Bald Head Island

BALD HEAD ISLAND — A small jetty almost 2,000 feet long is the only viable option Village of Bald Head Island officials say will slow chronic, sometimes dramatic, erosion on the island’s western shore.

Later this year the village will likely know whether the Army Corps of Engineers Wilmington District agrees.

The Corps had planned to hold a public hearing today on its draft environmental impact statement on the so-called terminal groin, but that hearing was cancelled last night because of the weather. A new hearing date has not been set.

The meeting would be the next step in the Brunswick County island’s pursuit to obtain a Coastal Area Management Act major permit to build a groin, which is a small jetty meant to control erosion.

Such structures were once banned on N.C. beaches because they tend to increase erosion on nearby beaches, but the N.C. General Assembly passed a bill in 2011 to allow them at four inlets. Figure Eight Island, Ocean Isle Beach and Holden Beach have joined Bald Head in applying for the groins. All the projects are in various stages of Corps’ environmental review. None has yet applied for a state permit.

The 740-page page draft EIS for Bald Head examines six alternatives to reduce beach erosion on South Beach, the Point and West Beach, all areas that have experienced persistent sand loss over the last 18 years.

In the alternative favored by the village, a wall of large granite armor rock of different sizes would extend 1,300 feet into the water perpendicular to the shore to trap drifting sand. The village wants to continue maintaining 16 smaller groins made from fabric tubes filled with sand along the westernmost portion of South Beach.

The tubes, spanning anywhere from 250 feet to 350 feet long, were initially built in 1995, then entirely replaced a decade later and again in 2010.

This so-called groin field is one of a variety of erosion-control tools the village has used over the years to fend off accelerated erosion that village officials say is a result of the beach’s proximity to the Wilmington Harbor Channel.

“Because the island sits adjacent to the shipping channel, it experiences constant erosion,” village spokeswoman Karen Ellison wrote in an email. “The terminal groin slows that process and so should ease the burden on the Corps and should keep the beaches more stable, longer. But it is not a panacea … we will still need dredging and erosion will continue; just at a slower rate.”

The corps of engineers routinely dredges the shipping channel, a vital economic waterway used by ships heading to and from the state port in Wilmington.

The village, along with other area beaches, including Caswell Beach, began getting sand from the dredging beginning in 2000 with the implementation of the Wilmington Harbor Sand Management Plan.

The Corps has periodically pumped beach-quality sand from the channel along those beaches at the federal government’s expense. It’s a process that has benefited those towns with, perhaps, the exception of Bald Head, which sued the Corps in 2011 and where some argue the corps is responsible for creating the erosion problem.

Suzanne Dorsey

Mike Giles

“We have an artificial, non-natural engineered problem with the channel,” said Suzanne Dorsey, executive director of the Bald Head Island Conservancy. “We have no control over that channel. The sand on Bald Head collapses into that channel. It’s not sea-level rise causing this. It’s erosion caused by a deep- level channel cut by the Army Corps of Engineers. A terminal groin will help the island slow down the rate of sand loss a little bit more.”

Mike Giles, a coastal advocate in the N.C. Coastal Federation’s Wilmington office, questions just how effective a terminal groin will be in reducing the rate of erosion on the island.

“Our concern about these terminal groins is they say they’re permeable. At what rate? How will that happen? Will the terminal groin become clogged?” he asked. “A lot of inlets are dredged along our coast. We haven’t seen the science that says these terminal groins will work along our coast at these dynamic inlets.”

The federation opposes the construction of hardened erosion structures on the beach. Giles said the federation will submit a statement reiterating its opposition before the corps of engineers’ written comment period ends Feb. 24.

Dorsey, who is also a member of the N.C. Coastal Resources Commission, said that while she understands objections to terminal groins, it is the best alternative for the island.

“I think it makes sense to oppose it,” Dorsey said. “We hate it. We all hate the groins. But what is the alternative to a community that is being impacted by an engineered problem? It’s a risky solution, but the groin is the only option for Bald Head. It acts as a dam, which is what the village of Bald Head needs. They’ve explored every option. This is their last option. If there was a way out of it I promise you they’d take it.”

Dorsey has been with the conservancy for nine years, during which environmentally conscious property owners and village leaders have asked her what natural alternatives the island has in protecting its shore.

“The only answer I can give them is this is an artificial situation,” she said. “You’re working with a group of people who have sacrificed, invested and made really good environmental choices for decades. If you’re going to live on a barrier island this is the best place to live.”

Property owners whose homes were built where the worst of the erosion is occurring built 300 yards back from wet sand behind 100-year-old dunes with established vegetation, Dorsey said.

Those dunes were destroyed in 2009 after a dredge sucked sand from the channel, she said. That sand was later pumped onto Oak Island.

The village filed a lawsuit against the corps of engineers in late 2011, arguing the corps failed to honor its commitment to protect beaches adjacent to the channel from adverse effects of dredging and restore sand to those beaches.

The Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals in Richmond last year upheld an earlier dismissal of the suit, saying the village’s complaint lacked “subject-matter jurisdiction.”

“The village is at this point because the Army Corps won’t stick to their agreement,” Dorsey said.

The village has paid for expensive monitoring that examines possible unintended consequences associated with the construction of a terminal groin, such as how waves bounce off of these structures, she said.

The island’s property owners will be assessed fees in order to pay for the construction and maintenance of the terminal groin if it’s approved.

Caswell Beach Mayor Harry Simmons said he supports the village’s plans to build the terminal groin.

Simmons said he believes Caswell Beach will continue to get its fair share of sand from harbor maintenance projects regardless of the existence of a terminal groin.

“We don’t have any concern about the terminal groin itself,” he said. “It is the only solution. We’re very much in favor of Bald Head moving forward with this project.”

FIGURE EIGHT ISLAND — A new design and location for a proposed terminal groin at the north end of Figure Eight Island are “significantly” different from alternatives reviewed in a 2012 environmental study, according to the head of the N.C. Coastal Federation.

The latest changes – a longer, bigger structure further seaward – are so different that the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers should restart the environmental impact study process, said the federation’s Executive Director Todd Miller.

“Design differences are so drastic that the new design cannot be considered a version of the previously proposed preferred alternative, but rather a completely new alternative,” Miller wrote in a Sept. 6 letter to Mickey Sugg, project manager with the corps’ Wilmington office.
The Figure Eight 8 Homeowner Association’s latest proposal has a new, angled footprint and would further affect the natural habitat, barrier island processes and public trust rights, Miller wrote.

The Corps has not received the engineering report on the new proposed location, Sugg wrote in an email responding to questions.

“If Figure 8 chooses this as the ‘applicant’s preferred alternative,’ our office will review whether the new location is a variance of the existing preferred alternative or whether a supplement to the DEIS (draft environmental impact statement) will have to be developed,” he stated.

Terminal groins are long, low walls built perpendicular to shore at inlets. They are designed to reduce shoreline erosion by trapping drifting sand.

Despite beach re-nourishment efforts, chronic erosion on the island’s north end prompted Figure Eight stakeholders to search for alternatives.

Opponent of a terminal groin on Figure Eight Island, right, fear the groin will affect the extensive shoals of Rich Inlet. Photo: Army Corps of Engineers

Sandbags protect some of the houses on the north end of the island.

The association has been working on developing a long-term management plan of Rich Inlet to protect the north end of the private island. Coastal Planning and Engineering of North Carolina is developing the Rich Inlet Environmental Impact Statement under the corps’ supervision.

The federation learned about the proposed alternative from the official minutes of the homeowner association’s July board meeting, which was held well after the public comment period ended for the corps’ DEIS.

Opponents who voiced their objections to a terminal groin being built at the north end expressed concern about the negative effects a wall will have on Rich Inlet.

Some of the property owners whose land is on the north end of the island have been steadfast in their refusal to grant the association the easements it would need to build a wall.

Following several meetings with property owners whose land is near the proposed site, the association got the corps’ permission to include a proposal for a possible alternative site.

The new alternative does not solve that matter, Miller wrote.

“The only reason that the new alternative has emerged at this late date in the DEIS process is an attempt by the Association to bypass the private property rights of individuals who have refused to grant easements to allow the groin to be built on their land,” he stated. “The Association does not have the power to condemn their properties to construct the project.”

David Kellam, administrator of Figure Eight Island, did not return calls seeking comment.

Figure Eight Island is one of four beach communities currently planning to build terminal groins since the N.C. General Assembly in 2010 legalized up to four such structures. The others are Holden Beach, Ocean Isle Beach and Bald Head Island. All are in varying stages of the environmental review required by federal law. The Corps is conducting those reviews.

The Figure Eight association and its technical consultants, “believe that installing a terminal groin is conceptually the preferred option to provide protection to the north end of the island,” according to the minutes of the association’s July meeting.

The DEIS lists four shoreline management alternatives, the first of which is that the association continue pumping sand dredged from the Nixon Channel area of Rich Inlet onto the northern end of the island.

Other alternatives include taking no action, relocating the ebb channel within the inlet and maintaining its new location or building a terminal groin.

Proponents of the last alternative argue that groins do not worsen erosion on nearby beaches by starving them of sand and would be more cost effective because a wall would reduce the frequency of dredging Rich Inlet.

Terminal groins, they say, have proved successful at other inlets along the coast – the Fort Macon groin at Bogue Inlet and the Pea Island groin at Oregon Inlet.

Opponents say a terminal groin could compromise public access to Rich Inlet, hasten erosion by interfering with normal sand flow long the beach and be expensive to build and maintain.

Should the corps issue a supplement to the DEIS, it “will be no small or inexpensive undertaking,” Miller said.

That’s because the corps’ review was based on structures that were sandbagged at the time of the study.

“These structures are no longer imminently threatened since the beach has now naturally accreted,” Miller wrote. “This change in circumstances should require a redetermination of purpose and need for the project.”

The corps also should take into consideration the fact that the DEIS is based on aerial photographs of the island from April 2006. Pictures taken in June 2012 show that about 350 feet of new wet sand beach has accumulated in the same area.

Sugg stated that the corps’ next step in the evaluation process will depend on whether the new location is a variance of the existing alternative or a supplement to the DEIS.

The DEIS process should be stopped, Miller stated, and a new process will “have to be developed starting at step one.”

BALD HEAD ISLAND — Village officials on this exclusive island in the mouth of the Cape Fear River are asking for a host of changes to state rules that they say are needed to allow them to better control worsening erosion.

A study by the state Division of Coastal Management to change rules protecting the coastline near the mouth of the Cape Fear River will be released next month.

A draft report examining the feasibility of establishing an “area of environmental concern” specific to the area around the opening of the Cape Fear River will be presented to the Coastal Resources Commission in September, said agency spokeswoman Michele Walker.

Areas of environmental concern, or AECs, are designed to regulate shoreline development and prohibit construction of hardened erosion control structures such as sea walls.

The Cape Fear River twists and bends little more than 200 miles from central to Southeastern North Carolina before flowing into the Atlantic, creating a unique area along the state’s coastline.

A groin field of 16 bags filled with sand was built on Bald Head Island’s South Beach to combat erosion. Photo: Olsen Associates Inc.

A bulldozer moves around sand during a beach re-nourishment project on Bald Head earlier this year. Photo: Village of Bald Head Island

Unlike the shallow draft inlets traversing North Carolina’s coast, the mouth of the Cape Fear is deep.

“The idea really is just to recognize the fact that the inlet here is 45 feet deep, not 12 and that there are unique considerations that should be recognized as a result of that,” said Karen Ellison, director of communications for the Village of Bald Head Island.

It’s for that reason that village officials are urging the state to create a new AEC for the river mouth near Bald Head Island and Caswell Beach. The river mouth and nearby beaches currently fall within overlapping AECs.

“That channel drives water and waves in different ways than any other inlet in the state,” Ellison said. “Erosion happens here quickly. As a result we end up struggling to deal with things that are way out of our control, but then the regulations hamstring our ability to respond. That’s really what’s driving this whole thing.”

The village has spent more than $22 million to mitigate erosion, a problem officials say, because of its unpredictability, hampers property owners from making infrastructure and investment decisions.

The southwest corner of the island experiences the brunt of erosion, Ellison said. In an effort to reduce the loss of sand on that end of the island, the village constructed a temporary sandbag revetment wall. Sandbag structures, as well as other non-permanent erosion control walls, must by approved by the state and granted a Coastal Area Management Act permit.

“The tip of the island keeps shifting northward,” she said. “It becomes like a domino effect.”

Beach erosion and channel shoaling impact commerce and port operations and drive up U.S. Army Corps of Engineer maintenance costs.

Bald Head officials have proposed a host of changes, including creating a new Cape Fear AEC that exclude estuarine creek areas and exempts the area from “limitations on erosion control structures.”

Specifically, the village is requesting the CRC allow structures, including rock groins, terminal structures, breakwaters, jetties, sandbags, sand push, beach sand placement projects, to mitigate channel-induced erosion.

Under the proposal, a coastal engineer would sign off on the necessity of such a structure.

Bald Head officials also want to expand the number of temporary control structures and request the state officially acknowledge a “finding that the beaches at the mouth of the Cape Fear River are experiencing accelerated erosion.”

The village wants sandbags automatically allowed within 20 feet of a structure’s foundation and temporary structures to be allowed to stay in place indefinitely.

North Carolina is one of only two states – Oregon is the other – that prohibits hardened erosion control structures. Fort Fisher in Kure Beach and Pea Island National Wildlife Refuge at the north end of Hatteras Island are the exception to the rule. Both areas have terminal groin structures.

“This has been a rule since 1985,” Walker said. “In 2004 it became a law. The commission feels that hardened erosion control structures are detrimental to neighboring beaches. While you’re helping erosion in one area you’re hurting another area. It’s something that the commission has felt pretty strong about.”

The General Assembly would have to pass a law excluding current hard structure rules in a new Cape Fear AEC. Legislators last year directed the CRC to study the feasibility of creating a new AEC for land adjacent to the mouth of the Cape Fear River.

Walker said agency officials plan to hold a meeting with stakeholders sometime this month and a public hearing in October or November in Southport. Dates for those meetings have not been announced.

Coastal Management officials held a public workshop June 26 in Southport, where the primary concern was about dredging impacts, Walker said.

Dredging as well as construction of marinas, piers, docks, bulkheads, oceanfront structures and roads in an AEC requires a CAMA permit.

These areas cover most coastal waters and about three percent of the land in the state’s 20 coastal counties. AECs are defined as an area of natural importance and “may be easily destroyed by erosion or flooding; or it may have environmental, social, economic or aesthetic values that make it valuable to our state,” according to Coastal Management.

There are four categories of AECs: estuarine and ocean system; ocean hazard system; public water supplies; and natural and cultural resource areas.

Coastal Management’s final report must be complete and ready for review by the General Assembly and state Department of Environment and Natural Resources by Dec. 31.

RALEIGH — A move by coastal senators to scuttle a two-year-old compromise on the use of terminal groins to halt beach erosion has gotten a cold reception from the McCrory Administration.

Michelle Walker, a spokeswoman for the state Department of Environment and Natural Resources, said the department is opposed to the effort to undo legislation passed in 2011 that allowed for four terminal groins and included environmental safeguards and restrictions on how they can be financed. The compromise also spelled out the liability of local governments for any damage the structures might cause.

A senate bill passed on May 15 lifts the cap on the number of groins, relaxes rules on financial responsibility, drops a requirement that financing for the projects be approved by local referendum and guts provisions to protect public beaches.

Sen. Bill Rabon

Sen. Harry Brown

Gov. Pat McCrory

“Essentially, we feel the original legislation should be allowed to stand,” Walker said.

The four projects — Ocean Isle Beach, Figure Eight Island, Bald Head Island and Holden Beach — are still not close to being permitted, she said.  They are currently undergoing the required federal environmental review and none has applied for state permits.

“We want to see how those work out before opening up the rest of the coast,” Walker said.

She said there had been high level discussions between DENR officials and the governor’s office over the senate bill.

Ryan Tronovitch, a McCrory spokesman, confirmed that the changes do not have the governor’s support.

“The office is opposed to it,” he said and supports DENR’s position to stick with the plans laid out in the 2011 compromise.

Todd Miller welcomes the governor’s opposition. He’s the executive director of the N.C. Coastal Federation, which has opposed allowing seawalls, jetties, groins and other types of hard structures on the state’s beaches to prevent erosion.

“We support the process outlined in the compromise bill because it provides strong protections for the environment and taxpayers,” Miller said. “We’re happy that the governor thinks so as well.”

The groin language is part of the omnibus Coastal Policies Reform Act of 2013, which was introduced by Sen. Bill Rabon, R-Brunswick, and has the strong backing from Senate Majority Leader Sen. Harry Brown, R-Onslow.

In floor debate both men forcefully defended the bill, successfully fighting off amendments to restore rules on bonds to cover potential damages and the referendum requirements.

Rabon said the financial requirements in the 2011 legislation were too restrictive and that the bill does require the towns to cover the cost of removal if the groins don’t function properly.

Both he and Brown said it was time for the legislature to stop meddling in measures to protect coastal property owners.

“It seems like you want to get involved in all the issues on the coast and try to block them all for the very people who live there,” Rabon told his colleagues.

“We’ve got four communities that want to build them, but you can’t build them because we’ve made it so restrictive that nobody can jump through the hoops,”

Brown, who noted he’d been working on the issue since he first came to the senate, said, “It’s time that we allow some of these be built.”

He said the state would save money if the groins can slow down the need for beach re-nourishment projects.

Carolyn Justice

John Hood

“As a General Assembly we have spent millions of dollars to help with beach nourishment and I have argued for years that groins will save so many dollars in nourishment projects in the long run because you can backfill those groins and nourish those beaches and they’ll stay there for a long time,” he said.

Brown didn’t cite any scientific evidence that these small jetties would reduce the need for beach re-nourishment. A state study of the structures in 2010 noted that sand would still have to be pumped onto beaches annually for the groins to be effective.

“Terminal groins are typically constructed as part of a broader beach management plan and may make nourishment adjacent to inlets feasible,” the study notes, “but they do not eliminate the need for ongoing beach nourishment.”

The bill awaits action in the N.C. House. Opposition from DENR and McCrory would seem to dampen its chances of passing in its current form. Neither Rabon nor Rep. Pat McElraft, R-Carteret, and chairwoman of the House Environment Committee, returned requests for comment.

The bill may have a tougher time in the House as opposition grows. This week, two more prominent voices joined the discussion. Former Rep. Carolyn Justice, a Republican from Pender County, and John Hood, John Locke Foundation president, penned an op-ed for the Wilmington Star-News opposing the new bill and supporting the 2011 compromise. Justice was the chief House negotiator on the compromise, working with Brown and others to hammer out an agreement with Gov. Bev Perdue. The Locke Foundation is the most influential conservative think-tank in the state.

“The 2011 bill included many safeguards to ensure that these jetties were limited in number and that the planning for them was done carefully,” they wrote. “Most of those safeguards are swept away by the 2013 bill. Even more disturbing is the way the 2013 bill wipes out most of the taxpayer protections in the 2011 law.”

RALEIGH – Small jetties, called terminal groins, could be built at all the inlets along the N.C. coast, under a bill that a state Senate committee passed yesterday, and state taxpayers could be asked to pay for all of them.

The bill lifts the cap of four groins that was set in a bill that the N.C. General Assembly passed in 2011. It also removes or weakens all the environment safeguards and the prohibitions on the use of state taxpayer money contained in the two-year-old legislation.

“This essentially guts the compromise bill on groins that was carefully crafted after much debate in 2011,” noted Todd Miller, the executive director of the N.C. Coastal Federation. “That was an attempt at a responsible piece of legislation. This new bill removes all accountability. It allows these damaging structures to be built anywhere and with no regard for who will pay for them or what they might do to public beaches.”

Sen. Bill Rabon

Sen. Bill Rabon, R-Brunswick, introduced the groin provisions at yesterday’s meeting of the Senate Agriculture, Environment and Natural Resources Committee. He had inserted them into a new version of his Coastal Policies Act of 2013. The committee passed the substitute bill. Its next stop is the Senate Finance Committee today, and the Senate is likely to vote on it this week.

Terminal groins, jetties, seawalls and other types of hard structures to control erosion had been banned on the state’s beaches since the 1980s because of the damage they can do to adjoining beaches. The 2011 bill allowed the first exceptions to the ban.

Rabon’s bill took many observers by surprise and drew a sharp reaction among longtime opponents of hardened structures on the coast.

“I’m very concerned,” said Sen. Ellie Kinnaird, D-Chapel Hill. “We have a beautiful coast and I don’t think it will beautiful after this. We know from testimony last time that you may put a groin in, but your neighbor may suffer greatly. I’m very concerned this is happening I think it is a betrayal of everything that was agreed to if groins were allowed.”

Rob Lamme, a lobbyist for the federation, spoke against the changes at the committee meeting, citing disagreements with both the environmental oversight changes and the implication for local taxpayers.

He said while the federation has long been opposed to the use of groins, the compromise legislation hammered out in 2011 had strong protections in both areas. “This bill raises many implications and many concerns, not just on the conservation side but also on the economic and tax implications of starting to put really expensive structures on our coast,” he said.

Rabon defended the bill saying if the groins could reduce the amount of inlet dredging they could save taxpayers money in the long run.

History seems to say otherwise because terminal groins, unlike jetties, are too short to stabilize channels and keep them from shoaling. A groin was built on Pea Island on the Outer Banks in the early 1990s to protect N.C. 12 on the south side of the Herbert C. Bonner Bridge. Shoaling of adjacent Oregon Inlet has worsened dramatically since then, and dredging hasn’t been able to keep a reliable navigation channel through the inlet open. The Army Corps of Engineers has to dredge Beaufort Inlet in Carteret County every few years despite a terminal groin at Fort Macon State Park on the west side of the inlet.

Rabon said the four pilot projects — Holden Beach, Ocean Isle, Bald Head Isle and Figure Eight Island — are under way and it is time to move forward on more.

“It takes quite a bit of time to get this in place and when your inlet is filling or when your front yard is washing away you don’t have a lot of time,” he said. “No one on this committee would decry the fire truck for running down the street to put out the fire, but I see people in this body constantly decrying trying to save the house that is washing away. It makes absolutely no sense to me. I live where houses wash away.”

Miller noted that all of the projects are still undergoing environmental review by the Army Corps of Engineer. None, he said, has been permitted. “It makes little sense to remove all safeguards before we know what kind of damage they can do and what requirements are needed to protect our beaches and the taxpayer’s pocketbook,” Miller said.

Proponents of loosening restriction on terminal groin say more structures along the coast will lessen the need for dredging.

Rabon’s bill drops language in the 2011 bill that requires that the groin be built if applicants demonstrate structures or infrastructure “are imminently threatened by erosion” and only if other measures, including relocating structures, are impractical. Under the new bill, alternatives are not required to be considered and applicants have to prove that structures or infrastructure are merely threatened by erosion.

Geoff Gisler, an attorney with the Southern Environmental Law Center who has been following the groin permitting changes, said the effect of the new bill would likely reduce environmental oversight of the projects in part because it lowers the threshold from “imminently threatened” to “threatened” and because it weakens requirements in a required inlet management plan, the chief method for follow through to make sure the structures are working as planned. The bill sets out new limits on what the management plan can contain and explicitly says consideration of sea-level rise can’t be required.

“This significantly reduces the analysis of what’s going to happen and the monitoring required,” Gisler said.

Giving applicants an out on sea-level rise ignores the science, he said. “We know that this is going to be a major player in the makeup of our coastal environment.”

As troubling, Gisler said, are provisions in the bill dropping financial assurance requirements on local government. The bill would lift restrictions on how local governments can finance groin projects allowing bonds and other financing options that do not require a local referendum, restrictions that were put in place in 2011, Gisler said, were put there so the public could have a voice in the process.

State taxpayer money could also be used without a vote by the legislature, which is now required.

Under the bill, the state also would no longer require groin applicants to provide financial assurances that they can cover the cost of any damage to public or private properties or for their long term maintenance as is now required.

The result, Gisler said, is that local governments could pursue the projects without being fully aware of the liability. He pointed to a study by the state’s Coastal Resources Commission that notes that terminal groins can cause damage and erosion.

“The idea that terminal groins have an adverse effect is not pulled out of the blue,” Gisler said.

In addition to the changes in the rules, Gisler said, lifting the four project cap and effectively allowing an unlimited number of groins could open the door to North Carolina’s shore resembling the armored coastlines elsewhere.

“What’s been demonstrated time and time again,” Gisler said, “is if you have one, you have many.

Related Stuff Worth a Look

• CRC terminal groin study
• Effects of the terminal groin at Oregon Inlet

The shallow water and shifting sand bars of Rich Inlet provide habitat for animals and are a playground for people. Both would be threatened if Figure Eight Island, on the right, were to build a terminal groin. That’s Lea-Hutaff Island to the left of the inlet. Photo: Army Corps of Engineers

FIGURE EIGHT ISLAND – A dozen or so double-crested cormorants huddled on a sand bar in Rich Inlet, their backs to the brisk east wind.  Hunched over and their long necks pointed skyward, the birds held out their wings as if in prayerful supplication.

“They’re drying their wings,” Mike Giles informed the group as he guided the Jones Brothers’ skiff past the bar on a recent beautiful but breezy early spring day.

The boatload of gawking people slowly wending its way through the labyrinth of sand spits and bars startled a small flock of bufflehead ducks that were bobbing and diving in the water. These little sea ducks with the bulbous heads are common winter visitors along the N.C. coast, where they find shelter and food in the shallow estuaries and inlets. They will be gone soon, heading to the boreal forests of Canada and Alaska. There, the females will raise their young in borrowed tree cavities made by northern flickers. The flickers don’t seem to mind.

Hundreds of boaters use the sand bars, the northern tip of Figure Eight Island and the shoreline of Lea-Hutaff Island as getaways. Others hunt for clams in the little creeks that course through the marsh. Photos: Mike Giles

The little ducks took to the sky as one, flying low to the water and squawking at the intrusion.

A splash on the port side. Then another, followed by the inevitable oohs and aahs on the boat. Dolphins.  A small pod broke water not 20 feet away. Giles shifted the boat into neutral.  The dolphins swam around the drifting boat, some jumping several feet out of the water.

“Why do dolphins jump like that?” Giles asked the group.

Most were probably trying to come up with the scientific answer for leaping dolphin. No one could, though.

“Because they can,” Giles said.

Several dolphins came alongside, gliding just inches below the surface. The eyes of these undulating apparitions were clearing staring up at the boat. They saw a pod of humans staring back, most clicking away furiously with their cell phones.

People are also common inhabitants of the inlet, said Giles, a coastal advocate for the N.C. Coastal Federation who lives a few miles away up the Intracoastal Waterway. They come in flotillas of watercraft in the summertime to fish, to swim and to play on the inlet’s stunning array of islands and bars.

“There might be 200 to 300 boats lining that shoreline,” Giles said, sweeping an arm toward Lea-Hutaff Island. Much of the uninhabited island is a protected bird sanctuary.

“They’ll meet with friends and neighbors and barbecue on the beach. They’ll sit in chairs to sunbathe and read. The kids play in the water. It’s a social happening,” Giles said, as we approached our ultimate destination. “And it may all be gone.”

The bow of boat bumped gently onto the beach of Figure Eight Island, and the boat’s passengers piled out. Lindsay Addison, a biologist for Audubon North Carolina, was right behind. She beached her boat and its passengers followed the others up the beach.

The 15 people gathered in a circle on the north end of the island. The wide beach was deserted.  Off in the distance, beyond the rise of low sand dunes, loomed some of large houses that make up this exclusive, private island.

Those houses were the real reasons these people had come. Audubon, the federation and the N.C. Sierra Club sponsored the trip here to show what might be lost in order to save a handful of them.

About a dozen of Figure Eight’s houses are said to be threatened by erosion.  To protect them, the island’s homeowners association wants to build a 1,600-foot-long wall of rock and sheet metal that would encase the north end of the island and extend into the Atlantic Ocean.

This small jetty, called a terminal groin, would be built not too far from where the people were standing.  If it were already there, these people would be swimming.

Mike Giles, right, stands by one of the survey stakes that mark the prospective path of the groin. Photo: Frank Tursi

Lindsay Addison said many species of birds have few places left to feed and nest. Photo: Frank Tursi

Until 2011, such things used to be illegal on the beaches of North Carolina because of their demonstrated abilities to protect private houses while destroying public beaches. After intense and prolonged lobbying by some Figure Eight property owners and others, the N.C. General Assembly changed the law to allow four terminal groins on the coast. Figure Eight’s project is currently undergoing environmental review.

Addison has been fighting for birds all of her career. She’s heard proponents of one type of beachfront construction project or another brush off her concerns by noting that the threatened birds could go somewhere else.

“We’ve been telling birds to go someplace else for years,” Addison told the group. “This is someplace else. There’s not a lot of good bird habitat left along the East Coast. They can’t lose much more.”

As if on cue, a piping plover was seen pecking along the wet sand of the falling tide. The sparrow-sized bird nests and feeds only on sandy and gravel beaches in North America. Hunted for its plumage, the plover’s population plummeted in the early 20th century. A federal law in 1918 stemmed the widespread killing and the birds’ population started to recover only to have its habitat later destroyed by beachfront development. It is now an endangered species on both the federal and state lists.

A dozen pairs of eyes watched through binoculars or sighting scopes as the plover went about its daily routine of feeding itself.

Some in the group broke off to wander up the beach to look at the huge sand bags that protect some of the houses or to stand between the metal and plastic poles that mark the jetty’s prospective path to the ocean.

If the rock and sheet metal wall is built, this end of the island will be gone, Giles said. “This will be open water,” he said. “No more piping plovers, no more Sunday outings to walk the beach with the kids.”

The jetty will also likely change the dynamics of the inlet itself. The sand bars and spits that are the favorite haunts of praying cormorants and splashing children will likely disappear as well.

“These shallow inlets are very special places,” Giles said on the trip back to the mainland. “They are wonderful habitat for animals and a great place to come and sit and enjoy the beauty of our coast. They should be protected, not destroyed.”

The chairman of the state’s coastal rule-making panel expressed confidence in an Army Corp of Engineers led-permitting process for small jetties called terminal groins along the N.C. coast.

Bob Emory, chairman of the N.C. Coastal Resources Commission, said yesterday that the decision to forgo new state rules for the structures and rely on a process led by the Corps was the right call. He was responding to questions about the process raised in a letter to the commission from the N.C. Coastal Federation.

Bob Emory

A bill passed by the N.C. General Assembly in 2011 cleared the way for groins, the first permanent, hardened structures allowed on the N.C. beaches since 1985. The law, however, contains a number of environmental and financial conditions that projects must meet. How to ensure that those conditions are met and how the structures will be monitored and any damage they cause mitigated have been the subjects of a simmering debate.

The Corps is currently considering environmental studies for proposed groins at Figure 8 Island and Ocean Isle Beach.

In its recent letter to the commission, the federation maintained that the state Division of Coastal Management does not have the proper authority to issue or deny groin permits in part because it did not develop separate rules for them.

The letter also raises concerns about how long-term financial costs and potential damages would be handled and it urges the CRC to reconsider its decision not create specific rules for the groins.

Emory said he and Braxton Davis, the division director, plan to set up a meeting with federation representatives to discuss the concerns, but that for now the division is satisfied with the Corps’ process. To receive its needed federal permit and to meet one of the requirements of the state law, sponsors of groin projects have to complete a detailed study of possible environmental effects of the groins and other alternatives. The Corps leads the process for a so-called environmental impact statement in consultation with several state and federal agencies, including the Division of Coastal Management.

The division, Emory said, has a mandate to move forward with a permitting process for the groins. “Because of the legislation, the division has to move along,” he said. “If we find that somewhere along the way we need to do rule-making, we can do that.

“I think it’s a choice,” Emory said. “Doing this through a multi-agency review as opposed to doing it through rule-making. That’s the dilemma.”

The terminal groin at Willoughby Spit near Norfolk, Va. Photo: Virginia Institute of Marine Science.

He said the CRC continues to see no need to go to a rule-making process for the groins. “Certainly at this point the coastal commission doesn’t think so,” he said.

Emily Hughes, who is leading the Corps’ work on developing the study for the groin projects, agreed with the CRC’s approach. In an email response, Hughes said she disputes the assertion that the state has not gone through adequate rule-making for the projects. “The state does have rules in place for the terminal groins. It’s called Senate Bill 110,” Hughes wrote.

She said extensive long-term monitoring of the groins will be in place to determine if they’re working properly.

The bill was the result of a compromise hammered out between coastal legislators and Gov. Bev Perdue in the 2011 session. Although it breaks with long-held state policy against harden structures, the law allows only terminal groins defined in the law as “a structure that is constructed on the side of an inlet at the terminus of an island generally perpendicular to the shoreline to limit or control sediment passage into the inlet channel”— and set the cap of four projects.

The bill also lays out a general set of guidelines for judging the efficacy of a project and requires an inlet management plan, beach re-nourishment at the location, a monitoring plan, mitigation in the event of adverse impacts and a bond or other financial assurance to cover the costs of long-term maintenance and restoration of any public or private property damaged by adverse effects.

The yearlong process to complete the environmental study starts with “scoping meetings,” which offer the public the first glimpse of the project and the process and allows people to suggest issues that should be considered  in the study.

Last month, in response to a scoping meeting for the proposed terminal groin at Ocean Isle Beach, the federation sent the Corps a harsh critique of the process. In a letter to Hughes, the federation’s Mike Giles and Ana Zivanovic-Nenadovic raised several concerns including whether there will be a solid exploration of alternatives and how the effectiveness of the project will be monitored should a groin be built.

The two said even the official description of the project seems to anticipate that the groin will be chosen as the preferred option.

Mike Giles

“The project description is troublesome in that the applicant clearly states its preferred alternative before any alternatives have been thoroughly investigated and discussed during the formal EIS process,” they wrote. “Clearly other alternatives must be evaluated, and non-structural alternatives may be much more practical once the total benefits and costs of this project are more fully understood.”

Giles pointed to inlet channel relocation projects at North Topsail Beach and at Mason and Bogue inlets as examples of working alternatives to groin projects.

Giles said the law is a start but falls far short of what the state would normally do in the case of a major modification to the Coastal Area Management Act. He is also concerned that under the current process the same firm that could wind up building the groins at both Ocean Isle Beach and Figure 8 Island is working on the EIS for those projects.

“There’s been this worry we may have the fox guarding the hen house,” Giles said. “Our concern with the Figure 8 project and this one is that you have the same company doing both and can they go about it in a fair, impartial and unbiased way. The Corps seems to think they can.”

Hughes noted that federal law requires that groin sponsors thoroughly explore all alternatives, including relocating the inlets. “However, alternatives for this project have not been fully explored yet,” she noted in her email.

A spokesperson for Coastal Planning and Engineering said last week that the firm was considering a response to the concerns raised in the federation’s letter. The company did not reply to repeated requests for further comment.

Sand bags attempt to slow down erosion at the east end of Ocean Isle Beach. Photo: Kirk Ross.

OCEAN ISLE BEACH — Since the N.C. General Assembly passed a bill last year allowing four terminal groins along the beach — the first hardened structures allowed on the North Carolina oceanfront in three decades  — the path from concept to concrete has been strewn with questions starting with where they might be built.

Now, with the four projects identified — Holden Beach, Figure Eight Island, Ocean Isle Beach and the Village of Bald Head Island — the questions have focused on how to measure the groins’ effectiveness, their environmental impact and who pays and who benefits.

A recent analysis by the N.C. Coastal Federation of property ownership in the vicinity of one project highlights that the direct benefit of groins can be highly concentrated.

The analysis, which looked at 631 properties listed in the Inlet Hazard Area around a proposed terminal groin at the easternmost end of Ocean Isle Beach shows that 82 percent of the acreage represented is owned by companies connected to one prominent family.

Properties held by three companies owned and managed by the family of the late Odell Williamson, a longtime civic leader and one of the original developers of Ocean Isle Beach, make up 61 percent of the Inlet Hazard Zone properties, including roughly 100 now-submerged properties that remain on the land records.

According to federation Policy Analyst Ana Zivanovic-Nenadovic, of the roughly $33.3 million of the $82 million in already developed properties at the end of Ocean Isle Beach is owned by the Williamson family and its companies along with much of the remaining developable land.

Todd Miller

Todd Miller, executive director of the federation, said the study came out of a look at possible relocation of homes, one alternative to building hardened structures.

Miller said that so much of the property in the area of the groin was found to be controlled by one group of investors raises old concerns about who is benefiting from beachfront projects and new worries about how the legal framework around terminal groins will play out.

Under the Corps of Engineers rules, Miller said, lands conserved through beach re-nourishment are considered public property if public money is spent on the project. But it’s unclear, he said, what would happen to property saved through a groin project, including some of the now submerged properties.

Further, Miller said, the law allows landowners who lose property due to the groins to seek damages. The proposed location for the groin bisects a group of properties owned by one company, LW Legacy Assets LLC, raising the prospect that without some kind of legal agreement with the town, the company could profit on one side of groin by seeing properties become buildable again while seeking damages for properties damaged by the loss of sand flow on the other side. The company is owned by Williamson family members.

“Without some kind of agreement,” Miller said, “they could benefit both ways.”

Take a short walk down the beach at the eastern end of the island and it’s not hard to see why the town and its homeowners are worried. The ocean is carving away at sandbag walls, first installed in 2001. The beach, in places, is heavily scarped. The tide claws at the steps to one three-story home and surf splashes through the carport of another. Occasional bits of asphalt and rock from the ocean front streets crumbled by steady tides and storms poke through the sand.

The map show the three companies that own the majority of properties near the proposed terminal groin. Source: N.C. Coastal Federation.

Mayor Debbie Smith said the groin represents the most promising change in the town’s long battle with erosion. “Those houses you see on the oceanfront were not built as oceanfront homes,” she said. “They were three or four rows back. There’s been a tremendous loss off the end of the beach.”

She said the town is aware of the land ownership concentration, but says the effects of beach loss extend far up and down the eastern portion of the island.

“It’s pretty important,” she said of the groin project. “Not just to the number of private structures, but to the public structures.”

The town, she said, has a major sewage system lift station near a highly scarped point in the beach along Third Street. The station serves dozens of homes east and west of it, Smith said, and losing it would be costly.

Saving the lift station as well as the rest of the town’s roads and infrastructure in the area is one of main goals for the town. So is long-term cost. Beach re-nourishment, Smith said, has proven increasingly expensive and frustrating, especially considering Shallotte Inlet’s hunger for sand.

“You know where it all goes. It all goes right back into that inlet,” said Smith, who has lived in Ocean Isle Beach most of her life.

The hope, she said, is that not only will the groin help stabilize the area, but will make it possible to reduce the frequency of re-nourishment.

Debbie Smith

She said the town has yet to see a cost estimate, but that there’s a willingness to consider ways to have those who benefit most pay more for the project, a point raised during town discussions on the groin last year.

“I don’t think anything is off the table at this point,” she said. “That’s certainly a model that’s been used up and down the coast.”

Smith said the town recently hiked its public accommodations tax to help pay for the project and will use those proceeds along with money from the tax typically used for beach re-nourishment to cover the costs.

The town has so far budgeted $785,824 for work on preparing an environmental impact statement.

Smith said the time and equity issues are just some of the issues over the groin. The town is also dealing with anxious homeowners worried about the time it will take to work through the process. “They’re frustrated,” Smith said.

The area needs a long-term fix, she said.

Meanwhile, the tide continues to roll. “We had some high water last night,” Smith said on Monday. The result, she said, was a damaged sewer line to the easternmost home on the fast changing ocean front. “We condemned it this morning.”

WILMINGTON — Federal and state agencies have asked for more study of a proposed terminal groin project on Figure Eight Island, and one federal agency has recommended that the proposal be denied until more information is provided.

The proposal also has run into opposition from some property owners who say they will not give permission for their land to be used. That permission would likely be needed for the project the island homeowners association would prefer to build, but proponents say other options are possible that would not require the properties in question.

Terminal groins, like this one at Fort Macon State Park in Atlantic Beach, are built perpendicular to shore at inlets to control erosion, but their environmental effects are often unpredictable. Photo: Program for the Study of Developed Shorelines, Western Carolina University.

The Figure “8” Beach Homeowners Association wants to control erosion near the northern tip of the island, and the group’s preferred option calls for building a small jetty, or terminal groin, and a seawall. It would be the first project permitted under a new law passed by the N.C. General Assembly last year. Hard-structures like jetties and groins had been illegal on N.C. beaches, but the law allows up to four groins at inlets. The association, which represents homeowners on the privately developed island near Wilmington, lobbied the legislature to change the law.

Such structures are commonly made by piling rocks in a long line perpendicular to shore. In effect, the groins are sand traps that proponents say would slow erosion on parts of the island. The structures had been banned on N.C. beaches because they tend to increase erosion elsewhere on the beach and their effects are difficult to predict. The association, though, expects some sand to continue to flow around the groin and through gaps in the rocks.

The intent of the groin, along with the addition of sand to some island beaches, is to control shoreline erosion near the northern end of the island and to protect waterfront houses. The association submitted a draft environmental impact statement to the Wilmington office of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers as part of a required review of the project, and the corps released that document earlier this year.

The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, the National Marine Fisheries Service and the N.C. Division of Marine Fisheries all reviewed the draft environmental study. The document examines several alternatives, but the preferred option calls for building the terminal groin extending 700 feet into the ocean near Rich Inlet at the northeast corner of the island. To anchor the groin, a seawall would extend several hundred feet onto the back side of island to ensure that erosion does not continue on the landward side.

Both fishery agencies expressed concern for the health of the inlet and called for more study of the area before a permit is granted. Fish and Wildlife went further, recommending denial of the project as described because the environmental review did not adequately address potential impacts to endangered species and sensitive habitats. The agency also offered to help the homeowners association in producing a more thorough environmental review.

The homeowners association will need federal and state permits for the project, and the Corps of Engineers is typically the first stop in such a process. David Kellam, director of the homeowners association, declined to discuss specific comments, saying he preferred to wait for the corps to provide feedback and instruction on how to move forward.

<p”>“We’re very early in the process,” Kellam said. “Now is not the time to (discuss specific comments).”

The review process can require an environmental impact statement to be reworked, and the document released earlier this year is a “draft,” or preliminary version. The corps could approve the document as is, require revisions or reject the document outright, but Mickey Sugg, the Corps official overseeing the process, declined to provide a timeline. He said the comments are being reviewed as part of the formal process and that a Corps decision would be forthcoming.

Kellam said it is certainly possible that the Corps will request additional work on the document. “I think the Corps will ask the contractor to address any of the relevant comments pertaining to Rich’s Inlet,” he said.

Those concerns may include a general rewrite of the document.

Federal agencies expressed concerns that the draft study of the proposed groin at Figure Eight Island doesn’t adequately address possible effects on essential wildlife habitat at Rich Inlet. Photo: Army Corps of Engineers.

“In general, the DEIS (draft environmental impact statement) appears disorganized, and specific information on the various alternatives proposed and project impacts was hard to find,” the Fish and Wildlife comments state. “Specific information on the alternatives was spread throughout the large document, which made it difficult to develop a cohesive picture of the alternatives and potential impacts.”

The study is required by federal law in projects like the one the homeowners association is considering. Its purpose is to provide the sort of cohesive picture that, according to Fish and Wildlife, is elusive in the Figure Eight document. The agency also states that economic data in the draft study used for cost-benefit analyses appears flawed. The economic data appears to overstate the potential economic threat to the island, the agency states in its comments.

The environmental assessment also appears to contradict itself and in doing so may run afoul of state law, according to Fish and Wildlife. That law requires that “nonstructural approaches to erosion control” first be found “impractical” before a groin can be considered. The draft study examines several options for controlling erosion, and the document states early on that a nonstructural option, managing Rich Inlet and adding sand to eroding beaches, is sufficient. The environmental assessment needs to deal with this apparent contradiction, the Fish and Wildlife comments state

Nonprofit environmental groups and individuals also submitted comments on the environmental review, and some of those comments are excoriating. However, not all comments were available. The Corps has not publicly released comments; the documents reviewed in this article were provided by agencies and individuals involved. Sugg said a large number of comments had been received and that that he could not say whether the lion’s share of the comments was in favor or against the project.

One of the nonprofit groups commenting on the document is Audubon North Carolina, a wildlife conservation group focusing on the needs of birds. The group challenges large swaths of the data presented in the document as incomplete, incorrect and, in some cases, misleading. The organization also expresses adamant opposition to any erosion control project that would affect habitats near Rich Inlet. The area is important to the health of several endangered species and should be safeguarded, Audubon asserts in its letter to the Corps. The environmental impact statement, which by law, is supposed to examine impacts to such sensitive environments, fails on many counts, Audubon asserts.

The draft study’s shortcomings are numerous, Audubon wrote. The organization said the study fails to adequately describe the affected environment and assess the environmental consequences; fails to consider the scientific data that exists and is available; fails to consider the impacts to federal and state listed species and high-priority species; omits key bird species considered threatened by the state; fails to consider the impacts on habitats for shorebirds, waterbirds and other wildlife; ignores the pertinent recommendations of leading scientists; fails to objectively consider impacts and alternatives; fails to consider indirect and cumulative impacts; presents dubious models based on old data that could not predict the present orientation of the inlet and are of questionable use in predicting the future orientation of the inlet in response to the terminal groin construction;  and  contains an “extraordinary number” of factual errors and omissions.

Audubon North Carolina worries about the proposed groin’s effects on rare birds like the piping plover.

“Some of these omissions are so systemic and egregious as to give the impression that the DEIS was drafted in order to arrive at the conclusions desired by the applicant rather than to report the full and objective consideration of and impacts of reasonable alternatives,” Audubon wrote. “In its current state, the DEIS should not be accepted by the permitting agencies and returned for major corrections and revisions to address these crucial flaws.”

The old data referenced in Audubon’s comments includes a study that predicted continued erosion on Figure Eight Island, erosion that would threaten homes. However, sand has been building up on the beach in front of those homes in recent years, and several commenters asserted that these conditions indicate that an erosion control project is unnecessary. Additionally, Audubon takes issue with the document’s examination of a particular endangered bird.

<p”>“One of the most objectionable aspects of the DEIS is its deliberate distortion of impacts to shorebirds, particularly the piping plover, through its selective citation and sourcing of scientific literature and federal shorebird recovery plans and reports,” the Audubon comments state.

The plover is an endangered shorebird that is found on parts of the N.C. coast year-round. The environmental review claims that the proposed terminal groin would be beneficial because it would create more sand dunes for the birds, but that assertion is challenged both by Audubon and the Fish and Wildlife Service. Audubon asserts that the dunes created by groins often have too much vegetation to accommodate the nesting needs of birds like the piping plover, and Fish and Wildlife states that the draft study does not provide sufficient discussion of potential effects to the nesting and foraging spaces that such birds need.

Another nonprofit commenting on the document, the Southern Environmental Law Center, takes issue with the way the process has moved forward. Like Audubon, the group challenges the data in the document, but it also asserts that the homeowners association needs to secure access to the property needed before the process should move forward.

One reason for the tug-of-war over property access stems from the limited power wielded by the homeowners association. Local governments, for instance, often submit and complete environmental reviews before access rights are secured. Access is not an issue in such cases because, if needed, the towns could condemn any private property required and use it whether the owner wants the terminal groin or not. On Figure Eight Island, the homeowners association has no such powers and would need permission of a property owner or would need to buy property outright. Even so, private applicants may move forward with the environmental review before securing property rights, a Corps official said.

Several groups commenting on the document banded together and asked the corps to suspend any further action on the environmental review and require the homeowners association to essentially start over. The groups, which include N.C. Audubon, Environmental Defense Fund, Penderwatch & Conservancy, Western Carolina University’s Program for the Study of Developed Shorelines, Southern Environmental Law Center and the N.C. Coastal Federation, made four claims in the request:

• No property is imminently threatened and therefore the preferred alternative is not allowed by state law.
• The project has not been adequately defined to trigger a formal review and the project’s scope, purpose and need have been drastically changed without any public notice.
• Flaws in the draft study make it useless. While it might be possible to correct inaccuracies, omissions, content and the disorganized state of the document, making the DEIS a truly independent and unbiased analysis of alternatives will be impossible.
• A complete permit application has never been submitted. In fact, because the applicant has not secured the necessary private property rights to build its preferred alternative a complete application is not even possible under both federal and state permit application rules.

The Corps office in Wilmington disagreed with the assertions and in a response issued Friday stated that the current environmental review will continue. Corps officials in Wilmington and Washington said an applicant does not need to secure property rights prior to the evaluation of an environmental impact statement.

“You can absolutely submit your application even if you don’t have access,” said Erin Hess, a Corps official in the agency’s Washington headquarters. “We get that a lot.”

No permit would be given if an applicant could not get access to needed property, but that is a matter separate from the review of environmental impacts, Hess said. The Wilmington corps office echoed that assessment. The organizations asking for the Corps to suspend work assert that the review would be a waste of time and taxpayer money if access is not secured first.

Kellam of the homeowners association said one reason for not seeking access involves location. The exact site of any structure has not been established, and that the environmental review process will guide the homeowners association in deciding what and where to build, he said.

The proposed project also has raised some opposition among homeowners. The preferred option described in the draft study has given some property owners the impression that the groin could limit their access to the water, prove to be an eyesore, reduce property values and perhaps interfere with insurance. Alan Goldenberg, a property owner who lives on the northeast end of the island, said that he believes his property would be needed for the terminal groin as described in the environmental review. He said he and more than five other property owners are opposed to the project unless the homeowners association can prove to them that there will be no negative effects to their land. Other property owners confirmed Goldenberg’s assertion.

“I am opposed based on the present presentation of the groin location,” Goldenberg said.

Goldenberg also said that property owners were given the impression early on that the terminal groin would be built in waters near Rich Inlet, away from their land. That option would be acceptable, Goldenberg said, but it is not what is described in the environmental review.

Other homeowners support the project because they want to safeguard their property against potential erosion.

“As far as I’m concerned, it’s a pretty good idea,” said homeowner George Denby. “It’s the most promising idea of any I’ve come across.”

Denby also said that he supports Audubon, and that he believes the terminal groin would be beneficial to the natural environment as well. He acknowledged that, in recent years, sand has been building up in front of the houses thought to be in danger. However, the terminal groin is still needed, he said, to ensure long-term safety.

“It’s a benefit to the entire community,” Denby said.

Still other property owners are opposed to the terminal groin at a conceptual level. John Stanback said he thinks people who willingly bought beachfront property should not get unlimited access to erosion control measures.

“I have the greatest sympathy for people wanting to protect their homes,” Stanback said. “Everyone knows this is a North Carolina barrier island made of sand, and they move.”

Kellam said he understands homeowner objections and that he is committed to providing information to allay peoples’ concerns.

“There are some homeowners who have reservations, and I don’t blame them,” Kellam said. “I do believe that all the hurdles will be overcome with time and with correct information being disseminated to everyone.”

• N.C. Coastal Federation comment letter
• Todd Miller: Study is beyond saving

Four coastal communities experiencing chronic erosion problems near inlets are developing studies to harden their shorelines based on a change of state law. But questions remain about how the recently passed law will be administered and how any damage from the hardened shoreline will be measured.

The N.C. General Assembly in 2011 approved a law, authorizing up to four small jetties, called terminal groins, along the coastline adjacent to tidal inlets, overturning the state’s decades old ban on hardened structures on the ocean. A terminal groin is a wall, usually made of rock,  that extends out toward the ocean and is designed to trap sand and prevent erosion. It is usually built perpendicular to the shoreline.

The decision to permit terminals groins follows years of lobbying by some beach communities facing severe erosion and the potential loss of property value if oceanfront houses are removed or taken by the sea. A 2010 study by the N.C. Coastal Resources Commission found that terminals groins in combination with beach re-nourishment could control erosion at the end of a barrier island.  Hardened structures had been illegal in North Carolina since 1985 because they can accelerate erosion problems on adjacent beaches.

Braxton Davis, director of the N.C. Division of Coastal Management, which oversees the CAMA permitting process, said it’s still unknown whether the Coastal Resources Commission will eventually develop administrative rules to guide the construction of terminal groins.The study said the erosional effects of terminal groins are the main concern, but they are variable. If it is built so that it disrupts the movement of sand, the groin can trigger increased erosion on beaches “downstream.” The study estimated that is would cost $3.5 million to $10 million to build a groin and to perform the necessary beach re-nourishment, depending on the length of the structure and building material.

“We have a process in place that can handle the whole permit process,” Davis said. “As we work through the first application, we may find things that it would be helpful to have rules to clarify.”

Communities seeking to build groins must commission an environmental impact study analyzing alternatives and showing the groin is the preferred alternative.  Among other things, the new law also requires that applicants monitor the groins and provide financial assurance that they have the money to repair any damage and to remove the structure if necessary.

Applicants must obtain a Coastal Area Management Act major permit from the N.C. Division of Coastal Management, a permit from the N.C. Division of Water Quality and a federal permit from the Army Corps of Engineers.

Figure Eight Project

To date, Figure Eight Island, a privately developed five-mile-long island in New Hanover County, has advanced the farthest in the planning process to build a terminal groin. Its purpose is to protect oceanfront houses threatened by erosion near the north end of the island at Rich Inlet.

Earlier this year, the Corps of Engineers released a draft environmental impact statement outlining alternatives including the construction of a 1,600-foot terminal groin along the southern shoulder of the inlet extending 700 feet into the ocean to protect two miles of eroding oceanfront. The design is intended to control shoreline erosion south of Rich Inlet and to protect property. Sandbags have been placed around 20 houses threatened by erosion near Rich Inlet. One house has since been relocated.

Sandbags protect oceanfront houses on Figure Eight Island.

The plan includes building a groin and placing sand along more than a mile of shoreline along the oceanfront and Rich Inlet. The estimated initial construction cost for the groin and beach re-nourishment is $5.9 million, according to the study. Ongoing replenishment of sand on the shoreline, using sand dredged from periodic maintenance of Nixon Channel, is estimated to cost $1.8 million every five years. This is the preferred alternative of the Figure Eight Homeowners’ Association.

The association has tried to shore up the eroding north end of the island with a total of 1.8 million cubic yards of sand since 1993. But their efforts have failed to stabilize the beach because of the high erosion rate in the area.

The Corps is receiving comments on the draft environmental study of the project until July 20.

Mike Giles, an advocate for the N.C. Coastal Federation, said a groin would pose a navigational hazard and affect access to public trust waters. “People who built near an inlet knew what they were getting into,” Giles said. “They rolled the dice.

Doug Huggett, manager of the Division of Coastal Management’s major permits section, said Figure Eight is the farthest along in the planning process and the earliest a terminal groin could be constructed would be the fall of 2013.

The law sets forth broad requirements as the basis for building terminal groins. Environmental groups including the federation have urged the Coastal Resources Commission to adopt specific rules to implement the law and to ensure its requirements are applied and enforced consistently.

Are Rules Needed?

Geoff Gisler

Geoff Gisler, an attorney with the Southern Environmental Law Center, said the existing law doesn’t provide the level of detail necessary to clarify important considerations such as how to calculate when a terminal groin is causing negative effects to adjacent beaches and what financial guarantees would be required to pay for removal of the groin.

“When you are dealing with coastal geology, the legislature isn’t a good forum for working out details,” Gisler said. “The statute doesn’t provide a level of detail to clarify how an agency should evaluate permits and what the requirements in the statute should mean. There is ambiguity in what different things mean.”

But Huggett said the law provides enough guidance that the staff is not recommending at this point that the Coastal Resources Commission develop administrative rules.

“Our view is the legislation gives us a lot of guidance that a rule normally would,” Huggett said.

The law requires a community to provide financial assurances to cover the removal of a groin if it harms neighboring shorelines. But Huggett acknowledged that developing long-term monitoring processes to measure accurately whether a groin is causing accelerated erosion on downstream beaches posed a major challenge the staff would have to tackle.

Every one of the groin projects is going to have its own unique measurement criteria for determining beach erosion before and after the construction of a groin, Huggett said.

“It’s certainly one of the more difficult components of the law we’re going to have to deal with,” he said.

Huggett said the staff would bring issues to the CRC’s attention if they see scenarios with construction of terminal groins that do need rulemaking.

Other Groin Projects

In addition to Figure Eight Island, three other communities are in the early stages of seeking permits to build terminal groins.

Bald Head Island—An exclusive island near the mouth of the Cape Fear River in Brunswick County, Bald Head has applied to the Corps of Engineers to build a terminal groin at the western end of South Beach to address accelerating erosion.

A portion of South Beach on Bald Head Island has retreated by as much as 400 feet since 2000, despite the placement of 6 million cubic yards of sand to rebuild the beach. Sixteen temporary sand-filled tube structures have been in place since 1996 to try and stabilize the western end of South Beach.  Despite all that, a portion of South Beach continues to disappear. In 2011, Bald Head built 350 feet of sandbags near the last groin to protect nearby houses, roads and dunes.

The Corps held a meeting in March to get input on a draft environmental study of the project. The draft environmental study is expected to be published at the end of 2012, and a public hearing will then be held.

Holden Beach—Holden Beach has asked the Corps for authorization to install a terminal groin on the western side of Lockwood Folly Inlet and place more sand along the eastern end of Holden Beach, according to the Federal Register notice. The eastern end of Holden Beach has experienced severe erosion and the town has undertaken periodic beach re-nourishment.

The Corps held a public meeting in March to receive input on issues that should be addressed in the draft environmental study. The final location of the terminal groin is still to be determined. The study is evaluating two alternatives designs and locations. One alternative is a 1,600-foot rock structure located along the western shoulder of the inlet. The second alternative is a shorter 400- to 600-foot structure near the end of Ocean Boulevard East.

A draft version of the environmental study is expected to be published in early 2013 for public comment.

Ocean Isle Beach — In April, the town hired engineering consultants to do an environmental impact study of building a groin on the eastern end of Ocean Isle.

In a presentation to the town board, engineers with Coastal Planning and Engineering, a consulting group involved in several of the projects, said that construction of a terminal groin would extend the cycle for re-nourishing the beach from three years to six years, resulting in costs savings. They estimated that continuing erosion to the east end of the island over the next 20 years would result in damages costing approximately $12.6 million. The consultants estimated March 2016 for completion of the design, permitting and construction of a terminal groin.

NAGS HEAD — Stretching out into the churning waters of Oregon Inlet, a rock wall in place since 1991 has been credited with both building and eroding the beach on the northern end of Hatteras Island.

No other terminal groin has been built in North Carolina since the one in Oregon Inlet was permitted to save the southern approach to the Herbert C. Bonner Bridge, and with restrictions on shoreline hardening in place since the 1980s, there are few such structures existing on the coast. As the state Division of Coastal Management works with applicants to implement a new state law that permits construction of up to four terminal groins, the agency is grappling with many unknowns.

“I have no clue now what the issues will be that come up,” Doug Huggett, manager of the division’s Major Permits and Consistency Unit, told the state Coastal Resources Commission at its meeting last week in Nags Head, “but they’re going to be significant.”

Law Requirements

The terminal groin bill mandates that the sand-trapping structures be built only at inlets, and they must be accompanied by a plan that details how erosion at the inlet will be controlled. The bill also requires shoreline monitoring to determine if the groins are causing problems. Opponents argue that the structures interfere with the natural movement of sand along the beach and thus accelerate erosion farther away.

Faced with myriad options on ways to address the requirements, the division sought guidance from its panel of scientific advisors. After two meetings and “spirited” discussions with the panel, Huggett said, numerous questions remain, especially how to pinpoint the cause of post-construction erosion and whether there is expertise on the division’s staff to properly analyze and review data

To address the concern about staff limitations— including the lack of a coastal engineer —the division agreed to a voluntary third-party review of an application. There was also consensus on the science panel, Huggett said, to use existing data as much as possible, and to drop the idea of a “control” beach to compare erosion rates, since such a beach would be nearly impossible to locate.

“We have to be prepared to act on those applications,” Huggett said in a later interview.  “We have to respond to these applications just like we would any other application. You can’t always wait to process an application until we have all the information. You never get all the information. Legally, we don’t have any authority to stall.”

Whatever the challenges are, Huggett said that the division has enough experience to adequately process a terminal groin application. Budget shortages make hiring outside consultants unaffordable, he said, but the division is staffed by skilled “generalists” who routinely work with challenging projects.

“We are going to do the best we can with the resources we have,” he said.

Four Applicants

Huggett said that of the four applicants so far, Figure Eight Island is furthest along, and could potentially have a permit in six to nine months. He said he expects that division staff will meet the island’s representatives in the coming weeks.

Other applicants in various stages of the permit process, which typically takes about 18 months, are Holden Beach, Bald Head Island and Ocean Isle Beach. North Topsail Island decided earlier this month to not pursue an application.

It’s also conceivable that a fifth or sixth community will decide to apply for a permit. They may try to “sprint ahead” of an earlier applicant, Huggett said.

Applicants will be required to show that the project will not lead to significant adverse impacts on threatened species and adjacent property. They also must have the financial means to fund the project and pay for any future damage to nearby beaches or remove the groin if necessary.

David Kellam, administrator of Figure Eight Island, said that his community intends to build a terminal groin that is engineered to not harm the environment. He said it is too early to know what the structure’s design or cost will be, except to say it will likely be about 700- to 1,000-feet long and made of rock.

“We’re waiting on the state to interpret how and what they’re going to do,” Kellam said in a telephone interview. “Figure Eight certainly wants to do this right. We want to do it prudently for the protection of the estuarine ecosystems.”

State Sen. Harry Brown, R-Onslow and the Senate’s majority leader, was the bill’s main sponsor. He said that much compromise was involved before the legislation finally passed. “I think a lot of parties were probably not happy with the final results,” he said.

Brown, who first introduced his bill when he was elected about eight years ago, said he would not be surprised if others, besides the four current applicants, seek a terminal groin permit.

“I think it’s important to the coast,” he said. “And I think it’s important to the communities with inlets along the coast.”

Mike Giles, one of our coastal advocates, attended the first public meeting on the proposed groin at Ocean Isle. Read his interesting take in our blog Cape Fear Beacon.