Second and final in a series

As the North Carolina Coastal Resources Commission’s Science Panel studies the effects of permanent beach erosion control structures such as seawalls and jetties, a critical aspect of the analysis will be looking at the lessons learned.

The commission banned hardened structures on the ocean shoreline in 1985 because of the down-shore erosive effects on the beach. Still, there are numerous examples of such structures in place along different parts of the coast, with varied degrees of effectiveness.

Erosion is not only more severe and longstanding on the Outer Banks, which are more exposed to the power of the open ocean and coastal storms than other parts of the North Carolina coast, it is the most dramatic and unforgiving, especially on Hatteras and Ocracoke islands. But coastal erosion is a statewide issue. To that point, federal beach nourishment projects in North Carolina began in 1965 at Wrightsville Beach and at Carolina Beach, and nourishment at both locations has been done in recent years.

When development and tourism took off on the Outer Banks in the 1980s, it didn’t take long before beach cottages began lining ocean shorelines.

Still, the forces of erosion had no mercy, and Kitty Hawk began losing beachfront properties. After the commission issued a variance to the hardened structures ban in 2003, permitting sheet-piling along N.C. Highway 12 in the beach community, then-Sen. Marc Basnight strongarmed the state’s ban into legislation.

Then in 2011, the North Carolina General Assembly passed a law that permitted four “test” terminal groins and has since expanded the permissible number of groins to seven. To date, four communities submitted permit applications: Figure Eight Island, Ocean Isle Beach, Bald Head Island and Holden Beach. Holden Beach has since withdrawn its application.

Long before the ban, numerous attempts were made to shore up the beach oceanward of the 1870 Cape Hatteras Lighthouse in Buxton. By 1930, the nation’s tallest brick lighthouse was a mere 98 feet from the ocean.

According to National Park Service records, interlocking steel sheet-pile groins were installed in the 1930s on the beach near the lighthouse and reinforced a few years later. Over the years, dunes were built, grasses were planted, the beach was nourished, revetment and sandbag walls were installed.

In 1969, the U.S. Navy installed three reinforced concrete groins to protect its base, which was adjacent to the lighthouse at the time. But the erosion continued. More sandbags were put in place; more beach nourishment was done. The Navy left in the 1980s. While the National Park Service officially gave up its beach nourishment and dune stabilization efforts in 1973, it continued trying in ensuing years to protect the lighthouse from the sea with rip-rap, artificial seagrass, sandbags and a scour-mat apron.

Finally, after much study and public debate, with the ocean lapping at its foundation, in 1999 the lighthouse was relocated about a half mile from the beach.

Fast-forward a quarter-century and, since September 2025, 19 unoccupied beach houses near that same beach in Buxton have collapsed into the ocean.

Escalating beach erosion along the state’s entire coast, but especially in Buxton, has put difficult discussions about lifting the hardened shorelines ban back on the table. The few existing permanent erosion-control structures built over the years on North Carolina beaches have yielded mixed results.

Oregon Inlet

One of the most successful examples of a terminal groin doing what it was intended to do, and with relatively minimal harm, is the 3,125-foot terminal groin and 625-foot revetment built in 1991 to protect the N.C. Highway 12 tie-in at the Herbert C. Bonner Bridge, which has since been replaced and renamed the Marc Basnight Bridge. The $13.4 million groin is substantial — ranging from 110 to 170 feet wide at its base and 25 feet wide at its landward end, and 39 feet wide at its seaward end — and was built to withstand waves as high as 15 feet, according to an analysis done by the state Division of Coastal Management, “North Carolina’s Terminal Groins at Oregon Inlet and Fort Macon,  Descriptions and Discussions.”

Located on the south side of Oregon Inlet at the north edge of Pea Island National Wildlife Refuge land, the groin placement encouraged sand buildup, or accretion, landward, resulting in a wide expansion of 50 acres of sandy property on the inlet side of the historic state-owned Oregon Inlet Life-Saving Station. The building is vacant, but has been weatherized to preserve it for future use.

The groin site and surrounding beach have been regularly monitored by state and federal coastal scientists. Studies have shown that the structure has likely increased shoaling of a spit on the Bodie island side and deepening of the channel. Yet, the groin has cause little if any destructive downstream erosion while adequately protecting the highway and bridge infrastructure.

But the report warned that within the next 20 years or so, the continued southward migration of the Bodie Island spit could push the inlet’s main navigational channel up against the terminal groin structure itself.

“If this were to occur, the result would be severe scour and an increase in the maintenance necessary to preserve the threatened integrity of the structure itself,” according to the document.

Beaufort Inlet/Fort Macon

Since Fort Macon was constructed in 1834, about 25 erosion-control structures adjacent to Beaufort Inlet have been built, including groins, breakwaters, timber cribbing, sand-fencing and seawalls, as well as multiple beach nourishment projects, according to the terminal groin report.  The first phase of the terminal groin project began in 1961 and included a 530-foot seawall, a 250-foot revetment and 720-foot long, 6-foot-high terminal groin. Phase II, beginning in 1965, extended the groin 410 feet oceanward, and another groin was built west of the revetment to address extensive soundside erosion, while 93,000 cubic yards of sand was placed on the ocean beach.

The third phase, started in 1970, extended the terminal groin another 400 feet, to a total of 1,530 feet long. A 480-foot-long stone groin was built to stabilize the beach fill, and another 100,000 cubic yards of sand was placed on the ocean beach. Total costs for the three-phase project was $1.35 million.

Effects of the project include increased wave energy along the Fort Macon State Park and Bogue Banks area, and continued increases in wave energy were predicted. A sediment deficit has created erosion on the inlet’s western shoreline. Meanwhile, the sand spit at Fort Macon has migrated into the western bank of the navigation channel, indicating that the terminal groin has become inefficient at trapping sediment.

“Without constant beach nourishment, the terminal groin would no longer perform as observed historically and potentially fail altogether,” the report concluded.

Buxton

Dare County is planning a nourishment project in Buxton, as well as restoration of one of the Navy’s three abandoned reinforced sheet-pile groins that had been installed in 1969. According to the recent application to repair the southernmost groin, which is 50% or more intact, that groin had been lengthened in 1982 on the landward side by 300 feet, and armor stone was added two years later. New sheet piles and additional scour protection were added to the structures in 1994. The other two groins in the original groin field are too damaged to qualify under the Coastal Resources Commission’s “50% rule” that permits repairs.

Dare County Manager Bobby Outten has said publicly that the county is under no illusions that the project planned for this summer will solve the erosion issue for good. But the hope is that it will serve as a Band-Aid long enough to find a more permanent solution to erosion that is now so severe it is threatening the livelihoods of community residents and the island’s tourism economy, as well as N.C Highway 12.

Retired East Carolina University professor and veteran coastal geologist Dr. Stanley Riggs, who has studied the Outer Banks since the 1970s, agreed that the fact that the lighthouse had to be relocated to save it illustrates why Buxton’s erosion is not going to be easy to tame for long, with or without groins. When the first coastal survey from Virginia to Ocracoke was done in 1852, the original 1802 Cape Hatteras Lighthouse, which was destroyed, had been 1,000 feet from the shoreline, Riggs recently told Coastal Review. All told, the shoreline has receded 3,000 feet, or about two-thirds of a mile, at the cape, he said.

“And it’s been constant,” Riggs said. “It oscillates a little bit, but the main direction has been constant.”

As Riggs explained, offshore just north of the motel area in Buxton, there is an underwater rock structure that is set at an oblique angle relative to the barrier island. Similar “old capes” are also off Avon and Rodanthe, he said. The rocks are under as much as 50 feet of water, and they dictate how the waves refract there.

“And so, if you fly over it, and you get the right angle down there, what you see is a series of cusps, and one side of that cusp will be stable, the other side will be highly erosional,” he said. Groins will only make the eroding side erode faster. And when there are permanent or semipermanent structures along the beach, the shore face — the part that is under water — starts to erode and gets steeper and steeper, he said. And the steeper it gets, the more severe the overwash and the more difficult it is to hold the sand in place. That’s a big reason why beach nourishment is having to be done more frequently.

Not only does the Outer Banks stick out farther into the Atlantic, there is also a narrower continental shelf, which allows the bigger waves to come ashore from the open ocean without the wider “speed bump” needed to dissipate the power.

There’s no negotiating with the ocean, Riggs said. Considering the combination of coastal dynamics at play in Buxton, efforts to control erosion will continue to fail.

“It’s that land-sea-air interface that is really the highest energy place that we’ve got on our planet,” Riggs said. “And there’s some things you can do there. There’s some things you shouldn’t do there, you can’t do there, and it’s a matter of understanding how that system works.”

Ocracoke Island

A persistent erosion hot spot on the north end of the island along N.C. Highway 12, the only road between the Hatteras Ferry Docks and Ocracoke Village, has been patched on and off for decades by increasing numbers of ever larger numbers and size of sandbags.

But even the type of large, new, trapezoidal bags permitted at Ocracoke, Pea Island and Mirlo Beach have not held up as expected, according to a presentation provided by Paul Williams of the North Carolina Department of Transportation at the February Coastal Resources Commission meeting.

Williams presented details at the meeting of NCDOT’s revised request to increase the base of the sandbags from 20 to 30 feet and the height from 6 feet to 10 feet, to better protect them from being undermined by waves.

The newer bags have open ends at the top, which proved to be a problem at Pea Island, Williams told the commission. The Pea Island Refuge at the Visitor Center, he added, faces similar risks now to that seen at Mirlo Beach in Rodanthe in the years before the hotspot was bypassed with completion of the Rodanthe “Jug-Handle” Bridge.

“The performance has not been what we anticipated,” he said, describing how they were flooded at the top, which caused the sandbags to deflate. “This product, there may be some modifications that can be made to make them more resilient.”

Some of the new bags were also installed along with traditional sandbags at Ocracoke, and they’re still covered, Williams said, but roughly 1 mile of sandbags along N.C. 12 are at risk of being undermined during the next big storm.

“So it’s basically to give us more latitude on different products, to try to protect the roadway out there better than traditional sandbags have,” Willams told Coastal Review after the meeting. “We’ve used them for decades out there, and especially Mirlo, they really got tossed around during storms. We were looking to find a more resilient product, and we’re working on evaluating other options out there.”

The new sandbags with an opening at the top are quicker to fill, he said. They’ve worked at other areas, but conditions elsewhere are not as fierce.

“When you’re on the Outer Banks, you’re under constant pressure during some of these storm events, because we’ll have a storm set up on the coast and grind for days at a time,” Williams said. “And every tide cycle is just steadily pulling sand out of the bags, and we need to have some way to stop that.”

Even though many of the traditional sandbags without the troublesome opening are still in place at Ocracoke, Williams said that about half of them, or about 1,000, have been exposed and need to be replaced. Another issue on the island is the limited amount of sand available to cover.

Sandbags, which are considered temporary erosion-control structures that are permitted parallel to shore to protect imminently threatened roads or structures, have rules about color and size, but those rules have been notoriously abused with regard to the “temporary” part, with extensions often adding up to decades at a site, making them “hardened structures” in everything but name.

Before Nags Head in 2011 started nourishing its eroded beaches in South Nags Head, for instance, even battered and torn sandbags weren’t removed for years, and property owners often successfully sued the state to keep longstanding stacked rows of protective bags in place in front of their oceanfront homes on the eroded beach.

As sea levels continue to rise, storms intensify and erosion accelerates, even sandbags as fallbacks in the absence of other impermissible erosion-control structures are becoming less effective, as evidenced by photographs of huge piles of sandbags lined up against undermined houses at North Topsail Beach.

Ocean Isle Beach

Responding to the state legislature’s repeal of the ban on hardened erosion-control structures on the coast, Ocean Isle Beach in 2011 began the planning process to pursue permits to install a terminal groin at Shallotte Inlet to stem erosion that for decades had chewed away at the island’s east end. Five years later, state and federal approval was in hand to build a 750-foot-long terminal groin, but environmental groups in 2017 filed a lawsuit to stop the project. A ruling in March 2021 in the 4th Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals affirmed a lower court’s ruling that the project alternatives were properly considered. By April 2022, the $11 million terminal groin was completed.

Today, a diminished beach remains in front of multi-million-dollar homes that were built after the groin was in place. Rows of sandbags block the surf from reaching some of the oceanfront homes, and several lots remain vacant because there is no longer enough property left to meet setback requirements.

In November, the Coastal Resources Commission allowed the owners of eroding vacant oceanfront lots to use larger sandbags to protect their properties.

Interest in future terminal groins

The Village of Bald Head Island, the first community to build a terminal groin after the “test groin” law passed, was issued a permit in October 2014 to build the erosion-control structure, which was completed in 2015.

North Carolina Department of Environmental Quality monitoring of the project after its completion did not turn up significant issues requiring corrective measures, according to its January 2024 report.

“While ongoing post-construction monitoring performed by the permittee has not identified any significant issues that would require corrective or mitigative measures, the Village performed a maintenance beach nourishment event, received nourishment from the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers’ regularly scheduled Wilmington Harbor maintenance project, and is currently seeking permit authorization for a second Village-sponsored maintenance nourishment event,” according to the document.

Six other communities have expressed “varying degrees” of interest in building a terminal groin project, including North Topsail Beach and Figure Eight Island, as noted in the report.

First in a series

Something potentially and significantly consequential is underway now in North Carolina that could alter management of the state’s increasingly battered Atlantic coastline.

The state Coastal Resources Commission’s Science Panel is in the process of finalizing an analysis of beach erosion-control structures, a report that is expected to be submitted to the commission in June. Although the 10-member advisory panel’s study is meant to inform policymakers of their options, some fear – or hope – that it’s the first step toward repealing the state’s longstanding ban on hardened shoreline structures.

“Alarms are sounding in nearly all of our oceanfront counties,” state Division of Coastal Management Director Tancred Miller said at the commission’s meeting in November at Atlantic Beach, referring to threats from accelerating beach erosion. “Nourishment costs continue to rise and the lifespan of many of these projects is painfully short. Infrastructure is increasingly vulnerable, and some communities are very concerned.”

Since September 2025, the Hatteras Island village of Buxton, home of the Cape Hatteras Lighthouse and the massive corner of wild beach known as Cape Point, has seen 19 unoccupied oceanfront homes collapse into the surf. In addition to a beach nourishment project, Dare County this summer is planning to restore the only salvageable groin of a 57-year-old groin field in an attempt to prolong the project’s lifespan.

In response to calls from Dare and Hyde counties, among others, to allow more options to address erosion, the division last winter asked the Coastal Resources Commission to review the structures.

“We must approach these challenges with open minds, innovation, and balanced pragmatism,” Miller urged. “We must take a critical view of our past and current practices, embrace what continues to succeed, and replace practices that are no longer working.”

But even the draft outline that the Science Panel submitted at the commission’s February meeting,  titled “Report on The Effects of Hard Structures on Sandy, Open-ocean Coastlines,” revealed the complexity involved in redirecting, blocking, deflecting, buffering, or absorbing the power of an open ocean energized by high winds, with forceful longshore and cross-shore currents feeding beaches with sand here, starving them of sand there.

“We’ve broken this into two categories according to how these erosion-management measures function; essentially all erosion-management approaches fall into two categories,” CRC Science Panel Chair Laura Moore told the commission. “One is structures or approaches that trap sand, and the second is structures that that really harden the shoreline.”

While the report will provide details about protective barriers and techniques, she said, it is less about offering remedies than providing information about effects of each option. It will also include comparisons to beach-restoration methods such as nourishment and living shorelines.

Erosion has been a fact of life along North Carolina’s 320-mile-long ocean shoreline for centuries, but before coastal development and tourism went into overdrive, the Coastal Resources Commission, the 13-member body that sets coastal policy in the state, took steps to preserve beaches.

In 1985, after studying the down-shore erosive effects of seawalls, bulkheads, groins, jetties and sandbags, the commission established a policy banning permanent hardened structures on the ocean coast. Sandbags were permitted as temporary structures.

Upheld in court in 2000, the ban was codified as law three years later by the North Carolina General Assembly. Then in 2011, a law was passed that permitted a limited number of terminal groins — sand-trapping barriers built near inlets or at the end of an island. Much of the ban, however, remains the law of the land. Environmentalists and countless coastal scientists have credited the limits on hard structures for preserving the state’s coastal wildlife and beautiful natural beaches, which attract millions of tourists every year. But critics blame the ban for limiting the ability to protect shorelines, as well as private and public property and infrastructure.

No magic, one-size-fits-all formula exists to address erosion, Moore said, and many factors will need to be weighed.

“There are approaches and strategies that can either shift the erosion problem to another adjacent location, or in some cases, we can slow the problem down,” said Moore, who is professor of coastal geomorphology at the University of North Carolina Chapel Hill. “We can create more time to make perhaps bigger adjustments that are likely to be needed going forward.”

With seas rising and Atlantic storms intensifying over recent decades as a result of climate change, erosion on the state’s barrier island beaches has been happening faster and more dramatically, especially along the high-energy Outer Banks coastline, where erosion rates at some locations – as severe as an annual average of 14 feet – are among the highest on the East Coast. Dozens of oceanfront houses on eroded beaches, pounded and undermined by surging surf, have fallen into the sea. At the same time, more Outer Banks inlets and waterways are filling with sand, clogging channels that until the recent past had always been navigable.

But the entire coast has been experiencing its own degree of changing and increasingly destructive conditions, and the pressure has been building to find ways to prevent or mitigate damages at different locations, each with different conditions.

“I would say most of the North Carolina coastline is either barrier or behaves like barrier,” Moore told Coastal Review. “Certainly, subsidence in the north is a factor that’s going to make the relative rate of sea level rise a little higher. But there’s also the shape and the orientation of the shoreline and the wave approach angles and the wave energy and how those drive longshore sediment transport gradients, and how much sand is coming into a stretch of coast versus how much is leaving. Also, a really big factor is how frequently in the past the coast has been nourished.”

The final report is to be centered on sand-trapping and shoreline-hardening structures, Moore said. But it will also look at other widely used erosion management tactics, ranging from avoidance with setbacks or relocation, sand trapping with fences or beach plants, and building the beach with sand nourishment and dunes.

The two-category design of the document is focused on function of the structures, she said, “because there are hundreds, maybe even thousands, of coastal erosion management approaches out there, and they all essentially fall into two buckets.” What the panel of volunteer scientists cannot do, she added, is analyze each approach.

“What we are trying to do is provide a better, clearer explanation of how structures function and what their effects are,” Moore said.

Moore emphasized that the science panel’s task is to provide an assessment of structures on the coastline. But she understands the urgency people feel for finding a “solution” rather than a range of options.

“And although we’re not providing recommendations, I do want to highlight that we will be discussing tradeoffs, and I think that’s really important, because whether an approach has benefits or negative effects depends on the perspective and goals of the beholder,” she said. “We certainly know that there are efforts afoot to repeal the ban. And again, it’s not our job to say whether that should or should not happen. It’s our job to lay out in a clear way what the tradeoffs are, given how these different approaches to mitigating erosion function.”

Next in the series: How have hardened structures currently installed on North Carolina beaches performed?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Editor’s note: Second in a series on the newest work by coastal geologist Stan Riggs, the following is an excerpt from “Cape Lookout National Seashore: Paradigm For A Coastal System Ethic.”

The book, with a foreword by conservationist Tom Earnhardt, a North Carolina Coastal Federation board member, is the first in the “North Carolina Land of Water” book series and focuses on the Cape Lookout National Seashore.

The nearly 300 photographs, maps and illustrations of shifting dunes, barrier islands and coastal wildlife are interwoven with carefully crafted maps and drawings, “tracing our coast from its ancient past through the centuries to our modern present,” according to NCLOW, the nonprofit founded by Riggs and fellow coastal geologist Dr. Dorothea V. Ames.

NCLOW’s stated mission “is to sustain NC’s dynamic water, land and air systems for generations to come.”

Land-Water-Air Interface: Nature’s Coastal Systems

I like to think that actively evolving coastal systems are like the human body with its totally interdependent array of subsystems: skeletal, muscular, circulatory, pulmonary, nervous, and endocrine systems driven by the incredible brain, heart, and lungs. It is difficult to live a healthy life without all these bodily components working intimately together. Likewise, our coastal system is dominated by an interdependent array of complex subsystems: landscapes, waterscapes, and airscapes all interacting at the land-water-air interface. The geographic conditions, geologic dynamics, meteorologic forces, and chemical-biological characteristics are critical variables that interact to produce a living, breathing, and evolving coastal system. Major coastal system drivers are the Earth’s physical landscape dynamics (uplifting of mountains and opening of ocean basins), its space partners (creating climatic zones and setting the waterscape and airscape into motion), and the life-giving energy from the almighty Sun (driving the hydrologic cycle and atmospheric circulation that dictates the resulting biosphere).

Throughout the world, wherever a water body (ocean, sea, lake, or river) meets the surrounding land, a coastal system occurs. Because all water bodies and land masses are uniquely different, no two coastal systems are alike. Rather, they each display the influence of multiple variables producing continuums of coastal system types. The landscape may be mountainous or low flatlands dominated by hard rock, sand and mud sediment, or rich and black organic matter; located in the polar, temperate, or tropical regions; or it may occur in a stable tectonic zone, an active earthquake zone, or an area dominated by volcanic activity. Likewise, the size, location, and physical-chemical-biological characteristics of the water body are also determining characteristics. A critical third component also occurs at every land-water intersection; this is the overlying atmosphere and its climatic characteristics that help determine the ultimate character and are the drivers of change for each coastal system.

Like the human body, coastal systems tend to be extremely dynamic, changing in response to energy input at several different time scales. Volcanic activity (Hawaiian Island coasts) and earthquakes (US Pacific coasts), the dominant sources of energy, occur over decades, centuries, and millennia. However, the energy input from atmospheric storm dynamics affects all coastal systems and is the dominant energy source along the US Atlantic and Gulf coasts, occurring at irregular but frequent short-term time scales. An extremely active atmosphere with rapidly changing climatic conditions is the overwhelming cumulative force that routinely produces short-term changes and long-term evolution associated with most southeastern US coastal systems. The ultimate driver of these climate systems and associated storms is our space partner, the Sun.

Natural Function of Barrier Islands: Limits to Growth, Development

Barrier islands and their associated water bodies have a set of dynamics that are established by the natural functions of Earth’s systems. The word “function” relative to the interactions between the land-water-air interface means assigned actions, activities, duties, or role. The function of interstate highways is to get vehicles from point A to point B very fast. Yes, I can ride my bike or have a picnic on an interstate, but it is guaranteed suicide for me to do so. I might instead ride a bike on a dead-end backcountry road or on a former railroad bed that has been disconnected from the grid, as these now have totally different functions. Rest areas with picnic tables and dog parks are already major components of most interstate highways and they might have separately constructed bike lanes in the future, but not today.

Absolute limits exist as to the number, size, and speed of vehicles that can use a one-lane dirt road. Absolute but different limits occur when it becomes a paved two-lane road. Soon the two-lane road becomes overwhelmed, and it is expanded to a four-lane highway, and with continued growth and development in expanding urban areas, it will evolve into six- and eight-lane segments. At some point in the situation of unlimited growth and development the function of each system will break down. Then society is generally forced to come up with new rules or zoning conditions essential for developing an upgraded or new roadway system that requires new land and higher-grade building materials for new types of vehicles that need higher speed limits, and so on.

Similar rules, or zoning, what I call geo-zoning or eco-zoning, must now be considered for natural landscapes, waterscapes, and airscapes confronted with the pressures of unlimited growth and development. The problem is that society generally sets economic rules concerning natural dynamics that maximize profits and minimize the cost of living. For example, many laws require state and federal contracts to go to the lowest bidder or require projects to have a certain cost-benefit ratio.

Often this requires that new roadways go straight through natural areas or over waterways. These laws also often eliminate or divide impoverished and minority urban areas, as well as promote minimum water drainage structures and shorter project life expectancies. Rarely do they take into consideration the cumulative impact or unintended consequences on complex, interdependent systems. In addition, a general lack of understanding of the scientific dynamics of many Earth systems leads directly to minimizing the use of scientific data relative to the economic impact of a project. Good societal and natural reasons exist for limits and constraints on our riding bikes on interstate highways; the same is true for living in active riverine floodplains, discharging waste into waterways, or building houses on ocean shorelines.

Barrier islands and their beaches are only mobile piles of sand at the intersection of land, water, and air. Yes, this is real estate that can be subdivided into house lots and developed from shore to shore. However, shoreline lots are not equal to those in the middle of an island since they are direct products of regular storm dynamics on the adjacent water body. A waterfront house for living is like camping on the interstate. The only good news is that your eventual demise will be a bit slower on the beach. With unlimited growth and development, all possible island lots are plotted, sold, and built on. This increased growth soon pressures us to replace our ferry boats with two-lane bridges that quickly become overloaded. Then new four-lane bridges are justified on the premise of the need to get more people safely off the islands during storms. Family beach cottages are rapidly replaced by big businesses that rise vertically as rental McMansions, condominiums, hotels, and full urbanization sets in.

Because sea level is rising and storms continue to impact the barrier islands with more people and larger shoreline structures attempting to prevent the shorelines from moving, beach sand begins to disappear. Pumping new sand onto the islands becomes essential, but it is soon gone even as the islands continue to be developed. The natural coastal system is now destabilized, requiring construction of groins, jetties, and bulkheads to desperately hold a beach and stop shoreline recession. Ultimately, the islands will be encased in steel, concrete, and rock walls with little to no sandy beach along an increasingly steeper shoreface.

When economic development wins the battle, with permanently fixed commercial islands in the ocean covered with urban accoutrements ranging from shopping malls to freshwater parks, the islands will have new economic functions. What happened to the barrier island with its unique natural functions and ecosystems associated with high energy sand beaches, dune fields, tide flats, and marshes that harbored the ghost crabs, sea turtles, and shorebirds? Natural barrier island limits have been violated by unlimited growth and development, and once again the stage is set for the perfect conflict between humans and their natural environment.

Similar to barrier islands, other geographic basins on Earth’s surface and in wet climatic zones (swamps, ponds, lakes, or ocean) have a function of holding water. If the geographic basin is linear and open-ended, its function might be to carry a moving flow of water, generally known as a river. Each type of water system has its own specific functions, each dictating different limits to contiguous growth and development.

Absolute limits to growth and types of development exist for high energy and mobile barrier island sand piles, riverine floodplains, swamp-forest pocosins, and estuarine marshes. Similarly, limits pertain to other landscapes, including the savage clear-cuts of the northwest US rain forests, excavations of Appalachian Mountain tops for coal, the vast deforestation of the Amazon jungle—these are all tracts of insatiable consumption driven by the indigenous American spirit monster of self-destruction. “Unlimited” human consumption has consequences; infinite growth on a finite planet is generally not compatible with natural law. We must embrace the radical notion that all of Earth’s natural resources and crucial ecosystem services are essential if we are to maintain a sustainable and high quality of life in society’s future.

Fortunately, some barrier islands, estuarine water bodies, riverine floodplains, and pocosin swamp forests have been protected from the perils of total modification and urbanization by establishing different forms of protected status such as national seashores, wildlife refuges, coastal preserves, state parks, and conservancy lands. The preservation of Cape Lookout National Seashore, or CALO in 1976 clearly demonstrates the critical interdependence between storm dynamics and the barrier island buffer zone. For these intermediary habitats to continue functioning as nature’s speed bumps, storms must unleash tremendous energy across the coastal wetlands—flooding marshes, reshaping shorelines, and maintaining the shifting sands of healthy barrier islands that buffer the uplands from the sea.

Developing a New Coastal System Ethic

In 1949, Aldo Leopold presented to the world his critical concept of a land ethic. This ethic was primarily focused on Earth’s land-based environments in general; it did not directly address either water or air as discreet components with equal voices to that of uplands. However, in the real world of our planet, land-water-air all form a crucial and highly interwoven trinity, a complex and totally integrated system of subsystems not unlike the human body or every other living organism whose component systems are interactive and interdependent parts of the whole. Society needs to apply Leopold’s land ethic to the total tripartite system of the whole Earth and its multitude of land-water-air based environments. One of the most dynamic parts of that system is the coastal component where the planet’s water world meets land, and wherever this occurs, the resultant climatic conditions tend to drive the energetic forces. This new variant of a coastal system ethic places boundaries around those regions where land and water meet and operates in response to atmospheric dynamics. In these uniquely high energy regions where forces collide, change is dominant and will always prevail.

First of two parts.

It was a nasty January day about 14 years ago, not long after publication of his book, “The Battle for North Carolina’s Coast: Evolutionary History, Present Crisis, and Vision for the Future,” when veteran East Carolina University coastal scientist Dr. Stan Riggs, the book’s lead author, had an unexpected and impactful visit. Not only did it prolong the sunset of his then-50-yearlong career, it cemented the reach of his legacy beyond academia to the lives of everyday people.

And it inspired Riggs to write 10 reader-friendly books focused on a blend of science, culture and history of North Carolina’s northeast and central coastal region.

Related: Riggs to launch first book in series Sunday on Harkers Island

“I’ve done a lot of work here, but science builds on itself,” he said. “And so, I just decided in 2018 that they could just put me in the ground, and who would care? Who would know what I’ve learned?”

In October, the first volume in the series, “Cape Lookout National Seashore, Paradigm for a Coastal System Ethic,” was released. Subsequent volumes, several of which are already written, will cover North Carolinas Inner Banks, or inland coastal region, Outer Banks and the continental shelf.

The books, all planned for release over the next three years, present Riggs’ coastal science research in accessible and understandable language, accompanied by striking photographs and graphics that seek to educate, enrich and engage readers.

Also, the ecotourism-centered program called North Carolina Land of Water that was first proposed in the book, “The Battle for North Carolina’s Coast,” has been transformed from a dim concept into its current sunbeam of possibilities. All because of the support offered to him on that blustery day.

“A nor’easter was blowing Billy out there — it was cold!,” Riggs, 87, recalled in a recent interview with Coastal Review. “I got a knock on the door, and two people were standing there. They introduced themselves and asked if we would take them out on a field trip. And I said, ‘You don’t want to go out there today.’”

But they insisted on a tour of the region he and his co-authors had written about in the book. They wanted to see it for themselves, and chat with some of the folks who lived there. Intrigued, and convinced his visitors were serious, Riggs made some quick phone calls, and soon they were all piling into a vehicle and hitting the road.

“We had one hell of a good trip,” Riggs recalled about the four-day adventure. Starting in Greenville, the group wound their way through the Albemarle Penisula and Inner Banks counties, along rivers, through the wildlife refuges, and down the Outer Banks to Ocracoke Island, then on to a ferry to the Core Banks. Some year-round residents shared “incredible” meals, he said, and invited them to stay.

“We covered the whole system,” Riggs said, a tinge of amazement still in his voice. Finally, as everyone said their goodbyes, one man got out of the car and walked over to Riggs.

“He put his arm around my shoulder, and he said, ‘The real reason we’re here is we’re going to give you some money.’

Surprised, Riggs responded: “‘I don’t need money.’ He said, ‘Yes, you do.’ I said, ‘Why?’”

“‘We want you to implement the vision that you set out in your book,’” Riggs recalled. “And that was the beginning of NCLOW.”

After the visit, representatives from the Kenan Institute for Engineering, Technology and Science at North Carolina State University provided funding for Riggs to create the North Carolina Land of Water, or NCLOW. The nonprofit is “dedicated to advancing coastal science, education, and community stewardship through research, outreach, and partnerships,” while working to ensure that the state’s coastal systems are “understood and safeguarded,” according to a press release.

In October, NCLOW announced the appointment of Stanton Blakeslee to its board of directors to guide the nonprofit’s future projects and fundraising. As noted in the release, the appointment “comes at a critical inflection point for the organization,” and his leadership will encourage “strategic investment and cross-sector innovation.”

Blakeslee, 55, who had attended ECU and worked for the N.C. Literary Review, is currently the president and CEO of Instigator Inc., a Greenville-based life science marketing firm. His experience includes investment in real estate development and consumer goods industries, and he serves as a member of the East Carolina Angels, an angel investment network.

So far, he has helped Riggs divide his approach to NCLOW in two phases, Blakeslee said. 

“Phase one culminated with the development of the books,” he said. “It was a way for Stan to formalize not only his life’s work, but what he sees as a sustainable future for the coast.” 

Blakeslee’s background as an entrepreneur who understands private equity and venture capital as well as conservation work provides insight into the goals of NCLOW, he explained.

“So the more I started to hear about what he was envisioning, I was like, ‘Oh, wow. So there’s like an economic concept behind everything that you’re trying to do here.’ We’re not trying to stay off the coast. What we’re saying is let’s look at where the opportunities are and invest …  so we can sustain this resource for everyone.”

Riggs’ earlier work with the Bertie County and Scuppernong River projects are two big success stories that drive NCLOW’s future initiatives, Blakeslee added. By harnessing creative ideas to manage and maintain the natural resources, a community’s economy and sustainability can benefit. For example, Windsor, Bertie’s county seat, mitigated flooding risk by requesting the water in a river dam be released slowly about a week before a predicted storm. And the community constructed tree houses above the river’s edge to rent, which quickly became a popular ecotourism attraction.

“The geographic setting of Bertie County provides a prime basis to capitalize on the incredible water system it has been blessed with,” Riggs wrote in his 2018 report, “From Rivers to Sounds in the Bertie Water Crescent” that proposed an approach to ecotourism and environmental education. “Consequently, NCLOW recommends developing a series of five educational and recreational ‘water hubs’ for ecotourism development.”

NCLOW can serve as a catalyst for other communities to take active steps towards sustainability, Blakeslee said. It’s a matter of determining the challenges, how to address them, and how to transform them into economic opportunities.

“I think Stan proved a lot of that in its first 10 years,” he said. “And now we’re looking at what the next 10 years, and possibly 20 years, looks like.”

Over his long career, Riggs, professor emeritus at ECU, has authored or co-authored 16 books and more than 100 journal articles.  But data-heavy research terminology and scientific jargon is a heavy lift for nonscientist readers, Riggs noted, and he believes that educating people about the science in their lives is a critical responsibility so people can understand the processes and relevant public policies that affect their lives.

“You know, when I was at the university, I got all my salary and everything was public funds, and all my research came from public organizations,” he said. “And so I see this as a give-back. It’s one thing to go out there and do a project and raise money and write your technical papers. But nobody in the public domain will ever, ever, read a technical paper.”

Riggs said he decided to write the Cape Lookout book because it is a success story. The undeveloped barrier island showcases how natural beaches recover, adapt and rebuilt after storms because over wash and other coastal processes are not blocked by infrastructure.

With an affable, every-man persona and an uncanny ability to recite minutia about ancient and ongoing geologic processes at seemingly every location he encounters, Riggs has spent considerable time traveling throughout the coastal region talking to residents and politicians in small communities, many of which are stressed by poverty, job losses and frequent flooding. 

As described in “The Battle for the North Carolina Coast,” the “Land of Water” coastal system in northeastern North Carolina includes a huge “drowned-river” estuarine system that encompasses vast shorelines, marsh, swamp forest wetlands, pocosin swamps, Carolina bays and blackwater streams.

“The natural resources that constitute this “Land of Water” can play an increasingly important role in the tourist economy, a role that would revitalize the region … build on the natural and human history and the dynamic coastal resources of northeastern North Carolina within an overarching and integrated umbrella program for sustainable, water-based ecotourism,” the book said.

And indeed, much of the land in northeastern North Carolina, from ocean beaches to river shorelines, from farmlands to forests, is surrounded by a body, or several bodies, of water. The Albemarle-Pamlico estuary is the second largest in the country, behind Chesapeake.

Although still rich with wildlife and natural resources, the low-lying region, some just inches above sea level, is becoming more threatened by impacts of climate change and rising seas: increased flooding, saltwater intrusion, stormwater inundation, shoreline erosion, ocean overwash and storm surge.

“The way I think about this is, you better understand the dynamics of our planet,” Riggs said. “That doesn’t mean that you have to be a scientist. It means you have to know something about water. You have to know something about land. And that comes down to the problem of education.”

That is, people, as a society, need to understand that how and where there is growth and development cannot be unlimited or driven by profit. 

Riggs says he’s had the benefit of learning over the decades from numerous other “incredible” scientists with whom he has worked together in teams, sharing spaces in classrooms and research ships. He has spent years warning about the futility of trying to control destructive natural forces, whether or not people believe they’re created by man-made causes such as burning fossil fuels. On the coast, sea walls, sandbags, and jetties ultimately make things worse by increasing erosion and will ultimately fail anyway, he has preached.

But as nightmare damages from storms, such as the recent deadly flooding in the mountains from Hurricane Helene, have increased, he said he’s noticed that people are starting to listen; they’ve realized that climate conditions are not the same as they were in the old days.

“There’s nothing wrong with the history and and yes, we can respect the history, but the history includes change,” he said.  “We better understand how rivers (and oceans) work, and if we don’t understand that, there will be human disasters. The more we politically ignore the science, the bigger the human disasters.”

Next in the series: “Cape Lookout National Seashore, Paradigm for a Coastal System Ethic”: An excerpt.

Third and final in a series on a recent visit to Louisiana’s bayous, a trip sponsored by the Nicholas School of the Environment at Duke University, to start a conversation between people there who are being flooded out and those in the Down East communities of Carteret County who face similar threats.

GRAND BAYOU VILLAGE, La. – Home is where we feel we belong. Its mystic cords connect us to everything we know and cherish – our family, our friends, our culture, our past. Its hold on us is so complete that we must fight to save it, even as the water rises around our ankles.

Maybe, in the end, that’s the simple, but profound, lesson in all this.

 A group of North Carolinians had gone to the battered bayous of southern Louisiana to connect with those at the edge of the climate crisis. We found resilient people who have withstood numerous storms and the constant flooding that comes with living at ground zero for rising seas. We found a natural world that is changing so rapidly and so dramatically that those who live there barely recognize it anymore. We had hoped to return better prepared for what’s coming because our state’s uniformly flat coastal plain will be one of most-threatened landscapes in America.

The scientists, as they did there in Louisiana, will almost certainly advise us to surrender to the impending flood. But it’s never that simple. Like the survivors of the bayous, we will try to adapt, pick up the pieces and soldier on, many to the bitter end. This is home, after all, and retreat isn’t an option.

“Leaving would be almost like death,” said Rosina Philippe, before we boarded the small skiffs for the short trip to her village in the bayou. We can reach it only by boat. “For us, home is more than the building you live in.”

Philippe is an elder in the Atakapa-Ishak/Chawasha Tribe, one of the several small Native American groups we visited. They fled from Andrew Jackson in the 1830s and sought refuge along the remote, watery fringes of the continent. Her people settled here in south Plaquemines Parish, close to where the Mississippi River empties into the Gulf of Mexico. Here, they fished; they farmed; they survived.

But, then, the water started rising. Slowly, at first. Then, more rapidly. Now, acres of marsh disappear in what seems like a blink of an eye. (See a previous story for the reasons.)

The small squadron of skiffs glided through Grandpa Bayou to what remains of Grand Bayou Village. Fourteen houses, perched on wooden stilts pounded into small plots of squishy land, dotted the water. No road connects them. “When I was a girl, there were forests as far as you can see,” Philippe said, as she scanned the open waters of the Gulf. “You could walk for miles without boots on your feet.”

Her grandparents told of a time, back in the 1940s, when almost 1,000 tribal members lived in hundreds of houses that lined the high ground of the bayou for more than five miles. Each had a proper yard with enough land to raise goats and plant peach orchards. The surrounding waters provided their bounty of fish, shrimp, crabs and oysters. Now, the 50 or so remaining residents must plant portable gardens in canoes and small boats. They try to protect their burial grounds and other sacred sites with reefs made from oyster shells recycled from New Orleans restaurants, 40 miles away.

Most of the tribe’s 800 members have left, but those who remained, including Philippe and her brother Maurice, intend to stay. She already has a solution for when dry land completely disappears. She’ll live on a houseboat moored to her sunken home.

“Everything you see around us is in our DNA. We’re part of the land, the air, the water.” Philippe explained. “If you leave, you become someone else. You are no longer the same person. No longer the same people.”

A Homecoming

In Ironton, 20 miles to the north on Louisiana Highway 23, the Rev. Haywood Johnson Jr. is trying to bring his flock home after a series of devastating hurricanes scattered it to the wind. Most are descendants of the slaves who founded the settlement soon after emancipation, making Ironton one of the oldest Black communities in the state.

Being Black and poor in the Deep South during the reign of Jim Crow meant nothing was ever easy. Life was particularly onerous in Plaquemines Parish, where Leander Perez ruled with an iron fist for more than 40 years during the mid-20^th century. The Democratic Party boss, district attorney and head of the parish commission was a racist and an avowed segregationist in the old Dixiecrat mold. He cared nothing for the Black residents of the parish and made sure they were last in line for everything – voting rights, equal schooling, sewerage, even running water. The parish didn’t lay water lines to Ironton until 1980 and then only after “60 Minutes” made a big deal of it.

The same was true of flood protection. Ironton was excluded from the massive federal levee that Congress authorized after Hurricane Katrina inundated much of southern Louisiana in 2005. Had the wall been extended 10 miles south, hurricanes Issac in 2012 and Ida nine years later would likely have been less destructive. “Ida was the worst,” Johnson said. “It devastated our community. I had never seen anything like it.”

The eye of the Category 4 storm passed over the Ironton on Aug. 29, 2121, just months after Johnson and his congregation celebrated the 143rd anniversary of their St. Paul Missionary Baptist Church. The hurricane damaged or destroyed every building in the community. Even caskets floated out of their graves.

For the third time in 16 years, Johnson’s church was wrecked. “We weren’t going anywhere,” he said.  “We were going to come back and rebuild because this is our heritage. This is our identity. If you lose that, you cease to exist.”

It took four years, but Johnson was notified just before our visit in June that the Federal Emergency Management Agency had finally approved money to raise and rebuild the church. He hopes the reopening will reunite his congregation. “Many left after Ida,” he said. “Their hearts had been broken.”

He promised to invite us to the first Homecoming.

Staying Home

The bright orange globe of the setting sun was dipping into Terrebonne Bay when we came upon brothers Dominic and Levis Dardar sitting on a dilapidated dock sipping beers and admiring the sunset. They are the last members of their tribe living on their ancestral island.

The Isle de Jean Charles Band of Biloxi-Chitimacha-Choctaw Indians have lived on a narrow ridge of high ground in the marsh in Terrebonne Parish for more than 170 years. Until the asphalt road was built in 1953, boats were the only reliable way to get home. Island Road today is often impassable because of high winds and tides. But few people use it now.

The amount of land that has been lost here is staggering, from 22,000 acres in 1955 to about 300 acres today. With the land went the people. Several hundred tribal members once lived in 60 or so homes. By the early 2000s, only 25 families remained on the island.

Chief Albert Naquin then began his tireless efforts to relocate the entire community to save the tribe’s culture and traditions. It took almost two decades, but the federal government In 2016 gave Louisiana $48 million to voluntarily move island residents to higher ground. It was the first federally funded climate migration program in the US.

The country’s relationship with its native peoples has been marked by disappointment and betrayal, and this deal was no different. Naquin had hoped that all his people would be reunited in one place, but only tribal members who left Isle de Jean Charles after 2012 were offered money to move. They could choose to live in a new, planned community, The New Isle, 40 miles to the north, or anywhere else in the state that was safe from flooding. Homes in the new community would eventually be available to anyone. “The plan was to reunite the tribe, and now it’s going to be destroyed,” a heart-broken Naquin told the Los Angeles Times in 2019. “Instead of fixing it, I broke it.”

Chris Brunet took the offer and left the island for the new community. “I can’t smell the water,” he told the BBC last year. “I can’t smell it, I can’t see it, I can’t sense it. And I miss it.”

As it dipped below the horizon that night, the sun cast its orange glow on the water, and the breeze carried a faint scent of the sea. “This is home,” Dominic told us. “I was born here, and this is where I will die.”

Second in a series on a recent visit to Louisiana’s bayous, a trip sponsored by the Nicholas School of the Environment at Duke University, to start a conversation between people there who are being flooded out and those in the Down East communities of Carteret County who face similar threats.

BAYOU LAFOURCHE, La. – Eric Verdin clearly knew where he was going. These waters are like family, after all, but his GPS plotter was frantic. Using the latest marine charts, its line tracing our path on the screen in front of us blinked red, warning us that we were about to plow into dry land. It was a good time, it seemed to suggest, to ABANDON SHIP. But we had open seas ahead of us and 8 feet of water under our keel.

“There used to be an orange grove here,” our captain conceded with a shrug.

Not a hundred years ago. Not 50. Not even 20. “Not that long ago, really,” Verdin said, as he looked out the window of the shrimp boat’s pilot house across the placid water of the bayou to the glimmering Gulf of Mexico on the horizon. “Just about all that water you see in front of us was all marsh.”

His native people, the Biloxi-Chitimacha, have lived on the fringes of this watery world along the southwestern tip of Louisiana for many generations. Verdin, 58, has known these waters since boyhood. He makes his living here, first running big boats to supply the oil rigs out in the Gulf and now chasing brown and white shrimp. He’s witnessed changes he never thought possible. “I’ve seen the absolute devastation of our coast during my lifetime,” he said with a sigh. “Miles and miles of marsh are now open waters.”

Nowhere on Earth does land disappear as quickly as it does here in southern Louisiana. According to one fantastic estimate, the water covers, on average, a chunk of marsh the size of a football field every hour or so. Or is it 15 minutes? No matter. The change is so rapid that not even online navigation charts can keep up. Brought about by a catastrophic combination of human engineering, ignorance and hubris, it’s been going on, though more slowly, for at least a century. During that time, an area of marshland the size of Delaware vanished. Now, add another human-induced insult — rising seas triggered by the warming climate — and a similar-sized piece is expected to disappear in just 25 years.

This is ground zero for sea level rise and wetland loss in the world. We, of course, had to see it ourselves.

A group of North Carolinians, on a 10-day trip sponsored by Duke University, toured coastal Louisiana in June looking for connections, for people at the water’s edge who are facing the perils wrought by a rapidly changing environment. They have weathered the frequent storms, survived the destructive aftermaths, and found ways to accommodate the rising seas as the familiar natural world transforms in the blink of their lifetimes. Some of their communities have been displaced, and their cultures are threatened.

Coastal people back home will soon increasingly confront the same dangers, knows Karen Amspacher, a native of Harkers Island in Carteret County, the director of a cultural museum there and the group’s inspirational leader. “We’re all living on the edge,” she told Verdin after he welcomed us aboard his 55-foot shrimper, Lil’E. “I’ve been trying to find common ties with people who are going through what we will.”

After the bayous of Louisiana and Florida’s Gold Coast, the uniformly flat North Carolina coastal plain is the most-endangered landscape in America. The small fishing and farming villages of low-lying eastern Carteret County, Amspacher’s beloved Down East, face a grim future of increasing storms and flooding. Many of the homes will become uninhabitable by century’s end.

Jerrica Cheramie understands all too well the fears that the people there will have to confront. “I’m just 36 and I’ve seen all this change,” said the local high school teacher who joined us on the boat. “It’s terrifying.”

Taming A River

Since its beginning, the Mississippi River has deposited the silt of a continent to build the Louisiana coastline. Its delta, a water-logged labyrinth of bayous, marsh grasses and ancient cypress trees, fans out like a swampy snout into the Gulf. The first European settlers along the lower Mississippi in the 18^th century started throwing up dirt walls along the river’s banks to protect themselves from the frequent floods. The effort intensified a century later after a series of devastating deluges. Congress got involved after the Great Flood in 1927 killed 500 people and inundated 27,000 square miles. It authorized the Army Corps of Engineers to begin digging. That old river man, Mark Twain, once scoffed at the notion of containing the mighty Mississippi. “Ten thousand River Commissions …,” he wrote, “cannot tame that lawless stream … cannot say to it, ‘Go here,’ or ‘Go there,’ and make it obey.”

By God, they tried, and they came damn close. Close enough, anyway, to make southern Louisiana disappear.

Today, massive levees line the river for about half of its 2,400-mile-long route to the sea. Along the very southern leg of its journey, the Mississippi is little more than a big canal, hemmed in place by huge earthen walls.

We followed it one day for its last 75 miles. Down Louisiana Highway 23 we went, through Bohemia and Port Sulfur, past Home Place and Triumph, to Venice, population 164. It’s as far as you can go by car. The river was on our left the entire way, but it flowed unseen behind its wall. The smokestacks of the ships we passed were the only hints that the river was actually there. At the end of the road, we had hoped to watch the great Mississippi make its last, lumbering lurch to the Gulf. Alas, there was nothing to see but more marsh, the wall and assorted bits of industrial detritus – cranes, barges, pipes, barrels and such. More on that shortly.

As we stood at the end of the road expressing our disappointment, a set of eyes popped up through the murky water of a lagoon that wasn’t 20 feet away. Then, another. Soon, it was a dozen. Then, more. I had never seen so many alligators in one place at a time, and I once lived in Miami and fished the Everglades in a canoe. They all came toward us, gliding silently through the water, leaving gentle wakes behind them. Our presence clearly triggered this conclave. Other gawkers, we surmised, had also come this way and had fed the native wildlife. The approaching gators were expecting a handout. What tidbits do you toss to giant reptiles? I wondered as we quickly headed back to the cars. A bucket of Col. Sanders? A Big Mac? Chick-fil-A nuggets, we agreed. Everything likes them.

After that meander worthy of the old Mississippi, let’s get back on course. The point of all this is that the river now heads straight to the Gulf. No more oxbow cutoffs, no twists, no turns. With it, goes all that muck. Very little now leaks into the surrounding bays. Without sediment to nourish them, the marshes have been sinking for a long time. They are drowning more quickly now as sea level rise accelerates.

Big, Big Oil

Verdin killed the engine and dropped anchor. We bobbed under a scorching sun in languid Lake Raccourci. A lot of open water bodies on the Gulf’s fringes in Louisiana are called lakes because they were surrounded by marsh when the mapmakers named them. To Verdin, these are sacred waters. His son, Eric Jr., died in a car wreck five years ago. He was only 34. His family spread his ashes here, one of his “honey holes.” Verdin named his boat after Eric and put a picture of his smiling son in a frame on the bulkhead behind the ship’s wheel. “He always used to stand behind me and say go this way or that way,” his father explained. Verdin comes back often, especially on the anniversary of his son’s death in December when he places flowers in the water. He couldn’t think of a better place to take visitors. We were honored.

We were also surrounded by an odd array of pipes, pumps and iron platforms that rose out of the water everywhere. Rust was their primary color. Each one marked an oil or natural gas well, Verdin explained, and most are still producing, though some are approaching 100 years old. They are relics, really, of simpler times, when the Gulf was just becoming America’s great oilfield.

Like the deltas of many of the world’s great rivers, the Mississippi’s is full of oil and gas. All that muck that the river deposited for millions of years contained the organic ingredients — ancient plants, algae, bacteria – of oil and gas. They’re called fossil fuels for a reason. Time and heat did the rest.

I sat one night on the beach at Grand Isle, one of the few sandy beaches in the lower bayous, and counted the lights of 22 offshore oil rigs blinking on the horizon. There are more than 600 out there, making the Gulf of Mexico America’s primary source for offshore oil and natural gas.

Big Oil is really big here. Its presence is almost everywhere: Refineries with their fiery tails of methane, mountains of pipeline stacked in neat pyramids, natural gas liquification plants, petrochemical complexes, miles of storage tanks, acres of stacked barrels. All in industrial grimy gray with splashes of white. It ain’t pretty and there’s likely no way to make it so.

From Lake Raccourci, we could see the outline of Port Fourchon, maybe 8 miles away. It is Big Oil’s most important port. More than 400 ships leave it every day to supply the rigs. More than 15,000 people fly out of there every month to work on them. It’s the operational base for almost 300 companies. The port is perched at the tail end of LA1, a vital road so threatened that it’s being raised on a causeway to keep it from slipping under the Gulf.

Before all that, there were these pipes now sticking out of the water. The reservoirs closest to shore were, naturally, the first to be tapped, starting in the 1930s. The companies dug canals through the dense marshland to dig the wells. The channels ended up becoming pathways for water, accelerating the marsh’s demise. Many of the wells are now miles from the nearest dry land.

Everybody understands the role the oil and gas industry played in destroying the marshes, Verdin explained as the shrimp were almost ready for lunch. “In hindsight, it ruined our environment, but you won’t find fishermen around here who are anti-oil.” he said. “We know how much we’ve benefitted. When the fishing was good, we fished. When oil was booming, we worked in oil.”

The Diversion

Verdin spilled the pot of boiled shrimp, corn on the cob and potatoes onto one of the hatch covers, and we dug in. The lunchtime conversation turned to The Diversion, the first step of a grand ecosystem experiment that would have taken 50 years to complete and would have cost more than $50 billion. Officially known as the Mid-Barataria Sediment Diversion, the controversial project intended to divert some of the Mississippi’s flow to allow sediment to once again nourish portions of the marsh. “We need to do something,” Verdin said. “This can’t go on.”

That was the state’s conclusion after Hurricane Katrina devastated the region 25 years ago last month. Healthy marshes, scientists said, would have lessened the damage. In response, the state legislature in 2007 passed the first coastal master plan, a 50-year initiative to blunt the forces eating away at the coastline: sinking land, rising seas, and the channels dug by the oil and gas industry. Barrier islands would be rebuilt, levees bulked up, and structures raised. The plan also endorsed 11 river-diversion projects. The biggest was in Barataria Bay, about 30 miles east of our lunchtime anchorage. Engineers planned to poke a hole into the levee near Ironton in Plaquemines Parish and release 75,000 cubic feet of sediment every second. They estimated that doing so every day for six months a year would create 21 square miles of new marsh in 50 years. “It gives us a fighting chance to win this battle,” Chip Kline, the chairman of the state authority charged with the task, said in 2021.

Others weren’t so sure. Fishermen worried that the sudden influx of freshwater would push oysters and brown shrimp, mainstays of the local fishing industry, out of their current ranges. Federal scientists feared that the salinity drop could cause skin diseases in the bay’s dolphins, killing maybe a third of them. Opponents noted that even if it completes everything in the plan, the state will still lose more wetlands – 2,300 square miles — than it saves or creates – 1,200 square miles.

The scheme went on life support the day voters sent Jeff Landry to the governor’s mansion in 2023. He had been a staunch opponent of the project as attorney general, questioning its ballooning cost — $3.1 billion — and claiming it would kill fisheries important to Cajun culture. A month after our visit, Landry canceled the project.

Its demise didn’t likely lessen Charamie’s resolve “People ask why do I live here?” she said before we said our goodbyes back at the dock. “Where am I to go? This is home.”

It would be a sentiment we would hear again and again.

Next: Life on the edge.

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

POLLOCKSVILLE – North Carolina’s attorney general is confident federal funding unceremoniously stripped from local governments earlier this year will be reinstated under a court ruling.

“I think we’re going to win in court,” Jeff Jackson said Tuesday afternoon. “I think our argument is very strong.”

Jackson had just wrapped up a short tour of Pollocksville’s Main Street, where the town’s longtime mayor pointed to building after building tapped to be raised higher off the ground and out of the path of future flooding that might spill over the banks of the Trent River.

“This building’s got great potential,” Mayor Jay Bender said as the two men strolled a sidewalk toward the river. One that, in September 2018, rose more than 25 feet when Hurricane Florence dumped more than 30 inches of rain.

Floodwaters forced most of the town’s residents to evacuate and destroyed or damaged more than 80% of its buildings.

“There’s nothing woke, there’s nothing political, there’s nothing wasteful,” Bender said to Jackson.

There’s also nothing left of the federal program that helped communities tailor projects to reduce and prevent damage from future storms.

Four days before Pollocksville officials were to sign contracts to kickstart their project to raise buildings, President Donald Trump’s Federal Emergency Management Agency killed the Building Resilient Infrastructure and Communities, or BRIC, grants program.

The agency said only projects that have been completed will be fully funded.

Gone was the nearly $1.1 million in funding this small Jones County town had worked so hard to secure through a process vetted by FEMA for more than 30 months.

“The rug was pulled out from under us,” Bender said.

A coalition of 20 state attorneys general, including Jackson, filed a lawsuit on July 16 in a federal court in Boston accusing FEMA of unlawfully terminating the BRIC program.

“The basic argument is that was not FEMA money to cancel,” Jackson said during a press conference under a picnic shelter in the town’s waterfront park. “That was congressional money. Congress gave that money to FEMA and told FEMA how to spend it. They said we want you to spend it helping small towns like Pollocksville defend themselves against the next flood. That is exactly what Pollocksville was doing with this money.”

Tuesday’s visit to Pollocksville was his second in recent days to a North Carolina town awarded BRIC funding only to have it ripped away.

Several days ago, Jackson went to Hillsborough to visit a pumping station that flooded when Tropical Storm Chantal swept through parts of central North Carolina early this month. Plans were to construct a new pumping station outside of the floodplain with more than $5 million in BRIC funds.

“We’re going in order of indefensibility,” he said Tuesday in what seems to be a campaign of sorts to raise awareness of FEMA’s decision to cut the BRIC program.

Pollocksville is one of 68 towns, cities and counties in the state that have been awarded BRIC grants since the program officially began its first round of funding in 2020. As previously reported by Coastal Review, almost half of the local governments awarded funding are in the 20 coastal counties.

The only completed BRIC project in the state is a living shoreline in Duck.

Congress approved the program in 2018 with bipartisan support and Trump’s signature during his first presidential term. Since then, nearly $5 billion has been committed to communities across the country for projects to elevate buildings and roads, relocate vulnerable sewer pump stations, control flooding, and strengthen building codes.

“Yes, we want to get this money back to Pollocksville,” Jackson said. “If we’re successful it means we get money back for the entire state.”

He said he expects the court will hold a hearing “within the next few weeks” over a request by the attorneys general for an injunction to lift the funds from being blocked.

“That’s been our request that they treat this as an emergency,” Jackson said. “What we want the court to do is say, while this matter is winding its way through court, which will take six to nine months to fully resolve, the money can continue to flow.”

Jackson said there’s no lack of evidence to support the importance of BRIC funding for communities like Pollocksville that are trying to better protect its residents and infrastructure from floods and other natural disasters exacerbated by the changing climate.

“The flood here, the flood in Hillsborough that happened three weeks ago, there’s fresh evidence with respect to an enormous number of these things,” he said.

First in a series on a recent visit to Louisiana’s bayous, a trip sponsored by the Nicholas School of the Environment at Duke University, to start a conversation between people there who are being flooded out and those in the Down East communities of Carteret County who face similar threats.

NEW ORLEANS – Our search for connections and common ground began with a tour of this storm-struck city on the Mississippi River.

We didn’t set out to find the Big Easy. No double-decked tourist buses for us. No frozen daquiris from one of the drive-throughs that seem to be everywhere. The famed French Quarter wasn’t on our itinerary. Neither were any cool jazz clubs on Bourbon Street or warm beignets at the Café Du Monde. No, ours was a melancholy excursion that took us to landmarks of our hubris, monuments to our supreme self-confidence that we can control the uncontrollable.

We visited the places where the levees gave way and the walls collapsed 20 years ago in August when Hurricane Katrina exposed their fragility and futility. Canals designed to drain water away from the city carried a devastating storm surge into it. One built to encourage commerce took the flood into New Orleans’ beating heart and drowned an entire parish that has yet to recover. Pumps failed, and as much as 17 feet of water ended up covering 80% of a city that exists mostly under sea level. Almost 1,500 people died, more than 100,000 families were left homeless, and about $200 billion worth of property was destroyed or damaged. The American Society of Civil Engineers later called it “the worst engineering catastrophe in U.S. history.”

The hurricane wasn’t the killer. We were. We thought we were gods who could contain the tempest. Rosina Philippe knows better. You’ll meet her later in our journey through the bayous of southern Louisiana. She’s an elder with the Atakapa-Ishak Nation in Plaquemines Parish, down in the far southern tip of the state. Her people have existed for centuries surrounded by water.

“Water will always meander,” she told us. “It will always find you. It will go this way and that until it finds your weakness. You can never control the water. You can only try to live with it.”

It seemed like a fitting first lesson for a group of North Carolinians who spent six days in June exploring a state that a dozen hurricanes have battered since Katrina, a place where a football field of marshes disappears on average every day. As Rosina warned and Katrina attested, the calculations of engineers may not offer much protection when the storms come, and the floods threaten.

Sponsored by Duke University and led by Karen Amspacher, a Harkers Island native and the director of a cultural museum there, the group hoped to connect the people of the bayous with those living at the water’s edge in the small fishing and farming villages of low-lying eastern Carteret County, Amspacher’s beloved Down East. They face a grim future of increasing storms and flooding as the climate warms and the seas rise. Many of their homes will become uninhabitable by century’s end. Can connecting with people who have already faced those dangers raise awareness and lead to understanding and ultimately to solutions?

“I don’t know if it can,” she said, “but we have to try.”

The Unexpected Flood

We drove along City Park Avenue, atop the remnants of a sand ridge that the Mississippi created eons ago, took a right on Canal Boulevard, and headed north, downhill, toward Lake Pontchartrain. In a couple of miles, we reached Lakeview, a neighborhood of handsome brick and stucco homes. We were below sea level, kept dry by the city’s extensive system of earthen walls, or levees. Look closely, advised Barry Keim, and the evidence of living below the sea is everywhere. Many of the houses’ foundations are exposed and their driveways cracked as the peat soil of the old marsh beneath them dries and compresses. Side streets are buckled, and the tops of storm drains are above the sinking pavement.

“Every house you see on both sides of the road was flooded after Katrina,” he noted. “The water here was 8 to 10 feet deep, some of the worst flooding in the city.”

A thick black line around the exterior of the neighborhood Starbucks memorializes those dark times. The line is more than 7 feet above the ground with one word printed above it in bold letters: “Katrina.”

“And this is where all that water came from,” Keim said, standing on the seawall that borders the lake. An affable man who was the state climatologist for more than 20 years, he now directs the Environmental Health, Climate, and Sustainability Program at Louisiana State University in New Orleans. He knows the city intimately, having grown up in one of its suburbs.

Down this way, they call the oval-shaped body of water behind him a lake, though it’s technically a lagoon because it has an opening to the Gulf of Mexico at its east end. By any name, it’s big, covering more than twice the area of North Carolina’s largest city, Charlotte. Though a levee was built along the shoreline here after a 1947 hurricane flooded a portion of New Orleans, Pontchartrain was considered far less of a threat than the mighty Mississippi, which snakes along the other side of the city.

Engineers found the lake to be a convenient place to dispose of excess water as New Orleans grew from its original settlement on the high ground of a natural levee created by the river. Over time, they dug three large canals to drain the low-lying land that locals call “the Back of Town.” Katrina came along on just the right path to turn the tables, pushing its deadly surge up the canals. “Everyone expected the big flood to come from the river,” noted Amy Lesen. “No one expected the levee system here to fail as it did during Katrina.”

A professor at Antioch and Tulane universities, Lesen organized much of the trip to come. She has spent most of her career teaching and writing about climate change and its effects on people. A striking resume popped up on Google when I searched: Bachelor of Science in marine fisheries biology from the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, and a doctorate from the University of California, Berkeley; a long list of books and publications; an impressive array of research grants; and weighty appointments and awards. Most striking, though, is what Google only hints at. Unlike most professors, Lesen gets out of the classroom and into communities, helping the poor and disadvantaged recover from storms or prepare for them. Over the next six days, I will come to learn that she’s just a big-hearted Jewish girl from the Bronx who came to New Orleans almost 20 years ago and found her life’s work helping the marginalized water people of the bayous adjust to a rapidly changing world.

Residents of 4900 block of Warrington Drive didn’t have much time to react when Katrina arrived that morning of Aug. 29, 2005. All they could do was run for their lives. Water from the lake rushed up the London Avenue Canal, which ran through their backyards along a channel lined by concrete and sheet metal walls that had been reinforced just a decade earlier. The engineers unknowingly anchored their walls in the soft sand of an ancient barrier island, Keim said. At 9:30 a.m., a 30-foot section of the wall collapsed, releasing a geyser of sand and a torrent of water that topped 15 feet. The neighborhood disappeared. “When I drove down here, there were houses on houses, cars on top of cars,” Amy remembered. “It was complete devastation.”

We are peeking through the windows of 4918 Warrington, a solid brick house that withstood the flood. No one lives here now, and you can’t go inside. The Flooded House Museum is a stark re-creation, a haunting reminder of what the people here came back to after the flood waters receded. Dark mold covers the walls. The baby grand piano in the corner is destroyed. Yet, the books on the shelves seem undisturbed. Photo frames hang askew. Toys are tossed around the room, and a thick layer of dirt covers every piece of furniture. The wrinkled, faded front page of the city’s Times-Picayune sits atop a broken table. The newspaper was published the day before the storm. “Katrina Takes Aim,” the headline screams.

We headed back to the van. “I hate I have to take you on this tour of woe,” Lesen says.

Mister Go

In the ponderous language of the bureaucracy, it’s known as the Mississippi-Gulf Outlet Canal. Locals took the acronym, MSGO, and came up with a more memorable moniker, Mister Go. It was the last and maybe most depressing stop on Amy’s tour. Of all the deadly screw-ups that led to a drowned city, Mister Go was the most predictable and most lethal.

Fittingly, then, it started to rain, though the sun was still shining, as we headed south out of town on LA 39, following the Mississippi. A huge levee obscured the river on our right, though we sometimes glimpsed the smokestacks of passing ships. “The devil is beating his wife,” Keim said from the front seat. “That’s what we say down here when it rains while the sun is shining.”

As Lucifer wailed away, St. Bernard Parish rolled by our windows. At almost 2,200 square miles, it is the state’s second-largest parish, or what we In North Carolina would call a county. Eighty-three percent of it is water, however, making it the wettest place in Louisiana, which is saying something. The passing scenery confirmed that: a thousand cuts of water coursing through an endless sea of marsh grasses, dotted by small islands of bald cypress trees. “Out here, you’re in another world,” Keim noted.

We reached our destination, Shell Beach, which has neither a beach nor any readily apparent shells. Shrimp trawlers and rusting oyster dredges were tied up along the Mister Go waterfront, confirming the community’s past prominence as a fishing port. “If you came here before Katrina, you would have seen a lot of activity,” Keim said as we got out of the van. “It was a bustling place.”

About 40 minutes from downtown New Orleans, Shell Beach is about halfway up the 76-mile channel that links the Gulf of Mexico to New Orleans’ inner harbor. The city had been clamoring for years for a shortcut for commercial ships. With support from the Army Corps of Engineers, Mister Go finally got congressional approval in 1956. The Corps started digging two years later, dredging up more earth then was moved during the building of the Panama Canal and destroying thousands of acres of wetlands in the process. The channel opened to shipping in 1965 at a cost of $92 million, or almost $900 million today when adjusted for inflation.

“Scientists warned of the environmental effects, and locals worried about the flooding.” Keim explained as we walked along the deserted waterfront. “The people here didn’t want this built. They thought it would be a disaster. It turned out to be worse than they imagined.”

As soon as the channel was dug, saltwater from the Gulf swept in, drastically changing the ecosystem. The dead, sun-bleached stalks of bald cypress and live oak trees, what scientists call ghost forests, mark the salt’s line of advance. Muskrats went next, taking the parish’s thriving fur industry with them. The oysters followed along with another industry. The brackish marshes were important to wintering waterfowl, but the birds went elsewhere after the water’s salt content tripled, killing most of the marshes.

The long-term effects stretched far beyond muskrats, oysters, and ducks, however. An estimated 20,000 acres of marsh that served as a buffer against storms were swept away over the next 40 years. By the time Katrina arrived, the original 500-foot-wide channel had more than quadrupled in size in some places.

Poor people bore the brunt of what came next. Katrina’s storm surge barreled up the channel and into the connecting Industrial Canal in the heart of New Orleans. Containing walls collapsed, and the city’s Lower Ninth Ward, a predominantly Black neighborhood, was under 12 feet of water. Its residents became the storm’s human face of suffering on TVs around the world. The Lower Ninth was the last place in the city to get power restored, the last to be pumped dry. Empty lots and collapsed houses covered in vines dot it still.

In poverty-stricken St. Bernard Parish, the destruction was complete. Every inch of the parish was underwater, every building flooded. Many who fled never came back. The parish’s population is still two-thirds of what it was before the storm.

The most-maddening thing about it? All that death and all that destruction and all that despair were for nothing. Absolutely nothing. A few people probably made money on Mister Go, but the economic boom it was predicted to trigger along its length never happened. In fact, it was a bust. Before the storm, the channel cost more than $8 million to maintain each year for the two large container ships that used it on any day. In the Corps of Engineers’ long list of misjudgments and disasters, the Mississippi-Gulf Outlet Canal must rank somewhere near the top.

Under extreme local pressure, the Corps shut the whole thing down after Katrina. It built a rock dam in 2009 at Mister Go’s Gulf end to close it to shipping and completed a $1.1 billion storm-surge gate across its connection to the Industrial Canal four years later. In New Orleans, it built floodgates at the mouth of the other canals.

The people of St. Bernard Parish were left to mourn, but they got busy building, too. They erected a monument along the shore in Shell Beach that lists the names of all 164 residents who died during the flooding: Bernhard, De la Fosse, Gallodoro, LaBlanc, Morates, Roark, Vidross …

“Those are the names of St. Bernard Parish,” Amy said.

Next in the series: Ground zero for wetland loss in the world.

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

MANTEO — In the six months since the chaotic and seemingly random cutting in the federal government began, a terrible uneasiness has descended on the northeast corner of North Carolina, where all of the state’s nine national wildlife refuges employ neighbors and family members who live in the rural communities in which they’re located.

At least 10 Coastal North Carolina National Wildlife Refuge Complex staff and five employees of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service’s regional Ecological Services office in Raleigh, so far, are believed to have voluntarily left their jobs, whether nudged by coercion or incentives.

With staff forbidden to speak with media, and ongoing legal challenges and limited public information creating uncertainty, no one appears to know what will happen to their refuges.

“I just found out we should be getting some staffing numbers from the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service in the next couple of weeks,” Howard Phillips, the Southeastern representative for the National Wildlife Refuge Association, a nonprofit advocacy and support group for the refuges, told Coastal Review, citing informed but unofficial sources. “The dust seems to be settling a little and (the agency) is starting to get a handle on where they stand.”

But Phillips, who retired at the end of 2020 as manager of Pocosin Lakes National Wildlife Refuge in Tyrrell County, says he fears that serious consequences are already baked into the refuges’ cake, no matter what the government decides to do. The lack of trust engendered by often abrupt, unexplained cuts of staff, research and budgets as well as the “crippling” brain drain of expertise, experience and local knowledge has only made the situation more problematic.

“Could the administration suddenly decide they want to hire everybody back and start doing conservation again?” he continued. “That would take at least six months, probably 12 months. They’d have to be trained.”

The stark reality, he added, is that without knowing the Trump administration’s timeline or goal in the current upheaval, it’s impossible to understand the long-term impacts and impractical to expect much to change, much less improve.

“I mean, they’ve just given no indication that they’re going to do anything that’s going to reverse the trend right now, which is down, down, down, down,” Phillips said.

An unnamed spokesperson from the agency’s public affairs office ignored Coastal Review’s request to authorize or facilitate a refuge staff interview, but responded to several questions about impacts on North Carolina’s wildlife refuges in a May 23 email.

“As part of the broader efforts led by the Department of the Interior under President Trump’s leadership, we are implementing necessary reforms to ensure fiscal responsibility, operational efficiency, and government accountability,” the spokesperson wrote. “While we do not comment on personnel matters, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service remains committed to fulfilling our mission of conserving fish, wildlife, and natural resources for the American people.” 

Refuges in the coastal complex encompass nearly a half-million acres of farmlands, swamp forests and pocosin peatlands, intersected by rivers, streams, canals, lakes and sounds within the nation’s second-largest estuarine system.

The nine refuges — Alligator River, Pea Island, Mackay Island, Currituck, Mattamuskeet, Pocosin Lakes, Cedar Island, Swan Quarter, Roanoke River — are stretched along vast swaths of geography in the coastal plain that provide habitat for unique species and globally important ecosystems.

For instance, the critically endangered wild red wolves, the only surviving in the world, roam within a five-county recovery area based out of Alligator River, descendants of Spanish mustangs range free in Currituck, and thousands of migratory birds and waterfowl passing along the Atlantic Flyway overwinter every year at Mattamuskeet and Pocosin Lakes.

Mattamuskeet, the state’s largest natural lake, is undergoing an innovative and intensive watershed restoration project many years in the planning. And Pocosin Lakes, named for the Native American term for “swamp on hill” because of its boggy peat soil, has been studied by Duke University researchers for its ability to remediate carbon pollution. The refuge has also nearly completed an extensive rewetting project to restore the ability of the pocosin peat to absorb carbon dioxide and resist wildfires.

Two major wildfires in and around the refuge in recent decades have burned deep in the ground for many weeks, spewing tons of carbon back into the environment, with one smoldering for six months before it was finally extinguished.

Therein lies the dilemma — and the risk — to the refuges: What happens when there’s no one available to take proper care of the refuges, and to even continue the conservation mission?

Pocosin Lakes, for instance, with the recent retirement of former manager Wendy Stanton, no longer has a refuge manager.

“You know, with Wendy gone now, I don’t know that there’s anybody left at Pocosin Lakes that really understands that hydrology restoration and how it works,” Phillips said.

But it’s more than the upper-level staff, said Bonnie Strawser, president of the Coastal Wildlife Refuge Society, a local nonprofit group that supports all of the eastern North Carolina refuges. It’s also the loss of staff that maintain buildings and trails, she said, as well as the biologists who monitor water and test soil.

Strawser, who retired in 2020 after 40 years with Fish and Wildlife as visitor services manager, said that the project leader for Coastal North Carolina National Wildlife Refuge Rebekah Martin has designated acting managers in each refuge, but that’s in addition to their regular jobs with the refuges.

Martin is based at the agency’s Roanoke Island headquarters but is not authorized to speak to reporters. According to a 2023 article on the coastal refuges website, Martin oversees about 400,000 acres of habitat with more than a dozen endangered or threatened species. At the time, it said, the complex had 35 employees and more than 400 volunteers.

“We are currently down to 10 staff, and this is regular O and M — operations and maintenance — funded by general funding, refuge funding,” Strawser said in a recent interview. “Now that does not include firefighters or law enforcement, because they are funded through different programs.”

Strawser said that there were no probationary employees in eastern North Carolina, so no one had been outright fired. Some staff who agreed to resign under one of the agency’s two rounds of the deferred resignation program, she said, were quickly shut down and put on administrative leave for varied periods of time while collecting their salaries.

Cuts in both the U.S. Forest Service and Fish and Wildlife Service will also hamper the agencies cooperative response to wildfires and disasters, including with the national interagency incident management teams. Strawser is a member of one of three teams in the southern area.

“I don’t know what in the world we’re going to do when fire season comes,” she said. “They stood down our team. It’s not going to be available, they said, at least until after July.”

As Strawser noted, a lot goes on behind the scenes to keep the refuges humming, including procedural processes to keep records and run programs, as well as have sponsors to maintain the “casual hire” personnel to respond to emergencies.

“But the Fish and Wildlife Service, because they lost so many people in the administrative positions, they don’t have anybody to handle the payments and the travel, so they can’t sponsor” for a team member, she said.

For the time being, the public many not notice much difference when they go to a refuge, Strawser said.

“The visitor centers are run by volunteers,” she said. “The public programs are conducted mostly by volunteers.” But there’s only three maintenance people for their nine national wildlife refuges.

“There’s been no talk of closing anything, but it’s just common sense there will problems if there’s nobody to grade the roads, if there’s nobody to do the mowing on the road shoulders, she said. “And if there’s no ‘daylighting’ of the roads, they’ll get overgrown, the sun won’t reach down, and the mud doesn’t dry out and the road is destabilized and before you know it, they’re not drivable.”

Mike Bryant, who was succeeded by Martin, had served as refuge manager for 20 years, from 1996 to 2016, and he witnessed decreasing support for the refuges from the federal government, he told Coastal Review in an interview. After retirement, he had also served as consultant for the National Wildlife Refuge Association, and was former president of the Coastal Wildlife Refuge Society. Although he said he keeps in touch, he is no longer directly involved with either group.

Since about 2010, Bryant said there has been a steady decline in staffing.

“You have refuges where there were multiple people, and with some of them, there’s just one person left, and so that’s part of the story,” he said. “So it had nothing to do with the past 60 or 90 days, whatever it is now.”

But it’s not just mandated reductions in staff that threaten the refuges, he said. The management challenge is also an aging workforce that may not be replaced.

“You got over half a million acres of National Wildlife Refuge in multiple counties, and spanning across North Carolina to the Virginia border, with all kinds of infrastructure and management mandates and no staff to get those mandates done,” Bryant said. “They’re just wondering, how are we going to meet our responsibilities if we’re the only ones left? It’s a morale buster.”

After being fully staffed around 2003, he said it seemed as if the Department of Interior stopped prioritizing conservation and Congress slowly began losing interest in supporting the refuges.

“The Fish and Wildlife budget has so many facets to it, so many other responsibilities under various laws, endangered species and ecological services and all these other entities within the agency, fisheries and all those things, are all important,” Bryant said. “But Congress was never convinced to budget specifically for operations and maintenance of national wildlife refuges.”

Meanwhile, scores of new refuges came on line in the last 25 years. And rather than hiring more personnel, more work was heaped on less staff.

“I was hired in 1996 to manage Alligator River and Pea Island,” Bryant said. “Two years later, when the manager left Mackey Island and Currituck refuges, the regional office called me and said, ‘Hey, we want you to manage those two.’ All of a sudden, I had four refuges.”

Two years later, he was told to hire and supervise a new manager at Pocosin Lakes. Then staff was reduced, forcing him to share staff between the refuges. Next, Roanoke River was added to his responsibilities — along with the 90-minute drive each way. During all those years, he was bumped up just one pay grade.

Bryant said he gets why people get frustrated with the inefficient, cumbersome aspects of the federal government. But he remembers back when the Clinton administration had reduced both staffing and regulations, and not only succeeded, but ended up with a balanced budget.

“We went through all of those things without ever feeling like the sky is falling,” he said. Rather than taking rational steps to achieve efficiency, the interest now seems more in “just destroying the government, constantly degrading it, and yes, crafting corruption.”

“There’s a few bad actors, no doubt, always, in every organization everywhere, no matter what the enterprise,” Bryant added. “There was a rational process to deal with bad employees, grounded in policy. And the policy was grounded in regulation, and the regulation was grounded in law.”

The first official unit of the National Wildlife Refuge System was Pelican Island in Florida, established for conservation in 1903 by President Theodore Roosevelt. Today there are 570 refuges and 30 wetland management districts on more than 150 million acres entrusted to the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Services and enjoyed by 69 million visitors.

Bryant is rooting for not just survival of the struggling refuge system, but its revival.

“I think we’ll recover,” he said. “I’m optimistic about that. But we’ll be deeply scarred.”

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

This story has been updated to include comments from EMC Chair JD Solomon

Federal and state efforts to limit the public’s exposure to “forever chemicals” through drinking water sources seemed to be gaining traction just a year ago.

In a historic move in April 2024, the Environmental Protection Agency set limits on six per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances, or PFAS, including PFOA, PFOS and HFPO-DA, most commonly referred to as GenX.

About three months after the federal drinking water rules were adopted, North Carolina Department of Environmental Quality’s Division of Water Resources introduced proposed groundwater and surface water standards on eight PFAS.

Related: Zeldin says PFAS limits may get tougher, downplays layoffs

But, as of this week, the Trump administration says it intends to rescind and reexamine rules on four PFAS, including GenX, and extend the deadline for public water utilities to comply with rules on PFOA and PFOS by two years.

PFAS are a group of more than 14,000 chemicals used in everyday consumer products including food containers, stain-resistant carpet and water-repellant gear. These man-made chemical compounds are often referred to as “forever chemicals” because they are persistent in the environment and have been found to accumulate in people and animals. Exposure to these substances has been linked to weakened immune function, reproductive and developmental issues and increased risk of some cancers.

The EPA’s announcement Wednesday of its plans to scale back PFAS limits comes on the heels of a recent decision by members of the state-appointed commission responsible for adopting rules that protect, preserve and enhance air and water resources to again defer moving forward monitoring and minimization discharge plans for PFAS and 1,4-dioxane into the state’s surface waters.

Critics of those proposed plans argue the rules, as written, lack any real subsistence in reducing the releases of chemical compounds into the state’s waterways.

And in a new year with a new administration at the helm of the federal government, the impetus for regulation may turn up the pressure on state governments to limit discharges of “forever chemicals” into drinking water sources.

State Division of Water Resources officials were heading in that direction in July 2024 when they presented water quality standards for eight PFAS to committees of the N.C. Environmental Management Commission.

The standards would be used to limit permitted releases of PFAS into groundwater and surface waters, set health thresholds for providing alternative water supplies to residents on private wells whose drinking water exceeds contamination limits, and establish goals for cleaning contamination.

The commission’s groundwater and waste management committee agreed to recommend groundwater health standards for only three PFAS, including PFOA, PFOS and GenX. That proposal went to public comment later in the year.

The commission’s water quality committee deferred a motion to send the surface water rule package on all eight PFAS to the full commission and, since its July 2024 meeting, has also pared down its focus on PFAS to PFOA, PFOS and GenX.

Based on that committee’s vote earlier this month, the commission isn’t expected to see a proposed draft rule on PFAS or 1,4-dioxane earlier than its July meeting.

In an emailing responding to questions from Coastal Review on Thursday morning, EMC Chair JD Solomon said the commission anticipates receiving the hearing officer’s report on the proposed groundwater rules at that same meeting.

Draft rule ‘doesn’t have sufficient teeth’

The current proposed rules for surface water bear little semblance to those the Division of Water Resources presented last July.

The set of rule drafts presented to the water quality committee in March were largely written from input provided by the North Carolina Water Quality Association, a statewide organization that represents public water, sewer, and stormwater utilities.

The water quality standards included in the initial draft rules the division created last year have since been deleted. Without those standards, the state lacks ability to enforce limits on dischargers of PFAS and 1,4-dioxane, critics say.

One of those critics of the current proposed draft rules is Environmental Management Commissioner Robin Smith.

“I think that consistently there has been a concern that, in the absence of a water quality standard, even a minimization plan isn’t enforceable,” Smith told Coastal Review in a telephone interview earlier this week.

Following last week’s commission meeting, Smith raised several concerns in an email that she sent to fellow commissioners.

“My concern is that (the current draft rule) doesn’t have sufficient teeth,” she said. “If you read through the full draft, there’s just nothing there other than the minimization contents, like a table of contents for what the minimization plan would have to be. There are no standards for determining whether what a system submits in their plan is adequate or not.”

In his email, Solomon explained that the regulatory impact analysis, or RIA, which is an evaluation of the potential costs and benefits associated with a proposed regulation, did not sufficiently identify cost-benefits associated with the proposed rules.

Last September, the water quality committee voted to move forward with a proposed monitoring and minimization plan and “continue discussions with federal agencies to make sure the benefits portion of the numeric standard were realistic,” Solomon said.

“The monitoring and minimization approach is seen as a proactive measure by EPA because it addresses potential contamination before it gets into our human and natural systems communities,” he wrote. “Allowing potential contamination into our public water bodies and public sewer systems is also much more costly to clean up.”

But the proposed monitoring and minimization plan would fail to enforce consequences for industries if they increase their pollution, said Southern Environmental Law Center Attorney Hannah Nelson.

“DEQ worked really hard to put together a comprehensive set of water quality standards that would have required polluters to reduce their pollution at the source and they spent a lot of time putting those rules together,” she said. “We don’t see that same thing happening with this set of rules. Instead, the analysis supporting this rule making completely ignored impact to downstream drinking water utilities. They don’t address that because, if they did, we would see that this rule is all about protecting industry and it’s not about protecting the people of North Carolina.”

In an April 17 letter to state environmental officials, Cape Fear Public Utility Authority’s executive director admonished the revised draft rule for 1,4-dioxane.

“After months of research, our consultants determined, as a matter of law, that there is no legal basis by which to create mandatory, legally enforceable 1,4-dioxane minimization requirements without supporting water quality standards for surface waters,” wrote the utility’s Kenneth Waldroup in the letter addressed to Solomon and Division of Water Resources Director Richard Rogers.

“Given that the EMC determined many years ago that 1,4-dixoane adversely impacts the protected use of groundwater, we respectfully point out that the EMC neglects its statutory duty to protect surface waters from the same pollutant. Pollution mitigation plans that have no required or enforceable reduction targets will not garner any tangible results but instead be no more than an action in name only providing empty promises to the people of North Carolina,” the letter states.

There are six known 1,4-dioxane polluters upstream of the drinking water supply for Sanford, Fayetteville, Brunswick, New Hanover and Pender counties, and municipalities that buy drinking water from Sanford.

Waldroup has said that the utility will have to invest millions of dollars to remove 1,4-dioxane, a likely carcinogen, from its raw drinking water source: the Cape Fear River.

Cape Fear Public Utility Authority has already spent millions in upgrades and ongoing treatment of PFAS discharged into the Cape Fear River from, among other upstream polluters, Chemours’ Fayetteville Works plant.

GenX is specific to the Bladen County facility, which is roughly 74 miles upstream of Wilmington.

Since news broke nearly eight years ago that Chemours had knowingly discharged PFAS directly into the river, air and groundwater for decades, the company has spent millions to reduce its PFAS emissions to comply with a 2019 consent order between the company, DEQ and Cape Fear River Watch.

The Cape Fear utility and other public water utilities in the region are calling for regulations that would ultimately shift the cost of reducing PFAS and 1,4-dioxane discharges to the industries that produce those chemical compounds.

“We seek meaningful regulation that acknowledges and rewards the reductions made to date, prevents backsliding, and requires uncooperative industrial dischargers to mirror the work of dutiful municipal partners,” Waldroup wrote.

The Clean Water Act includes “anti-backsliding” provisions advocates say prohibits repealing or weakening the drinking water standard.

“Unfairly” blamed

Water quality committee members pointed the finger at Division of Water Resources staff as the reason for the latest delay in getting proposed rules out for public comment.

Smith, who is not a member of the water quality committee, took issue with that assertion, saying in her email that committee members were “unfairly blaming” division staff.

“DWR was not responsible for the fact that the Office of State Budget and Management (OSBM) did not approve the Regulatory Impact Analysis (RIAs) for these two sets of rules before the May EMC meeting,” she wrote.

Instead, “significant changes” to the rule drafts and the draft regulatory analyses that were presented to the committee in March “led directly to OSBM questions that delayed approval of the RIAs and remain unresolved.”

Changes to the draft rules were made at the direction of a group of commissioners, including the chair and vice chair of the water quality committee, chair of the groundwater and waste management committee, and Solomon. Solomon did not respond to an email request for comment.

During the water quality committee’s May 7 meeting, Rogers said staff had “been engaged in taking direction from a subcommittee of this committee” over the last month.

“We have taken that direction and applied it directly to the draft rules that y’all have before you today,” Rogers said.

Exactly which commissioners had been meeting with staff had not been made clear until the May 7 meeting, Smith told Coastal Review.

“It’s not necessarily inappropriate to have a subcommittee or a working group, a small group of EMC members who work on something between committee meetings, but one of my concerns about this process has been there’s never been any transparency about the fact that was going on and who was involved,” she said. “I do think we need to reach some common understanding of how we’re working on these rules, but that also clearly affects the public, and I’m also not sure we’re on a path toward making great progress in July, depending on how willing some of these water quality committee members are to making changes to satisfy OSBM.”

Solomon said that DEQ staff “asked for a more collaborative approach” with the commission for the monitoring and minimization draft rule.

“Coordination and communication with DEQ divisions is charged to the chair and vice-chair of the relevant EMC committee, and in this case the WQC chair and vice chair interacted with DWR to move this draft item onto the committee agenda for debate and discussion,” he said. “No action has been taken on the draft monitoring and minimization rule, or the RIA, by the WQC or the EMC. Based on OSBM’s response to the draft RIA, the benefits aspect of the draft rule is the primary issue. My direction as EMC chair is to bring the updated draft documents before the committee in July.”

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

The head of the Environmental Protection Agency, speaking Wednesday during a Senate budget hearing in Washington, D.C., dismissed reports that the agency was weakening standards on per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances, also called “forever chemicals.”

During questioning by the chair and ranking member, respectively, Sens. Lisa Murkowski, R-Alaska, and Jeff Merkley, D-Ore., EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin told the Senate Appropriations Committee that news reports about the EPA weakening PFAS were inaccurate and that the standards could instead get tougher. Zeldin said expected job cuts at the agency would not impact its work.

The senators said they were concerned about the EPA’s reductions in force, or RIFs, and its ability to meet commitments made earlier this year about tackling the compounds in soils and waters.

Related: Proposed state rules on discharges defanged as EPA retreats

Murkowski noted that the Interior Appropriations Subcommittee, which oversees EPA funding, frequently discusses PFAS.

“Last month, you announced that EPA will, quote, ‘tackle PFAS from all of EPA’s program offices, advancing research and testing, stopping PFAS from getting into drinking water systems, holding polluters accountable and providing certainty for passive receivers. You said this was just the beginning of the work that EPA is going to do to tackle PFAs,” she said.

She asked Zeldin whether the EPA’s operating plan budget requests “actually reflect this kind of full-forward push on PFAS and whether it includes the $10 billion that the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law funding provided to take on PFAS contamination.”

Zeldin replied that the EPA was “actually adding people” to its Office of Water, which he said does much of the agency’s work on PFAS. But Murkowski pressed further on the announced RIFs deferred resignations and how they would affect EPA’s ability to execute the plan.

“When I was in Congress, I was a member of the PFAS Task Force. I had voted for the PFAS Action Act. When I was a member of the House, I represented the district that had all sorts of different PFAS contamination issues,” said Zeldin.

Merkley did not appear swayed. He said rough counts showed EPA had lost about 400 people, who were fired within their first year, 560 in the first round of deferred resignations, 180  in diversity, equity, inclusion, and accessibility jobs who were RIF’ed. Another 1,129 exited via second round of deferred resignations, with 1,800 of opt-ins.

“Now we’re up to almost 3,000,” Merkley said. “Office of R and D, it’s rumored that would reduce to 500 positions, which would be a loss of 1,300 additional — now we’re at 4,300. I’ll just point out that for two decades, the level of employment at EPA was about 17,000. Right now, it’s about 14,000, so subtracting the numbers I just shared, we’re talking about more than 4,000 reduction from that.”

He said cutting further to the expected number of 10,000 employees “raises doubts” the agency can meet its own goals.

“It sounds like it’s at odds with your commitment to tackling PFAS and I’m concerned about the numbers,” Merkley said to Zeldin.

Zeldin responded that it was apparent that the question was in response to a news story.

“It might not come as a shock to you, but sometimes the news says stuff that’s not accurate,” Zeldin said. “That is not what the agency announced. As it relates to PFOA and PFAS, you said that we were weakening the standards, and that’s actually the opposite of what the agency actually announced.”

Zeldin said “there was an issue” pertaining to four compounds, “and that’s something that we are going to be going through a process, but that doesn’t mean that the that it gets weaker. The (maximum concentration) might end up getting lower, not higher.”

Merkley entered for the record the Washington Post story with the headline: “EPA plans to weaken rule curbing forever chemicals in drinking water.”

Zeldin said he would “encourage the committee to look at the actual announcement from EPA, as opposed to the Washington Post.”

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

POLLOCKSVILLE – Jay Bender is rightfully proud of his town hall. Lovingly restored when it was moved to higher ground a few years ago, the old train depot has come to symbolize the grit of this little river town that a hurricane once tried to drown and its government in far-off Washington now has abandoned.

The mayor for 42 continuous years – a record in North Carolina – Bender fashioned his office to look like one that the stationmaster might have used when the depot was built in 1893. An antique rolltop desk anchors the room, accented by sturdy wooden chairs for visitors and framed railroad maps on the walls.

He led me to the handsome town council chambers with its wide-beamed oak floor and huge, sliding, wooden cargo doors that bear names and other graffiti that people scrawled during the building’s lifetime. “All of this was under water,” explained Bender. “We lost everything. We lost our records. We lost our computers. Everything.”

Related: North Carolina among most successful states for BRIC awards

The depot, which even then served as town hall, was a few blocks away, down on the banks of the Trent River, a pretty, usually placid stream that languidly flows northeast a dozen or so miles to its confluence with the Neuse River in New Bern. In these parts it’s known primarily for its catfish and largemouth bass. It was the little town’s biggest attraction.

Until it became the source of its destruction.

That would have been during those three, grim days in September 2018 when Hurricane Florence dumped more than more 30 inches of rain and unleased a biblical deluge. The river had overflowed its banks before, of course – back in 1999 after Hurricane Floyd, for instance – but never like this. Some experts would later speculate that the Trent hadn’t flooded that badly in maybe 1,000 years. It rose more than 25 feet, covering much of Pollocksville to its rooftops. Most of its 300 or so residents had to be evacuated. More than 80% of its buildings were destroyed or damaged, including every town commissioner’s home.

Bender, living in his grandfather’s old place on high ground, was spared. That’s where they ran the town until the river receded and the power was restored 11 days later.

The slow recovery then began.

Aided by state and federal grants, the town moved and refurbished the waterlogged old depot in 2021 and began getting pieces of its sewer and water systems out of the floodplain. Owners raised some buildings, and the town gussied up U.S. Highway 17, its main road, with a bike path, planters and banners.

The place was starting to look almost normal again, and Bender was feeling optimistic about his town’s revival until the Trump regime in Washington suddenly and without warning pulled the rug out from under him.

Killed without warning

The Federal Emergency Management Agency announced about a month ago that it was cancelling its major grant program that provided seed money to communities that wanted to be better prepared for the next flood or weather catastrophe. FEMA didn’t contact Pollocksville or the 67 other communities in the state that were awarded grants but had not yet received any money. Neither did it notify the N.C. Division of Emergency Management, which administers the grants, or the media. The agency made the surprise announcement on one of its websites after 5 p.m. on a Friday, presumably to attract the least amount of attention.

Bender didn’t find out about the cancellation until the following week. It was the first time a federal grant program had been killed in midstream.

It would be another 12 days before FEMA clarified that only grant projects that had been completed would be totally funded. Those that have started might receive partial funding. Everything else was dead. In North Carolina, that meant almost $186 million in projects intended to help communities ward off weather catastrophes and save lives would have to be shelved unless the recipients could come up with the money elsewhere. That total includes about $81 million in the state’s 20 coastal counties, including $1.1 million for Pollocksville to raise six commercial buildings to revive its downtown.

“Losing the grant is very disappointing,” said Bender, whose town operates on an annual $600,000 budget. “It would have funded the next step in our long-range plan. Replacing the grant money will be difficult.”

The Building Resilient Infrastructure and Communities grants, known as BRIC, was the federal government’s showcase program to help communities help themselves by funding projects to lessen and prevent storm damage. It committed almost $5 billion to communities across the country since it was approved by Congress with bipartisan support and signed by Donald Trump in 2018 during his first term. Local governments had planned to use the money to help raise buildings and roads, relocate vulnerable sewer pump stations, control flooding, strengthen building codes and on similar projects to reduce the damage of future storms. The program was so popular that last year FEMA had to reject nearly 2,000 applicants because it didn’t have enough money to go around.

About $1 billion was allocated to the program as part of the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act in 2021. Under President Biden, the BRIC grants were key parts of the government’s efforts to address climate change, and a special emphasis was placed on helping Black and other historically underserved communities. It was those directives that likely put BRIC on the regime’s hit list.

‘Wasteful,’ ‘political,’ fearful

An unnamed FEMA spokesperson said in the April announcement that the agency now considers BRIC to be “wasteful” and “political.” I called FEMA’s “news desk” at its regional office in Atlanta several times to get some examples. Each call disappeared into the ether because the number listed on the agency’s regional website didn’t even generate a dial tone. I sent an email to the address listed on the site. It remains unanswered. As do the emails and phone message I sent to the state’s two Republican senators, Thom Tillis and Ted Budd, asking for their reactions.

Many county and town officials also didn’t return emails and phone calls. They watched the bullying of the country’s biggest universities and law firms and heard the threats about withholding federal funds to public schools and museums. They apparently got the message. They would need FEMA someday, and all depended on federal funding for something. Bender understands his counterparts’ desire to remain under the radar. He’s relying partially on federal money to upgrade his water and sewer plants. “We lose this grant and we’re out maybe $20,000,” he said. “But I can’t build half a sewer plant.”

Anna Weber, however, needed no coaxing. She’s a policy analyst for the National Resources Defense Council and helps communities prepare for the violence of an unstable climate. She has a hard time understanding how spending money to prevent death and damage from future storms can suddenly be considered wasteful.

“In fact, investing in adaptation and resiliency against climate change is one of the least wasteful things we can do,“ she said. “It’s actually one of the best investments in preventing future local damage and loss of life from storms.”

She noted that studies have consistently shown that every dollar invested on projects to prevent storm damage results in at least $6 in savings when the pieces later have to be picked up and put back together.

BRIC also seemed to dovetail with the regime’s desire to require states to pay more for cleanup and reconstruction costs after a disaster, Weber said. The grants pay 75% of project costs. The applicant is responsible for the remainder. “These were communities that were doing this right,” she said. “The federal government wanted communities to step up and take some responsibility. These communities did step up and do what the government asked, and now the rug is being pulled out from under them.”

The charge that the grants were doled out as political favors by the Biden administration makes little sense in North Carolina, which Trump carried handily in all three of his elections. The 22 counties, which include the state’s most populous, that Biden won in 2020 received only about a quarter of the grant money, while the 20 coastal counties, many of which Trump won with 60-70% of the vote, received almost 45%.

Jessica Whitehead was North Carolina’s first chief resilience officer and helped evaluate the state’s first BRIC applications in 2020. She’s now director of the Institute for Coastal Adaptation and Resilience at Old Dominion University.

“Politics?” she said. “It never came up.”

No one asked Bender about his politics when the town applied for its BRIC grant.

“This had nothing to do with politics,” he said, “and I don’t know how you can consider it wasteful. This is all about trying to get our town back to normal.”

BRIC and North Carolina were made for each other.

Since the first applications were accepted for the Building Resilient Infrastructure and Communities grants in 2020, state and local-government officials had developed a keen sense of what the Federal Emergency Management Agency wanted to fund. A steady flow of successful applicants was the result.

“North Carolina was one of the most successful states to get BRIC funding,” noted Anna Weber, a senior policy analyst with the National Resources Defense Council. “As a result, it will be one of states with the most to lose.”

Related: Coastal towns awarded resilience grants see funding pulled

Sixty-eight cities, towns and counties in the state have been awarded grants since that first cycle of funding, according to the N.C. Division of Emergency Management, which administers the grant program. Thirty-three are in the 20 coastal counties. Those grants range from $120,000 to Bertie and Hertford counties for watershed studies to more than $18 million to Fayetteville for stream-restoration and bridge-relocation projects.

About all of it is now gone. FEMA releases BRIC money as work on a project is completed. The agency has said that only projects that have been completed will be fully funded. Those that have started may be partially funded. A living shoreline in Duck is the only completed BRIC project in the state, according to the division, and is the only one that will be completely funded. The project in Princeville to move municipal buildings out of the floodplain has started and will likely be partially funded.

Both projects in Fayetteville, the largest in the coastal counties, are currently being designed to lessen storm damage and flooding, Loren Bymer, the city’s marketing and communications director, explained in an email. He said the city “anticipates” being reimbursed by FEMA for the design work. The grants, however, won’t pay for construction as anticipated, he wrote. To complete the projects, the city would have to find other sources of income, such as issuing bonds or raising property taxes, or delaying other projects, Bymer said.

BRIC funding for all of the other projects on the list below has been killed. That amounts to about $81 million in coastal projects and more than $186 million statewide.

Third in a series

A chemical manufacturer that discharged pollutants directly into the Cape Fear River for decades has asked a judge to keep thousands of documents out of the public eye.

Attorneys for Chemours and its predecessor company DuPont requested the court keep under seal mostly internal communications between company employees about “non-public facts” that largely pertain to chemical production, according to the motion filed Feb. 28 in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of North Carolina.

“The court has recognized that this exact type of information is competitively sensitive because, in the hands of a competitor, it could be used to disadvantage Defendants,” Chemours’ attorneys argue.

Their appeal to the court aims to shield from the public between 5,000 and 10,000 pages of documents the plaintiffs’ lawyers submitted in their case against the companies, according to an attorney representing public utilities and local governments downstream of Chemours’ Bladen County plant.

“We do not believe there is a good basis for the vast majority, if not all, of those documents to be under seal,” said attorney Bill Cary of Brooks Pierce Law Firm.

The firm represents Cape Fear Public Utility Authority, Brunswick County, Lower Cape Fear Water & Sewer Authority, and Wrightsville Beach, which sued the companies in October 2017.

The lawsuit aims to recover costs and damages associated with the Fayetteville Works’ plant’s discharges of per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances, or PFAS, for decades into the Cape Fear River, the drinking water source for tens of thousands of residents in the region.

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

Included in the 25,000 pages Brooks Pierce has submitted to the court is a history of dealings Chemours’ West Virginia-based Washington Works Facility has had with PFAS, Cary said.

“Many of the documents that they have identified as wanting to be sealed are already on the public record, which means that there is no reason to seal them,” he said. “They’re already public knowledge. They are either part of the (Environmental Protection Agency) public record or they have been exhibits in other files.”

The Washington Works’ plant historically used synthetic compounds perfluorooctanoic acid, or PFOA, commonly referred to as C8, and GenX, in its manufacturing processes. The plant produces resin used to make the semiconductors that power cellular phones, computers and other electronic systems.

For decades, the plant’s owners knowingly discharged C8 into the Ohio River, the drinking water supply for an estimated 5 million people. High levels of the chemical were found in public drinking water supplies and private drinking water wells downstream of the facility, prompting government intervention and a slew of lawsuits.

Earlier this year, the West Virginia Rivers Coalition, a statewide nonprofit, filed a federal lawsuit seeking a temporary court order for Chemours’ Washington Works facility to reduce its discharges of GenX into the Ohio River. The lawsuit alleges the company is exceeding its permitted discharge limits.

As part of a 2019 consent order with the North Carolina Department of Environmental Quality and Cape Fear River Watch, Chemours has spent millions taking steps to reduce its emissions of PFAS into the Cape Fear, the ground and the air. The consent agreement also charges the company with testing thousands of private water wells in the region and providing a means of uncontaminated drinking water to households with private wells that contain elevated levels of PFAS.

The brunt of costs associated with removing PFAS from raw water sources has fallen on downstream drinking water suppliers, including Cape Fear Public Utility Authority, or CFPUA. The utility has spent millions in upgrades to filtrate PFAS out of the drinking water it provides to customers in the Wilmington area. The average customer bill includes a $7.50 charge associated with the utility’s filtration system.

A CFPUA spokesperson referred questions to Cary.

An upgrade and expansion of Brunswick County’s Northwest Water Treatment Plant totaling more than $120 million is expected to go online late this spring. The project includes the installation of an advanced low-pressure reverse-osmosis treatment system to remove compounds including PFAS and 1,4-dioxane, the latter of which is a likely carcinogen that is also being discharged into the Cape Fear River by upstream polluters.

“The health of the Cape Fear River is of importance to everybody in the watershed and they should be informed about it,” Cary said.

Emily Donovon, co-founder of Clean Cape Fear, said in a telephone interview earlier this week Chemours and DuPont had spent decades “hiding” its discharges of PFAS into the Cape Fear River at the expense of residents living downstream of the Fayetteville Works plant.

“We’re not just talking about monetary expenses,” she said. “We’re not talking about utility costs. We’re talking about the fact that people are dying. People have died. People died not knowing if what that company did and that facility did caused their illness to accelerate or cause them to get sick in the first place. We deserve to know everything that this company did. Out of basic human decency, we deserve to be able to see those files and we deserve to be able to know exactly what was going on. History needs to know this.”

Clean Cape Fear on Thursday afternoon posted an online petition for members of the community to sign in support of unsealing the documents.

Cary described information in the documents the companies want to remain sealed as “embarrassing” internal documents that include communications among Chemours employees.

“Or I would be embarrassed if I was Chemours,” he said.

An attorney with Miami-based Shook, Hardy and Bacon, LLP, the law firm representing The Chemours Co. FC, E. I. Du Pont De Nemours and Co., and The Chemours Co., did not respond to a request for comment in time for publication.

In their request to keep documents sealed, the attorneys argue Brooks Pierce violated electronic filing rules, writing, in part, that the plaintiff’s “indiscriminate inclusion of large swathes of immaterial documents” place “an undue burden on Defendants in responding and preparing this motion.”

Chemours’ attorneys go on to write that it would be impractical to redact the “enormous volume” of documents Brooks Pierce included in its Jan. 17 motion for summary judgment, or a request of the court to rule for one party against another party without a full trial.

Brooks Pierce has until April 14 to respond to the motion.

“We will respond to the motion that day,” Cary said.

In 2023, CFPUA filed a separate lawsuit in Delaware’s Court of Chancery to stop DuPont, Chemours and their related spinoff companies from financial restructuring, a move that would allow the companies to avoid liability for damages resulting from PFAS contamination. The case has been stayed pending the outcome of the 2017 lawsuit.

Second in a series

WILMINGTON – Without a state-set limit for 1,4-dioxane, a public utility that serves an estimated 200,000 people here will have to invest millions of dollars to remove the federally deemed “likely carcinogen” from its raw drinking water source.

The projected cost for Cape Fear Public Utility Authority, or CFPUA, to make additional upgrades to its Sweeney Water Treatment Plant is in the area of $17- $24 million, authority Executive Director Kenneth Waldroup said.

Annual additional costs associated with treating the chemical being discharged into the Cape Fear River upstream of the city are between $1 million and $3 million.

Such costs could be avoided if upstream polluters would reduce the amount of 1,4-dioxane from their effluent by 60-65%, Waldroup said.

But prospects that industry will voluntarily reduce discharges of the chemical are slim.

And efforts to get the state’s rule makers – both the North Carolina General Assembly and the Environmental Management Commission – to set a water quality standard for 1,4-dioxane are not making much headway. The commission is charged with adopting rules to protect the state’s air and water resources.

CFPUA will continue advocating for solutions, Waldroup said to a crowd of about 100 people Saturday.

The World Water Day event, hosted by Clean Cape Fear in partnership with St. Andrews-Covenant Presbyterian Church’s women’s ministry team, highlighted ongoing problems downstream water users face from upstream polluters.

It’s an issue that spans the country, where an estimated 6-10% of 66,000 drinking water systems throughout the country must figure out how to treat certain chemical compounds from their raw water sources.

The Cape Fear River is the drinking water source for tens of thousands of residents in the Cape Fear Region, one rocked nearly eight years ago when the public was first informed Chemours’ Fayetteville Works Facility had been discharging PFAS into the river, air and ground for decades.

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency estimates that there are more than 14,000 of these chemical compounds, which are used to make a host of everyday consumer goods from food packaging to water-resistant gear.

PFAS exposure has been linked to a number of adverse health impacts to people, including thyroid disease, increased cholesterol, liver damage, and different types of cancers.

More than two years have passed since CFPUA completed a multi-million-dollar upgrade to its Sweeney plant, which included the addition of a filtration system to remove PFAS, including GenX, from its raw water source.

Today, the average CFPUA customer bill includes a $7.50 charge Waldroup referred to Saturday as the “Chemours correction surcharge,” one associated with the utility’s annual operation costs associated with the filtration system upgrade.

That upgrade entailed the installation of eight granular activated carbon filters.

The system effectively removes PFAS for which the EPA in the spring of 2024 made the move to set enforceable limits on nearly a half-dozen individual compounds in public water systems.

The cost the utility incurs each year to remove PFAS is about $4.3 million, Waldroup said. The utility’s legal fees have surpassed $10 million in its ongoing lawsuit against Chemours and parent company Dupont to pay for costs and damages related to the companies’ actions.

A trial is not expected until next year.

CFPUA monitors up to 70 types of PFAS, including GenX and other chemical compounds specific to Chemours. The utility is now looking at ultra-short chain PFAS, Waldroup said. Those are compounds with carbon chain lengths of 3 or fewer carbon atoms in sequence

The utility is able to treat “some” 1,4-dioxane from its raw water source, he said, but the activated carbon system does not remove the chemical.

He explained that there is a debate in the scientific community as to the appropriate exposure rate of 1,4-dioxane, specifically whether that rate is 35 parts per billion, or 0.35 ppb. The federal drinking water health advisory level is 0.35 ppb.

“The difference is a one in 10,000 cancer risk a 70-year lifetime exposure and a one in a million,” Waldroup said. “As the downstream water provider, we think one in a million is the right standard.”

Known polluters

In January, CFPUA and other water utilities, including Pender County Utilities, were notified by the N.C. Department of Environmental Quality that a city-operated wastewater treatment plant in Randolph County discharged substantially high levels of 1,4-dixoane into a tributary of the Cape Fear River that month.

The notice came months after a state chief administrative law judge last September revoked 1,4-dioxane limits included in Asheboro’s discharge permit. DEQ appealed the judge’s decision and is awaiting a ruling.

The Southern Environmental Law Center, or SELC, on Wednesday notified Asheboro and its industrial customers, StarPet and Waste Management’s Great Oak Landfill, it plans to sue for failing to stop 1,4-dioxane from “flowing into the drinking water supplies for about 900,000 North Carolinians,” according to a release. The intended lawsuit is being filed on behalf of Cape Fear River Watch and Haw River Assembly.

“Asheboro and cities like it have the ability and responsibility to stop this illegal 1,4-dioxane pollution before it contaminates people’s drinking water,” SELC senior attorney Jean Zhuang stated in the release. “Emboldened by its fight to dismantle North Carolinian’s drinking water protections, Asheboro’s 1,4-dioxane pollution has skyrocketed in recent months. Asheboro’s industries don’t want to pay to treat their own chemical pollution, so the city is protecting their profits over the health and safety of North Carolinians downstream and making their untreated, toxic industrial waste a costly problem for communities who get their drinking water downstream.”

Asheboro discharges upstream of the drinking water supply for Sanford, Fayetteville, Brunswick, New Hanover and Pender counties, and municipalities that buy drinking water from Sanford, according to the release.

Asheboro’s wastewater treatment plant is one of six known 1,4-dioxane upstream polluters, Waldroup said. Of those, the Alpek Polyester USA plant just upstream of Chemours is the highest source of 1,4-dixoane release into the Cape Fear River, he said.

In May, the Environmental Management Commission is expected to be presented with a draft rule to establish monitoring and minimization requirements of PFAS dischargers in the state. The proposed rule was written largely from input provided by a utility association, which has drawn backlash from one of its own members – CFPUA – and environmental groups.

Hannah Nelson, a Southern Environmental Law Center staff attorney and speaker at Saturday’s event, called the proposed rule “offensive” to residents who live downstream of industry polluters.

“This rule was written by polluters and it shows,” she said. “There is no requirement under this draft rule for polluters to reduce PFAS pollution. Polluters will use this rule to hide behind it.”

The commission has instructed DEQ to put together a similar proposed rule for 1,4-dioxane, Nelson said.

That does not prevent DEQ from requiring industries include pretreatment programs in their discharge permits and placing the burden on the polluters, she said.

And the onus of establishing rules that hold the polluter, not water utilities and their customers, may fall even more on the state under the Trump administration, which recently announced plans to dismantle the EPA’s Office of Research and Development.

The EPA’s Research Triangle Park campus is home to labs that study PFAS contamination, air pollution and industrial emissions.

North Carolina also has a group of academic researchers within the North Carolina Policy Collaboratory’s PFAS Testing Network who specifically perform PFAS-related studies in the state. The General Assembly has appropriated tens of millions of dollars for the Collaboratory.

Dr. Jeffrey Enders, a senior research scholar and research assistant professor with North Carolina State University, shared last Saturday the results of a study he conducted on PFAS in sea foam collected along the state’s southern coastal shorelines.

A majority of the 10 foam samples he studied had been 10,000 – 10 million parts per trillion of total PFAS.

People are advised to avoid contact with sea foam on area beaches.

Next in the series: Polluter asks court to keep records under seal

First in a series on legacy and emerging water supply pollutants.

RALEIGH — Addressing PFAS and other emerging compounds is a “top priority” for the North Carolina Department of Environmental Quality, Secretary Reid Wilson told the more than 300 attending the N.C. Water Resources Research Institute’s annual conference.

“We are spending a lot of time and energy” working on per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances, or PFAS, because it’s important, Wilson continued Thursday, adding the department wants to work with all stakeholders in addressing PFAS through a comprehensive approach in a systematic, organized way.

WRRI is a multi-campus program of the University of North Carolina System that provides resources, and supports junior faculty, and undergraduate and graduate students.

The 2025 conference was held March 19-20 in the McKimmon Center and featured talks about the latest research on stream restoration, water supply planning, stormwater management, water quality, groundwater dynamics, community engagement and other water-related issues.

Wilson began his remarks by thanking the room full of researchers, educators, students, nonprofit representatives, academics and others for their contribution to science.

“I’ve been in North Carolina for 22 years,” Wilson said, explaining that he and his family moved from Maryland. “My work in these last 22 years has taken me to all corners of the state, and as I travel around, it just reminds me of the importance of making sure that everybody who lives here has clean air, clean water, healthy land from which their food comes and that they can roam around on, if it’s a park or a trail.”

NCDEQ has made “great strides over the years to collaborate with the research community to better understand the state of science a range of issues,” he said, and to ensure residents are better informed and better protected.

“We can’t make good decisions without sound, solid and unbiased scientific data. If we don’t rely on science, we will make bad decisions, and people’s health will be harmed. We don’t want that. It’s that simple,” Wilson said. “We have to base our decisions on science.”

When it comes to the emerging compounds in North Carolina’s water, programs like the PFAS Testing Network Applied Research Fellowship bring together DEQ and leading scientific experts “as we work to improve our understanding of these forever chemicals and generate the data needed to protect our communities.”

There have been several rounds of cohorts each semester working with nationally recognized experts from Duke University, the UNC system and its schools.

“We’re also partnering with Duke University Medical Center to conduct cutting edge research on how PFAS breaks down in our bodies. So we are working relentlessly to learn about these chemicals, protect our environment and safeguard our public health,” Wilson said.

NCDEQ launched its PFAS action strategy in 2022 to clean up contamination, protect drinking water and to take action to limit discharges of PFAS, into air and waterways.

“Part of that is we are sampling water systems to determine the extent of PFAS contamination, and that includes not only larger water systems, but smaller ones, like schools and daycares as well. And we have just deployed a robust set of ambient monitors that sample PFAS in the air, groundwater, lakes, rivers, streams, land, everything we can do,” he said, adding they’re really trying to “determine the extent of contamination of these chemicals.”

Wilson explained that, earlier this month at the department’s direction, Chemours, the company linked to discharging PFAS into the Cape Fear River, agreed to “significantly expand testing” of private wells in a larger area around their Fayetteville Works facility. 

“In terms of infrastructure,” Wilson said the department has “significant funds available” for towns, cities, counties, and water and sewer authorities for construction and planning projects that address PFAS contamination, and other water infrastructure needs.

“This funding makes it possible to assess options, design a solution to address PFAS contamination, implement treatment and develop with necessary alternative sources of drinking water,” Wilson said.

And last month, the department announced $265 million in drinking water and wastewater infrastructure grants that included $13 million for PFAS-related projects.

“Over the recent years, we have allocated $345 million to PFAS-related water infrastructure projects,” Wilson said. These investments are important, and will help improve lives and safeguard public health.

In Gov. Stein’s budget proposal released Wednesday for the next two fiscal years, Wilson said that it “includes an additional $1.5 million and three more employees to work on PFAS issues, to expand our capacity to address this problem, which affects lots of people in North Carolina.”

Wilson said that in addition to protecting people from PFAS and other water quality issues, “another huge priority for us is helping western North Carolina clean up, recover, rebuild from Helene.”

Millions in state and federal assistance have been provided since the September 2024 storm decimated the North Carolina mountains to restore and rebuild the region. “I think we all know that this recovery will continue to take years,” Wilson said.

“I know probably everyone in this room is trying to figure out what happens next in terms of recovery and rebuilding. We really must raise our sights beyond the immediate recovery to rebuild more resiliently, because we know these storms will keep coming with increasing frequency severity,” he said.

“Obviously, planning and public engagement will be key to this process in the mountain communities as they recover and rebuild, but that’s equally true for all over the state,” Wilson said. “We have to engage the public. We have to plan for the future, and again, plan for more severe storms.”

In an interview with Coastal Review, Wilson encouraged all stakeholders to weigh in and share their thoughts with decisionmakers, whether that’s an agency like NCDEQ, or the legislature or Congress, as environmental regulations undergo changes.

“We want to hear what people think to make sure that we’re making the best possible decisions to help people be healthy,” Wilson said.

Next in the series: Ultra-short chain PFAS

This special news feature is part of Coastal Review’s 12-month observance of the Coastal Area Management Act’s 50th year.

NEW BERN — Special Deputy Attorney General Mary Lucasse gestured to the projector screen behind her as she began her presentation to a couple dozen last month about the rules governing the last five decades of coastal development.

On the screen, a black-and-white photograph taken over a century ago depicting three, nattily dressed men in a rowboat, gliding across Bogue Sound with the expanse of undeveloped waterfront in the background a reminder of how much North Carolina’s coastline has changed.

When the photo was taken in 1912, the character of coastal North Carolina was “so different than it is today, 100 years later. We didn’t have bridges to the coast, people were not building on barrier islands,” Lucasse explained.

Lucasse joined the state Department of Justice in 2009, and works in the department’s Environmental Division. Her presentation, “50th Anniversary of the Coastal Area Management Act,” opened the daylong Shape of the Coast legal symposium, held in conjunction with North Carolina Sea Grant’s biennial Coastal Conference, Nov. 13-14 at the Riverfront Convention Center.

North Carolina Sea Grant, the North Carolina Department of Environmental Quality’s Office of General Counsel and the National Sea Grant Law Center partnered on the symposium that featured speakers on concerns regarding homeowner’s insurance, oceanfront homes, wetlands, sand for beach nourishment and other aspects.

“Development really started on the oceanfront after World War II, and even later than that, and what North Carolina was experiencing was a destruction of wetlands, indiscriminate development, dredging, septic tanks that were improperly sited, declining water quality,” Lucasse said. “And as the population in coastal North Carolina grew, the governor at that time realized that we lacked the public infrastructure and regulations that would allow North Carolina the capacity to handle an increase in population and development.”

The governor at the time, Bob Scott, worked with legislature to put together the Dredge and Fill Act in 1969. Lucasse called the measure “the start” of the state’s work to protect its coastal and the natural resources. The act put limits on dredging and filling of wetlands. Scott also directed a committee to design what would become the Coastal Area Management Act.

When North Carolina was looking to protect its coastal resources, the federal level was doing the same, resulting in the Coastal Zone Management Act of 1972, which Lucasse called “an important partner as we protect and manage the coastal resources here in North Carolina.”

CAMA was first drafted in 1973 but there was a lot of pushback from utilities, agriculture and building interests.

“At first, CAMA was opposed by 90% of the coastal legislators,” which she said was in part because coastal stakeholders wanted a larger role in the process. Legislators in response reworked the proposed act to include their feedback.

CAMA was enacted in 1974 and created the Coastal Resources Commission.

The commission adopts rules, establishes procedures for processing and enforcing major and minor development permits, considers variances from coastal development rules and appeals of permitting decisions, and other development rules.

Lucasse has been legal counsel to the commission since 2011, In that role, Lucasse advises members on open meeting laws, meeting procedures, handles public records requests, writes the commission’s final decisions, represent the commission on any litigation, and works with the North Carolina Department of Environmental Quality’s Division of Coastal Management. Division staff implement commission rules and issues CAMA permits.

“When I talk about CAMA, I always talk about the fact that this is a balancing statute. This is not about, ‘Let’s do everything we can to only protect natural resources.’ No, we balance the rights of development, the rights of property owners, with the need to protect natural resources,” she said.

CAMA protects the rights of neighbors, the public trust, the right to use ocean beaches, and to use navigable waters, she added.

A large part of CAMA is its land-use planning component. At the local level, the plans provide a blueprint for community growth and are used to guide development. At the state level, the plans review development requests and determine consistency both with state guidelines and federal regulations.

CAMA also gives the Coastal Resources Commission the power to determine areas of environmental concern. In the 1970s, the commission was directed to establish AECs.

They decided that all the barrier islands would fall under that designation, and there was “a lot of pushback for that,” Lucasse said. “They realized that really, the rules of the commission had to focus on critical areas. They began thinking about buffers, ocean beaches, not upland areas, but areas that are critical for protecting the North Carolina coastal resources.”

Now, areas environmental concern include estuarine system areas, ocean hazard areas, public water supplies, and natural and cultural resource areas. Examples are estuarine waters, coastal wetlands, beaches, frontal dunes, inlets and surface water and water supplies.

Another major aspect of CAMA is permitting and enforcement.

“I think of permits as the teeth of CAMA,” Lucasse said, because before any development in an any of the CAMA-designated areas, a permit is required, in addition to any required at the local or federal level.

CAMA grew to include in 1981 the Public Beach and Coastal Waterfront Access Program, a way to allow everyone to enjoy the shoreline.

“North Carolina realized that it was very important not only to protect the natural resources, but to allow the public to exercise their public trust rights. And this program was created to identify, to acquire, to improve and to maintain public access ways to public trust resources,” she said, noting that the legislature provided about $2 million in first-year funding.

In the decades since, appropriations have been at just over $1 million a year, she said. “Historically, the requests for funding have exceeded the amount of funding available. But since 1981, the division of coastal management has awarded over 500 grants that total about $45 million.”

Starting in 1982, the state began adding to CAMA reserve sites. Now, there are 10 coastal reserve sites making up the North Carolina Coastal Reserve and National Estuarine Research Reserve that protects about 44,000 acres along the coast.

“The reserves are really important component,” Lucasse said, adding that the sites allow for stewardship of these natural resources, research and education. Students visit the reserve sites to experience the natural resources.

Lucasse, in her presentation, was joined by Zach Griffith, a second-year law student at the University of North Carolina School of Law.

Griffith said that CAMA had undergone significant changes since 1994, including the exemption of floating structures associated with the shellfish industry from regulation, how lobbyists changed how the state interpreted sea level rise policy, the repeal of a ban on terminal groins to now allowing seven terminal groin permits that can potentially be issued.

​Second of two parts. Read Part 1.

By the time Chase Luker pointed the headlights of his king cab truck down a narrow country road that returned to Columbia, nighttime blanketed rural Tyrrell County.

A hunter safety specialist with the North Carolina Wildlife Resources Commission, Luker had spent his evening with Coastal Review meandering along farm tracks on private land, with permission, and the dirt lanes of the Pocosin Lakes National Wildlife Refuge, to catch a glimpse of American black bears.​

As the unofficial tour of Tyrrell County came to a close, Luker said that he’d never met anyone who hates bears.

“Everybody loves bears, but the people that love them the most are the people that hunt them,” Luker said, adding the hunters “care a lot about the bears and what they can do to protect the species.”

Bears also seem to be a source of pride for Tyrrell County residents and businesses. During an early dinner at the Mexican grill downtown earlier that day, two locals shared photos of bear sightings.

A longtime hunter, Luker manages the 13-county District 1 that spans from Currituck to Carteret County and Greene County is the farthest county west. He also enjoys writing, carving decoys and, when he has time, guiding private hunting tours.

Luker noted that 150 years ago “we didn’t use canola oil, butter, we used bear fat, bear grease, rendered down.” He said there are numerous layers involved in what draws people to bear hunting. There’s a lot of legends surrounding black bears, and it’s “part of our American fabric.”

Black bear hunting heritage in North Carolina dates back to early Native Americans and was adopted by early colonial settlers, “Bear hunting continues to be an important tradition in North Carolina, bringing together friends and families, providing food for the table, and teaching outdoor and naturalist skills, the commission’s Game Mammals and Surveys Supervisor Colleen Olfenbuttel told Coastal Review recently.

She was the black bear and furbearer biologist, when she was responsible for managing and conserving black bears and 17 furbearer species, from 2007 until earlier this year, when she took on her current role.

“For decades, most bear hunters used the assistance of trained hounds to pick up the scent of a bear and track it,” Olfenbuttel continued. “In fact, the official state dog of North Carolina is the Plott hound, which was bred for hunting bears in North Carolina starting in the early 1800s.”

For a long time, the state’s black bear population suffered. “Black bears were once restricted to remote areas and reached very low population levels in the mid-1900s,” according to the agency. Hunters and conservationists pushed for bear hunting regulations beginning in the 1930s and for the state to establish a wildlife resources agency to manage wildlife and enforce wildlife laws.

Hunters joined in the conservation effort when the commission began managing the species in the 1970s, she said. The bear hunting community contributed by providing data needed to make science-based management decisions, and helped fund conservation and research efforts through hunting license sales and the Pittman-Robertson Act of 1937, which imposes an excise tax on firearms and ammunition.

Olfenbuttel added that “The restoration of black bears is also due to the reforestation that occurred, starting in the 1930s, and due to changes in human attitudes toward bears, as well as the remarkable adaptability of black bears. Black bears have adapted well to urbanization, human development and habitat fragmentation,” she said.

Public response

The North Carolina Bear Hunting Association, which formed in 1985, and past hunting clubs have worked with the agency over the decades, including on designating more thousands of acres of black bear sanctuaries, according to a March 2023 letter on its social media page.

In the letter, the organization notes that it has taken issue with how the agency has handled past investigations into illegal poaching, and the fact that the commission has online public hearing because “the anti-community has learned to take advantage of on-line public hearings and meetings.” The online meetings were in response to the COVID-19 pandemic.

During the 2021-22 session, those who are against bear hunting announced their support of a bill to “disapprove a rule of the Wildlife Resources Commission allowing hunting of bears in certain areas previously managed as bear sanctuaries.” The bill had a first reading but didn’t go anywhere after being referred to the house rules committee.

The bill was in response to the commission changing in February 2022 the title of “designated bear sanctuaries” to “bear management areas” and allow permitted bear hunting in three western lands previous off limits.

The commission made the choice to open up a permitted season to stabilize the growing bear population in the western part of the state.

Bear Defenders said on its its website that on Feb. 25, 2022, “Despite the overwhelming public opposition that included 2,744 comments, 86% percent in opposition, and our petition with over 7,600 signatures, the North Carolina Wildlife Resources Commission (NCWRC) voted unanimously to open up the Pisgah, Panthertown-Bonas Defeat, and Standing Indian Bear Sanctuaries to bear hunting and hunting with dogs. In addition, they approved a regulation that changed the term ‘designated bear sanctuary’ to “‘designated bear management area.'”

During a public comment hearing in January 2022, Olfenbuttel said that with a restored and increasing bear population coupled with a diverse and increasing human population and their associated development, “the Commission recognized the need to change from restoration efforts to management efforts to ensure the long-term viability of the bear population as well as assure  and maybe even increase acceptance and support for the restored bear population to do so require developing a statewide Black Bear management plan.”

She added that the bear population had nearly doubled in size between 2005 and 2022, and one reason the commission has not been able to stabilize the bear population is that areas in the mountains where hunting is not permitted are increasing largely due to development.

In Defense of Animals said in a press release at the time that, “Despite public outcry, North Carolina has approved the violent killing of black bears in three of the state’s bear sanctuaries. With few exceptions, black bears have been protected throughout their natural habitats in North Carolina for decades. Thankfully, a new bill has been introduced to stop these shortsighted plans. We must urge North Carolina legislators to support House Bill 1072 to save vulnerable bear populations to agonizing deaths.”

Regulated bear hunting

With the state bear population recovered, Olfenbuttel said the commission’s objective is to stabilize the population so that growth is no more than 0-1%. “Basically, we want to maintain the number of bears we currently have on the landscape, with the bear population neither increasing or decreasing.”

She said that regulated bear hunting is an effective way to keep the bears healthy and reinforce a bear’s natural fear of humans, while allowing the animal to be used, particularly for its meat.

A survey of hunters shows that 99.6% use the bear meat​ they harvest, Olfenbuttel explained. Mostly they feed their household, share the meat or donate it.

“I estimated that the annual regulated bear hunting season provides over 610,000 plates of food for people, which is especially helpful for those North Carolinians that live in food deserts or who are on fixed incomes and have limited financial resources to purchase meat from a store,” she said. Adding that doesn’t account for other ways hunters use a harvested bear, such as rendering the fat, eating the organ meat, and using the bones to make bone broth.

She said that with the commission’s success in recovering the bear population, “we are seeing increased interest from all over North America, and beyond, to hunt bears in North Carolina, partly due to the number of black bears we have, but also due to the size of our bears.”

And bear hunting in eastern North Carolina has definitely grown in the last five or six years.

Luker has led guided hunting tours in the past. “There’s not much to do in Hyde and Tyrrell counties” and he stumbled across the opportunity. Though he enjoys guiding, he said the commission is his priority and “really believes in what the agency does.” In a quick exchange last week, he mentioned that he hasn’t had time to lead any tours this year.

While Luker drove during that recent evening through miles and miles of uninhabited, protected lands, he said that coastal North Carolina wasn’t even on the radar as a destination for black bear hunting until the last five or six years.

Some influential hunters were invited to the area, had a successful trip and put it on social media, and the industry has grown.

There are several outfitters that offer guided hunts on the coast, costing anywhere from $2,000 to $15,000 per person, and in some cases more. The amount depends on the company, length of hunt – usually from one to five days — and what is included in the package like lodging or meals.

Luker said the rates haven’t always been that way, just in the last four or five years, but seem to be leveling out. The guided hunts bring in what he called “high-net-worth” clients who “want to do something that they can’t do anywhere else in the world.” It’s becoming an economic driver.

“They contribute so much money to the local economy here,” he said.

License, e-stamp required

Luker reiterated that the hunter needs a big game license, which can be purchased through Wildlife Resources Commission, and a bear management electronic stamp, or e-stamp.

The license holder is only permitted to take one black bear a season. The bear must be more than 75 pounds and sows, or female bears, with cubs are off limits. The hunter must notify the commission of their take by calling 1-800-I-Got-One.

Bear hunting isn’t like deer hunting, though. “It’s not tricky,” he said. “Bears have a great nose, but they can’t see. Camouflage is not an important aspect of the hunt. You’ve got to wear blaze orange, and you have got to bring a firearm that’s capable of taking the animal clean.”

Luker said that for most hunts offered by an outfitter, the guide usually brings five to 10 hunters to approved land early and gets them ready to hunt by 30 minutes before dawn, when hunting is allowed to begin.

Some outfitters have a processing facility where they can weigh and dress the animal, though sometimes a hunter will remove internal organs on-site before moving the bear to make it lighter.

The hunt must be in a designated bear management area and the hunter must use approved methods only during bear hunting season, which is usually announced about nine months before it starts. Once the guides know the dates, the clients are contacted and told what to expect and what to bring.

“Generally, about every 10 years, our agency will do a bear management plan and make recommendations,” Luker said, but staff use data from year to year to establish the season.

Olfenbuttel is an author of the management plan, the most recent written while she was black bear and furbearer biologist from 2007 to 2024, and in the game and furbearer program.

She said the program works to ensure the long-term viability and sustained harvest of 71 game and furbearer species by providing the best possible scientific information on the status and management of each species and its habitats so that regulations and management are based on objective data and participate in planning and coordination of management directives based on sound science.

“For eastern North Carolina, that means monitoring the bear population using various metrics and surveys, such as harvest rates, age-at-harvest, sex ratio of harvest, number of vehicle-bear collisions, number of human-bear conflicts, as well as conducting bear research,” she said.

The commission is currently estimating the density and population of black bears across the 37 counties making up the Coastal Plain Bear Management Unit, which Olfenbuttel said is the first time the agency had conducted a study of this scale in eastern North Carolina for data to inform future bear management.

“The program uses all the data collected from multiple sources to monitor the status of the bear population and make informed, science-based management recommendations,” Olfenbuttel continued.

Because of regulated hunting, Olfenbuttel said the commission is meeting bear population objectives in eastern North Carolina, but as development increases, people and bears are living more closely together.

“Since bears can easily adapt to living near or in communities and neighborhoods, it will become increasingly common for people to see a bear in their neighborhoods and towns,” she continued. “This is normal, but people can do their part to live responsibly with bears by following the BearWise Basics, which mainly involves securing bird feeders, garbage, and not feeding or approaching bears.”

Note: Coastal Review will not publish Thursday and Friday this week in recognition of the Thanksgiving and Native American Heritage Day holidays, respectively.

First of two parts.

The American black bear population is healthy on the North Carolina coast, but that hasn’t always been the case.

The species was in jeopardy in the 1900s for multiple reasons, but particularly habitat loss, and by the mid-1900s, bears could only be found in the most remote coastal swamps and mountains, according to the North Carolina Wildlife Resources Commission, which manages the species.

Since the commission stepped in 50 years ago, the population has been restored to nearly its historic range, Game Mammals and Surveys Supervisor Colleen Olfenbuttel recently explained to Coastal Review.

“The successful recovery of North Carolina’s black bear population was primarily due to conservation and research efforts implemented by the North Carolina Wildlife Resources Commission from the 1970s to present,” she said.

The only kind of bear in the state — and in eastern U.S. — these omnivores are mostly found in the mountains and on the coast. In eastern North Carolina, bears usually prefer uninhabited lowland hardwoods, swamps and pocosins.

Where bears outnumber people

After an early dinner at the Mexican grill in Columbia and chat with the locals about bear sightings, Coastal Review met with Chase Luker, a hunter safety specialist with the commission, at the Pocosin Lakes National Wildlife Refuge visitor center.

The goal was to cruise around the refuge, which has one of the largest concentrations of black bears found in the United States, according to its website, and some farmland, with permission, with the hope to see bears in their coastal habitat.

Luker, as he steered his king cab truck out of the parking lot and toward the refuge, said “this is Tyrrell County, where bears outnumber people two to one, but there’s only about 3,500 people in the county,” and it’s the same story for Hyde County. The bears probably outnumber people there two to one, as well.

Dusk is the best time of day to see a bear because, “Bears are smart,” Luker said. They have an aversion to humans because humans “mean trouble,” and “just try to avoid confrontation. But late in the day, you’ll see bears starting to come into these fields. They’ll stay in them as long as they possibly can, and will make their way out around daybreak.”

Luker is originally from Alabama, but has been in eastern North Carolina for decades. He has managed youth programs in the region and is currently specialist for the hunter safety program’s 13-county District 1, which covers the northeastern quarter of the state, from Currituck County south to Carteret County and Greene County being the farthest west. The program provides free firearm safety courses while it emphasizes ethics and responsibility, conservation and wildlife management, wildlife identification, survival and first aid, specialty hunting and tree stand safety, the website states.

Luker cruised down a narrow country road before turning onto a wide gravel lane that seemed to stretch for miles. As dusk crept over the refuge, he expertly maneuvered his truck along the network of bumpy dirt paths, taking turns only a local would know. His familiarity with the area also is in part because he’s led hunting tours on nearby private land for an outdoor experience business.

He stopped every 15 to 20 minutes to check out the different paw prints on the dirt tracks, or slow down with hopes to catch a bear as it pops out of the woods or skitters down a tree.

During one of these stops, he nodded toward a stretch of land the size of a few football fields and explained that the breeding season for black bears is in May and June. During that window, bears are everywhere. He added that when people spot a bear limping, it’s usually not because the bear has been run over or been caught in a trap. That bear has most likely been defeated in a fight.

“When they fight, they fight with their front feet, and they bite and chew,” and it takes them a few months to heal, he said.

After breeding, the sows, or female bears, have delayed implantation, which means the egg is fertilized but doesn’t begin to develop until late fall. The bears give birth in January or February, according to the agency.

Species management

The Wildlife Resources Commission manages all aspects of the species, including conservation measures, hunting regulations and seasons, as well as research, which has focused on bear habitat use and home ranges, procedures for estimating bear populations and reducing vehicle collisions.

Olfenbuttel helped write the agency’s current bear management plan that outlines how regulated hunting is key to achieving and maintaining black bear population objectives.

The current stated goal for the agency is to “use science-based decision making and biologically-sound management principles to manage black bear populations in balance with available habitats and human expectations to assure long-term existence and hunting opportunities.”

Olfenbuttel has been in the wildlife profession for nearly 30 years. Before taking on her current supervisor role earlier this year, she had been the black bear and furbearer biologist since 2007. She earned her bachelor’s in wildlife biology from Ohio University and master’s in wildlife management from Virginia Tech, and has been in the wildlife profession for nearly 30 years.

The commission has several rules the hunter must follow, which are listed on the commission’s website. Among those is a prohibition on taking sows with cubs or bears weighing less than 75 pounds.

Hunters must have a bear e-stamp, in addition to a hunting license and big game hunting privileges. “Bag limit is one bear, you must report your bear, and you must submit the premolar (tooth) from your harvested bear to the N.C. Wildlife Resources Commission, in addition to other requirements and restrictions,” Olfenbuttel said, adding that there are further restrictions on game lands for hunting bears.

The commission determines rules and dates for hunting season, which is this time of year but exact dates vary by county. The commission allowed hunting for a few weeks earlier this month in Camden, Chowan, Pasquotank, Currituck, Gates, Perquimans, Beaufort, Bertie, Craven, Hertford, Jones, Martin, Washington, Dare, Hyde and Tyrrell counties and will reopen the season Dec. 14-29.

For Bladen, Brunswick, Carteret, Columbus, Cumberland, Duplin, New Hanover, Onslow, Pamlico Pender, Robeson and Sampson counties, season is Nov. 11 to Jan. 1.

“Unlike other causes of bear mortality, such as vehicle collisions or disease, we can regulate levels of hunting mortality,” Olfenbuttel said, adding that regulated hunting is the primary cause of bear mortality, “and that is good, as we can control harvest levels based on our bear population objectives, plus the bear can be utilized by the hunter, hunting is a quick and humane death, unlike disease or starvation, and a bear dying from vehicle collision may also result in a person being injured or killed.”

When the commission began managing the bear population in the 1970s, there was “direct cooperation and help from bear hunters,” Olfenbuttel said.

Hunters help fund conservation and research efforts through hunting license sales and the Pittman-Robertson Act of 1937, which imposes an excise tax on firearms and ammunition, as well as contributed data needed to make science-based management decisions.

Bear hunters also advocated for increased regulations on bear hunting, such as establishing bag limits, season lengths, minimum weight limits and license requirements, to assure the sustainable harvest of the bear population for generations to come.

Most recently, bear hunters joined the commission in calling for the state law that now requires hunters to submit the premolar tooth from their harvested bear, so that agency can use the data to determine its age at harvest and monitor bear population growth trends, Olfenbuttel said.

Luker said that “Hunting is the most reasonable conservation tool. Hunters are citizen-scientists on the ground, they know what’s going on out here. When they harvest a bear, they’re more than happy to send any hair samples, teeth samples, whatever’s needed.”

While bear hunting helps conserve the population, it also helps farmers.

Black bears in eastern North Carolina can cause tremendous agricultural crop damage and financial losses to a farmer, Olfenbuttel said. Regulated hunting allows farmers to offset their financial losses and address crop damage by having licensed hunters pay to access their land and harvest some of these bears.

“The regulated hunting season and the hunting leases that bear hunters are willing to pay landowners and farmers, helps maintain tolerance for bear populations on the agricultural landscape,” she explained.

Visible damage

As Luker guided his truck along the well-worn paths, he pointed out several times during that evening just how much destruction a bear can cause to crops.

“That was corn right there,” he said while pointing out the window to where bears had obliterated several rows of the crop. The closer the land was to the bear sanctuary, the more corn the bears ate.

“Bears typically don’t eat beans but they love corn, and as that corn grows, bears will move into the fields and not leave until the corn is picked,” he said. “It’s shaded. There are no bugs in there because of the pesticides and when they eat the corn, they get all the moisture they need, all the water they need.”

It’s a point of contention.

“Farmers can’t stand it, and I can understand why. Sometimes you can expect up to 20% loss.” For example, if a farmer plants 100 acres of corn, and expects to yield 200 bushels an acre at $5 a bushel, a 20% loss is substantial.

“The margins aren’t super high in farming, and bears literally eat into it,” Luker said.

He said many of the regional outfitters have working relationships with landowners who allow guided hunts on their property.

Next in the series: Bear hunting as heritage, conservation

Note: Coastal Review will not publish Thursday and Friday this week in recognition of the Thanksgiving and Native American Heritage Day holidays, respectively.

Second part in a series.

While wildfires are almost always the result of human activity, climate change is altering wildfires and how they’re managed.

North Carolina Forest Service Public Information Officer Philip Jackson said that while nearly all wildfires in the state correlate with human activity, climate change is affecting the nature of wildfires different ways.

First, the way precipitation falls is changing and becoming more extreme, Assistant State Climatologist Corey Davis said in an interview. “Instead of rain evenly spread out throughout a season or year, heavier rainfall is happening on fewer days with longer dry spells in between.”

Warming temperatures are an important part, too, and are making dry spells more severe and prone to wildfire activity. This has been especially apparent within the past few years. Last fall and again in June of this year, the state slipped into drought after just a few weeks of hot, dry weather.

“At both times, parts of the state went more than 20 days in a row without a drop of rainfall all while we were dealing with unseasonably warm temperatures — above 100 degrees in some areas earlier this summer,” Davis said. “Just like in your backyard garden, forests and other fire-prone ecosystems dry out in a hurry during times like that, and that brings the threat of wildfires.”

The State Climate Office, based in Raleigh, uses a handful of tools to monitor climate change and its effects, including measuring and archiving weather observations from more than 350 weather stations across the state, almost half of which have at least 30 years of historical observations.

Davis said this helps with understanding not only what current conditions are like, but also how conditions are changing, “and we’re consistently seeing more extremes in all directions.”

Most recently, that has been record rainfall totals in from Hurricane Helene in western North Carolina. Earlier this summer, conditions were extreme heat and dry weather. Davis’ office can use that kind of historical data to add context to those events. He cited Greenville as an example: The Pitt County city saw its longest streak of dry weather — 23 consecutive days without rainfall — since the fall of 2000.

The office is involved with research and partnerships that are helping explore climate change and its impacts, as well.

“Heat-mapping campaigns have shown us how much hotter certain parts of cities can get depending on their land use and land cover. There are applications there for forests, too, since we’ve found at a very micro scale on NC State’s campus, for instance, how bare ground and a lack of tree cover can affect surface temperatures,” he said.

That data, research and those partnerships all came together in the North Carolina Climate Science Report that the state climate office helped compile in 2020.

The report includes some key findings and projections related to wildfires, including a projected 300% or more increase in the number of weeks with the risk of very large fires, or burning more than 5,000 hectares – nearly 12,400 acres – by the middle of this century, compared to the end of the last century.

“And it notes that increases in temperatures and associated drying rates are very likely, with future droughts very likely to be warmer with a higher chance of wildfires,” Davis said.

Temperatures across the state are trending warmer in all four seasons, but it’s especially remarkable how much winters have been warming. According to the Climate Trends Plotter tool, the winter average temperatures in eastern North Carolina have been increasing by 0.5 to 0.75°F per decade over the past 50 years, and by more than 1.5 degrees Fahrenheit per decade in most areas since the year 2000.

“That’s having the effect of shrinking our winter seasons, and on the shoulders especially in February, we’re seeing more spring-like weather. That’s threatening to begin our spring fire seasons even earlier, and have them last even longer,” Davis said.

“We also see those changes reflected in future projections,” he continued, siting one study that projects a 74% increase in the area burned by lightning-caused wildfires in North Carolina between 2011 and 2060. “That’s a product of both longer fire seasons and warmer temperatures throughout the spring that make fuels more susceptible to burn.”

Other research shows more than a 200% increase in the number of days with suitable conditions for very large wildfires, which burn more than 12,000 acres, along the state’s coastline.

“Historically, these events have been very rare since they require all of those weather ingredients — extreme dryness in place with warm temperatures, low humidity, and high winds — for fires to grow that large in our region. But they’re expected to happen more often in the future,” Davis said.

Prescribed burns and climate change

Jackson explained that prescribed burns benefit forests and wildlife while reducing the risk and impacts of future catastrophic wildfires. The goal for these hazard reduction burns is to reduce the understory shrubs, vines, woody debris, needles and leaves that may be available to burn during unplanned wildfires.

“We will burn it in a planned manner that is of lower intensity, eliminating those fuel sources, helping prevent future wildfires or minimizing impacts from future wildfires. Low intensity prescribed fire also helps manage forestlands where many species require frequent burns to establish and thrive,” Jackson said.

The Forest Service also uses prescribed fire for site preparation purposes, also known as site-prep burns.

“These prescribed burns occur after harvesting to assist with reforestation activities. It allows for planting natural regeneration of tree seedlings, it’s less invasive and damaging than mechanical site preparation and is sometimes conducted as a pre-treatment to tree planting,” Jackson said.

Davis said that there’s been a lot of success with prescribed burns in North Carolina, and even though there’s still wildfires, those events are typically more manageable and less severe because of proactive prescribed burning practices, “But it’s already getting tougher to find windows to do this burning, and that problem is expected to become even worse in the future,” for a few reasons.

One, North Carolina is a fast-growing, fast-developing state, and we’ve got more acreage classified as wildland-urban interface than any state in the country, Davis explained.

“That means when we want to do burns in these natural areas, it’s more likely that people will notice it, so land and fire managers have to be very careful about burning when the wind direction is just right and making sure burns don’t linger overnight, when smoke can get trapped near the ground,” Davis said. “But climate change is also affecting our ability to burn. We’re getting fewer of those Goldilocks days when it’s not too wet or not too dry to have a successful burn, and the rapid changes from wet to dry patterns are making it tough to anticipate those periods.”

Historically, the most common times for burning in the spring and summer are becoming less suitable for burning as conditions then are hotter and drier, Davis said.

He explained that a study of the Southeastern United States looked at the suitability of prescribed burning based on projected weather conditions, and it found a sharp decrease in the number of suitable days in the transition seasons, or spring and fall, with the summer expected to become almost entirely unsuitable for burning by the end of the century.

“That’s largely driven by the warming temperatures, which makes the atmosphere less stable, the vertical transmission of heat and dispersion of smoke less predictable, and fuels drier so that they burn hotter and flames spread more quickly,” Davis said. “That’s all adding up to a big concern that we’ll see more frequent and more severe wildfires, with fewer opportunities to manage our forests in North Carolina to help avoid those events.”

Jackson said that the Forest Service predetermines weather and fuel parameters needed in order to safely execute a prescribed burn operation.

“If the weather doesn’t produce the ideal conditions that we need to safely carry out a burn, we simply won’t do it,” Jackson said, explaining that he has driven two hours to Stokes County, geared up in full personal protective equipment along with a dozen other personnel to conduct a prescribed burn, “only to cancel it before ever lighting a torch and putting fire on the ground. The weather either gives us what we need to carry out a burn safely, or it doesn’t. And if it doesn’t, we simply live to fight another day.”

First of two parts

As the fall wildfire season begins in North Carolina, the lead agency that responds to these uncontrolled fires in natural areas encourages residents be vigilant while burning outside.

“I’d like to remind folks about the importance of exercising caution with all outdoor fires, especially yard debris burns,” North Carolina Forest Service Division Public Information Officer Philip Jackson told Coastal Review.

Human activity causes 99% of North Carolina’s wildfires. Of that 99%, nearly half are caused by careless debris burning and escaped yard debris burns, which is the leading cause of wildfires across the state each year, Jackson said. The other 1% of uncontrolled fires are caused by natural ignition such as lightning.

“Fire activity has remained low over the last few weeks due to tropical storms and other rain events. However, as is the case most year’s during the month of October, we expect October to dry out some over the coming weeks, increasing fire activity,” Jackson said Wednesday.

Assistant State Climatologist Corey Davis told Coastal Review that there are three main components that each make for ideal wildfire conditions in eastern North Carolina: the time of year, the weather, and the ecosystem.

From late February through mid-April, grasses and other vegetation are coming out of their winter dormancy. Before the vegetation becomes fully green, they’re still pretty dry and flammable.

Deciduous trees are budding during this time, as well. But again, before the leaves have fully emerged, the leaves and trucks are fairly flammable. Without those leaves, they don’t offer as much shade for the vegetation beneath them, which helps it dry out even more, Davis explained.

These circumstances lead to the weather component.

“Warm and sunny days during the spring can cause environmental conditions to dry out more quickly, and as we receive more direct sunlight throughout the season, that can also cause fast-drying conditions in our forest fuels, which includes that not-yet-green vegetation and any dead woody material or litter covering the ground,” Davis said.

In addition to having those summer-like characteristics such as hot days with lots of sunshine, the spring is ultimately a transition season, and one feature of the winter climate that can carry over into the spring is lower relative humidity. “When we get one of those less humid air masses in place during the spring, especially after a warm period, then those dry fuels can be especially crispy and ready to burn,” Davis explained.

Last, there are a few different types of ecosystems in eastern North Carolina where we typically expect to see wildfires. Much of the southern and central coastal plain was once covered by native wiregrass pine savannas, where fires are a natural and common feature, happening every two to five years.

At low intensity, these fires are beneficial since they clear out competing vegetation and thin out the canopy so that native species like Carolina wiregrass and longleaf pines can thrive.

“Over the past century or so, the prevalence of these longleaf pine ecosystems has drastically declined across the region, Davis explained. This is because the trees were cut down initially for timber and naval stores such as tar, pitch, and turpentine, and more recently because of conversion to agricultural lands and other development.

“Where we do still have wiregrass ecosystems, the longleaf pines have been replaced by less fire-tolerant species such as loblolly, so fires may not be as effective. Historical fire suppression in these areas means that more fuels have built up within them, so when they burn now, it tends to be at higher intensity, which is both less beneficial and more likely to become difficult to control or contain,” Davis said.

The other major fire-prone ecosystems in eastern North Carolina are the pocosins near the coastline in places like the Pocosin Lakes National Wildlife Refuge in Hyde, Tyrrell and Washington counties.

“These are fairly low-lying areas where the water table is usually very high, often submerging the soils and creating a peat swamp sort of environment. But during times of drought, the water table drops and that highly organic soil dries out, which makes it very easy to burn,” Davis said.

These types of wildfires are tough to contain because of how remote and inaccessible many of these locations are, and because the fire can burn into the ground and consume the soil itself.

“There’s no easy way to extinguish them except for flooding the soil with as much water as possible or waiting for help from the rain so the water table rises again. Until that happens, these fires can burn and smolder for weeks or months, all while releasing lots of smoke that can be carried by the winds to different corners of the state,” Davis said.

“For those reasons, these pocosin areas have historically seen our state’s largest wildfires, and continue to be an area of concern any time there’s a springtime dry spell,” such as the April 2023 fire in the Croatan National Forest.

“Putting all of that together, the perfect conditions for wildfires in eastern North Carolina would be in late March or early April following a month or so of unseasonably warm and dry weather.”

Davis continued that with vegetation either dormant, dead or not green just yet, the environment would be highly flammable.

“The spark for fires could come from human activity like debris burns, or on a larger scale from lightning strikes along a strong cold frontal passage. Behind that front, a dry and less humid air mass would move in, and gusty winds would spread any newly ignited fires quickly across the landscape,” he said.

By late September, “these same trends from the spring happen again, but in reverse. Our temperatures can remain relatively warm well into October, and once trees drop their leaves, they ramp up the fuel loading at the surface,” according to the climate office.

So far in 2024, the Forest Service has responded to more than 3,500 wildfires for roughly 13,000 acres, Jackson with the Forest Service said.

The 2023 fall wildfire season was extremely active with nearly 2,000 wildfires statewide, more than 1,200 of which burned in November 2023 alone, Jackson said. “That was during our traditional fall wildfire season where fire risk is elevated, but we had also experienced prolonged drought conditions for much of the fall last year.”

“This is consistent and on pace with what we typically see each year. We usually experience between 4,500 and 5,500 wildfires annually. Frequency and duration are heavily influenced by weather conditions and time of year,” Jackson said, adding that over the last two months, “we’ve seen 119 wildfires for less than 50 acres. That’s considered to be rather quiet in terms of new wildfire starts and minimal acreage, largely due to the amount of rain our state has received recently.”

Jackson said that there’s a common misconception that wildfires are only an issue in the Western United States.

“The American South experiences more wildfires each year than any other region in the U.S.,” Jackson said. “While wildfires in the Western U.S. tend to be more severe while consuming larger chunks of acreage, wildfires in the Southeast U.S. are becoming more common.”

North Carolina had the third most wildfires nationally in 2022, behind only Texas and California. That same year, Texas, California, North Carolina, Georgia and Oklahoma accounted for nearly half of the total wildfires in the U.S.

The wildland-urban interface a big reason why. The wildland-urban interface, or WUI, is where development meets forestland. Three of the top four states with the most homes in the wildland urban interface are states located in the South, with North Carolina in the lead.

“North Carolina remains the leading state in the U.S. relative to number of acres in the wildland urban interface. As North Carolina’s population continues to grow, we’ll likely see more people living and recreating in the wildland urban interface,” Jackson said. 

With almost all wildfires in the state correlating with human activity, as the population increases, more people living and recreating in the wildland urban interface, potentially resulting in an increase in the number of wildfires our state experiences.

Statewide, between 2010 and 2020, 41,551 wildfires burned 399,125 acres, and from 1990 to 2010, North Carolina saw an increase of 3,005,048 acres in the wildland-urban interface.

“North Carolina’s WUI Risk Index estimates 2.3 million acres are at risk for moderate to major impacts from wildfires to people and their homes,” Jackson said.

Changes to a controversial bill that would have allowed development to trump historical and environmental protections went before the Senate judiciary committee Wednesday for discussion, and the measure now features a new provision allowing additional hardened shoreline structures to be built on Bald Head Island.

Sen. Norm Sanderson, R-Pamlico and also representing Carteret, Chowan, Dare, Hyde, Pasquotank, Perquimans and Washington counties, explained during the meeting that the previous language to change Coastal Area Management Act, or CAMA, permitting process rules was being replaced with directives for the Department of Natural and Cultural Resources regarding historically significant land.

With the new language, Sanderson said Wednesday, the department would be required, “upon request,” to inform the owner or prospective buyer of property “in an area of environmental concern of anything that may be of archaeological or historical significance,” Sanderson said.

The language also would prohibit the Office of State Archaeology, under the Department of Natural and Cultural Resources, to add conditions to a CAMA permit restricting development for three years after its issued, and directs the state agency to apply for funding to purchase properties in an area of environmental concern that has archaeological or historical significance, he said.

The new language replaces, as Sanderson explained it during a June 6 Agriculture, Energy, and Environment committee meeting, an attempt to harness the Division of Coastal Management, which he said had “forced developers to conduct lengthy, open-ended and costly historical and archaeological investigations to obtain a permit or as a condition of a permit.”

The previous language, Sanderson continued on June 6, “to some degree reins in DCM’s historical and archaeological jurisdiction to develop activities that involve actual land disturbance, and so that specifies the circumstances under which an area can be designated as an Area of Environmental Concern based on cultural, scientific or scenic values, or natural systems.”

Cultural Resources Communications Director Schorr Johnson said Thursday that while the new language is an “improvement from the original proposal, the Office of State Archaeology already provides information to property owners and prospective property owners about archaeological resources on their property. The new language attempts to codify that practice while also undermining archaeological protections. We look forward to continuing to work with the legislature on this proposal.”

Regarding the new section on hardened shorelines, Sanderson told the judiciary committee Wednesday that the language modifies the decade-old statute that allowed a limited number of terminal groins as a pilot project along the North Carolina shoreline.

Bald Head Island was the first town to build a terminal groin after a former law banning hardened erosion control structures on the North Carolina coast was repealed in 2011.

The new language defines “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, and changes the number of permits from six to seven to construct a terminal groin.

Bald Head Island has been working with the Department of Environmental Quality on the provision to allow the village to apply for a permit to build a second groin on the island nearest to Frying Pan Shoals, Sanderson explained.

“Upon passing, the village plans to do robust studies on the best environmental path forward for the new structure,” Sanderson said. “The section would also enable Bald Head Island to eliminate a number of geotextile sand tubes that have to be replaced every five to seven years at great expense to residents and replace them with permanent rock structures that are equal or less in number and size than the existing tubes.”

Southern Environmental Law Center North Carolina Legislative Counsel Brooks Rainey Pearson told Coastal Review in an email Thursday that the section added via proposed committee substitute Wednesday would change the definition of “terminal groin” to allow a new groin on the east end of south beach on Bald Head Island.

“We are against any expansion of the armoring (or ‘hardening’) of the coast, and believe that expanding the number of new groins allowed under state law will effectively open the entire coast to terminal groins on N.C.’s public trust beaches,” Pearson said in the email. “Groins are incredibly expensive to build and maintain, and encourage litigation as homeowners on the ‘wrong’ side of the groin lose sand/beach to properties on the ‘right’ side of the groin.”

Bald Head Island Public Information Officer Carin Faulkner said Thursday morning in response for a comment that the village council had not reviewed the proposed language, but village staff plan to present the information during the council’s 10 a.m. Friday meeting, which can be viewed online.

Division of Coastal Management officials said Thursday afternoon that the new provision would make the Village of Bald Head Island eligible to apply for a permit to construct another terminal groin near Frying Pan Shoals and it increases the cumulative number of terminal groins that the Coastal Resources Commission can permit from six to seven.

Sanderson, Lazzara want to ‘rein in’ regulatory authority

When the previous language, which was replaced Wednesday, had gone before the Senate agriculture committee June 6, both Sanderson and Sen. Michael Lazzara, R-Onslow, said the intention was to “rein in” the Division of Coastal Management and CAMA authority.

The North Carolina General Assembly passed the Coastal Area Management Act in 1974 to guide development on land near coastal waters. The Coastal Resources Commission adopts rules for CAMA that are carried out by the Division of Coastal Management, under the Department of Environmental Quality. The commission also determines for the 20 coastal counties area of environmental concern, which are those areas that are vulnerable to flooding or erosion, or may have environmental, social, economic or aesthetic values that make it valuable to the state.

State archaeology officials said in a June 10 response that the language was linked to a subdivision being built in Cedar Point where “extensive Native American human burials and an undisturbed Woodland period (1000 BC – AD 1600) village site have been found” and the bill as it was written then “would endanger some of North Carolina’s most significant archaeological and historical resources, including Native American village sites and human burials.”

Department of Natural and Cultural Resources Public Information Officer Michele Walker said Friday that two archaeological sites were found in the 1970s at the tract where Bridge View subdivision is now being developed.

Walker said that the department, through the Office of State Archaeology and the State Historic Preservation Office, is one of 10 state agencies that review CAMA major permit applications. These agencies may recommend specific permit conditions based on the permit review.

In response to the division’s CAMA Major Permit application review, the Office of State Archeology noted that the area of potential effect for the proposed Bridge View subdivision contained these two known and unassessed prehistoric archaeological sites that are adjacent to four other archaeological sites identified in a survey for the neighboring subdivision of the 1990s Magens Bay subdivision, she said.

“During construction at the site, the remains of at least five individuals were inadvertently disturbed in the developer’s Phase 1 area, which is outside the CAMA defined area of environmental concern,” Walker said. “And an initial archaeological survey within the AEC has identified 11 additional human burial sites, each of which may include multiple individuals. This initial archaeological survey included test trenches that, cumulatively, uncovered just over 1 acre of the almost 21-acre area of environmental concern.”

State Archaeologist Chris Southerly told Coastal Review last week that the “initial findings at this site indicate that this area was a pre-contact-era American Indian settlement which was occupied over multiple generations.”

Southerly said the site “is one of the most significant archaeological sites ever identified in North Carolina and could help us to understand more about these ancient people and their day-to-day lives. It’s important to recognize that this site contains multiple human burial sites – the ancestors of people living in coastal North Carolina today. These once-vibrant people deserve the utmost respect and care of their final resting place.”

Sanderson still could try to harness CAMA

Sanderson suggested at the agriculture committee meeting earlier this month that, during the legislative session most likely to begin in January, lawmakers can review CAMA parameters, “and see which ones are still good, which ones are outdated, which ones need to be changed or updated.”

“We welcome any opportunity to improve on our 50-year history of balancing the protection of coastal resources and the public trust with economic development. We all share a common desire to enjoy a healthy environment and economic growth. We support any reforms that are thoughtful, stakeholder engaged, and that will result in positive outcomes for a healthy coast and for the public,” division officials said Thursday.

It’s been a long time, Sanderson said in noting 50 years had passed since the landmark coastal measure became law. “CAMA has done a lot of great work on the coast, exactly what it was intended for,” but it’s time for a review “and we need to make sure that what we’re doing is still relevant for the coastal area, for the environment and for the people who want to take advantage of our areas.”

Division officials last week in response explained that eliminating its regulatory role does not improve the process for the public, “it simply replaces it with a much slower federal process, and certain permit applications that are now processed by DCM within two weeks could be taken over by the US Army Corps of Engineers and take six months or more to process.”

The division “serves as a permitting clearinghouse for coastal development so that one application to us covers all state and federal permits in most cases. Instead of having DCM guide applicants on necessary permits and standards, applicants will have to figure those out on their own and may inadvertently find themselves in violation of state or federal law due to a lack of awareness.”

The primary goal of CAMA is to balance protection of the public trust — environmental, cultural, aesthetic, recreational use — with private use and economic development, DCM officials said.

“DCM has a 50-year history of finding this balance, coordinating with other state and federal regulatory and resource agencies to continuously streamline the permitting process. This has made NC one of the most efficient coastal management programs in the nation. Some of the HB385 provisions stand to reverse years of progress to the detriment of the public,” officials continued. “Local governments may face heavier burdens on their staff time and resources to manage development activity that is currently handled by the state, including adopting and enforcing new ordinances, and resolving disputes and legal challenges.”

Sanderson also noted about the previous language discussed at the agriculture committee meeting June 6 that the provision would limit CAMA permits to development activities only within an area of environmental concern, and that Division of Coastal Management would be the only agency authorized to review and issue CAMA permits.

Division of Coastal Management officials said their agency collaborates with Cultural Resources staff throughout the permitting process if archaeological work on a project is requested, including after a permit is issued if there is a condition placed on the permit related to archaeological resources.

“Between 2020 and 2023, the Division of Cultural and Natural Resources reviewed 737 projects that were seeking major coastal permits and recommended archaeological work on 13 of those projects,” Walker said. The Office of State Archaeology “has limited to no statutory enforcement authority outside of its commenting responsibilities for environmental permits. Human burials, both marked and unmarked, do have statutory protections.”

The bill as it was previously written would have restricted the Office of State Archaeology, among other state agencies, from being consulted or recommending conditions on permits issued pursuant to CAMA.

“This sets an alarming precedent and could leave the permitting body or official unable to consult archaeological experts within state government when determining a project’s impact on archaeological and historical resources, including unmarked human remains,” she said.

Second of two parts. Read Part 1.

EAST LAKE — Before guardrails were installed about 20 years ago along U.S. Highways 64 and 264 in rural northeastern North Carolina, residents avoided driving at night in fear of striking a large animal and then sliding unseen into the abyss of a roadside canal.

Even now, with the barriers in place, locals know to drive with caution through the dark wilds of Alligator River National Wildlife Refuge, scanning the edge of the forest for glowing eyes or sudden movements of creatures on night hunts — raccoon, possum, bobcat, fox, bear, deer, coyotes and red wolves.

Vehicle strikes are a serious hazard to humans and animals, but they can be especially devastating to the recovery of the endangered wolves that number only about 22 in the wild, 18 of which are collared and within the 1.7-million-acre management area encompassing public and private land in Beaufort, Dare, Hyde, Tyrrell and Washington counties.

When a wild red wolf is killed, the loss can destroy the cohesion of a pack, creating a negative impact on reproduction that is so critical to the species’ survival.

Last year, for example, in two separate instances, wolves from the same pack were struck and killed on U.S. 64, said wildlife biologist Joe Madison, manager for the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service’s Red Wolf Recovery Program.

Madison told Coastal Review that one of the males and one of the pups were killed. “So that family group kind of got messed up, and we ended up capturing and placing the female for that family group back in captivity.”

With the loss of her mate, Madison explained, the female had started wandering to a different area and creating issues, such as getting into chickens that made her no longer suitable for the wild. “But it was going well until that mortality of the male and one of the pups, and then it kind of went downhill from there.”

After years of study in the early 2000s, the North Carolina Department of Transportation had developed plans to construct numerous wildlife crossings along U.S. 64 in Dare and Tyrrell counties as part of a proposed 27.3-mile-long road widening and bridge-replacement project. The department has since dropped the widening project, but $110 million provided recently by the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law allowed NCDOT to replace the 60-year-old Lindsey C. Warren Bridge over Alligator River. That $270 million project, which began this spring, will include wildlife crossings and under-road tie-ins at both ends of the bridge.

But it’s not enough, conservation groups say. Granted, more wildlife crossings would be costly to build in Alligator River’s swampy land, but considering the enormous investment that’s been put into the life of each red wolf in the interest of restoration of a unique species, these groups contend they’re worth it.

“That’s why one of the things we’re stressing this year is trying to make progress on getting (assistance from) NCDOT, who’s making great strides in the wildlife road crossings department,” Ron Sutherland, chief scientist at the nonprofit Wildlands Network, told Coastal Review recently. “We want them to try to put in for federal grants to build wildlife crossings and fencing on 64 through the refuge in particular.”

Sutherland had connected with an anonymous donor who recently pledged $2 million in matching funds for a grant to fund wildlife crossings in the refuge to protect red wolves, and the nonprofit Center for Biological Diversity stepped in to help raise the match, he said in recent email.

“I’m working directly with NCDOT to try to bring a big proposal for U.S. 64 to Federal Highways, which can only happen if we have enough nonfederal matching funds to work with, he said, adding that the state would have to provide a 20% match to the Federal Highway Administration money.

Although the costs versus benefit of keeping red wolves away from vehicle tires is clear, he said, wildlife crossings through a refuge teeming with wildlife would provide plenty of benefits to every creature dashing, hopping, galumphing, scurrying, slithering or crawling across the highway.

“That stretch of Highway 64 through the refuge and through the Alligator River game lands, it’s got to be up there in terms of national priorities for reducing roadkill in terms of the sheer numbers of wildlife,” Sutherland said. “There were like tens of thousands of dead animals that they recorded in the DOT-funded study. And so it’s definitely not just the wolves, but bears and deer and bobcats and so many turtles, so many snakes … that I’ve seen dead on that road. Nobody wants to see that.”

According to the draft environmental impact statement for the then-proposed widening project, 36% of all crashes and 77% of night crashes on the two-lane road were because of animals. Five crashes occurred within a milelong stretch in Tyrrell County about a mile west of the bridge.

Between July 1996 to June 1999, the fatal crash rate for the project area was 4.13 crashes per 100 motor vehicle miles. After the guardrails were installed along the canals on U.S. 64, the fatal crash rate went down to 1.02 per 100 miles.

The proposed widening had called for about 11 overpasses or underpasses and dozens of smaller structures for amphibians, reptiles and small mammals. Four wildlife crossings that were installed decades ago off U.S. 64 between Columbia and Plymouth had been shown to be about 90% effective, a U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service biologist had said in 2013. Designed with 6- to 8-foot-high fences at the road edge and both sides of the opening, the fence corrals animals toward underpasses, culverts or a bridge.

Travis Wilson, a biologist with the North Carolina Wildlife Resources Commission Habitat Conservation Division, said that the east and west sides of the proposed 3.2-mile Alligator River bridge replacement will be lengthened to accommodate culverts for fencing and wildlife passage.

Based on his years of monitoring the commission’s wildlife crossings, Wilson said he expects that all species will use the passages, although white-tailed deer tend to be more skittish.

“I have documented most every large mammal, medium-sized mammal, in North Carolina using culverts fairly frequently, from black bear to coyotes, on down,” he told Coastal Review.

If funding is found for additional crossings beyond the bridge, he said they would be designed in different sizes for different species. Vegetation at the crossings, and the fencing would need to be maintained, and some areas in front of passages would need a timber pole “bridge” over a canal.

“That’s really what the crossings are there for,” he said.  “It’s not for a single species — it’s to reduce wildlife mortality by vehicles … to make the highway more permeable to all wildlife.”

While the recovery team would welcome wildlife crossings, the staff’s focus will remain on keeping wild-born and captive-bred wolves who have been introduced into the wild away from any human interactions and activity whatsoever. The less habituated wolves are to humans, the better for both species. The staff also takes pains to minimize contact as much as possible, Madison said, and when handling is necessary, it is done as gently as possible, with voices low and no petting.

In addition to using a hand-held antenna to keep track of the collared wolves, which wear lightweight GPS devices on reflective collars, or for some, smaller VHF radio devices, there are more than 55 remote sensing cameras to see who is where and when.

GPS collars, which cost about $2,000 and weigh 1.3 pounds, cannot exceed 4% of the animal’s body weight. The VHF collars are lighter but don’t send points from satellites.

A red wolf known as No. 2191 was recently sighted in the Milltail area of the Alligator River refuge. Madison said that the young male’s fear of people gives him a better chance to avoid becoming one of the unfortunate number of casualties suffered by red wolves from too-close encounters with people.

Madison held a small radio telemetry antenna during a visit to the Milltail area in late April. A steady beep revealed that the wolf — or more specifically his GPS collar — was close but too far away to see without field glasses. The wolf was born at Wolf Haven International in Washington state, one of the 50 zoological institutions and wildlife centers that participate in the captive-breeding program that is critical to repopulating the species in the wild.

When 2191 — the animals purposely are not named — was deemed ready for life in the wild, he was transferred to Alligator River.

“They did an excellent job,” Madison said, referring to Wolf Haven, “because he wants nothing to do with people.”

After his arrival, 2191 was placed in an acclimation pen before being released on Jan. 29 to meet a female who had come into heat, “in the hopes that they could become a pair,” said Madison.

The good news is that it appears that the handsome wolf is the father of a litter of eight pups born in the refuge in May. It’s the third year in a row that the Milltail pack has produced a litter, and this was the first sired by 2191. The previous breeding male that had sired two litters was killed by a vehicle last year.

Madison said he understands why zoos and conservation centers name the wolves, but it’s against the recovery team policy. The studbook number that is assigned to each animal identifies them in sequence that is vital management information.

American red wolves once had an enormous range in the Southeast and along the Gulf Coast. But because of habitat loss and hunting, the population collapsed. The red wolf was listed as endangered in 1973 and declared extinct in the wild in 1980. In 1987, four pairs of captive-bred wolves were released at Alligator River refuge.

Innovative management practices, such as pup fostering and coyote sterilization programs, grew the population, and by 2010, there were about 130 red wolves in the wild. But politics and funding shortages led to management cuts, and the population plummeted to seven before a federal judge ordered the program to resume in 2021.

Starting over has had its challenges. When 11 captive-born wolves were released in 2022, three wound up dead from gunshots and five were killed by vehicles. In the last year alone, four wolves have been killed by vehicles.

Still, the new litters provide hope, and the restored pup fostering practice — where a captive-born pup is slipped into a wolf den with a litter of pups about the same age — has been successful. So has the renewed coyote sterilization program, which allows hormonally-intact coyotes to hold territory, keep out fertile coyotes and prevent hybrids.

From November until March, the recovery team is kept busy doing captures to collar older pups, perform health check on the mature wolves and sterilize coyotes. There are 16 pens in the Sandy Ridge area, each double-fenced, but only 13 are currently usable. Interns and other staff enter the pen to water and feed the wolves and check on them. At that point, the wolves either go to the farthest distance and pace, or they go to their den box. The never try to escape.

“They don’t want to come near you,” Madison said. “They’re very nonaggressive.”

The pens are especially useful in letting wild wolves visit the captive wolves and start making friends. Recovery staff can watch with the remote-sensing cameras for signs that courtship may be blooming. Once they’re let free, all bets are off.

“We’ve had bonded pairs that came from captivity,” Madison recalled. “They were bonded in captivity, had had previous litters together, they had a litter in the pen, and they still left each other when we opened it up. It was like, ‘Now that I have options, you ain’t it!’”

Sutherland said that he is encouraged that the red wolf population is rebounding and that wildlife crossings are a critical component in its recovery. Healthy numbers of red wolf packs also would go far in pushing out a lot of the opportunistic coyotes and raccoons that swooped into vacated wolf territories, he said.

As they’ve done out west, he said, wolves can keep other species in check not just by eating them, but also by creating a climate of fear that works for the good of the entire ecosystem.

“So that’s the value of having the wolves back,” he said. “Not only are they the only thing that seems to control coyotes, but they also do kill the raccoons and we think that’s important from the standpoint of bird populations.”

“The red wolf was a success story of the Endangered Species Act, and it’s been saved from extinction,” Sutherland said. Now the question is whether the program can rebuild, without the apex predator being plowed down on a strip of asphalt.

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

First of two parts.

EAST LAKE — From a half-mile away, the red wolf was a blur on the flat farmland within Alligator River National Wildlife Refuge. Through binoculars, the young male was strikingly muscular, striding with confidence on the dirt access road, seemingly unperturbed by the spying humans.

“He’s a big guy — yeah, he’s close to 80 pounds,” said Joe Madison, manager for the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service’s Red Wolf Recovery Program, while peering through his field glasses in late April from the cab of his truck. “If we got closer, he’d definitely start running, but I don’t want to do that.”

Madison, a wildlife biologist who has had earlier stints with grizzly bear and gray wolf management, is keenly focused on conservation and protection of the only wild red wolves in the world. He knows that the wolves’ instinctual fear of people is critical to their survival. The two biggest contributors to wild red wolf mortalities are directly related to interactions with humans: The first is intentional killing by gunshot or poisoning, the second is vehicle strikes.

After establishing cooperative programs with landowners and others in the community to prevent wolf shootings, officials with the refuge are now working with the North Carolina Wildlife Resources Commission and the North Carolina Department of Transportation on constructing wildlife crossings at both ends of the planned replacement bridge over the Alligator River on U.S. Highway 64 between Tyrrell and Dare counties.

The hope is that, beyond the bridge project, funding also will be available to build numerous crossings along U.S. 64, said Travis Wilson, a biologist with the North Carolina Wildlife Resources Commission Habitat Conservation Division.

“It’s kind of a standalone discussion on wildlife improvements in highway permeability improvements,” Wilson told Coastal Review. “It’s outside the scope of a highway project.”

The Center for Biological Diversity announced last week that an anonymous donor had pledged a $2 million match of other donations toward wildlife crossings across U.S. 64, which bisects the Alligator River and Pocosin Lakes wildlife refuges. If the additional $2 million can be raised by the nonprofit center and its supporters by the target date of Aug. 1, it could leverage an additional $16 million in federal funds.

Funding for $350 million in grants was provided in the Wildlife Crossings Program, established in the 2021 Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act.

A million wildlife-vehicle collisions occur in the U.S. annually, costing more than $8 billion and resulting in thousands of injuries and hundreds of fatalities, according to the Federal Highway Administration website.

A second round of Highway Administration discretionary grants will be opened this summer under the Wildlife Crossing Pilot Program with the stated mission of reducing wildlife-vehicle collisions while improving habitat connectivity for terrestrial and aquatic species.

Marissa Cox, the Western Regional Team lead with NCDOT’s Environmental Policy Unit, said that her team intends to apply for a grant, but it does not know yet what the total cost of the project would be. NCDOT is using information from the proposed — and since dropped — U.S. 64 widening project design plans to try to estimate costs for the structures, she said in an interview.

“It’s very competitive, and there’s not a lot of funding,” Cox said about the grant program.

During the first round, she recalled, the amount of project applications far exceeded the available funds.

Although Cox said there are about 26 wildlife crossings in North Carolina, Wilson said that when standalone structures are included, there are “dozens and dozens” of crossings.

As part of a wildlife stewardship memorandum of understanding signed in March 2023 with Wildlife Resources, NCDOT is currently compiling information and Global Positioning System data on all the crossings that it has committed to, designed and constructed, she said. The agencies are also finalizing a joint Wildlife Crossing Guidance document to be made available online.

With U.S. 64 and other less-traveled highways cutting through the 1.7 million-acre management area encompassing public and private land in Beaufort, Dare, Hyde, Tyrrell and Washington counties, the wildlife crossings could benefit not only the survival of the red wolves, but also the taxpayer who is supporting the recovery program.

A recently updated red wolf management plan estimated costs of $328 million over 50 years, and that does not include the millions spent over the decades since the wolf conservation program began.

The red wolf had once roamed much of the Southeast, but overhunting and habitat loss decimated its population. In 1973, the species was listed as endangered under the Endangered Species Act. Fish and Wildlife, the agency charged with implementing the Endangered Species Act, first listed the red wolf as endangered in 1967, and it was declared extinct in the wild in 1980.

As part of an effort in 1987 to restore the species in the wild, four pairs of captive-bred red wolf pups, offspring of the few remaining from the wild population captured earlier in Louisiana, were released at Alligator River National Wildlife Refuge.

After a series of setbacks beginning around 2010 — with the wild population plummeting from as much as 130 to seven — the recovery program has been renewed and reinvigorated since 2022.

Currently, there are 18 known and collared red wolves and a total of about 20 to 22 wolves in the wild and 263 in the captive-breeding population.

Wildlife crossings have been studied, planned and – sometimes – built along roadways in northeastern North Carolina, but in coming years they are to be a more significant part of the focus on conservation of the fragile population.

“Wildlife crossings along one of North Carolina’s most dangerous highways are crucial to protecting the world’s most endangered wolf,” stated Will Harlan, southeast director the Center for Biological Diversity.

In a study done for NCDOT by the Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University and completed in 2011, hair samples caught on a barbed fence were from 890 black bear crossings from March 2009 to March 2011 in the 147,432-acre Alligator River Refuge. The Virginia Tech study also found that 15 GPS-collared bears crossed the highway 99 times. In addition, 170 white-tailed deer, 200 bobcats and raccoons, and an additional 260 bear were caught on camera.

Surveys of roadkill from November 2008 to July 2011 showed eight deer killed. Between January 1993 and July 2011, factoring in historical data, there were 63 bear, 75 bats, 82 small mammals, 134 mid-sized mammals, 1,153 birds, 4,014 reptiles and 7,498 amphibians killed on the road. And in 2012, refuge biologists reported that 11 bear were hit by vehicles, not including those who ran off into the woods after being struck.

Data from the Virginia Tech study will be used to guide project estimates for crossings through the refuge, Cox said.

The Fish and Wildlife Service, in its February red wolf recovery program five-year status review, said that between 1987 and 2013, vehicle-wildlife collisions resulted in 34% of all mortalities related to humans; and there were 11 vehicle-related mortalities between 2019 and 2023.

“This mortality level would be expected to increase as habitat becomes more fragmented by roads and with increasing human traffic that would be expected with increased development,” the report said. “Additionally, this threat would also likely increase with increases in the population size of red wolf.”

Madison said that there is now orange reflective material on the GPS collars placed on the wild wolves to increase their visibility at night. There are also roadside mobile electronic message signs to warn drivers on all the highways.

Any wildlife crossings that are proposed separately from an NCDOT project, which would absorb some of the costs, will “not be inexpensive,” Wilson said.

“We have been successful in putting underpasses in coastal North Carolina in various places,” he said. Swampy Alligator River, with its numerous roadside canals, “has its own unique features and soil conditions,” Wilson said.

“That’s a big part of the conversation, building in the soil types that are out there, the fill and the engineering that have to go in place there. And as you know, anything that becomes more complex, the dollar figures begin to increase with that complexity,” he said.

“When it comes to the mammals that we’re talking about, if your structure is designed correctly and located correctly, and you have appropriate fencing, then you’re going to have mammals find those crossings and use those crossings,” he said. “And once they start, they’ll keep using them.”

The crossings provide habitat connectivity, as Wilson explained it.

After the New York Times recently published an article about wildlife crossings that included video of wildlife using an overpass, public interest in wildlife passages nationally increased dramatically.

“My phone blew up with reporters and the public wondering when is North Carolina going to do these things. And it felt like I spent a year on the phone every other day explaining to people that North Carolina has been doing it for two decades,” Wilson said. “The documents are memorializing a lot of what we’ve done but also will be good tools to give to people who have interest.”

Next in the series: Wildlife crossings dovetail with red wolf conservation science.

This special news feature is part of Coastal Review’s 12-month observance of the Coastal Area Management Act’s 50th year.

BEAUFORT – The state’s Rachel Carson Reserve protects more than its herd of around 30 wild horses.

The dedicated nature preserve’s five uninhabited barrier islands, totaling 2,315 acres, protect historic downtown Beaufort from the ravages of ocean winds and tides.

“You can see just how vulnerable the town of Beaufort can be during storms coming through that Beaufort Inlet,” Central Sites Manager Paula Gillikin said early Friday afternoon from the boardwalk on Carrot Island, one of the five islands making up the site.

Gillikin was speaking to North Carolina Department of Environmental Quality leadership, local, state and federal elected officials, fiscal research and governor’s office budget staff, partners, residents and volunteers, as part of a “Discover the N.C. Coastal Reserve Tour.”

The gathering of about 20 had met earlier that morning at Beaufort Hotel to tour the Rachel Carson Reserve. It was the third stop on a multi-year campaign launched in June 2023 when the Currituck Banks Reserve reopened after repairs. The second stop was at Bird Island Reserve in December 2023.

NCDEQ Chief Deputy Secretary Tim Watkins explained before the tour how 50 years ago, “North Carolina enacted the Coastal Area Management Act, or CAMA, as we all know it.”

“Passing CAMA in 1974 was a bold and important step that was intended to balance economic development and protection of coastal resources through coordination and planning under the umbrella of state and local partnership,” Watkins said. “CAMA was also intended to reflect the will of coastal residents in finding this balance.”

He noted how CAMA was amended in the 1980s to establish the state Coastal Reserve Program, which “provides public access to coastal areas, essential habitat, fisheries and wildlife, and a cleaner healthier environment for all. The reserve sites also strengthen our communities by developing a sense of place and creating opportunities to reconnect and recharge with our natural world.”

Coastal Reserve Program Manager Rebecca Ellin said that the reserve program protects more than 44,000 acres of coastal and estuarine habitats across the 10 sites.

These sites provide essential habitat for wildlife, educational opportunities for students, teachers and the public, living laboratories for scientists to inform the management of the state’s coasts and estuaries, public enjoyment for citizens and visitors and protection of local communities from storms and erosion, Ellin said.

“The reserve program in North Carolina started nearly 40 years ago with the designation of the North Carolina National Estuarine Research Reserve. This happened in 1985 via a state-federal partnership between the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration National Estuarine Research Reserve System and the Division of Coastal Management,” she said.

The designation of the North Carolina National Estuarine Research Reserve provided an inspirational model for the state of North Carolina to protect additional habitat areas, Ellin continued.

“In 1989, the General Assembly amended the Coastal Area Management Act to do just that and formally established the North Carolina Coastal Reserve, which includes the North Carolina National Estuarine Research Reserve.”

There were a handful of past and current elected officials on hand, including Rett Newton, who was raised in Beaufort and is a former town mayor. He said that protecting the Rachel Carson Reserve is “personal for us. It is personal. It may not be personal for Raleigh, Durham, Chapel Hill, or Washington, D.C., but I assure you it is very personal for us.”

Beaufort Mayor Sharon Harker, who is in her second term, added that the reserve has a lot of talents, and the town is working with the state programs to protect the island for future generations. “It’s a classroom, it’s a laboratory, it provides us information so that we can inform policies to be better and proactive caretakers of the island, but the reserve is a gem. It’s part of our character, it’s part of our history.”

Sen. Norm Sanderson, R-Pamlico, who also represents Carteret County, told attendees that the reserve is worth fighting for and worth protecting, “not only for its beauty, but its protection” as a barrier island.  “It’s up to us to save it for the next generation.”

Rep. Pricey Harrison, D-Guilford, was on the coast for the tour, as well. A resident of Greensboro, Harrison said she spends her weekends patrolling the shoreline of the Rachel Carson Reserve and has for 34 years.

She extended her gratitude to those who have made the reserve “such a special place” adding, “I love this place. I’m going to do what I can save it.”

Rep. Celeste C. Cairns, R-Carteret and Craven counties, spoke briefly, stating she is “so proud of this district. It’s impossible to express how much I love it here.”

Gillikin, who grew up in Beaufort and is currently a town commissioner, has been with the reserve program since 2007, and oversees both the Rachel Carson Reserve and Permuda Island Reserve near Topsail Island.

Gillikin said she feels “privileged to coordinate the stewardship of this site and to work with all the passionate community members and commercial users and teachers and advisory committee members. It really is all about people.”

She echoed Newton in that the site is very personal to her, because five generations back, her family owned a lot of the land, and “I never thought that I would come back to Beaufort and be a steward of the land.” She left Beaufort to attend the University of North Carolina Wilmington.

“Their blood, sweat and tears are out there. And mine are too,” she said, clarifying “no big injuries, just some nicks and cuts.”

After the tour, Ellin expressed her gratitude for those who joined, “to celebrate the Rachel Carson Reserve, share their perspectives, and take in its beauty and the diverse roles the reserve plays for ecosystems and people alike.”

About the Carrot Island Living Shoreline Project

Part of the event included a quick peek by boat of the Carrot Island Living Shoreline Project, currently under construction.

A representative of consulting firm Moffatt & Nichol, which is a contractor on the living shoreline project here, told Coastal Review Monday that work began April 12. A joint project between Carteret County and the North Carolina Coastal Reserve, the work includes around 1,475 linear feet of living shoreline, extending along the east side of Carrot Island, which is adjacent to Taylor’s Creek. 

The design features two sills. There is a sill of wave-attenuation units, called ExoForms and manufactured by Natrx, a nature-based resilience and restoration company in Raleigh, and a sill with oyster habitat units called Oyster Catchers, which are manufactured by Sandbar Oyster Co. in Beaufort.

The footprint for the ExoForms is around 11,250 square feet, with a length of 1,250 feet, and the footprint for the oyster habitat sill is about 6,960 square feet, and about 1,270 linear feet.

The sills run parallel to one another with a gap of 10 feet in between. Both are 100-foot segments with 10-foot gaps between the segments to allow water and wildlife to move through.

Plans include planting marsh grass, both Spartina alterniflora and Spartina patens, to support stabilization of the shoreline and enhance the ecological value of the project, according to the company.

“The length of shoreline to be protected was chosen to provide maximum benefit to the Carrot Island shoreline based upon available funding from the National Fish and Wildlife Foundation, the North Carolina Land and Water Fund, and the North Carolina Department of Environmental Quality,” according to the company.

Gilikin said monitoring the project’s performance over time and sharing successes and lessons learned could inform future living shoreline design and estuarine shoreline management in coastal North Carolina.

About the reserve program

The North Carolina Coastal Reserve and National Estuarine Research Reserve program initiative began in 1982 with funding from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s National Estuarine Research Reserve System.

Three sites were dedicated in 1985 to be part of the North Carolina National Estuarine Research Reserve: Rachel Carson, Currituck Banks and the Zeke Island reserves. The fourth national site, Masonboro Inlet Reserve, was designated in 1991.

The state initiated the parallel program in 1987. This move, according to NCDEQ, was to protect other coastal areas that could not be incorporated into the national program. The state acquired Permuda Island near topsail Island that year and Buxton Woods in the southern Outer Banks in 1988.

In 1989 CAMA formally established the North Carolina Coastal Reserve Program. In the following years, the state program grew to include Kitty Hawk Woods Reserve in 1992, Bald Head Woods Reserve in 1993, Emily and Richardson Preyer Buckridge Reserve in Tyrrell County in 1999, and Bird Island Reserve, the southernmost site, in 2002.

Second in a series.

Maybe one North Carolina insurance provider should join the industry trend and advertise: “Hello Beach Plan policyholders! Do you need a new roof? Want to save on your property insurance? How about we help you out with as much as $8,000 toward a much stronger roof that is fortified to withstand storms? And don’t worry — we’re not asking you to pay it back.”

Even with those selling points, the North Carolina Insurance Underwriting Association, or NCIUA, which runs the Beach Plan, has yet to reach the number of property owners who could benefit from the Strengthen Your Roof grant program it offers to its policyholders.

“The question was, how do we incentivize consumers so that they desire a new roof as much as they desire a beautiful countertop?” Gina Hardy, general manager and chief executive officer of N.C. Insurance Underwriting Association and N.C. Joint Underwriting Association, said in an interview.

“We had given credits to policyholders who installed fortified roofs, but in 2016, we started running pilot programs to motivate them to engage in mitigation,” Hardy said.

To be clear, that motivation is money in the form of a grant. To fund the grant program, Hardy said the insurance provider made a business case that the grants would help homeowners build more wind-resistant roofs, which would result in savings on future claims and reinsurance costs.

The North Carolina Joint Underwriting Association administers the Fair Access to Insurance Requirements, or FAIR, Plan is a tax-exempt organization of insurance companies that do property insurance in the state. The North Carolina Insurance Underwriting Association, or Beach Plan, is similar but is specifically for providing essential coverage in coastal and beach zones.

At a time when North Carolina’s coastal homeowners are more immediately worried about rising costs of property insurance and its availability than rising seas, insurance providers are looking askance at growing risks from climate change-related impacts and the ballooning costs of disaster claims.

Meanwhile, forecasters are predicting a very active hurricane season in 2024.

Proactive resilience measures such as N.C. Insurance Underwriting Association’s Strengthen Your Roof program, which provides the grants to install the trademarked Insurance Institute for Business and Home Safety, or IBHS, Fortified Roof are helping to decrease a significant part of that risk.

Data from IBHS, the South Carolina-based research nonprofit that developed the roof, shows that up to 90% of insured catastrophic residential property losses are related to roof failures.

As described by IBHS, Fortified is a voluntary re-roofing program, designed to be stronger in winds, hail and hurricanes based on field research of real houses after storms. Installation of a fortified roof involves removing the existing roof to the decking, sealing the deck, and using stronger nails and nail attachments, and roof mounted vents.

Recent research on the effectiveness of IBHS roofs by N.C. State University’s School of Data Analytics found a reduction of about 35% in reported claims and 23% in the amount of payment in filed claims for hurricanes Matthew in 2016, Florence in 2018, Dorian in 2019, and Isaias in 2020.

When the pilot program first launched, only four houses on the coast out of over 400,000 policyholders had participated in the program by December 2016, Hardy said. Still, it was innovative enough to inspire invitations to both the White House and the World Bank in late 2016.

But Strengthen Your Roof has grown steadily since its underwhelming start. In April 2019, 274 eligible houses had fortified roofs. As of September 2023, the grant program’s completed roofs and applications totaled 5,928.

“This is a great program!” 2023 grant participant Joseph Connolly Ely of New Bern said in feedback provided on the program’s website. “Homeowners get a cash grant, a reduction on their wind and hail insurance premium AND peace of mind from the reduced likelihood that their roof will fail in a hurricane.

“The NCIUA, in turn, has a reduced likelihood that they will have to pay a large claim due to such a roof failure,” he added, “so it really is a win-win program.”

Who is this program for?

Billed as one of the first efforts in the nation to help policyholders in hurricane zones to better protect their homes from the storms, the IBHS program is offered to its eligible policyholders on the Outer Banks and barrier islands.

The grants are available on a first-come, first-served basis until the end of this year, or when all funds are awarded. The program also expanded two years ago to the other 18 coastal counties the Insurance Underwriting Association serves.

Part of the slow response from the public to the program may be confusion about the requirements, which includes having an evaluator ensure qualification for the IBHS designation, and a contractor who is trained to build a fortified roof.

“So, it was definitely an uphill battle trying to get everyone to understand IBHS was doing fantastic science, but we were not getting that science implemented for the benefit of our coastal residents and our policyholders,” Hardy said.

Now known officially as the Coastal Property Insurance Pool, the Beach Plan, also referred to as the market of last resort, was created in 1969 by the North Carolina General Assembly to provide adequate property insurance for homeowners in the state who could not otherwise obtain coverage in the private market.

About 70% of homeowner policies in coastal North Carolina counties are insured for wind and other hazards under the Beach Plan. Separate flood insurance policies, required for mortgaged properties in flood zones, are provided by a Federal Emergency Management Agency program.

What is IBHS?

IBHS, which researches mitigation and resiliency across the country, is funded by insurers and re-insurers. First established in 1977 as the National Committee on Property Insurance, it has since changed its name and expanded its focus numerous times.

In 2010, the IBHS Research Center was created in South Carolina “to advance the scientific understanding of severe weather perils and their interaction with the homes and businesses at full scale,” according to its website, referring to wind, hail, rain and wildfire.

“We study those four primary perils as we conduct that research and we gain understanding of how buildings are interacting and how different systems like the roof, like windows and doors resist flying projectiles . . . how they interact with the wind,” said Fred Malik, managing director of Fortified. “We are charged by our member companies to reduce avoidable losses and financial hardship for their clients and our customers.”

Besides its roofs, IBHS offers Fortified construction techniques to strengthen the overall structure of a house as options for property owners.

In general, the institute claims that Fortified methods reduce emergency management and disaster recovery costs, decrease insurance losses, increase availability and affordability of insurance, and minimize disruptions and uninsured losses to homeowners.

The argument for fortified roofs

Data shows that fortified roofs work better than standard roofs, said Donald Hornstein. He is chair of the N.C. Insurance Underwriting Association board of director’s mitigation committee and a professor at the University of North Carolina School of Law who, among other subjects, specializes in insurance law, regulatory law and environmental law.

“It’s just a matter of whether or not the relatively modest additional costs of requiring fortified roofs should be adopted,” Hornstein told Coastal Review. “So that’s a straight-up political fight — it’s not an expertise fight.”

Hornstein explained that the insurance provider has spent $50 million of its own funds for the roof program “because we make money.” Estimates show that for every $50 million invested, within 10 years $65 million in avoided claims will be saved, as well as reduced reinsurance costs.

“These fortified roofs are definitely cost effective,” Hornstein said.

That’s why some states, like Alabama, require them, and others pay homeowners the additional cost, which averages about $2,300, to install a fortified roof when they’re re-roofing.

“So basically, if you don’t compel people to do it,” he said, “you bribe them to do it.”

Other states offer grants, and although the North Carolina legislature has provided funds, much of Strengthen Your Roof grant program has been paid for out of the N.C. Insurance Underwriting Association surplus fund.

With the average cost of roof replacement at least $12,000 or more, depending on factors such as location and home size, people often put it off until the last minute. But the hope is that by offering policyholders the $8,000 grant, Hornstein said, they will see the advantage of applying for the stronger roof.

Using the fortified program, for instance, could make homeowners property insurance eligible for mitigation credits, according to the state Department of Insurance.

How is it funded?

The General Assembly allocated $7 million to match the N.C. Insurance Underwriting Association’s allocation for grants for the expanded program. The 2023 Strengthen Your Roof Program was launched with a $20 million allocation from the insurance provider, which then increased the grant amount from $6,000 to $8,000 for the Outer Banks and Barrier Islands.

Legislators provided only $2 million of the $20 million requested last year for matching funds, but the spell of relatively minor hurricane seasons for North Carolina in recent years has allowed N.C. Insurance Underwriting Association to contribute more to the grant program than it would have if it had been paying high-damage claims for disasters.

Hornstein said that while the insurance provider appreciates the support from the legislature, it knows that the state’s funding — like the insurance provider’s surplus — is not guaranteed indefinitely into the future.

“So, we’re trying to make hay while the sun shines,” he said.

Legislative setbacks

One of the reasons the building method has become distinctive is because its standards go beyond building codes to strengthen structures against destructive winds and other storm damages.

Fortified roofs, in some way, are going in the opposite direction of North Carolina’s current regulatory approach.

A controversial bill, House Bill 488, that became law in North Carolina last year, froze old residential building and energy efficiency codes, and banned inspections of roof sheathing in areas exposed to winds 140 mph or below.

The North Carolina Home Builders Association objected to the upfront costs to meet standards in proposed new building codes, as well as the time builders say it would take for homebuyers to get a return on the investment, Tim Minton, executive vice president of North Carolina Home Builders Association, said in an interview.

Minton said the association went to the legislature and asked to pause implementation of the new proposed codes until 2031, or until a new residential code council is installed in 2025 and can look at, or possibly phase-in, potential updates and changes.

In a couple of years, he said, the costs for items such as insulation may cost less. Also, Minton said, the legislation included inspection for roof sheathing on the coast, where winds are typically highest.

“First and foremost,” Minton explained, “we have not seen any data that shows that houses are blowing down in North Carolina. Second, when you look at damage from a hurricane, the damage is not occurring from wind is actually occurring from water.”

Minton also disputed that the value of government grants related to resilient building and updated building codes outweighed what the association said would be an additional average $20,000 cost per house.

“So, you know, adding additional requirements just to make people feel good is not really a reason to do that,” he said. “Yeah, there’s the balance, and how do you create that balance that’s a reasonable balance? And the policy makers will decide the future in the sense of what happens next.”

One of the main sponsors of HB 488, Rep. Mark Brody, R-Anson, who is a construction contractor, defended the need to create separate code councils.

“The reason is that commercial construction in particular has become so complex, and there’s so many new products, methods, and designs that are coming forth that we felt that they needed their own council because they needed a certain expertise,” he said in an interview. While the councils do its work reviewing codes before the mandated 2031 update, he said, nothing is stopping home owners or contractors from building to stricter standards than the existing codes call for.

Brody also strongly disagreed with estimates from a research lab with the U.S. Department of Energy that estimated that the proposed code updates that HB 488 stopped from going into effect would have added only $4,700 to $6,000 to the average home cost, and that the energy savings would pay off the cost in a few years.

But Brody said that those estimates did not take into account the extra labor and cost of materials to install energy efficiency requirements such as specific insulation. He also said that the homeowner would not see the return on those costs during the life of a 30-year mortgage.

“They’re misleading people,” he said of the Energy Department.

In Malik’s observation over the last 15 years, he said it can take years to incorporate the latest science into building codes, which he called a “consensus process.” For that reason, he said that volunteer programs such as Fortified can help get the word out to homeowners and builders about new construction practices that can influence policy,

“And there are plenty of builders and roofing contractors who like the opportunity to offer to their customers something that goes beyond whatever the current building codes are,” he said.

More hurricane-prone states are responding to the risk with stricter codes. For instance, Alabama’s building codes require new and replacement roofs to be Fortified, and Florida in 2020 adopted a code requirement for sealed roof decks. But sometimes, an epiphany will happen only after a disaster, Malik said.

“People may see the value of resiliency when they’re paying for hotel rooms or see the costs from flood damage to their home,” he said.

“You know, what we’re starting to see is consumers really paying attention and saying that they want to see resilience,” Malik added. “And the more they do that, the more that will be an opportunity for builders to respond to that demand.”

First of two parts.

When Insurance Commissioner Mike Causey met last month in Manteo for a brief overview and Q&A with community members worried about property insurance issues, he stressed that his office had limited power over building code changes and insurance company business decisions in North Carolina that have unnerved homeowners.

First of all, he said, billion-dollar losses from storms, wildfires, floods and other disasters are worldwide challenges. But the property insurance industry in the U.S., where population numbers and real estate values are often highest in the highest-risk areas, is approaching its own survival crisis.

“It’s a very hard market right now across the United States,” Causey said. “Companies just don’t want to write homeowners policies.”

Confronted with looming policy price hikes and feeling powerless to stop their insurance companies from pulling out of the state, frustrated homeowners are turning to the government for solutions.

“People say, ‘Why don’t you change the system?’” Causey said, responding to the audience’s questions about future insurance affordability and access. “The only group that can change that system is the legislature.”

Whether Causey, a Republican who is seeking reelection to the post he’s held since 2017, is shifting blame may be debatable, but it is evident from the last legislative session that focus on property insurance viability in the state was not a priority for the North Carolina General Assembly.

Rather than modernizing the state’s 15-year-old residential building codes, a step incentivized by lower property insurance costs, millions in government grants, and more resilient and efficient construction, North Carolina legislators passed a law, House Bill 488, that in much of the state banned inspection of exterior sheathing in structures exposed to winds of 140 mph or less.

The bill also removed authority from the North Carolina Building Code Council, a panel of industry specialists that had been working for months on updating codes, froze the old energy-efficiency standards until 2031 and directed creation in 2025 of a new separate residential council.

While the legislation is certain to deprive the state of available funds for climate resilience, it is also locking homebuyers into new housing that is built to outdated standards and thus more vulnerable to climate hazards. As a result, homebuyers will have increasingly higher utility bills, as well as structures more prone to damage in weather events, ultimately making their home more expensive to own.

“Everybody’s going to be paying quite a bit more for homeowners’ insurance because …  our building codes are hopelessly out of date when it comes to residential construction in some areas,” said Kim Wooten, a member of the Building Code Council and the chair of the council’s ad hoc energy committee. “The other piece of this is that North Carolina is now going to lose hundreds of millions of dollars in grant money from the federal government to increase our ability to withstand flooding from flood events, storm events, weather disaster events.”

The bill also allocated about $500,000 for staff members for the new residential council, which had been part of the existing Building Code Council, she said. Wooten, who was on the panel from 2008 to 2013 before rejoining about five years ago, is an engineer.

Anti-regulation sentiment in the legislature as well as persistent climate change skepticism, Wooten said, has contributed to lawmakers’ resistance to updating codes. The North Carolina Home Builders Association, which lobbied for the bill, had said that sheath inspection is unneeded and, along with energy-efficiency updates, would add an average of about $20,000 in costs to a new home.

But in an independent analysis Wooten conducted as part of her role with the energy committee while reaching out to green homebuilders, industry insiders and researchers, said that energy efficiency was consistently one of the five top things homebuyers want in a home — and the costs were “nowhere near” what the homebuilders claim.

“They just pulled a number out of a hat, which is the same number they pulled out of their hat five years ago, 10 years ago, 15 years ago,” Wooten said. “Yeah, it’s always $20,000.”

Zach Amittay, a Southeast advocate for E2, also known as Environmental Entrepreneurs, told Coastal Review that it’s understandable that the homebuilders’ group would want to protect their bottom line, but ultimately, the consumer and the taxpayer will be paying the piper.

“It’s going to become more and more financially untenable for folks to be able to have insurance, and then you’re dealing with more uninsured homes and then what happens after storm damage,” he said.

Less resilient construction often translates to more severe damage to both the interior and exterior, Amittay added. That leaves underinsured property owners unable to afford repairs or replacement of their home.

“That’s also the kind of thing that, in my opinion, the government should be taking steps to try and protect residents from these sort of outcomes,” Amittay said.

On its website, the North Carolina Home Builders Association said that “viable” code changes would have to be supported by data and follow proper processes.

“We work to develop and support cost-effective and affordable building codes, standards, regulations and state legislation in the construction area,” according to the website. “While safety is our priority, proposals also have to be examined for their cost-benefit and practicality.”

Typically, cities and towns in the U.S. base their building codes on recommendations that are updated every three years from the International Code Council, a Washington, D.C.-based nonprofit.

According to a Feb. 28 Swiss Re Institute report, at $97 billion, or 0.38% of gross domestic product, the U.S. suffers the highest economic cost “in absolute terms” from weather events in the world, mostly related to hurricanes. The Swiss Re Group is a leading global provider of reinsurance and insurance.

“The first step towards cutting losses is to reduce the loss potential through adaptation measures,” the report found. “Examples of adaptation actions include enforcing building codes, increasing flood protection, while keeping an eye on settlement in areas prone to natural perils.”

Each dollar invested in new building codes designed for construction that can better withstand storms can save $6 to $10 later, according to the report.

“Ultimately,” the report said, “losses as a share of GDP of each country will depend on future adaptation, loss reduction and prevention.”

Property owners on the Outer Banks and elsewhere on the North Carolina coast were shaken earlier this year by eye-popping proposed rate increases for homeowners insurance, averaging 42% statewide and as high as 99.4% in some coastal counties.

Rates in the state are set by the North Carolina Rate Bureau, which was established as a separate entity to represent insurance companies in the state, and operates independently of the insurance commissioner.

“It’s the largest rate request I’ve ever seen, (since 2017 when he took office) 42% state average, 99.4% in some counties. 25,000 letters and comments, including from associations and county boards, congressional delegations,” said Causey, who has challenged the Rate Bureau. But barring a negotiated agreement, Causey said he expects the rates will be adjudicated in court on Oct. 7.

“I haven’t seen the evidence to justify such a drastic rate increase on North Carolina consumers,” Causey said in a Feb. 6 press release.

Other insurance impacts weren’t as broad, but they can factor into future costs.

In February 2023, Nationwide insurance had notified the state that it would not be renewing 10,525 policies in North Carolina, about half of which were related to hurricane risk, spurring homeowners’ fears of more companies fleeing.

Then, in August, the legislature overturned Gov. Roy Cooper’s veto of H.B. 488, allowing the building code bans to go into effect.

Causey’s office had opposed the bill, and he said that his office “weighs in” on insurance company actions in the state such as Nationwide’s decision.

At the same time, a volatile property insurance market can spook real estate investors, and eventually, economic stability.

“It’s not going to be, ‘Can you afford it?’” Tanner Coltrain, agency manager at Farm Bureau Insurance in Swan Quarter, told Causey at the Manteo meeting, referring to insurance availability. “It’ll be, ‘Can you even buy it?’”

There may be some comfort in that North Carolina has what many consider one of the most innovative programs in the nation that encompasses resilience, insurance and consumer incentives and costs in one fell swoop.

The North Carolina Insurance Underwriting Association, or NCIUA, offers grants up to $8,000 for eligible homeowners toward roof replacement with what’s known as a fortified roof through its Strengthen Your Roof pilot program.

Studies have shown that as much as 90% of catastrophic insurance claims from storm damage are related to roof failures, and the NCIUA program has shown the effectiveness of fortifying roof construction.

But despite its proven track record, funds for the program were decreased during the General Assembly’s last session.

“We’re looking for the legislature to put more money into resilience,” Causey said.

This special news feature is part of Coastal Review’s 12-month observance of the Coastal Area Management Act’s 50th year.

WILMINGTON – There was no time to waste.

The North Carolina General Assembly’s April 1974 passage of the Coastal Area Management Act triggered demanding deadlines to set the course for managing development along the coast.

Today, the act continues to be referred to as “bold,” one that thrust North Carolina into an elite category whose leaders had the foresight to create something that other coastal states look to as a template for how to do it right.

Yet CAMA’s beginning was as humble as it was ambitious.

“There was zero staff, zero institutional history,” explained David Owens, retired professor of public law and government at the University of North Carolina School of Government. “It was a blank slate pretty much.”

Owens, who spent 10 years with the North Carolina Division of Coastal Management, was among a host of panelists who verbally unfolded CAMA’s history, how it has evolved over the last five decades, and how it has led to the creation of partnerships aimed at conserving unique coastal resources and, in today’s changing climate, helping communities adapt to the effects of rising seas.

From those who were there at the beginning to those who spoke of how the local governments they represent have benefited from CAMA, panelists spoke at the Coastal Resources Commission meeting Wednesday afternoon in downtown Wilmington to commemorate CAMA’s 50^th anniversary.

Owens reminisced on the first 15 years of CAMA, breaking the act’s earlier history into two parts – the first few, building from the ground up years to the subsequent years when officials “put some muscle on the bones that had been there.”

One of the big political debates that sprouted during CAMA’s first weeks centered on appointments to the Coastal Resources Commission, or CRC, a then-newly created commission that would be responsible for designating areas of environmental concern or areas of natural importance, to protect from uncontrolled development, adopting development rules and policies within those areas, and verify local coastal land use plans.

What qualifications were they looking for in commission members? How would they be appointed? Officials had to determine the answers to those questions and ensure the first sitting members were on the commission in six weeks.

For the first three years, the commission met two days each month, rotating their meetings up and down the coast. Within that time and starting with a staff of two, the commission adopted guidelines for local land use plans, identified areas of environmental concern and hosted public hearings on those areas, and adopted development standards. Nineteen of the state’s 20 coastal counties adopted land use plans.

State staff gradually grew to roughly a dozen people, and in March 1978, the CAMA permit program was launched.

Into the early to mid-1980s, the CRC beefed up CAMA’s foundation, improving planning guidelines to make them more useful and helpful for local governments. The board took another look at oceanfront development standards established for areas of environmental concern, formulated a method on how to get solid beach erosion rates, and examined social and economic impacts associated with these designated areas.

CAMA programs expanded to include land acquisition, which led to public beach accesses and estuarine system and acquisition programs for natural areas, which led to the purchase of state reserve sites.

CAMA has been amended several times over the years. Today, DCM has more than 50 full-time employees and issues about 3,000 permits each year.

Panelists who spoke Wednesday highlighted various successes DCM has achieved, including 16 U.S. Army Corps of Engineers regional general permits specific to North Carolina that streamline the permitting process, collaborating with other organizations to create and implement nature-based solutions such as living shorelines to combat erosion, and guiding local governments in implementing climate resiliency and adaptation programs.

Through the CAMA program, local governments have received more than $45 million to create or improve 420 sites to provide public access to beaches and coastal waters, said North Carolina Department of Environmental Quality Secretary Elizabeth Biser.

“Fifty years of CAMA has helped to preserve a healthy environment, foster economic opportunity, and protect our public trust resources for the future,” Biser said. “All of these have led to a high quality of life for coastal residents, a coast that draws visitors and their economic benefit, and a living laboratory to introduce students at our public schools to the natural world and the wonders of science. We should all be proud of the accomplishments this partnership has made through CAMA’s history.”

“CAMA has done many, many, many things positive for coastal North Carolina,” Sen. Norm Sanderson, R-Pamlico, said. “It’s also very, very connected to the economic health of this state and the safety of the people who live here. It’s not about our generation. It’s about what we leave for the next generation and the next generation.”

Hyde County Manager Kris Cahoon Noble explained that CAMA affects daily decisions of that local government.

“It is the act that has protected our most precious coastal resources,” she said.

Fresh challenges

The future of coastal management will look different in the years to come as an onset of fresh challenges emerges thanks to rapidly growing populations in the state’s 20 coastal counties, the onset of more intense coastal storms and nuisance flooding associated with sea level rise.

“The changes over the next 50 years aren’t going to look the same as the last 50,” DCM Director Tancred Miller said.

The Coastal Resources Commission is currently locked in a battle with the North Carolina Rules Review Commission over more than a dozen rules that affect day-to-day decisions within the division.

Thursday closed the public comment period on 16 of 30 longstanding rules objected to by the Rules Review Commission last fall and then removed from the North Carolina Administrative Code.

The commission voted in December to classify and adopt the 16 rules as “emergency,” which effectively got them back into the Administrative Code.

DCM had received 171 comments as of Monday, all of which urge the CRC to adopt the rules as temporary, a measure that would keep them in the Administrative Code for one year or until they are reinstated as permanent rules.

The rules include one that designates Jockey’s Ridge State Park as an area of environmental concern and dictates that sand blown from Jockey’s Ridge onto neighboring properties must be returned to the park.

The coastal commission and DEQ filed a lawsuit in Wake County Superior Court against the rules commission and Snyder to settle the deadlock over legal interpretations between the two commissions and restore the rules.

The commission has scheduled a special called meeting at 11 a.m. March 13 to decide whether to adopt the temporary rules.

This special commentary feature is part of Coastal Review’s 12-month observance of the Coastal Area Management Act’s 50th year.

When first considered 50 years ago, the Coastal Area Management Act (CAMA) was the most controversial environmental legislation considered in the state. It was then and remains the state’s only attempt to forge a state-local government partnership for regional resource management. Many observers in 1974 thought that if not repealed, this new law would collapse from the weight of its overly ambitious design.

Yet CAMA is still with us. This article reviews how the law came to be, how it has worked, and the challenges it faces moving forward.

Adoption

Gov. Bob Scott first proposed a state coastal program in 1969. Given the complexity of developing a “comprehensive and enforceable plan” for the coastal zone, in 1971 a 25-member Blue Ribbon Committee with diverse interests was created to develop legislation. It took the committee two years to develop a draft bill that served as the framework for CAMA.

In early 1973, the administration of newly elected Republican Gov. Jim Holshouser supported moving forward with the bill. It was introduced by the Democratic chairs of the House and Senate committees that would consider the bill, Rep. Willis Whichard of Durham and Sen. Bill Staton of Lee County. Coastal local governments quickly expressed reservations about the state taking over traditional local powers relative to land use management. So, the sponsors decided to conduct a series of hearings in the coastal area between the 1973 and 1974 legislative sessions to further refine the legislation.

After these hearings and much deliberation, the bill was revised to that strengthened the role of local government and move most policy decisions to a Coastal Resources Commission (CRC) composed of citizens with a broad range of differing interests and expertise (rather than with the Department of Environment and Natural Resources Secretary as originally proposed). A Coastal Resources Advisory Committee with strong local representation was added to bolster local involvement. The bill still faced strong opposition from some in the development community, from private property rights advocates, and some coastal local governments. Most coastal legislators remained in opposition. But with strong bipartisan support from Gov. Holshouser and Lt. Gov. Jim Hunt (who at that time was the presiding officer in the Senate), and after several legislative near-death experiences, the bill was enacted on April 11, 1974.

This four-year effort to develop CAMA modelled what has been a defining feature of coastal management in North Carolina – proceeding cautiously but ambitiously and only after a great deal of discussion and consensus building amongst affected interests.

Judicial and Legislative Challenges

The threat of judicial invalidation was a serious immediate concern. The three principal legal challenges were that application of the law to coastal counties rather than making it a statewide program rendered it a “local law” prohibited by the state constitution, that the broad authority granted to the CRC constituted an unlawful delegation of legislative discretion, and that the development regulations would be an unconstitutional taking of private property. In 1978 the North Carolina Supreme Court upheld the law on the local act and unlawful delegation claims and held the takings claim was premature.

There have since been nearly 30 state appellate court decisions regarding CAMA. Most have dealt with the process for making individual permit appeals to the courts, the details of specific enforcement orders, and the occasional interpretation of development standards and variance rules as applied to individual applications. No cases have found that CAMA rules unconstitutionally constrain private property rights, notably upholding decisions to deny permits for fill for a road in wetlands and for construction of shoreline erosion control structures.

The threat of legislative repeal of the law did not materialize. That is not to say there has not been ongoing legislative opposition. In the early 1980s a prominent coastal legislator threatened to “gut CAMA like a fish on the wharf in Wanchese” and unsuccessfully sought to eliminate most of its budget. While the General Assembly has continually tweaked and refined the law, most of the legislative changes strengthened or refined the details of the law rather than weakening it. Budgetary support has waxed and waned over the years, but as part of broader trends affecting all environmental programs.

Program Accomplishments

CAMA has successfully met most of its lofty goals.

Land use planning. When CAMA was enacted only a small handful of coastal cities or counties had land use plans and local development regulations. That was not surprising given the rural and small-town nature of much of the coastal region. So, building local institutional planning capacity was an early focus of CAMA. By 1993 all 20 coastal counties and 67 municipalities (including 59 cities with populations under 5,000) had adopted plans and had them approved by the CRC.

The state’s planning guidelines have evolved over time to promote local attention to key policy areas, including addressing storm hazards and rebuilding, beach access, coastal water quality, and more resilient and sustainable development patterns. Greater flexibility has been granted to local governments to tailor planning to their particular circumstances. While the quality of individual local plans still varies a good deal, the level of citizen and local government engagement in addressing future land use and development has moved from nearly nonexistent to robust. This would have happened for only a few local governments without the CAMA planning mandate and the substantial state and federal funding provided to prepare and implement local plans.

Development standards. The second early focus of the program was developing a permit program for critical coastal environmental areas. In 1977 the CRC designated coastal waters and wetlands and about 3% of the coastal land area as its permit jurisdiction. While the areas have been tweaked and modestly expanded several times since, the scope of CAMA permit jurisdiction has been accepted and noncontroversial. Initiatives to consolidate and streamline permit processing have been adopted over the years, including exemptions for minor development and expedited general permits for routine work.

The standards for development have prevented unwise and harmful development while not deterring beneficial and desirable development. The wholesale filling and excavation of coastal marshes taking place in the 1950s and 1960s was halted. Piers, bulkheads, and marinas are built without destroying critical fisheries habitats or interfering with public use of coastal waters. “Living shorelines” and other innovations for dealing with estuarine shoreline erosion are being encouraged. Redevelopment of urban waterfronts and enhancement of the state’s ports proceeds in a responsible fashion.

The standards adopted for development in ocean hazard areas are one of the more significant program accomplishments. Oceanfront setbacks have prevented construction of new structures that would shortly be in danger of falling into the ocean. When these setbacks were enacted in 1979, it was estimated there were nearly 800 existing oceanfront lots that could not meet the new setback requirements. The doubled setback later adopted for large structures further reduces future losses, particularly when major storms strike the coast. CAMA standards prohibit the construction of oceanfront bulkheads that would eventually destroy the public beach. These measures, which would not exist without CAMA, have been critical in preserving the attractive ocean beaches that are a beloved state treasure and essential to the tourism industry.

Beach and water access. The General Assembly significantly improved CAMA by adding an ocean beach access program in 1981 and extending it to estuarine shorelines and waters in 1983. These laws declared, and the courts subsequently confirmed, that the public has a right to free use of ocean beaches and public trust waters. These programs provided the walkways, dune crossovers, piers, parking, and restrooms needed for people to get to and use these public resources. Since an initial $1 million beach access appropriation in 1981, the state has provided over $50 million in grants to support nearly 500 access projects. This extensive access program has been a rousing success.

Preservation of natural areas. As with beach access, CAMA did not originally include a program for preservation of natural areas that were not already under public ownership. That was rectified when the state secured approval for a four-site National Estuarine Research Reserve in 1982. Additional sites were added in the mid-1980s as state protected areas. The General Assembly formalized this initiative with the adoption of legislation establishing a state coastal reserve program in 1989. There are now 10 coastal reserve sites containing over 44,000 acres, assuring the long-term preservation of important natural areas for research, education, and public enjoyment.

Challenges

Coastal management is never “solved.” The appropriate balance between competing legitimate public interests in development and conservation is always in flux. New issues and challenges emerge. Old conflicts and controversies are resurrected. Interest groups on all sides continually jockey for some new advantage.

Two additional factors will make resolution of ongoing coastal issues more challenging in the coming decades.

The state’s population, which was under 5.5 million when CAMA was enacted, is now over 10.5 million and is expected to top 14 million by 2050. While coastal population growth in the 1960s created the need for CAMA, the coming decades will see even greater growth. Six of our oceanfront counties are projected to have population increases of over 25% by 2050. Accommodating this growth will put significant pressures on natural resources and public infrastructure. Many of our beach towns are nearly built out at the current low-density levels desired by residents and visitors alike. Securing affordable housing and maintaining the traditional character and charm of coastal communities will be difficult. At the same time, six of our coastal counties are facing population losses of over 10% by 2050, which poses different but no less significant challenges for these more rural coastal areas.

There has been an understandable pressure on the state program since the mid-1980s to focus its efforts and attention on improving the permitting program that it directly manages. However, as those who crafted CAMA clearly understood, the permitting program alone will be inadequate to meet this coming growth challenge. Renewed funding and attention to the collaborative state-local land use planning built into CAMA will be necessary.

The second factor that will increasingly challenge CAMA success is the accelerating impacts of climate change in general and sea level rise particularly. Accommodating new development and protecting natural resources will be more difficult given more frequent and widespread flooding and storms, increasing habitat loss, threats to transportation and utilities infrastructure, and the near-certain eventual need to address major post-storm recovery and rebuilding. While meaningful attention is now being given to adaptation and resilience issues, going well beyond “business as usual” will be essential to deal with these longer-term impacts. The integrated use of regulation, planning, acquisition, and public education that is built into CAMA provides the opportunity to do this.

Keys to Continued Success

Legislative support and funding have always been and will continue to be fragile. Those disappointed by policies adopted by the CRC seek to persuade the legislature to intervene, a perennial practice that will no doubt continue. Building continuing and constructive legislative engagement is necessary for program success.

The question of who makes the key program policy decisions was one of the most hotly debated issues 50 years ago and continues today with debate on how the CRC should be composed and who should appoint its members. How that is resolved is critical as the program will thrive only with quality appointments. The CRC members’ expertise, judgment, dedication, and leadership are indispensable elements for program success.

Broad public engagement and education, which was absolutely essential to creation of the program and its early success, is all the more difficult with the loss of local newspapers, fractured electronic media, and increasingly rigid partisan and ideological polarization. Building a shared understanding of the impacts of and threats to coastal development is necessary to build the consensus needed to address coming challenges.

The guiding principle for those crafting CAMA and responsible for its early successes was an abiding dedication to long-term protection of the coast for the beneficial use and enjoyment of all its residents and visitors. In the early 1980s, then-CRC Chair Parker Chesson would often remind the CRC, CRAC, staff, and public at the end of long and sometimes fractious discussion, “We’ve heard from everybody and now it’s time to decide what is in the best long-term public interest.”

Adherence to that admonition, along with a lot of hard work by a lot of good people, will be necessary if we want to have a 100-year celebration of the enactment of CAMA.

Third and final in a series investigating why, after years of consistent seasons for inland, joint and coastal waters, recreational anglers found themselves negotiating different flounder and mullet rules in 2023.

Disagreements between the two commissions that manage state waters began to flare in 2019 after they formed an interagency committee to work on the required 10-year review on rules for the joint waters they both manage.

With the threat of these rules expiring in 2022 looming over the Wildlife Resources Commission that manages inland waters and the Marine Fisheries Commission manages coastal waters and the two never coming to an agreement, the governor’s office directed the agencies in February 2022 to adopt the existing joint rules without any changes.

The joint rules address scope and purpose, the classification of inland, coastal and joint waters, posting dividing lines, applicability of rules and special regulations for joint waters, and estuarine striped bass management.

Though there was mounting conflict evident between the agencies, what highlighted the impasse was the two recreational flounder seasons in September 2023. The WRC season was the first two weeks and MFC’s was the second two weeks, leading to confusion and even warnings issued to some fishers for breaking one agency’s rules.

North Carolina Fisheries Association Executive Director Glenn Skinner told Coastal Review that with the two agencies trying to decide who has authority over what, “you’ve got a lot of stakeholders that are really caught in the middle. And that’s a shame whenever it comes to that.”

What kept the inland and coastal seasons concurrent was a 2011 Wildlife Resources Commission rule to mirror the recreational seatrout, flounder and red drum seasons set by the Marine Fisheries Commission or Division of Marine Fisheries, which carries out the Marine Fisheries Commission’s rules. The Wildlife Resources Commission amended this rule in late 2021 to establish its own flounder season and limits as well as dozens of species-specific rules that went into effect March 2023.

Division of Marine Fisheries Public Information Officer Tricia Smith recently explained to Coastal Review that the 2023 southern flounder seasons “demonstrated the real-world consequences of competing regulations for a single species: confusion for anglers and the potential for significant overharvest of a stock in need of rebuilding.”

Division of Marine Fisheries and Marine Fisheries Commission specifically warned the Wildlife Resources Commission of these consequences when the Wildlife Resources Commission proposed separate rules for a host of marine and estuarine species, she said. “The WRC adopted these rules despite the MFC and DMF’s objections.”

Wildlife Resources Commission Inland Waters Chief Christian Waters said that the commission’s goal is to be consistent with the species management of the Marine Fisheries Commission and Division of Marine Fisheries to provide anglers the opportunity to fish and eliminate unnecessary confusion. 

“We acknowledge that the angling public suffers when seasons and limits are not consistent. However, we can only effectively implement any regulatory change in our jurisdictional waters per our statutory requirements and responsibilities when MFC and DMF communicate with us in a timely manner about management decisions being considered. We believe this would ultimately eliminate confusion for all staff involved and our customer – the public,” Waters said.

Capt. Jess Hawkins, who operates an ecotours business in Carteret County, previously worked 30 years with the division as a marine biologist.

Hawkins said that for most people who do not follow fisheries regulations or environmental protection measures, these disparate fish restrictions probably do not mean much and may appear to be an example of government inefficiency.

“However, in reality they mean much more to North Carolina citizens,” he explained in an email. “We have a situation where one state agency, created by our General Assembly with jurisdiction over freshwater (inland) fish are creating different regulations on primarily coastal/marine fish that differ from another state agency which was created by our elected officials to manage and conserve those fish.”

Hawkins said that any scientific data used to objectively manage those fish are collected by the coastal fisheries agency.

“The conflicting limits jeopardize science-based efforts on these fish, some of which are experiencing population declines based on that info. Enforcement officers are placed in a very difficult situation where they have to deal with a scenario where fishermen legally taking fish in areas become illegal when taking their catch back to the boat ramp where they launched,” he said. “If officers decide to write a citation, then our district attorneys and judges have to determine what is ‘just’ in such a situation. Also, up until recently the agency primarily dealing with freshwater fish mirrored those of the coastal agency, preventing such scenarios.”

Looking ahead

In response to the conflicting seasons, Smith said the Marine Fisheries Commission, during its November 2023 meeting, began rulemaking to amend the joint rules with “a straightforward approach,” which is to allow the Marine Fisheries Commission and Wildlife Resources Commission to regulate species based upon the respective expertise of each agency.

“Under the proposed amendments, the WRC would continue to set regulations for freshwater species in joint fishing waters, while the MFC would set regulations for marine and estuarine species,” Smith said.

She said the proposed amendments align regulatory authority with management responsibility and expertise, and it ensures that the state remains in compliance with the multiple federal and regional bodies with oversight of coastwide stocks that frequent joint waters.

“The two agencies would continue to share enforcement authority in joint waters under a single set of regulations, rather than separate, and, at times, competing regulations,” she said, adding staff are finalizing the regulatory impact analysis for submission to Office of State Budget and Management.

Waters said that the wildlife commission voted Oct. 26, 2023, to move forward with proposed rule text as part of its 2024-25 annual rulemaking cycle with a public comment period and hearings for amendments to inland fisheries rules.

“Of the proposals in the package, one would reduce the daily creel limit for Flounder from four fish to one fish. A second one would reaffirm the WRC’s authority over certain species designated as inland game fish in all public fishing waters and clarify the size and creel limits which apply,” he explained in an email. “A third one would reaffirm the WRC’s authority over all fishes taken by hook and line in Joint Fishing Waters and clarify the size and creel limits, seasons, and restrictions on species that may be sold.”

The public comment period for the proposed rules opened Dec. 1 and will end Tuesday, Jan. 30. The website has information on how to submit comments. There will be a public hearing at 7 p.m. Wednesday, Jan. 17, at the Craven County Courthouse in New Bern and a virtual hearing 7 p.m. Thursday, Jan. 18.  Hearings were scheduled for Jan. 9 in Asheboro and Jan. 11 in Clyde, as well.

Joint water rules discussion

Early in the conversation, completely eliminating joint waters was proposed, which would cause boundaries for inland and coastal waters to change.

Wildlife Resources Commission Chairman Monty Crump explained to Coastal Review that the point of getting rid of the delineation of waters — to just have coastal and inland waters, and get rid of joint jurisdictions – is to avoid the overlapping we have today.

The Wildlife Resources Commission published more than 50 proposed rules in the Jan. 18, 2022, North Carolina Register. The 11 that would have led to significant changes to the definitions of inland, coastal and joint waters were withdrawn before the rules went before the Rules Review Commission at its May 2022 meeting. The rules went into effect March 2023.

Division of Marine Fisheries Director Kathy Rawls in a March 2022 letter said that while they appreciate the Wildlife Resources Commission withdrawing the rules while both commissions work toward updating the joint rules, the remaining 46 rules continue to conflict with the division’s and Marine Fisheries Commission’s interpretation of authority in joint fishing waters. 

Waters said that the action taken in early 2022 was to readopt joint rules to meet the deadline for the periodic review. When the governor’s office directed both agencies to adopt existing joint rules with no changes, there was further direction for the two to develop a comprehensive solution to address joint rules and jurisdictional waters.

“A proposal was developed to modify current jurisdictional boundary lines and eliminate the designation of joint fishing waters, which should have addressed most of the issues with joint rules,” Waters explained.

A draft memorandum of agreement was written for the Wildlife Resources Commission and Marine Fisheries Commission to consider that would commit each to “conducting a comprehensive assessment of the proposal including, but not limited to, impacts to joint rules, recreational and commercial consistencies, fisheries management and regulations, other state agencies, and local governments,” Waters said.

The Wildlife Resources Commission during a committee meeting Aug. 17, 2022, agreed with the draft agreement, pending Marine Fisheries Commission review. The Marine Fisheries Commission at its Nov. 17, 2022, meeting, discussed the agreement, but took no action. 

“There has been no further activity on the designation of jurisdictional waters since then,” Waters said and there are no current efforts by Wildlife Resources Commission to reconsider the designation of jurisdictional waters, specifically joint fishing waters boundaries.

He continued that the jurisdictional waters designation review was not to “merely eliminate joint fishing waters, but a major goal was to ensure WRC and MFC have primary jurisdiction in those waters which are predominately inhabited by the species and supporting habitats under their respective management authority.”

Additionally, Waters said, the purpose was to enhance consistency with the intent of a general statute Relating to Resources and “to provide a consistent, predictable, common-sense approach for constituents. While this wouldn’t eliminate the need for collaboration between WRC and DMF/MFC, it would substantially reduce future conflicts among regulations.”

Smith echoed that there had been no recent developments on changing boundaries for joint waters.

“DMF and the MFC are focused on the more immediate need for consistent regulation in joint waters that is aligned with statutorily mandated fishery management plans,” she said, adding that the recently proposed amendments would address that need.

Joint water rules ripple effect

Smith explained that the concept of eliminating joint waters was considered, “but it became apparent that moving boundary lines, particularly ones that would cause areas to change from joint or coastal to inland, would have unintended consequences to other regulatory programs that far exceeded any potential benefits.”

These concerns were voiced in letters to the Wildlife Resources Commission by the state Department of Environmental Quality on the proposed rules back in 2019, she said.

The NCDEQ letter as well as those from the Division of Marine Fisheries, Division of Coastal Management and Coastal Resources Commission were made available to view in the Wildlife Resources Commission’s April 14, 2022, agenda packet, as part of the the public comments on the proposed rules.

Division of Coastal Management Director Braxton Davis wrote that if the joint rules were allowed to expire automatically, or be repealed as proposed unilaterally by the Wildlife Resources Commission, there would be significant changes for where the division and the Coastal Resources Commission could enforce more protective rules for estuarine shorelines and estuarine waters.

Coastal Resources Commission Chairman Renee Cahoon reiterated during the Marine Fisheries Commission’s November 2022 meeting that the boundary of the existing coastal and inland waters established by the joint rules had significance far beyond jurisdiction for fisheries regulation.

“Several state laws for which the Coastal Resources Commission is responsible, including the Coastal Area Management Act and the state Dredge and Fill Act, refer to the boundary between Coastal and Inland Waters as the extent of the state’s estuarine resources,” Cahoon said.

“As a result, if the Marine Fisheries Commission and the WRC changed the boundary of coastal-inland waters or repeal the rule establishing that boundary, the estuarine shoreline and waters critical to the state’s estuarine fisheries could be removed from protection under Coastal Management, water quality and habitat protection programs,” Cahoon said. “At the very least, changing this boundary could cause significant uncertainty about where the Coastal Resources Commission’s more protective estuarine shoreline rules could be enforced.”

Cahoon added that she had also submitted in March 2022 comments to the Rules Review Commission after learning that the Wildlife Resources Commission had proposed, amended and adopted rules published in the North Carolina Register Jan. 18, 2022, that would “unilaterally change the jurisdictional boundary between coastal and inland waterways.”

Skinner said that from a commercial fishing perspective, it would be a problem for more waters to be classified as inland waters for commercial fisheries. Commercial gear has always been allowed in joint waters but under the Wildlife Resources Commission’s current rules, commercial gear is prohibited.

Hawkins said that the proposal to change classifications of waters by the freshwater fish agency should worry people because, if it had passed, it would have harmed efforts that had been developed over the last 40 years to protect critical coastal fish habitat.

“These proposed reclassifications were pursued even over the strong objections of the agencies responsible for the protection of critical fish habitat and coastal/marine fishes, even writing the current Governor about those concerns,” Hawkins said.

“The Department that the General Assembly empowered for environmental and natural resource protection even objected to the proposals, but the inland fish agency continued to pursue those proposals,” Hawkins said. “The public and our leaders should ask what was broken that caused such a drastic change from policies that were in place to conserve and protect our resources the last 40 years.”

Waters explained that for these previous proposals that reduced or eliminated joint fishing waters, a comprehensive assessment was never conducted that would have better defined any impacts to Coastal Resources Commission rules and potential fixes.

As part of that assessment, “a question that needed to be considered is whether CRC/DCM rules should be linked to where fisheries are executed and managed? Or instead, should the area where CRC/DCM rules apply be defined based on the habitats being conserved and protected? One concern is that habitats currently have different levels of protection and regulation simply based on whether the location is in inland fishing waters compared to joint and coastal fishing waters, Waters explained.

‘One Mission, One Commission’

The nonprofit North Carolina Wildlife Federation proposed in late 2019, “One Mission, One Commission,” which would consolidate the Division of Marine Fisheries into the North Carolina Wildlife Resources Commission.

Wildlife Federation CEO Tim Gestwicki said it doesn’t make sense to have two agencies managing the same species, yet managing those species differently depending on an invisible line in the water.

“The agencies are extremely duplicative with both having administrative, information technology, enforcement, human resources, and budget sections. A single agency, consistent with many east coast states, is a model that is good for the resource and the taxpayer. This is not a unique proposal. Most recently Florida consolidated heir agencies as we have proposed,” he said.

Gestwicki explained that the Wildlife Federation believes that the more holistic approach of the Wildlife Resources Commission being made up of members appointed by the governor, Senate, and House to represent all regions of the state and provide a voice and perspective from all user groups of public trust resources.

“On the other hand, the MFC is selected only by the Governor with the statutory requirement for 4 of the 9 members to have a vested financial interest in the fisheries they manage,” he said, adding the Wildlife Resources Commission has resource successes except for those issues that they must work with the Division of Marine Fisheries and Marine Fisheries Commission to resolve.

“We hear repeatedly from elected officials and stakeholders that the system is broken, something needs to be done, etc etc.,” he wrote in the email.

“The science based, resource first decision making that is typical of the WRC is countermanded by the economic and political decisions by the MFC. Combining the two agencies in some fashion to provide consistency of conservation theory and the precautionary approach in managing our fish and wildlife makes good biological sense that will ultimately reap economic rewards to our state,” he said.

Gestwicki said that the organization has recommended “One Mission, One Commission” publicly, “now it’s up to elected officials to make it happen.”

Smith said Combining the Division of Marine Fisheries and Marine Fisheries Commission with the Wildlife Resources Commission had been studied by the legislature on numerous occasions but had never been recommended.

“While the two agencies share a common statutory charge, each agency has a distinct regulatory framework and area of expertise,” she said, explaining that the Division of Marine Fisheries and the Marine Fisheries Commission are ultimately concerned with the long-term viability of the state’s marine and estuarine resources, rather than the organizational structure through which they are managed.

Waters said that the Wildlife Resources Commission had not taken a position on the proposed merger.

This historical profile is presented as part of Coastal Review’s 2024 yearlong examination of 50 years of the North Carolina Coastal Area Management Act, including the science that helped to inform and the advocacy and leadership that resulted in passage of the landmark 1974 legislation, as well as the coastal environmental challenges yet ahead.

Robert Dolan and Paul Godfrey didn’t meet the way scientists often do, at a conference or sharing a drink after a long, technical talk. Instead, they met on a wind-blown beach near Cape Lookout, part of the long, winding bands of sand we know as the Outer Banks. It was 1971.

Godfrey, a quiet but creative botanist, and his wife Melinda, a pathbreaking marine biologist, had been digging cores along transects in the sand and mud for a research project trying to determine the history of the remote, 28,000-acre Cape Lookout National Seashore. Each layer of sand, peat and mud was like a chapter in a book, they recalled, secrets revealed here, surprises there, building to an unexpected ending.

Dolan, a coastal geologist who specialized in sedimentology, was also digging cores, near Cape Hatteras. He had arrived there almost on a lark in 1959 searching for a topic for his doctoral dissertation. “Why not study the Outer Banks?” one of his professors at Louisiana State University suggested. At the time, little was known about the chain of islands’ geology; some scientists even theorized the Outer Banks must be anchored to a coral reef, which prevented the islands from washing away. Ever confident and always up for an adventure, Dolan packed the family wagon, collected his wife and young daughter, and off they went. A decade later, he was still studying the islands and publishing seminal papers when it was suggested he meet Paul Godfrey and his wife, who were doing similarly impressive work a couple of hours away by boat on the undeveloped Core Banks.

Dolan and Godfrey knew one another from their work and contacts in the National Park Service, which manages the seashores. But they had never spoken, let alone met. Paul and Melinda took Dolan and several park service officials to see their cores, which Melinda had cleverly engineered with PVC piping.

Paul Godfrey, now 83, and living on a nature preserve in Western Massachusetts, recently recalled: “I think Bob was really intrigued. All of the species we identified as being adapted to the coast, he picked up on that right away. He saw we were coming to similar conclusions. The islands weren’t fixed in place like people thought. Nor were they washing away. They were fine, healthy, moving and adapting, the same way humans do.”

“The islands weren’t fixed in place like people thought. Nor were they washing away. They were fine, healthy, moving and adapting, the same way humans do.”

— Paul Godfrey

After their meeting, Dolan and Godfrey began to work together on various projects while they consulted for the park service and held down jobs as young professors at the University of Virginia and the University of Massachusetts, respectively.

Their collaborations would forever change the way coastal scientists looked at barrier islands and prompt the National Park Service to reverse its decades-old policy of trying to hold the islands in place by constructing artificial sand dunes, engineering the beach, bulldozing sand around after storms, even fertilizing the grass and shrubs by plane.

It all sounds so simple today — allow water, wind and storms to naturally sculpt the islands — but it was a revolutionary idea in the early 1970s, even heretical. Many villagers had grown accustomed to the park service protecting them and keeping open N.C. Highway 12, the only route on and off the islands. Even today, decades later, the politics are challenging, with the park service expected to provide a buffer between the ocean and the ever-larger and more expensive vacation homes that line the eroding shoreline and fuel the Banks’ billion-dollar tourism economy.

~

They made an unlikely pair. Robert Dolan grew up in Southern California and was an avid surfer and self-described beach bum at a time when surfing was considered novel and daring in the Golden State. Following a stint in the Navy, he earned undergraduate and master’s degrees in the Earth sciences at Oregon State University. He then headed south, to Baton Rouge, to work on his doctorate in coastal geology at Louisiana State University. Various profiles of Dolan, including one in John Alexander’s 1992 book, “Ribbon of Sand,” described him as confident, exuberant, passionate and adventurous.

Paul Godfrey grew up on a small farm in central Connecticut where he developed an abiding respect for nature. Melinda: around water on Cape Cod, where she learned how to handle boats and measure her own confidence in a world dominated by men. The future couple met in graduate school at Duke University, where Paul was pursuing a PhD, Melinda a master’s. One day, Melinda walked into a call on soil composition affectionately called “Dirt.”

“It was all men,” Paul recalled. “Melinda walked in and all these men were saying, ‘What is she doing here?’” They became lab partners and later Paul followed Melinda to Beaufort, where she worked as an assistant in the school’s renowned marine lab. “It was how I got interested in the coast. Melinda taught me. She was pretty, too,” he laughed.

After arriving on the Outer Banks, Dolan settled his wife and young daughter in a Nags Head cottage about 200 yards from the Atlantic Ocean. In the early morning of March 7, 1962, Dolan awoke to find the ocean rushing under their cottage. Another cottage, seaward of his own, had broken loose and was crashing toward them.

“In record time, I packed my personal belongings and research gear into a four-wheel-drive vehicle and headed for high ground,” he wrote 25 years later in an editorial for the Journal of Coastal Research.     

Dolan had wanted to study the effects of powerful storms on barrier islands. Here was his chance. After delivering his wife and daughter to higher ground, he returned to take measure of the damage. The Ash Wednesday Storm, a three-day nor’easter featuring five high tides, each one higher than the last, was one of the strongest storms to ever strike the Outer Banks. It flooded or flattened scores of homes, crumpled a pier where Dolan had recently installed a tidal gage, and washed away a 30-foot aluminum tower he had built to take photos of the beach.

But the storm also answered some of his research questions. For example, it showed that the massive artificial dunes that Works Progress Administration and Civilian Conservation Corps workers had constructed during the Great Depression to “stabilize” the islands were no match for the storm surge and waves. It also demonstrated how the storm washed large fans of sand across the road to the middle of the island, elevating it, a form of coastal adaptation now known as overwash. As long as man didn’t interfere, barrier islands would heal themselves even after epochal storms, Dolan concluded, shifting sand inland, slowly rebuilding foredunes, widening the marsh along the tidal inlets and sounds.

Dolan had also used a machine to dig 140 cores to study sand samples and test the theory that the islands were anchored to coral reefs. He dug and dug. But all he found was sand, layer after layer, one older than the last — a clear indication that the islands weren’t fixed in place, but were moving. Always moving.

Paul and Melinda Godfrey arrived at similar conclusions near Cape Lookout. Melinda had ingeniously found a way to use PVC piping to take deep samples of sand and mud. She and Paul then pored over each layer, studying the shells, clams and plants for hints that helped to date the formation of the island. The wider and deeper they dug, the more surprises they found: snails near the beach that only could have come from the marsh; shells near the marsh that only could have come from the beach. It was their eureka moment, “powerfully proving,” Godfrey said, “that the islands were moving, slowly rolling over themselves as they inched their way toward land.”       

~

Dolan had begun writing up his findings in research papers for the National Park Service while becoming increasingly vocal about the threats that rampant development posed to Cape Hatteras National Seashore. In 1972, he was joined by Paul Godfrey in a paper questioning the park service’s decades-old practice of spending millions of dollars on dune-building and beach-engineering after storms. The service’s practices gave “the false impression of safety and stability offered by the [artificial] barrier dunes,” they wrote. “As the system is stabilized, man builds roads and utilities that establish a `line-of-development’ which soon becomes a ‘line-of-defense.’”

As you might imagine, the criticism made for some tense moments between the researchers and the park service. “But to their credit, they came around,” said Godfrey. In 1973, Director Ronald H. Walker announced that the park service would no longer try to hold the line against the forces of nature. “There is just no way the National Park Service can continue to fight nature,” he told reporters. “We’ve spent all of this money; tried various ways to control the situation, but none of them has worked.”

“There is just no way the National Park Service can continue to fight nature. We’ve spent all of this money; tried various ways to control the situation, but none of them has worked.”

— Ronald H. Walker, Director, National Park Service, in 1973

The policy shift was the direct result of the work of Dolan, who died in 2016, and Paul and Melinda Godfrey showing that the Outer Banks were “dynamic natural landscapes” that will adapt and repair themselves after storms, losing sand in some places but gaining it in others as part of the natural evolutionary process of barrier islands.

Despite their warnings, developers and governments continued to add thousands of vacation houses and investment properties along the shifting shorelines – scores of which quickly were threatened by rising seas and storms. In the last few decades alone, county, state and federal taxpayers have spent tens of millions of dollars renourishing beaches, building and rebuilding artificial dunes, and constructing multimillion-dollar bridges to bypass storm-damaged roads.

In 2021, the park service adopted a revised sand management policy to help speed up the permitting process, allowing state workers to repair dunes and scrape sand off of N.C. 12 and other applicants to seek sand management permits within national seashore boundaries. But even that may not be enough to satisfy property owners and politicians.

Recently, U.S. Rep. Greg Murphy, a Republican representing North Carolina’s 3rd District, drafted language directing Cape Hatteras National Seashore Superintendent Dave Hallac “to identify potential long-term, cost-effective sediment management activities to minimize the impacts of beach erosion.”

The spending bill provision and ever-evolving policy could place the National Park Service back in the beach-building business.

Footnote: Dolan and the Godfreys continued to study the Outer Banks for decades, bringing hundreds of eager students to dig cores, study the ecology and geology, and experience the unfiltered beauty of the Banks.

Second in a series investigating why, after years of consistent seasons for inland, joint and coastal waters, recreational anglers found themselves negotiating different flounder and mullet rules in 2023. Read part one.

Conflicting recreational flounder seasons this past September put a spotlight on a bitter rift between two separate agencies that manage state waters.

In the past, the Wildlife Resources Commission had a rule in place to line up its recreational flounder season and a handful of other species for inland and joint waters with those established by the Marine Fisheries Commission or Division of Marine Fisheries for joint and coastal fishing waters.

But that changed last year, despite the Division of Marine Fisheries’ objections.

The division’s public information officer Patricia Smith said that, prior to recent rule adoptions by the Wildlife Resources Commission, the inland fishing rule for spotted seatrout, flounder and red drum referred to the Marine Fisheries Commission rules for these marine fish species. 

Wildlife Resource’s “reference rule” said that for those species, “recreational seasons, size limits, and creel limits are the same as those established” by Marine Fisheries Commission rules or Division of Marine Fisheries proclamations “in adjacent joint or coastal fishing waters.” 

The amended rule that went into effect March 15, after several months delay due to legislative review requests by the public, now reads, “(a) The daily creel limit for flounder is four fish. (b) The minimum size limit is 15 inches. (c) The season for taking and possessing flounder is September 1 through September 14.” 

The division proclaimed in June that the season for coastal and joint waters for recreational flounder would be Sept. 15-30, with a limit of one fish per day, minimum 15 inches in size.

“This rule was changed over the objection of the Marine Fisheries Commission, the Division of Marine Fisheries, and the Department of Environmental Quality. The result was contradictory regulation in the state of North Carolina for many marine and estuarine species of fish,” Smith said.

Wildlife Resources Inland Fisheries Division Chief Christian Waters explained to Coastal Review that the original intent of the “reference rule” was to efficiently implement consistent seasons, size limits and creel limits in the commission’s jurisdictional waters, which he said are inland fishing waters and hook and line in joint fishing waters. 

“When the ‘reference rule’ was established in 2011, DMF staff agreed to notify WRC, prior to the issuance of any proclamation to allow WRC opportunity to publicize the change to its constituents via news release, website, etc. Unfortunately, advance notice from DMF to WRC does not regularly occur, creating confusion to WRC staff (including Wildlife law enforcement) and the public,” Waters wrote in the email.

“As part of the Periodic Review of Rules, the WRC Board on December 9, 2021, initiated rulemaking which included removing the reference to MFC and DMF seasons, size limits, and creel limits for Flounder, Red Drum, Spotted Sea Trout, and Weakfish and reestablishing species-specific rules as in the past,” he said in an email. “The rule changes simply revert to WRC-specified season and limits promulgated in accordance with the Administrative Procedures Act with the seasons and limits mimicking the current MFC and DMF seasons and limits.”

He added that the board undertook this effort then to clarify rules for species when found in inland fishing waters, certain inland game fish in all public fishing waters, and species when caught by hook and line in joint fishing waters.

“Note that in addition to the four species covered by the ‘reference rule,’ the rule changes addressed over a dozen other species for which DMF had established seasons and limits via proclamation. Additionally, the WRC Board addressed the issues caused by the lack of communication from DMF regarding the ‘reference rule’,” he said.

Smith explained that the Division of Marine Fisheries is required under state law and Marine Fisheries Commission rule to manage all commercially and recreationally significant marine fisheries species or fisheries for long-term viability. 

“As stewards of the environment, the Division also has an obligation to the people of North Carolina to conserve their fisheries resources. The latest stock assessment for Southern Flounder indicates the species is overfished and overfishing is occurring throughout the Southeast Atlantic region,” she said. “Through a fishery management plan process, the Division has implemented management measures designed to end overfishing and rebuild the Southern Flounder stocks within state-mandated timeframes. The Division implemented the 2023 recreational flounder season in coastal and joint waters in accordance with the fishery management plan.”

Division of Marine Fisheries Director Kathy Rawls said during the Marine Fisheries Commission’s Nov. 16 meeting, that, as predicted, there was “significant public confusion around the separate flounder seasons in the state and where those regulations applied.”

She continued that the issue is not resolved and “is a significant challenge that will impact other fisheries.” It’s impacting striped mullet now and will potentially impact spotted sea trout down the road, and there are others.

Currently, recreational mullet rules set by Wildlife Resources, which also went into effect March 15, state that there is no closed season in inland fishing waters or in joint fishing waters by hook and line. Its daily limit for both striped and white mullet is 200.

Because the most recent striped mullet stock assessment indicated that the stock is overfished and that overfishing is occurring, Marine Fisheries Commission approved a supplemental action in May to end overfishing mullet. The season has been closed since Nov. 7 for waters north of the Emerald Isle bridge and Nov. 10 for waters south of the Emerald Isle bridge, with the season to reopen Jan. 1. This measure was put in place to address overfishing of the species while the Striped Mullet Fishery Management Plan Amendment 2 was being developed.

“The separate rules recently established by the Wildlife Resources Commission continue to fall out of sync with Marine Fisheries Commission rules, with division proclamations and out of compliance with interstate and federal management for marine and estuarine species,” Rawls said. 

Waters said that in the 1980s, 1990s and 2000s, both commissions had separate, but essentially matching rules for fish species under shared jurisdiction. In the 2000s, the division began regulating more frequently through proclamations and it became difficult for Wildlife Resources to keep rules for species in inland and joint fishing waters consistent with division proclamations.

Then in January 2011, the Wildlife Resources Commission adopted the rule that referenced the seasons, size limits, and creel limits for flounder, red drum, spotted sea trout, and weakfish established in coastal fishing waters.

This rule change, effective Aug. 1, 2011, was implemented with the understanding that the Marine Fisheries Commission and the Division of Marine Fisheries would coordinate changes in species management, but “the coordination and communication regarding MFC and DMF changes in species management rarely occurred. As a result, there was often confusion among anglers fishing in WRC jurisdictional waters,” Waters said. 

He added that Wildlife Resources continues to attempt to communicate and coordinate with the division in order to undertake rulemaking in a timely manner to match seasons, size and creel limits. “For example, we have proposed to change the creel limit for Flounder in rule so that it matches the current limit established by DMF by proclamation.” They are proposing to change the limit from four to one fish per day.

If the division decides to change its current limit and does not communicate the change in a timely manner, “our limit would again be different,” he said.

North Carolina Fisheries Association Executive Director Glenn Skinner said in an interview that when the Wildlife Resources Commission did away with the reference rule in 2022, its officials did so knowing they could not adjust their rules fast enough to comply with changes by the Marine Fisheries Commission or the Division of Marine Fisheries, which is the reason the rule was in place for so long.

Skinner said that the reference rule was put in place specifically because officials had dealt with the flounder issue before. At one time, recreational size limits and bag limits were changing constantly for the summer flounder fishery, which is managed regionally by the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission.

“Every time our state had to comply with ASMFC, they would change the size limit and bag limit recreationally. The WRC adopted that rule specifically to make sure that they didn’t have to deal with this issue that we’re dealing with now. And then, for whatever reason, they repealed this rule and set their own rule for flounder and a bunch of other species, knowing that it was going to cause problems.”

A back-and-forth

The buildup to the conflict is evident in meeting minutes and public comment periods, beginning in early 2019 when the two agencies formed a committee to discuss how to manage joint waters.

The discussion was spurred by the state-mandated 10-year rules review, because these joint rules were set to expire in 2022. The joint rules address scope and purpose, the classification of inland, coastal and joint waters, posting dividing lines, applicability of rules and special regulations for joint waters, and estuarine striped bass management.

Early in the discussion, the Wildlife Resources Commission voted on using estuarine salinity zones to determine inland and coastal boundaries, but because of the significant jurisdictional changes some state agencies would face and ecological concerns, the Marine Fisheries Commission at its November 2019 meeting did not vote.

In August 2020, the Marine Fisheries Commission moved forward with approving a notice of text with no changes for the joint rules. The Wildlife Resources Commission, after seeing the notice in the Oct. 1, 2020, North Carolina Register, responded by letter in November 2020, stating “we would appreciate the chance to discuss potential updates to these 30-year-old rules and the DMF’s plan to ensure joint readoption prior to final approval” and suggested other changes.

Wildlife Resouces Commission Chairman Monty Crump told Coastal Review recently that the two agencies met Sept. 2, 2021, and had come to an agreement, but the Marine Fisheries Commission called a special meeting Sept. 9, 2021, to approve readoption of joint rules with substantive changes, with which WRC disagreed. 

“At that point,” Crump said about the joint rules readoption by Marine Fisheries, “we’re in full disagreement with them on what they wanted to change,” adding since these were joint rules, they needed to be adopted by both commissions.

“This whole timeline you can see kind of sets the stage for a showdown, so to speak,” Crump added. 

At the specially called meeting Sept. 9, 2021, Marine Fisheries Commission Chair Rob Bizzell explained that some of the proposed changes discussed at the Sept. 2 meeting to improve clarity and accuracy of the rules were incorporated into the draft language, other “changes represent a significant departure from our commission’s and DMF’s understanding of the authority in joint waters and from historical management of fisheries in these areas” and were not recommended for adoption.

The Marine Fisheries Commission ended up withdrawing the nine rules before going before the Rules Review Commission in December 2021. That’s because the staff attorney had said they would recommend objection.

Then in October 2021, Wildlife Resources Commission members and staff opened up about the conflict. Waters “described disputes with the Division of Marine Fisheries and Marine Fisheries Commission” during an update on the delineation of waters and joint rules, according to the meeting minutes.

Waters summarized proposed rule changes and new rules “to reaffirm and clarify the Commission’s authority to regulate specific inland game fishes in all Public Fishing Waters and all fishes in Joint Fishing Waters when caught by hook and line,” the minutes state.

In December 2021, Wildlife Resources began what Waters called in an interview clarifying rules for inland fishing waters, certain inland game fish in all public fishing waters, and species when caught by hook and line in joint fishing waters.

With the joint rules set to expire that year and the two commissions at a standstill, the officials went before the governor’s office Feb. 17, 2022, as directed by a general statute that reads, “In the event the Marine Fisheries Commission and the Wildlife Resources Commission cannot agree, the Governor is empowered to resolve the differences.” 

Both commissions were told to readopt the existing joint rules with no substantive changes. Marine Fisheries voted to approve the nine rules June 23, 2022, and Wildlife Resources on June 28, 2022, during a special meeting. The rules went into effect Sept. 1, 2022.

Crump and Bizzell met to discuss delineation boundaries again June 6, 2022, and directed staff to work on a memorandum of agreement and accompanying maps, for which the Wildlife Resources Commission approved a draft on Aug. 17, 2022.

Largely because Wildlife Resources is moving away from mirroring Marine Fisheries Commission rules and toward setting its own species-specific rules, the Marine Fisheries Commission did not sign the agreement during its meeting Nov. 17, 2022. 

Bizzell, a recreational fisherman, reiterated that the two agencies had run into conflicts in adopting each other’s rules, adding that the reason was jointly managed waters. He said that two agencies shouldn’t be regulating the same body of waters, and Wildlife Resources agreed with him during its February 2022 meeting with the governor’s office.

Bizzell continued that the agreement was intended to capture the June 2022 discussion, and many of the points that are included in the documents were agreed upon, but there were two that were not.

First is a statement to establish a rule-making deadline of December 2024, which Bizzell said he didn’t feel was appropriate. 

“The other point is not specifically with the document but rather a change in regulation. Following the June 6, 2022, meeting, The Wildlife Resources Commission undertook rule-making establishing Inland water specific rules for marine and estuary species such as flounder, black drum and cobia,” Bizzell said, which he considered counter to the discussions that were had during that meeting.

He was referring to the temporary, species-specific rules that Wildlife Resources had presented to the North Carolina Office of Administrative Hearings June 10, 2022, for publication.

“This is because the proposed lines were discussed based on the assumption that the Wildlife Resources Commission will continue referencing the Marine Fisheries Commission rules for marine and estuarine species. Given that it’s no longer the case, lines will need to be reevaluated based on these changes,” Bizzell said.

Next: Current rules, new rules and the impact on other commissions

First in a series investigating why, after years of consistent seasons for inland, joint and coastal waters, recreational anglers found themselves negotiating different flounder and mullet rules in 2023.

Up until recently, the North Carolina Marine Fisheries Commission, which manages coastal waters, and North Carolina Wildlife Resources Commission, which manages inland waters, appeared to have a system in place for the shared responsibility of what’s known as joint waters.

However, since forming a Joint Committee on Delineation of Fishing Waters in late 2018, there’s been a paper trail of mounting disagreements between the two on managing the area between inland and coastal waters. 

Division of Marine Fisheries Public Information Officer Patricia Smith told Coastal Review that the joint committee was formed to determine boundaries defining inland, coastal and joint fishing waters under a statutorily mandated periodic review of rules. Delegates of the two commissions met periodically, but the discussions ended without consensus.

The conflict came to a head last year because the two were unable to agree on changes to joint water rules, which require approval by both commissions before they expired. Because of the dispute, the governor’s office intervened in February 2022 and directed both to approve existing joint rules as written, according to past meeting minutes of both agencies.

Both agencies readopted the joint boundary rules without change later that year but continue to strive for consensus, Smith said.

A Wildlife Resources Commission’s committee approved that summer a memorandum of agreement that included maps with proposed boundaries for coastal and inland waters. The Marine Fisheries Commission discussed the agreement, maps and other aspects of this issue at its November 2022 meeting, but did not vote on the agreement, she said.

Friction appears

The friction between the two agencies became evident earlier this summer.

For the first time in years, recreational flounder seasons for inland waters and coastal waters didn’t overlap, meaning rules for joint waters didn’t either.

Flounder season for Wildlife Resources Commission in inland waters was the first two weeks of September with a limit of four fish per day, and for Marine Fisheries, the second two weeks of September in coastal waters with a limit of one fish per day.

Mullet seasons are inconsistent as well.

North Carolina Wildlife Resources Commission officials said in a statement provided Thursday that, “there is no closed season for the harvest of Striped Mullet and White Mullet in Inland Fishing Waters by any lawful method or in Joint Fishing Waters by hook and line. The daily creel limit is 200 mullet in combination with no minimum size limit.” 

As with flounder, the statement continued, “WRC enforcement officers will enforce our season and creel rules, and, for questions about how marine patrol plans to enforce the proclamation, please contact NCDMF,” or the Division of Marine Fisheries. 

Commission Inland Fisheries Division Chief Christian Waters explained in an email that its current mullet rule applies to all legal gears used in inland fishing waters and for joint fishing waters when taken by hook and line.

Division of Marine Fisheries Director Kathy Rawls declared by proclamation that it is unlawful to possess mullet in North Carolina coastal and joint fishing waters for recreational fishers and for commercial purposes such as possessing, selling or offering for sale, in waters north of the Emerald Isle bridge as of Nov. 7, and as of Nov. 10, south of the bridge. The closure expected to end Dec. 31 is estimated to result in a 20% reduction in harvest. 

Marine Fisheries Commission officials said in May when they approved the measures to address overfishing of striped mullet in state waters that the most recent striped mullet stock assessment indicated that the stock is overfished and that overfishing is occurring.

North Carolina Fisheries Association Executive Director Glenn Skinner told Coastal Review that he is concerned about the consequences. Both agencies claim authority over joint waters, meaning anglers may or may not be allowed to possess mullet in joint waters, depending on which agency’s officer they encounter.

To make matters worse, Division of Marine Fisheries officials have given dealers, fish houses and bait shops until Nov. 18 to dispose of any mullet they have at their place of business, even though they were caught and purchased legally, prior to the closure, Skinner said.

“We believe this represents an illegal take of property by the State, violating both our State and Federal Constitutions,” he said.

Flounder in joint waters

The Wildlife Resources Commission established in February 2022 its 2023 flounder season set for Sept. 1-14 for inland fishing waters and when using hook-and-line gear in joint fishing waters. 

The Marine Fisheries Division announced June 28 that its 2023 recreational flounder season for coastal and joint fishing waters would be Sept. 15-30, with a possession limit of one flounder per person, per day. 

Both agencies in late August released statements explaining their decisions regarding the flounder seasons. 

Waters said in the Aug. 30 statement that when the commission adopted in February 2022 its current rule for flounder, it “mirrored the recreational season, size, and creel limits established by proclamation of the Division of Marine Fisheries director for coastal fishing waters.” 

He continued that it was not until June 28 that the commission learned through a Division of Marine Fisheries news release of its intent for this year’s season and creel limit. 

“You may ask, ‘Why can’t the Wildlife Commission change or simply not implement its rule?’ Legally that is not an option, given the Wildlife Commission does not have proclamation authority like the Division of Marine Fisheries,” he said. “Our agency cannot modify a rule or suspend a rule without going through the rulemaking process, which includes opportunity for public input. Had we been informed of Marine Fisheries’ plans sooner, we could have attempted to address the discrepancies through temporary rulemaking. However, two months is not enough time to complete the rulemaking process as outlined in the Administrative Procedures Act.”

Division of Marine Fisheries officials said in an Aug. 31 announcement that the flounder management measures “are science-based and required by law to ensure the long-term viability of the State’s commercially and recreationally significant species. Ending overfishing and rebuilding overfished stocks within the timeline set out in the Fishery Management Plans is essential for the conservation of these fish for the enjoyment of current and future North Carolinians.”

Additionally, the Division of Marine Fisheries rule prohibits the possession or transport of flounder through coastal or joint fishing waters when those waters are closed to flounder harvest, regardless of where the species was taken.

The inconsistent flounder seasons led to four warnings from Marine Patrol in the first two weeks of September for unlawfully possessing or transporting flounder through coastal waters.

“These warnings were a direct result of the Wildlife Resources Commission’s opening the flounder season in inland waters and the fisherman transporting outside of those waters,” a division representative said.

In response to these warnings, Wildlife Resources Commission Executive Director Cameron Ingram wrote a letter Sept. 8 addressed to Rawls, stating he was appalled when he was informed marine fisheries officers had been directed to take enforcement actions against anglers for fishing or transporting fish in joint waters during an open season that was adopted in 2022, approved by the Rules Review Commission, subjected to legislative review, and codified months before the division’s proclamation. 

He said the warning citations issued by Marine Patrol officers for “transport fish not in compliance w/ body of water” were issued to anglers in joint waters on Wildlife Resources Commission ramps and these “actions are completely unacceptable, unprofessional, and likely unlawful.” He said that Wildlife Resources Commission officers would not be taking similar criminal actions against the angling public during the Marine Fisheries Commission season announced in joint waters starting Sept. 15. 

Division’s view

Rawls, during a Marine Fisheries Commission meeting Aug. 25, explained that although the Wildlife Resources Commission has authority in inland waters, their rule conflicts with the requirements of Amendment 3 to the Flounder Fishery Management Plan, therefore causing confusion to the regulated public. Amendment 3 maintains a 72% reduction across the fisheries, according to the division. 

“And more importantly, because these regulations are a divergent from the current Marine Fisheries Commission regulations, which in contrast are based on data, sound science, and management and in accordance with sustainable harvest requirements, which are outlined in state law, this impacts the Marine Fisheries Commission and the Division of Marine Fisheries ability to meet the objectives of the Flounder Management Plan,” she continued. 

Rawls explained that the Wildlife Resources Commission “now believes that they have sole authority over all hook and line fishing in joint waters despite the fact that they have not exercised that authority since the joint rules were created decades ago.”

The Wildlife Resources Commission executive director had called her earlier in the week to let her know that they would be announcing their authority over hook and line in joint waters to the public “and that he hoped we could be on the same page about this interpretation,” she continued. 

“Certainly, not to his surprise, I let him know that we are absolutely not on the same page and that the Division of Marine Fisheries nor the Marine Fisheries Commission agree with this interpretation. I let him know and I also want to let this commission know that the Division of Marine Fisheries will continue to implement and enforce the rules and regulations of the marine fisheries commission as we always have.”

Rawls referred to the governor’s office having directed in 2022 both agencies to readopt the joint rules as is and the Division of Marine Fisheries has been operating as is — not only the rule text but also the way the rules have been implemented and enforced for decades. 

“It has become abundantly clear with the Wildlife Resources commission’s recent actions that their focus is on jurisdictional boundaries with a total disregard for the condition of the flounder stock,” she said.

Wildlife Resources’ perspective

During a Wildlife Resources Commission committee meeting Aug. 24, Waters, while discussing the two flounder seasons, told the board that it has regulatory authority over inland waters and hook and line in joint waters, but with joint waters, “there’s a little more nuance.” 

State law says that “joint waters are deemed coastal waters from the standpoint of laws and regulations administered by the Department,” which is the Department of Environmental Quality and its Division of Marine Fisheries, “and are deemed inland waters from the standpoint of laws or regulations administered by the Wildlife Resources Commission,” Waters read. 

“‘The Marine Fisheries Commission and the Wildlife Resources Commission may make joint regulations governing the responsibilities of each agency and modifying the applicability of licensing and other regulatory provisions as may be necessary for the rational and compatible management of marine and estuarine and wildlife resources in joint fishing waters’ And that’s because an animal or fish that is in joint waters is legally both a marine and estuarine resource and a wildlife resource.”

He said that joint rulemaking took place in the late 1970s or early 1980s, was revisited in the 1990s and readopted in 2022, at the direction of the governor’s office.

“At the time, it was really adopted based on what both boards were told to do, and that we would address this issue after it was readopted,” Waters said.

Included in the rules readopted by both with no substantive changes, which went into effect Sept. 1, 2022, coastal fishing laws and regulations administered by NCDEQ and the Marine Fisheries Commission apply to joint fishing waters except “the following inland fishing laws and regulations administered by the Wildlife Resources Commission apply to joint fishing waters and shall be enforced by wildlife officers: (1) all laws and regulations pertaining to inland game fishes; (2) all laws and regulations pertaining to inland fishing license requirements for hook and line fishing; and (3) all laws and regulations pertaining to hook and line fishing except as hereinafter provided.”

Commission Chairman Monty Crump of Richmond County told Coastal Review in a recent phone interview that during the Feb. 17, 2022, meeting with the governor’s office that he clarified that Wildlife Resources managed hook and line in joint waters. “I said I want to be clear, so there’s no misunderstanding” that while Marine Fisheries has made it clear that they do not agree with WRC having authority over hook and line in joint waters, the governor’s office was telling both agencies to adopt rules as written. 

Crump, who owns a small family farm and has been on the commission since 2017, said he was asked during that meeting why he thinks the Wildlife Commission has hook and line authority, and “I said because it’s plainly clear in the general statute that Wildlife has hook and line authority in joint waters, which means all species, they consider coastal under them, and when they get into joint waters in inland waters, they’re under our jurisdiction. And they don’t agree with that,  that is the crux of the whole deal, that statutory language.”

Waters told Coastal Review in an email that by rule, WRC has regulatory authority for species in joint fishing waters when taken by hook and line, and certain species listed as “game fish,” and Marine Fisheries Commission has regulatory authority over all other fishing activities.

“These differences in authority means that WRC and MFC can only implement seasons, size and creel limits within their respective jurisdiction. Therefore, there is a critical need for open communication between WRC and MFC/DMF when there is a regulatory change for a given species,” he said.

He said the Wildlife Resources Commission needs to know of a potential change six months in advance of when it is to be effective to have rules in place. 

“In the case of recent changes for Flounder and Mullet, WRC did not learn of the change in time to implement a rule change. The result is that the DMF proclamation is effective in the MFC/DMF jurisdiction and WRC rule is effective in its jurisdiction,” he said. “Traditionally, seasons, size and creel limits have been communicated between agencies. And the WRC has promulgated rules that are consistent with MFC/DMF management. Recently DMF has implemented management changes through proclamation, not allowing WRC sufficient time to address the changes through rulemaking. This occurred with both Flounder and Mullet seasons.”

Waters continued that at this point, regulations for other species are substantially similar, if not identical.

“The WRC has tried to match our rules with MFC/DMF for those species for which they generally take the management lead. The flounder season is now closed in all waters, and we are trying to coordinate with DMF to address regulations for the 2024 harvest season,” he said, adding that the mullet season closure implemented by DMF through proclamation is different than the open season established by the WRC in rule.

Rule change exposes clash

Skinner explained that the conflicting seasons had been avoided in years past because of a Wildlife Resources Commission rule that was amended in 2022. 

The rule, before being changed, read, “In inland fishing waters, Sea Trout (Spotted or Speckled), Flounder, and Red Drum (also known as Channel Bass, Red Fish or Puppy Drum) recreational seasons, size limits, and creel limits are the same as those established in the Rules of the Marine Fisheries Commission or proclamations issued by the Fisheries Director in adjacent joint or coastal fishing waters.”

The rule that went into effect March 15, now reads, “(a) The daily creel limit for flounder is four fish. (b) The minimum size limit is 15 inches. (c) The season for taking and possessing flounder is September 1 through September 14.” 

Skinner noted that the recreational southern flounder season and/or bag limit has changed every year since Amendment 2 to the flounder management plan was adopted in the fall of 2019. “That being said, there’s no way the WRC could have thought that their new rule would have matched the DMF/MFC seasons or bag limits on any given year.”

There was no recreational season in the fall of 2019 because harvest had been allowed all year prior to adopting Amendment 2. In 2020, the season was Aug. 16 to Sept. 30, and a four-fish limit. In 2021, the season was Sept. 1-14, again with a four-fish limit. In 2022, the season was Sept. 1-30 with a one-fish limit. 

Skinner said with the previous rule, the Wildlife Resources Commission acknowledged the Marine Fisheries Commission’s authority over joint waters, “which they now claim they have authority over, at least for the hook-and-line fishery. If they’ve always had authority over the hook-and-line fishery in joint waters, why wait decades to exercise that authority?” he said.

Next in the series: How did this unfold?   

Last in a series.

The week after Hurricane Florence devastated eastern North Carolina in September 2018, Core Sound Waterfowl Museum and Heritage Center Executive Director Karen Willis Amspacher wrote in an online message to members and patrons that throughout the 13 unincorporated communities making up Down East and the entire county, “we’ve been putting back the pieces.”

But “in the midst of the damage and pain throughout Down East, the Museum has suffered far more damage than originally seen.” She continued that there were significant leaks in the facility, mold was growing on the carpet, floors were buckling and drywall was crumbling. 

By mid-October 2018, teams and equipment had been brought in to help manage moisture, and staff and volunteers had completely emptied the nearly destroyed building so the damaged floors, walls and roof could be replaced, Coastal Review reported at the time. The museum reopened May 2020, after the $3.4 million in repairs were completed. 

Hurricane Florence’s impact on Down East initially grabbed the attention of researchers, agencies, educators, students, advocates and others invested in adaptation and resilience, leading to research on ghost forests, sea level rise, inundation and flooding. They’ve formed the Down East Resilience Network to raise awareness and create a better understanding of the environmental changes to the area and find solutions. 

As part of that awareness effort, the network hosted a two-day community conversation Sept. 12-13 at the museum on Harkers Island to discuss Down East since the 2018 Category 1 storm and how to prepare better for “the next Florence.” 

Over the course of the two-day conversation, attendees were given tours of Cape Lookout National Seashore and Down East communities, they heard the science behind ghost forests and king tides, had discussions with representatives from the North Carolina departments of transportation and insurance, and area utilities.

There also was time for residents to voice their concerns including the everyday flooding plaguing Down East, the poorly maintained ditches throughout the area, and frustrations with new development. 

Upgrading transportation infrastructure

Department of Transportation Assistant State Hydraulic Engineer Matt Lauffer, Division 2 Engineer Jeff Cabaniss and Division 2 Deputy Engineer Jeremy Stroud explained during the conversation that the state agency is preparing for climate-related change.

Division 2 is responsible for eight counties, including Carteret, and manages preconstruction, planning and construction, and maintenance of roads, bridges and ditches and culverts along state routes. 

Cabaniss said the agency is one of the largest landowners in the state because it owns rights of way. 

NCDOT’s responsibility when it comes to drainage is two fold, he continued. First is to keep water off the road if possible and the other is to divert through pipes, culverts and bridges the water that is coming.

Since the department owns facilities in all communities, as communities face issues with flooding, so does NCDOT. “A lot of times, we have the ditches alongside the road. We can clean those out, but we can’t make (the water) go away from the road because that goes off the right of way. And we don’t have the permission, the funds or the people to make that happen,” he said. 

NCDOT removes debris from the roadways and to restore the network after emergencies and other catastrophic events, Stroud added.

But not all ditches are state-maintained, especially Down East where artificial drainage can also funnel water onto land as well as roadways.

To prepare for how environmental changes will affect transportation infrastructure, Lauffer said NCDOT is working with climate scientists to design projects that consider more hurricane surge and sea level rise, and the implications of those on a proposed facility, such as an interstate. Planners are also beginning to incorporate resilience methodology in new projects. 

 “We’re definitely looking at the hazards that can adversely affect that facility,” he said, and how to best design projects. 

The agency is using past flooding data for vulnerability assessments. An assessment that is nearly complete is for U.S. Highway 70 between the state ferry terminal at Cedar Island and Raleigh that will look at the vulnerability of that major corridor.

Cabaniss said that, on the maintenance side, NCDOT is replacing older, smaller drainage pipes. Recently, a 24-inch pipe in Davis was replaced with a 55-inch by 72-inch pipe. 

Stroud added that they get recommendations from the hydraulic unit for every pipe that is replaced, a requirement now for projects that receive federal funding. 

“If we have future events, we can show that we brought it up to the current standards,” he said. “Hopefully there is no damage to that structure, and even if there is, it’s not because we put an inadequate pipe size in that would not meet the criteria for that event.”

Lauffer said that after Hurricane Florence, there was a huge realization that NCDOT could do better to know what to expect during major storms and how they affect the larger transportation network.

To do that, NCDOT has partnered with other state agencies and researchers who have tools and programs in place to measure flooding across the state, like the Flood Inundation Alert Network. NCDOT is using that data to project what roadways could be inundated based on the forecast for a particular storm. The agency also has a system that continually monitors 15,800 major bridge structures and culverts statewide. 

“We have a better understanding of the vulnerability of our facilities and structures,” Lauffer said, which they’re trying to get a better handle on “so that we can potentially recover faster, respond better, and potentially save lives by knowing these things are coming.”

Girding utilities 

Heidi Smith, manager of energy services and corporate communications with Tideland Electric Membership Corp., which serves parts or all of Beaufort, Craven, Dare, Hyde, Martin and Pamlico counties, and Ethan Horne, field engineer with Carteret-Craven Electric Cooperative’s resilience planning, both said the utilities they represent are working to prepare smarter. 

“We’ve just obviously had a lot of hurricanes. Practice doesn’t necessarily make perfect, but you get smarter and smarter each time around, there’s always lessons to be learned,” Smith said.

Horne said that flooding is always a big issue, especially because it makes reaching lines when they’re down more dangerous and difficult, but Carteret-Craven Electric Co-op is going to be better with the next Florence, starting with upgrades to the main office in Newport. 

A new fuel system that holds 10,000 gallons of diesel, a new radio tower for better communications, “because we always have problems communicating from Newport down to Cedar Island, Harkers Island area, especially when the towers are down,” he said. The co-op is working on improving response to outages, putting in a new substation in Otway, upgrading lines, and talking about bringing in different contractors with specialized equipment for hurricane response.

Smith said there’s a lot of challenges for underground infrastructure, including inundation, falling limbs and trees in ghost forests, and fires that burn and burn for months, especially for places like mainland Hyde County that are losing population. 

There’s so much technology, but “Here’s what I’m going to tell you, you’ve got to be prepared. We’re getting people back on faster than ever before. Our lives are more electrified, it is more inconvenient but what is shocking,” she said, is that in her 31 years with the utility, she’s seen a lot of hurricanes, but during Hurricane Florence, she saw communities flood that had never been flooded before. 

“When you’ve been flooded before, you’re better prepared than if you haven’t been,” Smith continued. She explained that she witnessed 900 of 2,000 homes in a community flood and “people literally died sooner because of that, because they’ve never been through it before. They didn’t have the mental infrastructure. They didn’t have the physical infrastructure. They didn’t have the family infrastructure –nothing to make them through it. And we’ve got to better prepare people. Because preparation makes us better. Preparation helps us emerge and resume our lives much more quickly. And we’ve got to do it. And we’re going to help lead the way.”

Understanding insurance

Jessica Gibbs, regional director for coastal northeast North Carolina with the state Department of Insurance, said the department has many services and is available to answer any questions. 

“We’re there to help you understand it, help you make sure you’re getting exactly what you need, and you’re not being overcharged, and you’re not being double-covered.” She reiterated that experts in the department answer the calls, not a recording. There are also resources on the department’s website to prepare and recover from catastrophic events. 

Also with the Department of Insurance, Tim Crawley, consumer complaints analyst, told those in attendance that if you run across issues in making a claim, he’s the person you contact. 

Here on the coast, he said during the community conversation, “Most companies will exclude wind and hail, so then you have to chase the wind and hail policy down” and if you have a federally underwritten loan, they’re going to require you to carry flood insurance on your home as well. “Those are the challenges you’re having to face here.” 

He added that it’s important to make sure your coverage is in sync with the current real estate market and adequate for your dwelling – don’t just base it on your tax records.

“When a claim is filed for, especially here, you’re having a multifront attack on your property. You’ve got water coming up from the ground to flood, and then you’ve got the wind assault from above,” he said, and the insurance company is going to have to determine how the damage occurred. For example, if the floor or carpeting is soaked, and there’s a saturation line coming up the wall, the insurance company’s going to say that’s flood related and will have to go through the flood policy. 

“The home policy is a covered-peril policy,” Crawley said. 

That means it only covers those perils that are expressly stated in the policy. 

“We all think, well, I have insurance, so I’ve got everything from hurricanes to lightning, to alien invasion, to my kid drawing all over the house with crayons, you know. It is written as a covered-peril policy for a very specific reason,” Crawley said.

Then there’s also the language used in homeowners policies. “It says they will repair or replace. The word ‘repair’ is first for a very specific reason: They’d rather put X-number of shingles on your roof than have to (replace) your entire roof.”

Ryan Cox, president of Insight Planning & Development consultant services, said he defined a natural flood as moving water covering two or more properties, and that could be your property and the road, which is state property. “If the road and your property are flooded, then that is two or more properties, but that is the definition of a natural flood,” he said. “Flood is water moving across the ground, that’s a flood. If it’s from the roof, that’s wind and hail.”

Your insurance agent is also a great resource to find out if you have the right coverage, Crawley added. But, he warned, agents sell policies, they do not adjust claims.

“Once the claim is filed with the insurance company, it’s the adjuster that’s driving the bus at that point,” he said, adding that the agent has to step aside to let the claims organization take over.

Crawley said he tells everybody before any storm that their smartphone is their best tool. He encourages residents to take photos of their insurance policies and expensive or bigger items, like bedroom and living room furniture and electronics, and make sure those are saved in online storage. 

“As a former claims adjuster, the easier you make it on the adjuster, the faster you’re going to go through the process,” he said, so have your policy information ready when you file a claim.

Cox added that just because you are not required to have flood insurance, it doesn’t mean you shouldn’t get flood insurance. Many residents don’t get flood insurance because they’re not in a special flood hazard area, or 100-year floodplain. A 100-year floodplain means there’s a 1% chance of annual flooding, or a one-in-a-hundred chance every year that an area could flood. 

“The gamble is, where is it going to happen? It can happen in the western part of the state for flash flooding. It can happen in the central part of the state through flash flooding or hurricane. It can happen either here from storm surge, or it can happen as a combination of storm surge and riverine flooding,” he said, which is when water from the ocean or sound – storm surge – and riverine flooding meet. 

He encourages residents to have flood insurance, whether in a floodplain or not, “the worst is having to tell somebody that there’s nothing I can do for you because you didn’t have flood insurance,” Cox said.

Identifying what’s next

Organizers spent the weeks after the community conversation compiling notes collected during the two days of programming to identify concerns and what actions are needed. 

The following are some of the comments provided to and compiled by organizers and shared in a spreadsheet with Coastal Review: 

“One person says that recurring flooding Down East is driven not only by sea level rise, but also by poorly maintained ditches – not enough, filled with debris, etc.”

“The tours through Down East communities were eye-opening and having residents leading the way gave me a lot of perspective on the issues they’re facing.”

“I’ll admit that when I first heard about global warming thirty years ago, I thought I’d never live to see it or feel it. Obviously, I was wrong.” 

And one comment said the realistic expectation is that it’s not possible to be able “to protect every parcel” but they “don’t have to run for the hills.”

“Environmentalists aren’t going to let us dump [referring to water] into Sound” later goes on to say that she understands that it may impact sea life, but says that “water needs to go.”

The spreadsheet also detailed notes where action was needed, such as Down East needs to look at all the options for community sustainability and have a “seat at the table” when it comes to planning for roads and other infrastructure, and for a readiness, response, recovery plan to work it has to be developed with the community. 

Amspacher told Coastal Review after the event that she believed everyone who participated went away feeling that the conversation was positive for all involved.

“The community learned about resources for adapting to the changes, and the researchers and agencies gained a firsthand look at the issues Down East residents live with every day,” she said. “These two days were the beginning of many more conversations that have taken place since this gathering, and more are underway for the immediate and long-term future. Those who helped plan see it as an excellent first step in connecting needs and resources.”

Among those who helped plan the conversation were North Carolina Office of Recovery and Resiliency Resilience Planner Holly White, Western Carolina University geology professor Rob Young, and lifelong Down East resident Chris Yeomans, a retired educator. 

White told Coastal Review that resiliency staff attended the recent meetings of community leaders Down East to listen to their concerns about flooding issues and other hazards impacting these areas. 

“We want to understand the local perspectives as a continuation of NCORR’s recent community work in the eastern half of the state through a disaster resilience program called RISE. Through hearing the perspectives of those that live in the region, we hope to determine if NCORR or other partners can be helpful in increasing the resiliency of the communities,” White said.

Young, who is director of the Program for the Study of Developed Shorelines at Western, told Coastal Review that he became involved in the network three years ago when he met Amspacher. 

She shared with him the issues she saw for Down East and how the unincorporated areas of the counties seem to have trouble getting resilience funding and organizing for projects, “Even though it is clearly one of the most exposed areas to coastal hazards in the state,” he explained.

Areas like Down East have a lot of trouble developing projects and getting resilience funds because it’s not an incorporated municipality. It’s really easy for the state to work with a municipality that has lots of capacity, like planning and GIS departments, “but working with an area that doesn’t have any of that, you have to go through the county. And if the county is either not interested or if the county doesn’t have the capacity, then those folks end up at the end of the line.”

Young said meetings like the community conversation are important “even though we didn’t walk out of there with the projects developed and money on the way” and because the state agency representatives showed up and listened, they were reminded what and where the needs are “because ultimately, they are going to have to drive some of these solutions” by working with county governments.

Yeomans, a retired Carteret County principal, spoke to Coastal Review in a follow-up interview from the front porch of his daughter’s home on Harkers Island that she just purchased. He was helping with odds and ends that needed fixing. 

He said he sees how vulnerable Down East is to storms and sea level rise. 

“The water is higher than it was 20 or 30 years ago,” he said. Adding it’s the changing environment is just part of nature, “but I think we humans have sped up that process.” 

His question, which appears to be on the minds of most Down East residents, is “How can locals maintain their heritage and maintain where they live. Be able to stay here and thrive, too.”

When he was a young boy growing up on Harkers Island, before Down East was “discovered,” he could see development coming. He observed it on the Outer Banks, and knew it was imminent for Down East, he said. 

Now, what gets his attention is development in the unincorporated communities, and the associated septic systems and well water, especially in low-lying areas where there’s sea level rise, which is saturating the ground. 

When does development maximize our ability to sustain the natural environment and human interaction? He asked. “When do we put up a ‘No Vacancy’ sign? Who’s going to make that decision?”

That concern, Yeomans continued, runs parallel to Down East resilience efforts. 

“My heart is Down East. I love the Down East people. I love our culture. And I want to see it protected as much as we can with the changes that are happening,” and those changes need to happen responsibly, and in a way that protects the environment and the Down East heritage, he said.

Second in a series.

Aerial photographs that capture ghost forests, pilings jutting up from the water in Hatteras Inlet, the narrow two-lane N.C. Highway 12 at North River Bridge, and oceanfront homes with waves lapping at the front steps were hanging in the Core Sound Waterfowl Museum and Heritage Center on Harkers Island in late June 2018 as part of a multimedia exhibit showing climate-related change.

“Rising: Perspectives of Change along the North Carolina Coast,” featuring 15 photographs accompanied by firsthand accounts, was on display when Hurricane Florence lingered over eastern North Carolina just a few months later in mid-September, amplifying and exacerbating the changes focused on in the exhibit. 

In the very room where the exhibit survived the storm, its co-creator Ryan Stancil and a gathering of Down East residents, community leaders and academics in September revisited that scene from five years ago when the storm hit and then, its aftermath. Stancil and Dr. Barbara Garrity Blake had collected the oral histories to accompany Baxter Miller’s photography for the exhibit funded by North Carolina Sea Grant.

“Five years ago, this world changed swiftly,” Stancil said Sept. 13 to those participating in the two-day community conversation, coordinated by the Down East Resilience Network.

The network is made up of researchers, agencies, educators, students, advocates and others invested in adaptation and resilience was formed three years ago to raise awareness of the environmental changes taking place in the region.

“Florence sank her teeth into Down East – gnashing at the banks, shoving water up through the marsh and into the 13 unincorporated villages,” Stancil continued. “She dumped nearly 30 inches of rain and left in her wake damage and flooding like we’ve never seen. Homes destroyed, business at a standstill and livelihoods in jeopardy.”

People Down East were battered and bruised, “But, if you know anything about Down East, you know the people are strong, self-reliant and resilient,” and in the days, weeks and years that followed, they held close to each other, neighbor helping neighbor.

“So much has changed since Florence came ashore,” Stancil said. “10 years ago, we were asking what was happening around us. Five years ago, we were asking what we could do to fix it. Today, we are asking, ‘How can we buy more time?’”

Stancil said that the museum’s executive director, Karen Willis Amspacher, has said that “Rising” had inspired the community conversation.

“Sure, ‘Rising’ might play a small part in why we’re here today, the truth is, today’s conversation was inevitable,” he continued.

“There is a different sort of storm brewing – one of eroding shorelines, migrating fish, intruding saltwater, and inundated roadways. And Down East is smack-dab in the middle of that storm’s path,” Stancil said. “The people who live here aren’t the only ones who know it.”

In the last five years, Down East has attracted the attention of most of the state’s academic institutions and state agencies, and there’s at least a dozen research projects taking place in the communities.

“I’m grateful to see the interest and engagement of so many researchers as we all work to open doors of communication. We must work together to better understand the science and its intersection with place and people and policy. I believe the work we are doing here today can be a foundation for resilience building, in unincorporated communities across North Carolina and beyond,” he said.

What is changing?

The fishing industry is having to navigate changes in water quality, development and once-reliable species migrating.

Hardy Plyler with Ocracoke Seafood Co. said he had been told several times long ago by an Ocracoke fisherman that fish populations are controlled by natural cycles and are influenced by climatic events — hurricanes, freezes, salinity changes, droughts — many things that are in the natural world that affect these fish over and above regulations by the North Carolina Division of Marine Fisheries.

Fish also are influenced by environmental factors like pollution, agricultural runoff, municipal wastewater, and industrial pollution. When you have a big rainstorm in coastal North Carolina, pesticides, herbicides and fertilizers wash off the farmland into sounds and rivers, he added.

Adam Tyler, owner of Harkers Island’s Core Sound Oyster Co., said one of the biggest challenges on the coast he’s seeing is development and hardened shorelines. He said that living shorelines, rather than seawalls or bulkheads, are an effective way to protect the coast and promote resilience.

Tyler said there’s a marshy property a half-mile from the water under development in Carteret County that he knows won’t perk, and is being backfilled. Tyler said he didn’t know how that could be allowed.

“And then I asked one of the guys who built the home down here, and he told me, he said, ‘son,’ he said, ‘When you know the right developer and you got enough money, anything can be done.’ That conversation was about six weeks ago,” Tyler said in mid-September.

Adding that the commercial fishing industry “always get blamed for everything,” Tyler said it’s not responsible for all the coastal environmental damage.

“It’s not all us. I’m not saying that we don’t bear some burden there, but it’s not all of us. It’s the people coming in here backfilling these marshes and destroying the ecosystem. I see that all the time.”

Tyler said his frustration with regulatory agencies encouraged him to transition to oyster farming to keep himself on the water and instill in his son the proud Down East heritage.

Raleigh’s Locals Seafood Market owner and co-founder Ryan Speckman said he’s seen the shrimp fishery change since 2010, and the company has been having a hard time getting the popular bottom fish — snapper, grouper, sea bass, triggerfish — that used to be reliable almost year-round.

Speckman said that, traditionally, they’d get their bottom fish from the southeastern part of the state, the coast from Carteret County south, but he’s seen more triggerfish in waters north of Hatteras than in the southeast during the last two years.

Because the Raleigh-based company sells fresh, local seafood bought almost daily from fishermen along the coast, Speckman said he hears feedback daily, including that some species once abundant on the North Carolina coast have moved north.

‘We don’t have to wait for these changes’

Ghost forests are another visible environmental change Down East, and in much of coastal North Carolina.

Duke University professor and ecosystem biologist Emily Bernhardt explained that these dead and dying trees are “an iconic symbol of rapid change” on the coastal plain.

“There’s always hurricanes blowing salt onto the landscape, and there’s trees dying. But in the past, those trees would come back,” Bernhardt said. “What we’re seeing now is that we’re having a lot of ghost forests forming, and the trees are often not growing back.”

When a coastal forested wetland is lost, and can’t grow back because the soil is too salty or too wet for trees to grow, it is a fundamental change to the ecosystem.

“The big question I’m interested in is, what is going to happen to the ecosystems and communities of the eastern coastal plain over the next century? What makes these systems and people and communities vulnerable? What is the impact that we’re already seeing? And that we can expect? And then the big question, which is not a scientific question, it’s a human question, is, what is going to happen next?” Bernhardt continued.

The conversation about rapid environmental change taking place in this country implies it’s going to happen in the future, Bernhardt said, but there are areas already subject to widespread tidal flooding, called recurrent or nuisance flooding. “We don’t have to wait for these changes.”

During hurricanes and tropical storms, areas Down East are extremely vulnerable to storm surge, which can bring not just water but also salt. Storm surge is a big component of how salt gets delivered to the system.

So is drought, which is a very confusing problem to explain to people, she said. Salt can penetrate the ground when it’s arid and when it’s extremely wet, and both are a risk for saltwater intrusion.

“We focus a lot of attention on hurricanes because they’re acute. But what we’re looking at with ghost forests is kind of more of a slow disaster. Those hurricanes might push you over the edge, but it’s a disaster that’s building over time as a result of the accumulation of salts in these exposed and vulnerable landscapes,” Bernhardt said.

Thermal expansion

Scientists have evidence that water levels are rising, another change affecting Down East now and in the long term.

“We’ve been measuring water level in many different ways, and yes, water levels are rising,” said North Carolina King Tides Project founder Dr. Christine Voss, a retired coastal scientist from University of North Carolina Institute of Marine Sciences.

“Part of the whole sea level rise story is just the thermal expansion of water,” she continued.

Also affecting water levels are wind, the tides and the Gulf Stream.

Last year, federal agencies published a report saying that water levels are expected to rise within the next three decades, by 2050. “That difference for the East Coast is about 10 to 14 inches. And that’s kind of hard to comprehend,” said Voss.

King tides have always happened and are predictable, taking place when the moon is at its closest distance to the Earth, causing extremely high high tides, and extremely low low tides. “We use those high tide events to help us visualize what future higher sea levels will look like. It’s kind of giving us a glimpse of what future higher sea levels will look like,” Voss said.

In the last 20 years, sea levels have risen about 6 inches. Within the next 30, federal officials forecast sea levels up to a foot higher. 

Voss said other visible changes are related. “We’re having more and stronger tropical storms,” and know that these will be stronger.”

One of the biggest take-home messages, Voss said during the gathering, is that the changing environmental conditions are basically integrated into the coastal landscape, “and I’ll say in your seascape as well. You are the communities seeing these changes. And there’s a lot of complexity,” she said, referring to the numerous changes happening at once, including warmer temperatures and sea level rise.

Katherine Arnade is co-leader of the Sunny Day Flooding Project, which aims to monitor how often land is flooded due to sea level rise. Project scientists are measuring water levels and storm drains using special gauges they have developed. The sensors also take photos of the roadway and can measure flow in stormwater systems, including the contributions from rainfall and, in some cases, groundwater.  The first installation was in Beaufort in 2021.

“We’re committed to learning about flooding in Down East and collecting data that’s useful to your community for as long as long as we can,” Arnade said, adding the sensors will be there for at least five years. Right now, there are only four sensors in use but the program could expand.

Realtime sensor data is available online.

Priorities identified

Dr. Rob Young, a geology professor and director of the Program for the Study of Developed Shorelines at Western Carolina University, has been part of the Down East Resilience Network since its inception three years ago. Young recently worked with Cape Lookout National Seashore officials to assess its villages’ and historic buildings’ vulnerability and has piloted a program for vulnerability assessments of private homes Down East.

“I can’t tell you how many times in the last 24 hours I’ve had people come up to me frustrated with the nature of the new development that’s going on Down East, where folks are filling wetlands, building in places where we know that septic systems cannot possibly be perking,” he said the second day of the conversation.

Young said residents are frustrated. These folks who are generally suspicious of regulations, always seem to be regulated, while they see others not be held to the same standards. And elected county officials – the only local government representation residents of unincorporated Down East hamlets have – and county management were absent, despite being invited to the event.

“Unfortunately, a lot of the people who might answer some of those questions for us at the county level are not with us for these two days to help us find solutions or have that discussion. I don’t know how to fix that either,” Young said.

Young said his priorities are how to keep residents from being displaced by flooding, how transportation infrastructure and utilities will be maintained in the future, and how to deal with the public health implications of failing water treatment and septic systems.

“The final piece to all of this, I think, is trying to understand how we tap into some of those infrastructure dollars that have become available over the last couple of years that just don’t seem to make their way Down East,” Young said. “How can we tap into all of the new sources of funding available from the federal government that comes to the state and find a way to get some of those funds into a place like Down East, for meaningful projects? That’s what we really need to know, at the end of the day, from a meeting like this. We have to stop talking and start doing stuff. And we need our elected officials to really engage and help make that happen.”

Next: What is being done to prepare?

First in a series.

Nothing’s been the same since Hurricane Florence for the 13 unincorporated Down East communities in Carteret County.

The slow-moving Category 1 storm hovered over the state after making landfall Sept. 14, 2018, on Wrightsville Beach, causing record-breaking flooding and dumping dozens of inches of rain on eastern North Carolina.

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration estimates that the tropical cyclone cost $24 billion, or $29 billion in today’s dollars, with the total damage from Florence in North Carolina being more than the combined cost of Hurricane Matthew in 2016 and Hurricane Floyd in 1999.

The Core Sound Waterfowl Museum and Heritage Center on Harkers Island, like much of Down East, was not spared. The 22,000-square foot facility suffered millions of dollars in damage.

After extensive repairs and being sidelined by COVID-19, the facility has been back open for a bit, but it isn’t back to normal.

To discuss the changes taking place over the last five years and to look ahead, the Down East Resilience Network coordinated in mid-September a two-day community conversation at the museum. 

The network made up of researchers, agencies, educators, students, advocates and others invested in adaptation and resilience was formed almost three years ago to raise awareness of the environmental changes taking place in the region.

To begin the conversation, tours were offered Sept. 12 of Cape Lookout National Seashore to learn about its resiliency strategies and of Down East communities to see the risks and realities of those living there. Attendees returned to the museum Sept. 13 to hear what’s happening with the commercial fishing industry, talks on the science behind flooding and ghost forests, North Carolina Department of Transportation infrastructure plans, and ways to navigate the ever-more-difficult insurance industry.

Guides on one of the Down East tours that hot September day were lifelong residents Chris Yeomans, Cheryl Lawrence and Richard Gillikin.

The trolley with about two dozen onboard meandered along narrow, two-lane roads lined with deep ditches.

Yeomans, a retired Carteret County educator who led the tour, began by encouraging passengers to observe Down East, “where we call home.”

He, along with Lawrence and Gillikin, pointed out throughout the two-hour tour where roads and properties tend to regularly flood, which seemed to be in more places than not, and the history of some of the older houses.

When the trolley paused on a corner in the unincorporated community of Marshallberg, Lawrence’s home of more than 40 years was just down the road.

She gestured out the window and said, “this is Core Sound.”

“I say I live on Core Sound, but actually, during a storm, I live in Core Sound,” Lawrence said. “I have sat on my front porch during a hurricane, and I have watched waves come across the banks from the ocean into the Sound, and I have had white caps in my front yard.”

She moved into her new home in 1981, and that summer, there was a strong northeast storm.

“From day one, I’ve always had flooding and never gotten help. I asked for ditches to be dug, we just can’t get the state to help us,” she said. And the flooding has changed over the years. It lasts longer and is higher, and when her yard floods, it “takes forever” for the water to recede.

In addition to the nuisance flooding that appears to affect everyday life for residents, the vegetation is suffering from saltwater intrusion, leaving a different kind of scar on the landscape.

“We have what we call ghost forests,” Lawrence said. Her road used to be full of greenery and now “the trees are nothing but sticks, no leaves or limbs or anything. The saltwater has taken over. I cannot plant flowers in my yard.”

Gillikin, whose family has lived for generations Down East, reiterated that everything has changed since Florence, especially the trees.

“I might hurt some people’s feelings here. I’m not so sure that I’m on board with global warming and all this mess, to be honest with you. But I do know things have changed. That’s all I can say. Places are flooding now that didn’t flood before,” Gillikin said.

“Trees are dying,” he continued. The “pines were just as green as you’ve ever seen a pine tree from top to bottom. Now, it looks like a nuclear bomb was dropped off here. People can say the hurricanes did it, but hurricanes have been around from the beginning of time as far as I know. When I grew up in the ’60s and ’70s we had hurricanes, and it never killed the trees like this.”

And the ditches along the roads rarely held water, but now they stay filled, Gillikin continued. “It’s an everyday deal. There’s water in these ditches all the time.”

Rob Young, director of the Program for the Study of Developed Shorelines at Western Carolina University in Cullowhee, made a few points about what the passengers were observing during the tour.

He began by saying that while it’s not his job to convince anybody anything about climate change, “I can tell you one thing we do know about change, and that is that sea level is rising. That one’s about as straightforward as you can get. We’ve been measuring it from tide gauges for over 100 years, everywhere on the planet. The volume of the ocean, the amount of water in the ocean, is increasing and sea level is going up.”

The rising sea level is doing more than eroding beaches, it’s raising the regional groundwater table.  “We’re talking about 16 inches over the last three or four decades. In a place that is as flat and low as this, a foot and a half makes a lot of difference.”

The rising water table also means that when it rains, there’s less space for that water to seep into the ground. “You take a rain bomb that’s dropping an inch or two of rain on you, and it can’t go into the ground anymore the way that it used to, it has to run off,” he said. “What we’re facing Down East is this gradual rise in the water table. It’s also the driver of the ghost forests.”

Yeomans, earlier in the tour, had spoken of his concerns about what will happen when the septic systems and drinking water wells Down East are ruined, when the ground is saturated so that fish and shellfish habitat die because of stormwater runoff and failed septic systems.

Young responded that failing septic systems are a public health issue.

“I would be stunned if there’s an in-ground septic system in this community around here that’s functioning. I would be stunned. Maybe there’s some mounted septic systems. Maybe there are some that have been modified, but septic systems that perked 20 years ago, 30 years ago, they’re not perking anymore,” Young said. “Your septic system is not treating the effluent that you’re putting into that septic tank.”

Young called it a threefold problem.

“How do we help folks keep their homes dry? And that’s on the top of the list for me, individual people,” he said. “Can they elevate? Can they afford to elevate? What would it cost? Is there a way to help them do that proactively, not after the next storm when they’ve had water in their house?”

Yeomans also has been thinking about what can be done to prepare for a storm.

“Before the storm comes, why can’t we have resources in various staging areas, either at schools or at fire departments, or somewhere that will be relatively safe? We don’t want our resource to be washed away — things that can be there before the storm,” he said.

Yeomans told the tour group that the official storm shelter in the county is in Newport, which is several miles and bridges away, but the community will open Atlantic School for people in flood-prone areas or in mobile homes. He formerly served as principal there.

His suggestion to help Down East residents was to have a generator for the entire school and turn Atlantic School into a storm shelter for residents who aren’t financially able to prepare, and the elderly who need electricity for their medical care. It would also keep the air conditioning running to prevent books and other supplies from getting moldy, and to preserve the refrigerated food in the cafeteria.

“There’s resources at the school where when bridges are washed away, and roads are washed away, you can have access to those,” he said. “I know it’s a pretty big measure and is going to cost the money up front, but it can save some lives.”

Community night

Following the tour, the museum hosted a community night to look back on the fifth anniversary of the storm.

Harkers Island resident Corey Lawrence opened the discussion. He said in 2018, 11 days after the storm when the power was finally restored, he wrote a Facebook post to capture his feelings.

Five years later, from the podium inside the now-repaired museum in front of about 60 or so, he read from that post.

Lawrence said he appreciated how simple it is just to flip on a switch and have light, for the fridge to be cold, to have hot water, and to have the air conditioner running again.

“If there’s anything good that comes from these storms is people I have never seen before and know I’ll never see again that came from places like Rocky Mount and Wilson, and Louisburg. And they showed up with pig cookers and randomly set up wherever, and you get word that there’s food,” he said, his voice thick with emotion.

“I appreciate people that did things like that. I’ve been reminded to use my manners even more than I usually do. I’ve said ‘thank you’ after standing in a line and I never meant it more in my whole life,” he continued. “Patience is gold, and so is water, a warm plate of food, ice, and gasoline. I believe that angels were everywhere, and the saints still exist. Giving is better, and oftentimes is easier than receiving. I learned that serving others brings joy. That warm food is soul food. That ounce of prevention really is worth a pound of cure.”

The Rev. Robbie Phillips, former director of Carteret Long Term Recovery Alliance, told the crowd that “we are very much still in recovery tonight.” Five years later there are still people in the community who have not recovered, and might not ever recover. “To me, that’s staggering. Because 95% of the people in our community have (recovered), and they’ve long forgotten about the people who have not.”

The alliance was formed about five weeks after Florence and the organizers committed to helping until the last home is complete. “And I’m here to tell you tonight that the last home is not complete.”

As of mid-September, 623 families, or cases, had been to the alliance for help. Of those, 477 have been closed by working with agencies and partners, and the alliance directly closed 93 cases. There are still 146 cases open, with 73 being managed entirely by the alliance.

Phillips, a Presbyterian minister, said the biggest lesson she learned came shortly after Florence when Presbyterian Disaster Assistance met with the community.

“They gave us an image and I’ll take this with me always,” Phillips said. “They said a disaster, particularly like a hurricane, rips the roof off of a community, just like it rips the roof off of our homes, and it gives us an opportunity to stare into the community, like we’ve stared into our homes and find the weaknesses, find the things that need to be fixed. Folks, our roof on our community is still ripped off,” she said. “We are still staring in and finding the weaknesses, seeing where we need to fix things and adjust things. And I think we will be doing this for a very long time.”

State agency representatives and the audience discussed the greatest challenges for Down East, which included recovery inequity, infrastructure, insurance concerns, the role of federal recovery agencies, and how to get help on the county and state level.

More than one attendee spoke up about how deserted they felt by the county.

One resident asked if there were any county representatives attending the community night. Upon learning the answer was no, she said, “They need to come to the table with this community and have a real discussion about what we need here. As unincorporated communities in a large geographic area, how do we get our voice out there?”

Another resident added, “we need the county to be more active. We need somebody that will listen, that says, ‘hey, we’re really going to do what we say and when we can get this done.” He added that he’d been fighting for 20 years to get ditches fixed.

I’m living in the house I’ve been in for 67 years, and when I think about things changing, it’s changed,” he continued. “Because first of all, hurricanes, the frequency certainly has changed, the intensity has changed. So, something’s going on. I don’t know what, I’m not that smart. But I know it’s changed. And if we flood with a northeast wind, with just wind and rain, what do you think we’re going to have when a hurricane comes in?”

Next: What’s changed? What’s next?

Last in a series.

Stretching north from the Wright Memorial Bridge at Kitty Hawk to the Back Bay of Virginia Beach, Currituck Sound was, at one time, the crown jewel of the Atlantic Flyway.

A large, freshwater estuary teeming with subaquatic vegetation and dotted with innumerable low-lying islands and marsh habitat for ducks, geese and swans, migratory waterfowl by the hundreds of thousands flocked to its waters every fall and winter.

By the early 20th century, market hunting and dozens of hunt clubs that placed no limit on the number of birds that could be taken sprang up and wiped out the population of waterfowl that migrated to the sound’s waters.

Those days are now the stuff of history and legend. Migratory waterfowl counts have plummeted. But now, researchers and conservationists from different organizations and fields are working together with a plan to restore the marsh habitat and make it more resilient – a blueprint that resulted from several years’ worth of pilot projects.

Audubon North Carolina, the state affiliate of the National Audubon Society, notes that at the Donal C. O’Brien Jr. Sanctuary at Pine Island, “waterfowl populations in the 1970s were around 300,000, recent surveys in Currituck Sound have counted only around 30,000 birds.”

Although bag limits have been in place for some time, balancing the take of hunters with the ability of waterfowl to repopulate, migratory waterfowl have not returned to their historic numbers. The reasons are complex, intertwined with an ecosystem that is unlike almost any other estuarine system anywhere.

Robbie Fearn, director of the Pine Island Sanctuary, recently described Currituck Sound for Coastal Review, noting how different it is from other estuarine systems.

“I don’t like to use the word unique, but it’s an unusual system in that it’s primarily freshwater,” he said, adding that the nearest ocean outlet for the sound’s waters is some 25 miles south at Oregon Inlet.

“The dynamics of the system are very unusual in that it is a giant shallow bathtub. And the water is sloshing around in it all the time. Most marsh systems don’t have this level of dynamism,” Fearn said, adding that it is “a really unusual system to be working in and exciting because every question is still ready to be answered.”

The environment, however, is not the only complex system to navigate in addressing how restore Currituck Sound’s restoration. Its shores include lands that are parts of Currituck County, the town of Duck and those managed by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and the North Carolina Wildlife Commission.

To navigate the issues involved among multiple entities, Audubon in 2019 formed the Currituck Sound Coalition, a partnership that includes 14 members representing local governments, state and federal agencies, and research and educational institutions. The North Carolina Coastal Federation, which publishes Coastal Review, is part of the coalition.

In 2020, the North Carolina Attorney General’s office awarded Audubon North Carolina a $98,000 Environmental Enhancement Grant, or EEG. The work on the grant has been completed, but the grant was invaluable in creating a framework for marsh restoration and resilience, said Audubon Senior Coastal Resilience Program Manager Cat Bowler.

“The EEG funds allowed us to work with the Currituck Sound Coalition to develop the Marsh Conservation Plan for Currituck Sound. It also helped us to conduct a site analysis at Pine Island Sanctuary and start to develop the project concept for the marsh restoration pilot projects that Audubon is still working on with partners to this day,” Bowler said. “It really laid the groundwork for us to launch this work.”

The Currituck Sound Coalition Marsh Conservation Plan is a working publication that outlines how the group will work together to restore the waters of the sound. In the document’s “process overview,” the role the EEG played is specifically cited.

“In 2019, Audubon received funding from the North Carolina Environmental Enhancement Grant Program to support the coalition in developing a marsh conservation plan for Currituck Sound. A working group was formed to lead the planning process with partner members,” the plan’s authors wrote.

The plan outlines a wide scope of objectives to address sea level rise, erosion, invasive species, declining water quality, and loss of biodiversity — some of the issues listed that are known to affect Currituck Sound marshes.

“The beauty of the EEG funding was that it allowed us all to work together to share the knowledge we’re all developing separately and come together,” Fearn said. “I think it creates shared understanding. It created this connective tissue.”

The grant funding did more than create a communication network. The Audubon Society was also able to examine and compare different methods of marsh rehabilitation.

“The EEG actually funded a series of four pilot projects,” Bowler said. “Pilot marsh restoration projects looking at different types of living shoreline techniques, but also looking at more innovative restoration techniques like thin layer placement, where you take sediment and put it in thin layers on the surface of the marsh to help it accrete with sea level rise over time.”

Those research projects may prove to be critical in how much funding Currituck Sound restoration and resilience projects will be able to access. One of the partner organizations of the Coalition is Dr. Reide Corbett and the Coastal Studies Institute.  Corbett, the institute’s executive director, explained the significance the research that is now being done will have in the future.

“When it comes to any sort of resilience, some of it’s education, but a lot of it’s going to come down to funds, (and) the fact is, you can’t get those funds until you really understand what the problems are and where the problems really need to be addressed,” Corbett said.

The EEG projects, though, are not close-ended programs, rather the nature of the projects and the way in which the money has been administered has created additional opportunities to develop strategies for marsh restoration.

Bowler said the EEG funds in combination with money from other state sources, the North Carolina Land and Water Fund and the Clean Water Management Trust Fund, as well as from Northwest National Coastal Resilience Fund, “and all three of those grants supported different elements of this project,” Bowler said. “To be able to bring the three different funding sources together to help enhance our partnerships in the region and also get some of this work planned and designed on the ground, I think that’s been a huge success.”

Second of two parts. Read part 1.

The final rule ending federal protections for isolated wetlands that the Environmental Protection Agency and Department of the Army issued last week is another setback in the more than 40-year battle to protect North Carolina’s water quality.

Issued Aug. 29, the amendment to the final “Revised Definition of ‘Waters of the United States’” rule published in the Federal Register in January reflects the Supreme Court’s May 25, 2023, Sackett v. EPA decision that only wetlands with a “continuous surface connection” to waterbodies are considered “waters of the United States.”

The two agencies enforce the Clean Water Act put in place in 1972 that prohibits the discharge of pollutants from a point source into “navigable waters,” or those defined as waters of the United States, or WOTUS.

The amended rule, coupled with the North Carolina Farm Act passed June 27 that aligns the state definition of wetlands to the federal definition, opens up 2.5 million acres of isolated wetlands to being developed, according to an estimate provided earlier this year by the state.

A Department of Environmental Quality representative told Coastal Review Friday that the agency was still “reviewing the final rule released by EPA this week and is unable to provide a specific estimate of wetlands impacted based on the rule change.”

With these two rule changes, North Carolina Coastal Federation Executive Director Todd Miller said to expect “a mess and a real threat to the health of our coastal estuaries that support the marine fisheries of North Carolina.

“We can also expect to see more closures of waters for swimming,” Miller said.

Southern Environmental Law Center Senior Attorney Derb Carter Jr. echoed Miller’s concern.

“The state estimates that up to 60% of the wetlands in the state will no longer be protected or regulated under the Clean Water Act,” Carter told Coastal Review. “I don’t think the public is quite aware of the scope of this and its potential impact on wetlands, on water quality and on the natural heritage of the state.”

Carter said the Sackett case that began in the late 2000s happened when the EPA told the Idaho couple, who had begun to backfill their property adjacent to a lake to prepare for construction, that they needed a permit. “They weren’t told they can’t do it. They were told they needed a permit. Instead, it became a challenge to whether Congress can regulate wetlands at all under the Clean Water Act,” he said.

The Sackett case would not be as big of a concern in North Carolina, Carter explained, “because the state program had been in place to backstop the federal program and ensure at the end of the day, that all the wetlands are protected.”

But the 2023 Farm Act changed that.

Gov. Roy Cooper vetoed the bill June 23, because of the provision “severely weakens protection for wetlands” which will lead to “more severe flooding for homes, roads and businesses and dirtier water for our people, particularly in eastern North Carolina,” he said in a statement at the time. The provision coupled “with the drastic weakening of federal rules caused by the U.S. Supreme Court’s recent decision in the Sackett case, leaves approximately 2.5 million acres, or about one half of our state’s wetlands, unprotected.”

The legislature overrode the veto.

Carter continued, “Literally in one sentence this General Assembly at the behest some special interest in the legislature summarily repealed all of that, so there is no backstop supplementary protection for wetlands that are no longer regulated under the federal Clean Water Act after the Sackett decision.”

Going forward, the Farm Act says the only wetlands that are protected by state law are those that are determined to be protected at the federal level, under the Clean Water Act, after the Sackett decision.

Early days of wetlands advocacy

Miller told Coastal Review that the nonprofit he founded became active in this type of conservation because wetland drainage in the Albemarle-Pamlico peninsula had led to a federally funded proposal in 1982 to strip mine 120,000 of peat lands to make methanol. The land would have been reclaimed as farmland. 

“The commercial fishermen in Pamlico Sound witnessed the direct harm the drainage was doing to the estuary, and were crying out for help, having sent a petition from Hyde County to Raleigh with over 3,000 signatures about the harm the drainage was already doing, without this new project,” Miller explained. “We got involved in that project as one of the first things the Federation ever did, thus our bumper sticker:  No Wetland, No Seafood.”

Carter, who had worked alongside Miller while representing the National Wildlife Federation to stop the wetlands project, said that these pocosins on the Albermarle-Pamlico peninsula were not considered wetlands and would be opened up to peat mining then converted to agriculture.

“Coastal Federation volunteers worked with residents out there to help them understand this was a big decision that could have a lot of impact on commercial fishing, fisheries, and recreational fishing — that’s a big part of the economy out there — but we’re literally talking about tens of thousands of acres of wetlands that were proposed to be converted into agriculture with drainage into the estuaries of Pamlico Sound,” Carter said, adding they represented the case.

Historian David Cecelski, the Coastal Federation’s first volunteer, was on the ground, spending just shy of a year living in Swan Quarter spreading the word in mostly fishing communities about the consequences of the strip-mining project that was going to cover parts of the Dare, Beaufort, Hyde, Washington and Tyrrell counties.

During that time, he said he was welcomed by the community and took an interest in its history.

“Even to understand how to build bridges amongst people like between the Coastal Federation and those African American communities, I always felt like you had to dig deeper. You had to know the story of those communities,” he said.

Miller said that the Alligator River and Pocosin Lakes national wildlife refuges protect more than 100,000 acres.

He continued that in the time since, the Coastal Federation has invested heavily in buying lands that should be wet, and restoring their hydrology, including the North River Wetlands Preserve where alone nearly 5,000 acres were restored, and has been directly involved in restoring around 20,000 acres of wetlands with its partners.

Federal, state laws over the decades

Miller said that since the early 1980s, both federal and state laws and rules have progressively gotten stronger and more consistent, with some back-and-forth, but nothing overly dramatic.

“Enforcement of those laws and rules has always been a challenge, and a shortcoming to the effectiveness of the standards that are written in laws and rules. The current rollback at the federal and state levels means that we are back to where we started before the peat mining proposal — large wet areas of coastal North Carolina are no longer protected,” he said.  

The Coastal Federation advocates that wetlands are critical not only as habitat, but also to maintain water quality and the productivity and health of coastal estuaries. 

“When you alter hydrology and drain runoff off, the land that would normally have infiltrated and soaked into the ground, you change water quality and make our coastal waters unsafe for shellfish harvest and swimming. That runoff, even when not mixed with human development or sewage, contains high levels of harmful bacteria, nutrients, and sediment,” he said.

With wetlands protections, the most important time related to state regulations was in the early 2000s, Carter said. Also noting that there’s an interplay between federal and state laws.

From shortly after the Clean Water Act was enacted until 2000, the Corps of Engineers issued permits and the state issued water quality certifications, both under the act.

Carter said that was not without controversy. In 1985, the Supreme Court in a lawsuit unanimously decided that the EPA and the Corps had properly determined that wetlands are regulated under the Clean Water Act. Then, in 2001, the Supreme Court ruled in a 5-4 decision against the Corps’ addition to the wetlands definition that any wetland used by migratory birds is regulated under the Clean Water Act.

“The court said just the use of migratory birds of otherwise isolated wetlands that aren’t connected to any other waters is not enough to regulate activities on those wetlands under the federal Clean Water Act,” Carter said.

This prompted a response by the Environmental Management Commission.

The late Dr. Pete Peterson at the University of North Carolina Institute of Marine Sciences based on Morehead City was serving as chair of the commission’s Water Quality Committee. He was concerned that nobody knew the scope of wetlands that may no longer be protected. The commission initiated an effort to continue state protection of those wetlands.

The commission reached out to the attorney general to see if the state law at the time clearly encompassed protecting wetlands. The attorney general issued a formal opinion stating that when the General Assembly enacted the State Water Quality law in 1974, the definition of waters of the state regulated under that law was broad and encompassed wetlands.

“This is noteworthy. I keep trying to emphasize this to people, the attorney general also pointed out that the state constitution that the people amended in 1972 — and it’s still in the state constitution — says explicitly that it is the policy of the state and the will of the people in amending the constitution to protect wetlands in the state. The state has an explicit constitutional provision enacted by the people saying it’s the policy of the state to protect our wetlands by name,” Carter said.

The commission then enacted state regulations and established a state permitting system for those wetlands that were not under federal protection. These were challenged by the North Carolina Home Builders Association, which filed a lawsuit in state court contending that state law does not allow the commission to regulate wetlands.

“We intervened in that case. I represented the Coastal Federation and other organizations intervening on the side of the state to help defend those regulations and the EMC’s authority,” Carter said. The state Court of Appeals unanimously upheld the state’s authority to regulate wetlands as waters of the state.

Another decision by the Supreme Court in 2006 set up what became a new rule to assess wetlands that had been the policy up until the Sackett decision earlier this year.

“That was the genesis of the state regulations,” he said. “Now you have two things that happened in 2023. You have a much more political Supreme Court that’s willing to write its own definition of wetlands and, in my view, ignore what Congress actually intended to do in the Clean Water Act when it ruled in the Sackett case.”

With the longstanding state law based on the state constitution, the initial enactment of the Clean Water Act in the early 1970s, the attorney general’s opinion that the commission had authority in 2001, and the North Carolina Court of Appeals decision in 2002, the state had full authority to regulate wetlands, Carter said.

The Farm Act of 2023 ignores the will of the people, “And instead, responded to special interests in removing any state wetland protection beyond what the federal government provides, and they did it in ignorance,” he said. “They have no idea how many wetlands are now going to be at risk for loss and they have no idea what the impact of that is going to be on the state’s wetlands, the state’s water quality, all those things that rely on wetlands from fishery resources to avoiding downstream flooding. It is completely irresponsible and ignores the will of the people.”

First of two parts.

The lawsuit an Idaho couple filed in 2008 against the Environmental Protection Agency arguing that wetlands on their property were not protected under “waters of the United States” has resulted in federal protections being stripped from millions of acres of isolated wetlands.

The EPA and Department of the Army, which oversees the Corps of Engineers, issued Tuesday their final rule amending the “Revised Definition of ‘Waters of the United States’” published Jan. 18, 2023. The EPA and Corps enforce the Clean Water Act, which prohibits the discharge of pollutants from a point source into “navigable waters,” defined as waters of the United States, or WOTUS. 

The amended definition conforms to the Supreme Court’s May 25, 2023, decision on the Sackett v. EPA case that the Clean Water Act “extends to only those wetlands with a ‘continuous surface connection’ to bodies that are ‘waters of the United States’ in their own right,” and “the wetlands on the Sacketts’ property are distinguishable from any possibly covered waters,” Justice Samuel Alito writes in the opinion. 

“While I am disappointed by the Supreme Court’s decision in the Sackett case, EPA and Army have an obligation to apply this decision alongside our state co-regulators, Tribes, and partners,” said EPA Administrator Michael S. Regan in a statement.  “We’ve moved quickly to finalize amendments to the definition of ‘waters of the United States’ to provide a clear path forward that adheres to the Supreme Court’s ruling.”

A public webinar on the new definition is scheduled for 3 p.m. Sept. 12. Register on the EPA’s webpage for the amendments rule. The agencies also plan to host listening sessions this fall.

In 2007, after learning that the couple was backfilling the lot in preparation to build, the EPA ordered the Sacketts to restore their property by Priest Lake, Idaho, or pay $40,000 a day in fines. The EPA said the lot contained wetlands and backfilling violated the Clean Water Act. The EPA classified the wetlands on the Sacketts’ lot as waters of the United States because they were near a ditch that fed into a creek, which fed into Priest Lake, a navigable, intrastate lake. 

The Sacketts sued. 

“We have worked with EPA to expeditiously develop a rule to incorporate changes required as a result of the Supreme Court’s decision in Sackett,” said Assistant Secretary of the Army for Civil Works Michael L. Connor. “With this final rule, the Corps can resume issuing approved jurisdictional determinations that were paused in light of the Sackett decision. Moving forward, the Corps will continue to protect and restore the nation’s waters in support of jobs and healthy communities.”

Issuing the amended final rule on WOTUS comes just two months after the North Carolina General Assembly approved, Gov. Roy Cooper vetoed and then the legislature overrode that veto of the North Carolina Farm Act of 2023, which changed the state’s definition of wetlands to align with the federal definition.

North Carolina Department of Environmental Quality staff members estimate that, as a result of both the Supreme Court decision and Farm Act, around 2.5 million acres of wetlands will be unprotected. That’s nearly half of the wetlands in the state and more than 7% of the state’s total landmass. 

Few satisfied with new rule

The final amended rule has met pushback from different interests and for different reasons. 

Environmental groups worry that the final rule, when considered with the North Carolina Farm Act, leaves critical waters in North Carolina unprotected and will increase the chance of flooding. Homebuilders worry that the final rule leaves too much room for uncertainty and government overreach. 

“While this new wetland definition is in keeping with the requirements of the Supreme Court ruling on the Clean Water Act, it’s a serious blow to our ability to protect water quality and prevent flooding on the North Carolina coast,” North Carolina Coastal Federation Executive Director Todd Miller told Coastal Review Wednesday. “It eliminates many forested wetlands, pocosins, and inland swamps from both federal and state protection. The outcome will be less fish to catch, more illnesses due to exposure to polluted waters, more public health swimming advisories, and more costly property damage from floods.” 

Miller cited Supreme Court Justice Brent Kavanaugh’s dissenting opinion, which Miller said mirrored the Coastal Federation’s concerns: “He said, ‘By narrowing the Act’s coverage of wetlands to only adjoining wetlands, the Court’s new test will leave some long-regulated adjacent wetlands no longer covered by the Clean Water Act, with significant repercussions for water quality and flood control throughout the United States.’”

Sound Rivers Executive Director Heather Deck said Tuesday that, as the state prepares for yet another extreme weather event with potential flooding and the Neuse River is suffering from a significant fish kill, “it is imperative that our legislature reverses course and restores protections for our wetlands and waters.”

Cape Fear Riverkeeper Kemp Burdette told Coastal Review that the EPA’s rule will have serious consequences for water quality and communities throughout the Cape Fear Basin. 

“The Cape Fear is the state’s largest and most diverse watershed and the drinking water source for one in five North Carolinians. It’s also home to the highest concentration of hog and chicken farms in the state, and North Carolina’s most industrialized river,” he said. “Gutting the Waters of the U.S. rule will mean more toxic chemicals and more animal waste in drinking water, more wetlands lost forever and more short-sighted development. In short, more polluter profits over people and the environment.”

Rick Savage, executive director with the Carolina Wetlands Association, said that the Supreme Court has eliminated years of wetland protection under the Clean Water Act and North Carolina could have continued to protect these wetlands, “however the recently passed Farm Bill eliminates that protection,” he said. “We need to brace ourselves for a lot of wetlands no longer being protected and they are the very resource we need to protect our communities from flooding. Expect more communities getting flooded, less clean water, and reduced community resilience.”

North Carolina Conservation Network Policy Director Grady McCallie told Coastal Review that the EPA rule, “does no more and no less than what the US Supreme Court’s Sackett decision requires. Unfortunately, that decision – unwisely echoed in state law by the NC General Assembly in June – stripped protection from over half of North Carolina’s wetlands. State legislators who care about preventing flooding need to re-establish protections for the wetlands that protect our communities.”

Kelly Moser, senior attorney and leader of the Southern Environmental Law Center’s Water Program, said in a statement that the final rule mirrors the Supreme Court’s majority opinion in the Sackett case, “which overturned decades of law and practice and put the safety of our communities and waters at risk. The rule, like the Sackett decision itself, severely restricts the federal government’s ability to protect critical waters including wetlands that shield communities from damaging floods and pollution.”

The homebuilder organizations have different complaints about the amended final rule.

The National Association of Home Builders stated in a news release that the final definition of WOTUS “relies on a fatally flawed version of the 2023 Revised Definition of WOTUS” and that rather than making necessary changes and improvements to the rule, “the EPA and Army Corps did the bare minimum and struck the most egregious and unlawful parts of it.”

They say the 2023 amended rule “doubles down on bad policy and vague terms,” which allows “for continued government overreach.”

Association Chairman Alicia Huey in a statement Tuesday said that the amended rule is a “blow to housing affordability and assures continued uncertainty regarding federal jurisdiction as established by the Supreme Court’s recent Sackett decision that made clear the federal government only has authority over relatively permanent waterbodies.”

She continued that the rule “sets the stage for continued federal overreach, bureaucratic delays during the wetlands permitting process, and regulatory confusion for home builders and land developers,” and will be a barrier to produce new affordable housing.

Associated Builders and Contractors Vice President of Regulatory, Labor and State Affairs Ben Brubeck said in a statement Tuesday that these revisions fail to fully implement the Sackett v. EPA ruling, “which placed clear boundaries on the scope of the federal government’s authority while maintaining reasonable environmental protections for America’s waterways. Instead, this rule, issued without meaningful opportunities for input from the construction industry and other stakeholders, will contribute to continued regulatory uncertainty and unnecessary delays for critical infrastructure projects across the nation.”

Third in a series on the Albemarle region’s environmental-economic connections.

Persistent algal blooms on the Chowan River are nothing new, but there was a time when the problem, one affecting public health, the environment and the coastal economy, got better. Then the blooms returned, and researchers are still trying to determine why.

Blue-green algal blooms return each summer to rivers in northeastern North Carolina and linger. The North Carolina Department of Environmental Quality on July 18 issued a warning to avoid the Chowan River from Tyner on Indian Creek in northern Chowan County to Edenton.

Related: Lingering Chowan River algal bloom prompts state advisory

A 30-month program administered by the Albemarle Resource and Conservation Development Council is more than a year into looking at why the Chowan, Perquimans and Pasquotank rivers are so prone to the blue-green algal blooms that are caused by cyanobacteria feeding frenzies on nutrient-rich waters. These bacteria are potentially toxic to humans and animals and are associated with hypoxia, or deprivation of oxygen, in the water, leading to fish kills.

Albemarle Resource and Conservation Development Council Executive Director Elizabeth Bryant, a longtime resident of the Edenton area, said the problem is significant and real, and affects the area’s most important resources.

“With blue-green algal blooms in Edenton Bay and then farther north on the Chowan River,” Bryant said, “They’ve been severe to the point where warnings had to go out about people not swimming, that if they’re boating, they should steer clear of algal blooms. And not touch the fish in the area. Obviously, that restricts tourism.”

The council serves 10 northeastern North Carolina counties: Camden, Chowan, Currituck, Dare, Gates, Hyde, Pasquotank, Perquimans, Tyrrell and Washington.

Bryant said the algal blooms can be breathtaking and affect towns across the region.

“If you get out of your car, and you can hardly breathe because of the scent of algal blooms, you’re going to get back in your car,” she said. “That will inhibit tourism to Edenton to Elizabeth City.”

Some of the region’s smaller towns’ economies depend on the summer travelers to or from the Outer Banks, Bryant added.

The 30-month-long study, Bryant noted, will yield data for the council’s entire service area. The grant requires gathering samples consistently throughout the year and, importantly, water samples are collected at tributaries and streams, and not necessarily the larger rivers.

The study is funded through the Environmental Enhancement Grant program administered by the state attorney general’s office. The program is part of a 25-year agreement that resulted from the state’s hog waste pollution case settlement with Smithfield Foods.

Attorney General Josh Stein, speaking at an event in May in Bertie County, said that in the 22 years since the agreement was signed, about 210 projects had been funded with awards totaling more than $40 million. Numerous awards have supported different strategies to improve water quality, Stein said.

Colleen Karl is the chairperson of the Chowan Edenton Environmental Group. She and others in the organization are among the numerous amateur, or public, scientists who are gathering samples for analysis as part of the program.

“It’s a very large watershed and we’re sampling on a lot of back roads,” she said.

The Chowan Edenton Environmental Group is sampling the waters of Potecasi Creek, a tributary of the Chowan River that joins the river at almost the same location as the Meherrin River.

“Some of those tributaries that come off Potecasi Creek, were earmarked as pretty high in nitrogen,” she said.

Nitrogen and phosphorous have long been known to contribute to cyanobacteria blooms, but other factors have also been identified, including those related to climate change.

Dr. Hans Paerl and Dr. Nathan Hall of the University of North Carolina Institute of Marine Sciences are analyzing the samples. Paerl, who has published papers on climate change and how it affects blue-green algae, explained that the organisms are influenced by changing weather patterns.

“These bloom organisms are particularly sensitive to climate change, including overall warming of the globe’s atmosphere and water, but then also more extreme events, like bigger storms and bigger droughts,” Paerl said. “Those things have come into the equation to more or less complicate factors in terms of coming up with recommending management strategies.”

Paerl has been studying the Chowan River watershed since the 1980s, when herring was still abundant in the river.

“When I first started working there, they had big herring pickling places (where) I used to buy my herring over in Colerain,” he recalled.

He was part of a team that came up with an early management plan for reducing the nutrient load entering the Chowan.

“When I first got hired to look at the blooms on the Chowan River, that was back in 1980, I believe. We did a good job. We identified both nitrogen and phosphorus and came up with some recommendations for how much reductions needed to take place in terms of input of those nutrients, and it proved to be pretty effective,” Paerl said.

It was a temporary reprieve.

“Then 15 or 20 years later, the blooms returned to the Chowan — pretty much the same players. So now we’re trying to figure out what has happened in the interim,” he said. “We’re still really aiming for nutrient reductions. We may need to reduce them even more now than we did before. The additional thing is climate change.”

But climate change does not completely explain why there has been an increase in algal blooms in rivers like the Chowan. As Hall explained, when the Albemarle Resource and Conservation Development Council first approached the researchers, they wanted to know where the nutrients had originated. In reviewing data and literature on nutrients in the rivers, a sudden spike wasn’t apparent.

“We have flow gauges (on the rivers) and the Division of Water Resources measures the concentrations. So, we have flow, we have concentrations, we can calculate loads,” Hall said. “Those major rivers don’t look particularly spectacular as far as how much load. The concentrations in the rivers really aren’t that high.”

What was apparent though was that relatively minor tributaries to the Albemarle Sound where gauges were in place or were otherwise monitored seemed to have significantly higher nutrient loads.

“For the few small streams where we do have concentration data, like the Scuppernong River, the Pasquotank River, the Perquimans River — these are smaller tributaries to the Albemarle Sound area — the concentrations are really high,” Hall said.

Those concentrations are also being found in the tributary streams — concentrations so high that they may be a significant contributing factor to algal blooms.

“A lot of the smaller streams are three times higher concentration than the big rivers. So if they’re carrying a proportional amount of flow and they’re about 15% of the watershed, they’re carrying three times higher concentration, they could be 40% of the load,” Hall said.

The study recently passed the 12-month mark, and there are still a number of unanswered questions. It remains unclear, for example, where or how the nitrogen is entering the river system.

“The organic nitrogen component is something that’s increasing in a lot of the streams in North Carolina. And it’s been kind of a head-scratcher as to where it’s coming from,” Hall said.

He explained that one of the goals of the project is to look across some of the streams that have different watershed and land-use characteristics, that are higher agriculture use, or include urban development, and try to investigate what the dissolved organic components look like.

Land use may be the key to mitigating extreme algal blooms, but to date the role of land use, how it affects nutrient loads, is not completely clear. To North Carolina State University researcher Dr. Chris Osburn, who is analyzing the data, the information is by no means definitive.

“Preliminary evidence points to changes in land use and climate (especially extreme rainfall events) that can mobilize DON (dissolved organic nitrogen) from wetlands and forested landscapes into tributaries, which could be driving some of the increases in DON observed in the Chowan River. Research into the sources of DON to these tributaries is ongoing,” Osburn responded to Coastal Review in an email.

Even if the sources of nutrients that are creating algal blooms in the Albemarle Basin are identified, Paerl said limiting the blooms is about the best that can be accomplished.

“We’re probably never going to be able to get rid of cyanobacteria in these slow-moving systems, and even in Albemarle Sound,” he said. “But we can keep it from getting worse.”

He said that’s essentially the point of mitigation strategies: holding back an issue or a problem from getting worse. “After all, cyanobacteria have been around on Earth for 2 billion years. They’re not going to go away.”

Second in a series.

A little-noticed rule in the North Carolina Farm Act of 2023 could bring noticeable changes to North Carolina’s streams, lakes, reservoirs, ponds and estuaries, and some conservation advocates are worried. 

This new provision limits civil penalties for removing timber in a riparian buffer “in violation of rules applicable to that riparian buffer” from a maximum of $25,000 per violation to the civil penalty being capped at no more than the value of the timber removed.

A quarterly report released last week by the North Carolina Cooperative Extension forestry office shows that the most recent state-wide average standing timber prices range from $7.57 to $41.44 a ton, depending on the species, quality and product.

North Carolina Department of Environmental Quality Deputy Secretary for Public Affairs Sharon Martin explained last week that the agency is incorporating the legislative changes into the enforcement process and each civil penalty is determined based on the specific details of the case and the applicable rules and regulations. 

“The changes may limit the maximum amount of the penalties that can be issued,” she said.

A riparian buffer is a vegetated area with native trees, shrubs and plants adjacent to an estuary, stream, lake or pond that stabilizes the shoreline, provides habitat and filters pollutants. The Division of Water Resources established riparian buffer rules to protect water quality in the Neuse River, Tar-Pamlico River and Catawba River basins and Randleman Lake, Jordan Lake and Goose Creek watersheds.

NCDEQ’s Division of Water Resources finds out about potential violations through complaints from residents or referrals from the North Carolina Forest Service, Martin explained.

“After an investigation, DWR determines the appropriate course of action and amount of civil penalty, if appropriate. If a civil penalty is assessed, severity of impact is one of the main considerations when determining amount,” she said.

This is the same Farm Act, also known as Senate Bill 582, that sparked outcry over a provision that amended how the state defines and protects wetlands. The act passed in late June, despite the governor’s veto that he based on objections over the wetlands provision. 

Southern Environmental Law Center Senior Adviser Derb Carter told Coastal Review Monday that while none of the other provisions in the Farm Act received as much attention as the repeal of the state wetlands protections, this gutting of riparian buffer regulation is also now law. 

With this civil penalty change, you can sell the timber for what it’s valued, then use that money to pay your fine. If you’re allowing trees to be cut and presumably sold – and they can fine you no more than what you receive for cutting the trees — “It’s made the tree protection and buffers pretty much a joke,” Carter said.

Sound Rivers Executive Director Heather Deck said Thursday that she is concerned the lowered penalty will simply become the “cost of doing business.”

Sound Rivers is a nonprofit organization that works to protect the neighboring basins of the Neuse and Tar-Pamlico rivers that extend from the Piedmont to the coastal plain and have sizable drainage areas entirely within the state. Both empty into the Pamlico Sound. 

These two basins require a 50-foot riparian buffer, with the 30 feet closest to the water, or zone 1, required to remain undisturbed, and the outer 20 feet, or zone 2, can be managed vegetation. In the 20 coastal counties, the riparian buffer is measured from the landward edge of the Division of Coastal Management’s wetland boundary, according to NCDEQ.

Deck said that riparian buffers, or treelined waterways, are the most cost-effective tool at keeping our waterways clean and healthy for all uses. 

“Keeping trees on the banks of rivers and streams and creeks is the simplest, most-efficient, cheapest option for protecting waterways and trying to keep them clean,” Deck continued. “Now you basically cut out that financial penalty for enforcement that would have incentivized some not to cut trees.”

The legislature has been for the last decade undermining environmental protections in favor of developers, and this is no different, Deck said.

“This move, in our opinion at Sound Rivers, takes away incentives not to cut trees while also putting a greater burden on the Department of Environmental Quality who is already overworked and under-resourced,” Deck said. This penalty change will result in more buffer violations and tree loss along river and stream banks, putting additional strain on the already understaffed agency. 

Deck recognized that many remove trees to have an unobstructed view of the water, and “you can either have that, or have water that you want to swim and fish in. It’s as simple as that,” she said. “Keeping trees where they’re meant to be along the rivers, creeks and streams is very important. And this legislation will make it harder for us to do that.”

Coastal Carolina Riverwatch Executive Director Lisa Rider agreed that recent legislative actions have caused the state to move backward from “any progress we’ve made to protect the quality of water and life in coastal North Carolina.” The nonprofit advocates for the White Oak River Basin.

Rider added that, as a whole, some of the components to the recent Farm Act will have devastating outcomes with long-term effects on the local economy, just as much as the ecology. 

“Here on the coast, downstream of the cumulative impacts, we are continuing to hear an outcry of concern from local commercial and recreational fishers about the lack of water and habitat protections by the state. We hope that in the future, these coastal voices are heard much louder by decision makers in Raleigh,” she said.

North Carolina Farm Bureau Federation Natural Resources Director Keith Larick told Coastal Review that while the buffer violation penalties language would restrict the amount of the civil penalties, he believes the state can still require the landowner to replant trees to replace those removed.

The provision went into effect July 1, just before the standing timber price numbers for the second quarter of 2023 were released last week by the Cooperative Extension’s forestry office. The quarterly report is through an agreement with Timber Mart-South, a nonprofit that provides trend data for timber.  

This quarter, the statewide average prices for pine pulpwood is $7.57 a ton, pine chip-n-saw is $21.10 a ton, pine sawtimber is $30.02 a ton, hardwood pulpwood is $4.49 a ton, mixed hardwood sawtimber is $28.77 and oak sawtimber is $41.44 a ton. 

Pulpwood is a tree or log used to manufacture paper, absorbent pulp, cardboard, fiberboard and other wood fiber-based products, and are typically the lowest-value product. Chip-n-saw is lumber produced from medium-sized pine trees, and sawtimber is a log or tree large enough and of suitable quality to be sawn into lumber, according to the North Carolina Forest Service. 

N.C. State University College of Natural Resources professor and Department Extension Leader Dr. Robert Bardon said in an email response to questions that these standing timber prices are average prices for all of North Carolina. “This is the price paid to the landowner who owns the timber prior to it being harvested,” he said. 

Bardon, referencing information from Forest2Market, explained that an acre that is clear-cut can produce, on average, about 87 tons of sawtimber-size trees and smaller. If an area is being thinned, or pulpwood-size trees are removed, then it would produce on average about 32 tons an acre. 

If the state uses these recent numbers to determine the civil penalty, an acre of sawtimber would be valued between $2,612 and $3,605, depending on the tree species. An acre of pulpwood-sized pine trees would be valued at $242 and hardwood pulpwood at around $143.

Other provisions

The Farm Act adds to the farm digester system general permit that the “collected gases shall be used as a renewable energy resource as quickly as feasible, but within six months of the collection of the gases, and during that period the gas shall be flared rather than vented.”

Martin with DEQ said that this digester section adds specific guidance on the usage of the collected gases as a renewable energy resource and sets timelines for utilizing the collected gases, which is within six months of starting gas collection.

Larick said that the digester provision allows a farmer some flexibility — up to six months — to line up an outlet for the collected gas while still qualifying for the digester general permit instead of an individual permit. “The condition about flaring the gas for a maximum of six months was added to ensure that the methane was not just vented to the atmosphere in the meantime.”

Also in the Farm Act, the Environmental Management Commission has been directed to withdrawal the aquaculture national pollutant discharge elimination system, or NPDES, general permit that took effect Dec. 1, 2021, for discharges from seafood packing and rinsing, aquatic animal operations, and similarly designated wastewaters and revise the permit to be “substantively identical to the previous general permit.”

Martin clarified that this provision primarily applies to trout farms in western North Carolina.  

Larick reiterated that the section of the Farm Act that requires changes to the NDPES permit was added at the request of trout farmers. 

“The main issue that they had was the expense and time needed for the sampling in the most recent permit. The sampling frequency and number of parameters were increased, and they would be required to conduct composite samples instead of grab samples. The smaller trout farmers were especially concerned about the monitoring provisions,” he said.

Read part 1: Analysis: Farm Act strips wetland safeguards, mitigation

First in a series.

Nearly a month has passed since the North Carolina legislature overrode Gov. Roy Cooper’s veto of the annual Farm Bill that includes a provision boxing in how the state can define and, ultimately, protect wetlands.

Though Senate Bill 582, otherwise known as the North Carolina Farm Act of 2023, covers more than 30 topics hitting on everything from padding buffers by trout streams and upping the penalty for animal waste spilled along state roads, to mandating muscadine grape juice in all public K-12 schools.

But the provision that prompted the governor’s veto and that raised the loudest alarm bells among environmentalists strips state-enacted safeguards and compensatory mitigation for wetlands that have been in place for years by aligning the law with a recent U.S. Supreme Court decision.

In May, the nation’s highest court ruled that the definition of waters of the United States, or WOTUS — the Environmental Protection Agency’s Clean Water Act jurisdiction — applies only to wetlands that have “continuous surface connection.”

“What qualifies as surface conveyance?” asked Norton Webster, treasurer and consultant with the Carolina Wetlands Association and chief strategy officer at Eco Terra, an Atlanta-based environmental services company that specializes in mitigation and alternative energy. “This is what the (Army Corps of Engineers) and the EPA are wrestling now.”

Webster, who works out of Eco Terra’s Cary office, explained that North Carolina has unique wetlands features like Carolina bays and pocosins, which have no inlet or outlet, can be wet for part of the year, and in some cases take up a large part of the landscape in the state’s coastal plain.

“They are wetlands, but some of them may not have federal protection now because they don’t have that surface conveyance,” he said.

The degree to which the wetlands provision’s effect will have on future protection of wetlands in North Carolina will not likely be fully understood until the Environmental Agency and Corps issue a final rule on revisions to the definition of “waters of the United States,” or WOTUS. That ruling is expected to be issued by Sept. 1.

“It’s really difficult at least at this moment to be able to quantify what the exact impacts are because we, unfortunately, really can’t predict the future,” Webster said.

The overwhelming consensus among environmental groups: It’s not going to be good.

Proponents of the Farm Act argue environmentalists are overstating the impact of the wetlands provision.

Mike Carpenter, general counsel for the North Carolina Home Builders Association, told the Associated Press that the provision pertains to isolated wetlands and was “not as gloom and doom and disastrous as our friends in the environmental community would like to believe it is.”

Carolina Wetlands Association Executive Director Rick Savage disagrees.

“Realize it’s more than isolated wetlands,” he said. “It’s a lot more with the (Supreme Court) case. It really is.”

How a new definition may cut mitigation

The North Carolina Department of Environmental Quality estimates that more than half of the state’s wetlands – as much as 2.5 million acres – could lose protection.

Opponents of the wetland provision point out that the state is allocating millions of dollars to create nature-based solutions, including wetlands, to mitigate flooding of riverside communities, yet state lawmakers have enacted a bill that diminishes protecting those wetlands and curbing water pollution.

In his written objection and veto of the bill, Cooper stated that severely weakened wetlands protections will equate to more flooding and dirtier water, especially in eastern North Carolina. According to Savage, 90% or more of the state’s wetlands are east of Interstate 95.

“This bill reverses our progress and leaves the state vulnerable without vital flood mitigation and water purification tools,” the governor wrote.

Nonjurisdictional wetlands, or those not defined under WOTUS, have under state statute been included in the state’s Stream and Wetland Mitigation Program, but that may no longer be the case with the passage of the Farm Bill.

“Mitigation was created to allow for landscape changes, but to try to make sure that the overall quality in those respective areas were not diminished,” said Amanda Mueller, program director of North Carolina State University’s Kenan Institute, Engineering, and Technology Science Climate Leaders Program and a former environmental specialist with DEQ. “That’s come up, especially now with the increased frequency of flooding in a lot of areas. I started to say coastal, but it’s not just coastal any more. So, the services and values of those wetlands, even though they are not continuous with the waters of the U.S. as they’re termed, those services have the potential of being removed by those wetlands not being protected.”

Webster said the answer as to how the state wetland provision will affect the future of wetlands mitigation is simple.

“If a wetland’s not jurisdictional it’s not going to be protected under the Clean Water Act,” he said. “If (wetlands) aren’t jurisdictional and because the state’s protections are gone there will be no mitigation required for those. It’s that simple, unfortunately. The reason it’s going to hurt the mitigation industry is because there’s going to be less mitigation required because there’s going to be less jurisdictional wetlands.”

The state’s compensatory mitigation program is designed to offset what are deemed unavoidable impacts to wetlands by a proposed development.

There are three options for compensatory mitigation: mitigation banks where an applicant can buy credits from an approved bank; in-lieu fees where credits may be purchased through the North Carolina Division of Mitigation Services; and project-specific mitigation, which allows an applicant to mitigate at the project at or off the site.

A mitigation plan must be implemented or constructed before the developer can build.

Mitigation bank sites are the physical acreage in which wetlands can be established, restored, enhanced or preserved.

Sites are vetted through requirements established by a handful of federal agencies, including the Corps and EPA, that look at features including the size of the area, hydrologic sources and watershed management plans.

The system works like a commercial bank, but instead of having a cash asset to loan, mitigation banks loan mitigation credits to sell to anyone who has to offset mitigation debits.

In North Carolina, more than 400 mitigation banks have been approved and “many more” are in the review process, according to Joseph Pitchford, division public information officer.

Nearly 300 of those banks are Division of Mitigation Services sites and 123 are private.

Mitigation must occur within the same geographical service area, or watersheds, as the area in which wetlands are being impacted.

In areas of the state where it is difficult to establish a mitigation bank, particularly small watershed, developers have the option of paying in-lieu fees, when the permittee of a development project pays an in-lieu fee sponsor, such as a public agency or nonprofit organization.

North Carolina has one of the largest and oldest in-lieu fee programs in the country, according to DEQ.

The agency credits the success of the program to Division of Mitigation Services’ partnership with the North Carolina Department of Transportation, which accounts for about 80-90% of mitigation in the state. DOT forecasts an estimate of the department’s mitigation needs and provides that information to the division.

“For mitigation banking we have to have regulation because that’s what defines our market,” Webster said. “And, right now I don’t believe from a political perspective people really see what the value of clean water is because if you look at how dire the environment was back in 1972 when we had the National Environment Policy Act, the Clean Air Act, the Clean Water Act, all these environmental regulations came to be because we were having all these issues and now it’s like, oh well everything’s good, we’re on the status quo, we don’t need to protect these resources anymore. Generally, if you look at the amount of land that has been protected through mitigation and you look at some of the pretty significant wetland banks – there’s some pretty large areas in the coastal region that have been protected and they’ve been protect in perpetuity because there are conservation easements.”

Last in a series on pollinators.

KITTY HAWK — Denise Deacon inspects her bees. This year she only has one hive, although in years past she has had more — as many as eight.

She gently pries the lid off and points to the dark brown resin that lines the top of the inside of the hive.

“That’s the propolis,” she says, explaining that it’s resin the bees collect from trees and other plants that they use to weatherproof the hive.

She slides a frame out and looks at it critically. It’s still early in the season for honey production — they’ll get around to that later in the summer. Right now, the bees are concentrating on foraging for food, building the hive and reproduction.

The bees in this frame have been working on the honeycomb for some time and the comb fills almost the entire frame.

She pulls out another frame and in this frame the honeycomb is clearly a work in progress, the comb filling perhaps a third of the frame. Each cell appears to be identical, although they are not. The largest are reserved for the drone bees, smaller ones for workers and the queen bee gets her own shape and size.

The comb, the wax the bees produce to seal the honey in the combs, and the honey are unique to the honeybee. Other bees die off in the winter and emerge as the weather warms. Honeybees stay active in their hive all winter and the honey is their food source.

They produce more honey than they need for the winter, although beekeepers vary in how much honey they’ll harvest. Some, like Deacon, leave enough honey for the hive to get through the winter. Others take all the honey and feed the bees sugar water as a substitute.

“Some people do take off honey and then feed them sugar water, to make it through the winter. They will survive but they won’t be as healthy is my understanding,” she said.

This is Deacon’s 10^th year raising her own bees, although the idea had been in the back of her mind since childhood and the onetime attempt by her father.

“In my teens, my father started beekeeping,” she recalled. After a weekend away, “We came back and the house had been broken into and they had kicked over the beehive. He didn’t continue from that point forward. (But) that was just something in the back of my mind that might be a cool thing to do.”

She is a member of the Outer Banks Beekeeper’s Guild, one of the founding members, although she downplays that role.

“In my mind. I may have made phone calls to people to say, ‘Hey, let’s get together and talk about getting a group together,’” she said.

The guild is part of the North Carolina State Beekeepers Association, an amateur beekeeping organization that may be the largest in the country.

“We do have the largest state (bee) association, with nearly 5,000 paid members,” said Dr. David Tarpy, apiculture professor and extension specialist at North Carolina State University. “Compared to even large states like California and Texas (we have) more beekeepers. In Texas and California, those are large-scale commercial guys so they have more colonies but fewer beekeepers.”

There are some large commercial beekeeping operations in the state, but Tarpy, when comparing North Carolinas commercial beekeepers to other states, said they are, “vanishingly small.”

The number could be fewer than a dozen.

Not all the commercial operations take place in the state; they are, in fact, somewhat migratory.

“There are large-scale beekeepers that reside here full time and go out to California every winter for the almonds and up to Maine for the blueberries and things like that,” he said.

There are 4,000 or so species of bees that live in the United States, according to the U.S. Geological Survey, and the honeybee is not even native to the continent. The first shipment of honeybees arrived in the Virginia Colony in early 1622. By the end of the 17th century, they were part of everyday life, although beeswax was the more valuable commodity at that time.

As an introduced species, there is controversy surrounding honeybees. Deacon pointed out that even her lone hive could have an effect on the local ecology.

“The problem with honeybees, you’re bringing 40,000 insects into this realm of 3 to 5 miles and all these other native bees that are all out there competing for the same plants,” she said.

Tarpy sees the issue of competition with native species as overblown and, perhaps, one that misses more significant questions.

“Whatever competition has happened, it’s been going on for 400-plus years. Ecology responds a lot faster than that,” he said. “There probably has been competition and certainly when beekeepers move their hives into a very fragile area like a desert, they can swamp whatever species are there. So it certainly is an issue and one we need to be cautious about. But is it driving the extinctions of these other bees? I think there are bigger fish to fry for that: pesticides, those kind of things.”

The pollinator population in general is under stress. And, although careless pesticide use does threaten honeybees, the most significant natural peril is the varroa mite.

It is not the mite itself, though, that is the threat, rather it is the disease the mites carry.

“I would say that public enemy No. 1, 2, and 3 are all called the varroa mite,” Tarpy said. “They’re like little vampires, sucking the bees until they’re so anemic that other stressors start to compound. But the biggest thing that we’re actively researching is that it’s not really the varroa mites that kill bees. It’s the viral pathogens that they’re vectoring. They’re like little dirty hypodermic syringe needles.”

There is no easy way to protect bees from varroa mites. The N.C. State Apiculture Program is concentrating on two areas of research: strengthening hives so they can better withstand stress and early detection of infection.

“We offer this service that if you send in your bees, we can … look at all of these different pathogens and see if we can identify if you have an overwhelming pathogen load within the colony,” Tarpy said.

Tarpy’s research is finding ways to identify the strongest queen for a colony. The apiculture lab has developed empirical measurements that can be applied to queen bee health, and Tarpy’s research has shown healthy queens correlate to a healthier hive.

“If you have a bad queen, your ceiling is low. If you have a good queen, your ceiling is high. The queen is this singular thing that beekeepers have control over,” he said.

The work is currently conducted in a dilapidated building on the N.C. State campus.

“Research is being conducted in one of the worst facilities in the University of North Carolina system,” according to the North Carolina State Beekeepers Association’s website. “There is inadequate room for instruction, storage and research … The teaching classroom is in the former kitchen and dining area where long leak stains adorn the sheetrock ceiling. During rain showers, buckets are strategically placed in order to catch rain water that drips through the sheetrock.”

The association lobbied state legislators for funds to replace the building and the North Carolina General Assembly responded in 2019 with $4 million for a new apiculture center.

“We’re on the downhill slope of the design phase, which is the fun part for me because we get to decide what kind of rooms we want, what we’re going to put in it and how we’re going to use it. We’re building this facility exactly the way that it would really work well for apiculture, science and extension. It’s having all the elements that we could ever want,” Tarpy said.

Construction is estimated to be completed in August 2024.

Part of a series for the Pulitzer Center’s nationwide Connected Coastlines reporting initiative that Coastal Review presents in partnership with NC Newsline. The reporting also was made possible with support from the Solutions Journalism Network.

In 2019, an N.C. State Magazine assignment sent me to Princeville, North Carolina, where I met Marquetta Dickens and her cousin, Kendrick Ransome. We stood in the Tar River where their enslaved ancestors were brought ashore and forced to work on plantations in Edgecombe, and I made their portrait. I knew right away I had met some special people in a special place.

It’s been two years since I published “Tide and Time,” a story about a small cemetery in the village of Salvo on North Carolina’s Outer Banks that was eroding into the sea. The same storms that erode the Outer Banks threaten to erase historic communities 100 miles from the coast. I wanted to learn about that story.

Read “The Whales of Fishing Creek”

“Origins” is a three-part photography and reporting project that explores how climate change is exacerbating Tar River flooding in Princeville — the oldest town in America founded by formerly enslaved Black people. The series investigates Princeville’s ambitious plan to become more climate resilient, as well as natural climate solutions in eastern North Carolina.

Over the past 150 years, Princeville has survived at least eight major floods, including two “500-year” floods in 17 years: Hurricane Floyd in 1999 and Hurricane Matthew in 2016, which caused hundreds of millions of dollars in damage. According to scientists, the town’s neglected, insufficient levee and climate change threaten to cause more frequent and catastrophic flooding and erasure from this marginal land.

The stories explore the origins of climate change born from colonialism and chattel slavery, how Princeville’s floods aren’t natural disasters at all, and how our ecological-climate crisis is interconnected with other justice issues.

But it’s not enough to report on the symptoms and causes of climate chaos. All of the stories detail climate adaptations and natural solutions, and the ordinary people experimenting with them.

In the NC Newsline stories you’ll meet Princeville Mayor Bobbie Jones, and learn about the town’s ambitious recovery plan and all the obstacles the town faces. You’ll get to know Marquetta Dickens, a local and college basketball standout turned pro, who eventually moved back to Princeville to run a nonprofit to help the town’s recovery. You hear from Ann Adams, who has been displaced from her Princeville home for two years after ReBuild NC delayed its demolition and elevation. Finally, you’ll meet Kendrick Ransome, Marquetta’s cousin, who runs an organic farm near Princeville with his ancestral farming techniques that prevent carbon from escaping into the atmosphere by sequestering it in the soil.

A lot of ink has been spilled about Princeville and I wanted to take readers places they’ve never been before. Photography of climate change is often a pantheon of destruction: starving polar bears, wildfires, and houses crushed by hurricanes. But like in “Tide and Time,” climate change photojournalism should also show us why places are worth saving. It can show us the ordinary people making a difference, as well as daily life and joy, which are true forms of resistance.

Related: Outer Banks ties inform photojournalist’s climate reporting

I also believe that climate change storytelling can do more. I’ve wondered how I can tell a story about solutions while transporting readers across time and space, and expand their imaginations so they can envision other worlds.

Fast forward to 2022 and I’m standing in one of the Tar’s biggest tributaries, Fishing Creek. I’m fossil hunting with Marquetta and my friend Megan. In my muddy hand is a whale vertebrae the size of my head that I dislodged from the creek bottom. I looked up and in my mind I could see the whales swimming over the tree line.

This final chapter takes us to the prehistoric past, to the Pliocene Epoch, 3 million years ago, when the Atlantic Ocean covered the coastal plain and prehistoric whales swam over Princeville. When the old whales died, their bones settled in the ancient seafloor and fossilized over millions of years. The same intense storms that cause the Tar River to flood Princeville erode these fossils from the creek and river bottoms, revealing the remains of this ancient marine world.

Current atmospheric carbon levels are around 421 parts per million — higher than they’ve been in about 3.6 to 4.5 million years, when temperatures were 3 to 4 degrees Celsius (5.4-7.2 degrees Fahrenheit) warmer and sea levels were 70 to 80 feet higher. According to the International Panel on Climate Changes, temperatures are on track to climb to nearly 3.2 degrees Celsius, to Pliocene temperatures — or higher — beyond 2100, without immediate climate action.

The whale fossils buried under Princeville reveal what prehistoric climates can tell us about our future, what whales can teach us about natural marine climate solutions, and about how the fates of Black people and whales are an interconnected justice issue. The spirits of these prehistoric whales still inhabit the landscape of eastern North Carolina. They have something to teach us about climate resilience and solutions, and about ourselves: We are of the land, we are of the deep past.

With this Pulitzer Center Connected Coastlines grant, I wanted readers to reimagine human geographic boundaries, connect the coast with the coastal plain, and to never see the eastern North Carolina landscape the same way again. The next time you drive down U.S. 64, or N.C. 33, look out over the cotton fields and imagine the whales.

Explore the rest of the series

Homecoming Part I
A Black town in a floodplain persists and forges its own future despite unnatural disasters, policy failures, and white supremacy.

Homecoming Part II
Can Princeville’s recovery plan succeed despite obstacles? A resident displaced by flooding fights to return home to Princeville.

The Soil Farmers
Black farmers heal the soil, fight climate change and provide healthy food to their rural communities.

Note: “The Whales of Fishing Creek” is not available for reprint.

Part of a series on pollinators.

When people shop for ornamental trees, shrubs and flowers for their gardens and yards, visual appeal is usually top of mind. Chain stores and nurseries offer lots of striking choices, but often plant species native to the North Carolina coast are hard to find.

Biologists say that’s a problem.

It can take some effort to find a retailer selling native species, and professional landscapers often fail to include them in their designs, but these plants play a critical role in providing for bees, butterflies and other pollinators here.

Amy Mead of the North Carolina State Extension for New Hanover, Pender and Onslow counties explained to Coastal Review last week that native species are the foundations of coastal ecosystems. For insects like bees and other pollinators, native plants provide nectar, but that’s just one facet of their importance, Mead said.

“Especially for butterflies and moths, so many of our native plants are host plants for their caterpillars, and so they’re looking for these plants to lay their eggs on,” she said. “These native plants are providing the food source for those caterpillars to complete their life cycle. They are absolutely critical, and then that moves up the food chain to these birds looking for these caterpillars to be able to complete their life cycles, as well.”

It’s not an unusual sight in North Carolina: Vines of kudzu or wisteria sprawling across the landscape, reaching up, wrapping around, covering and choking the life from trees and other vegetation and creating a mess that’s not only unsightly, it’s also bad for the environment.

Though common, these vines aren’t native to this area, they were introduced as ornamental plants and subsequently became invasive. They’re just a couple of high-profile examples of plants that cause ill effects because they don’t belong here.

So, how can coastal property owners and landscapers avoid harmful landscaping plants? What plants native to North Carolina would be better alternatives?

A collaborative called the Coastal Landscapes Initiative has compiled a new guide of what it describes as “attractive eco-friendly plants” to substitute for commonly used “bad actors” that the initiative has identified as landscaping plants to avoid.

The Coastal Landscapes Initiative, a public-private partnership created more than five years ago to promote beautiful, functional, cost-efficient and environmentally friendly coastal landscape designs, recently released its free guide, “Plant This Instead!” The publication is available in print at county Cooperative Extension offices and online at the North Carolina Sea Grant website in PDF form.

“The Coastal Landscapes Initiative was started to find ways to promote and support landscaping practices at various scales, practices that meet our human needs and our desires, but also protect and enhance our coastal resources, resources like water quality fisheries and wildlife habitat,” said Gloria Putnam during a webinar in March that shared the title of the new publication.

Putnam, North Carolina Sea Grant’s coastal resources and communities specialist who leads the Coastal Landscape Initiative, said that the North Carolina coast has diverse ecosystems, and each has its own distinct set of plants that are naturally found here – they are native to the area.

“The type of soil, the amount of water and the temperature are really the primary determinants of the type of plant that can live in an area, and the type of plants that are there determines the kind of animals that can exist. In other words, native plants are naturally adapted to the local soil and climate conditions. These plants co-evolved with other species in the area. Some of these plants have highly specialized relationships with animals, and they work as a system,” she said.

Putnam, during the webinar, cited the cedar waxwing and the eastern red cedar as an example.

“Eastern red cedar is actually Juniperus virginiana, so it’s not a cedar at all. It’s juniper, which is why it’s important to know the scientific name,” she said. “Red cedar is very common on barrier islands, and they’re adapted to the conditions there. They’re adapted to the soil and salt aerosols and drought, and the waxwing depends on the cedar for food. And the cedar depends on the waxwing for seed dispersal.”

Invasives can be costly

A big problem with nonnative species is that they can outcompete the native plants, and often with devastating results, environmentally and economically.

According to the publication, estimates of invasive plants’ economic effects can vary. But costs to control just one ornamental species, Lythrum salicaria, commonly known as the European purple loosestrife, and the loss of forage associated with the invasive plant are estimated at $45 million each year in the 48 states where it is found.

The publication cites a 2018 University of Delaware study of residential yards in the Washington, D.C., area, which found that Carolina chickadees there could sustain their numbers only where available plants were at least 70% native species. That’s because Carolina chickadees mainly eat caterpillars that often rely exclusively on a limited number of native plant species for their food.

“A single clutch of chickadees, hatched from 3 to 10 eggs, consumes up to 9,000 caterpillars in the 16 days it takes to develop into fledglings,” according to the publication.

Native plants in coastal landscapes support numerous other birds, as well as other animals and insects, including bees and butterflies.

The guide includes alternatives for commonly used nonnative species, with options for various landscape uses, such as trees and grasses as accent plants, shrubs for foundations and borders, privacy screens and hedges and ornamental deciduous vines to add “vertical interest and flowers.”

For example, the guide suggests Amelanchier canadensi, or serviceberry, and Cercis canadensis, or redbud, trees instead of commonly used Pyrus calleryana, or callery pears, that include Bradford and other cultivars.

Bradford pears, which bloom beautifully in March along much of the North Carolina coast and are frequently featured in landscape designs here, were bred to be sterile, but because they are grafted onto other pear rootstock, which can send out suckers that flower, they can cross with other pear trees nearby.

“Bradford pears can’t crossbreed with one another but they can crossbreed with other cultivars and other pear species,” Mead said during the webinar.

Mead said the Bradford pear had become a “poster child” of good intentions. Structurally weak and “malodorous,” she said that, while it is a beautiful, spring-blooming tree, “I have heard the blooms described as (smelling like) rotting fish or urine, not something that I want to have in my yard.”

Alternatives to the Bradford pear include Cornus florida, or flowering dogwood, Magnolia virginiana, or sweetbay magnolia, and Acer rubrum, or red maple.

For shrubs, plant Ilex vomitoria, or yaupon holly, instead of Nandina domestica, or nandina.

Instead of ornamental grasses like Cortaderia selloana, or pampas grass, the guide suggests planting taller cultivars of native Panicum virgatum, or switchgrass — or Muhlenbergia capillaris, or pink muhly grass, where plant height is not a priority.

Supply and demand

So why aren’t native plants more widely available in stores here?

“It’s sort of a chicken and egg — there’s got to be a demand for the native plants in order for box stores to start carrying these, but then it goes all the way back to the supply chain. The nurseries need to have the demand from the box stores to be able to start growing these plants,” Mead told Coastal Review.

She said it’s not always easy growing native plants on a commercial scale. There’s the matter of the native seed supply, and then figuring out how to grow them.

“And then there’s the psychology, too, of what plants people will buy in the box stores. It has to look pretty and be blooming, and so there’s so much more that goes into it rather than just saying, ‘Hey, you should grow more native plants,’” Mead said.

The effort to increase awareness of the importance of native plants is so that it will drive more demand. “So people will start going into these large home improvement stores and asking for native plants and then they will start asking the growers to grow these plants as well. We’re hoping to drive that supply and demand and we’re starting with education,” she said.

Knowledge could steer folks away from what Mead calls “the starter pack of crepe myrtles and loropetalums,” plants easily found in stores and widely used – sometimes to the exclusion of all other choices – in residential landscaping.

Mead said there are so many more plants to choose from that will thrive on the coast and provide benefits to the environment. These plants can be added to established gardens, including those planted with nonnative species.

“I’m not a native purist,” Mead said. “We don’t live in a natural forest, but I would say add plants. I’m a big fan of expanding your garden beds, adding in plants. If you’re ready, if you have failing or older plants, it’s a good opportunity to plant something new.”

She advises trying to plant 70% native species, and then ornamental plants can be included as “ornaments in your yard.” Sometimes a few nonnative plants can simply bring joy.

“I have a beautiful gardenia bush that reminds me of my childhood. And so that’s something that gives me pleasure, and I can have it in my yard. It’s important that something is beautiful and gives me pleasure,” Mead said, adding that Japanese maples are similar. “Something that I really enjoy having in my garden, as well. Those are going to be beautiful, they’re not going to be invasive or cause any harm.”

Find a nursery

To find native plants, contact your county office of the N.C. State Extension, which also offers the following links to help you locate a nursery near you that sells native plants:

• North Carolina Botanical Garden
• North Carolina Forest Service
• North Carolina Native Plant Society

Second in a series on the Albemarle region’s environmental-economic connections.

Attorney General Josh Stein was at the Tall Glass of Water county park in Bertie County last month to meet with four groups whose projects had benefited from the Environmental Enhancement Grants that his office had awarded in eastern North Carolina.

The EEG funds are through a 25-year agreement the state and Smithfield Farms entered into in 2000 as part of a settlement stemming from hog waste pollution caused by company farms. The grants have been awarded since 2002.

Although advocates say EEGs have had an effect wherever they have been awarded, for Tall Glass of Water, the impact was particularly significant.

“The environmental enhancement money helped with the outdoor spaces that needed to be repaired,” Robin Payne told Coastal Review in an interview shortly after the Stein visit. Payne has been the facilitator for the project for the county since late 2019.

Those funds are what enabled Dr. Bo Dame, professor of biology and physical sciences at Chowan University, to bring his students to Tall Glass of Water as part of an ongoing restoration and study program of the site’s environment.

“We were asked to help with planning for wetland restoration … establish an ecological monitoring program. That program has a very strong water quality component to it,” he told Stein, adding that he hoped the program could eventually be a part of the local school system’s curriculum. “The idea is that we would implement that monitoring program until the restoration was done and a little bit beyond that, and then hand it over to the (local) schools.”

Sometime next month, the first phase of the Tall Glass of Water park is expected to be completed. The restrooms will be ready, the wheelchair-accessible ramp to the beach will be built, picnic tables in place, and a site the Tall Glass of Water website describes as “unlike anywhere else in Northeastern North Carolina” will be fully opened to the public.

The next phase is to feature an outdoor performance area.

It is a lush, scenic site. An open field gives way to high bluffs that overlook the river. There is a sandy beach that extends for 2,200 feet. Looking south along the beach, the Chowan River has carved deeply into the soil, creating shear bluffs 20 feet high in places. Tree roots are exposed, looping out of the dirt then back into the bluff.

The county purchased the property in 2016 in part thanks to a North Carolina Parks and Recreation Trust Fund grant. With its natural beauty and setting, it is, Payne said, the best possible fit for a county park.

“Bertie County looked at their assets, and they’re all nature-based assets,” she said.

It is a point of view that marine geologist Dr. Stan Riggs addressed during Stein’s visit.

“When I came in here, what became obvious, is that this is a world-class water system that surrounds Bertie County,” Riggs said. “So let’s look at the resources here … and what can we do with these with respect to long-term ecotourism and sustainability.”

Asked about Riggs’ contribution to Bertie County, Payne told the Coastal Review that his vision for the county extended well beyond the 147 acres at the site.

“Bertie County has such a wealth of natural resources and their geological history, there’s just so much there that’s worth protecting and (Riggs) has been a dynamo in helping the county do it,” she said.

Walking with the attorney general along the bluff, Riggs explained the geographical and ecological history of the area. As Stein and the other group members came to a trail that would eventually cut through a heavily forested part of the site, Riggs explained how important it was to understand what the county and state had at Tall Glass of Water.

At the base of the hills, the dark waters of a swamp reflected water tupelo, common spatterdock and other trees that thrive in a wetland environment.

“These are incredible ravines and they’re so steep that they could never be logged,” Riggs said. “This is probably one of the most perfect examples of a mature North Carolina hardwood forest. You’ve got a few big trees, you’ve got middle-sized trees, you’ve got new, young growth. This has probably never been logged, because there’s plenty of wood out here on the flatlands.”

Especially at the north end of the site where the swamp lies, the Tall Glass of Water project has been called ambitious.

“The TGOW Wetlands Restoration Northern Boundary project goal is to reestablish pre-agriculture hydrology and plant communities that support the healthy functioning of the incised ephemeral stream for improved water quality and habitat,” the Tall Glass of Water website states.

But for Bertie County, the Tall Glass of Water project represents more than environmental rehabilitation.

Some 2 miles of trails wind their way through the forests and wetlands. Almost surrounded by Salmon River Natural Area, the trails on the north end connect with a trail leading into the natural area.

The beach is relatively narrow, but the sand is soft and with 2,200 feet along the Chowan River, public access to water activities on the river are available for the first time in the county’s history, something Bertie County Board Chair Ron Wesson who grew up in the county, said is particularly important.

“I’ve never had access because there’s never been a public access on the Albemarle Sound,” he said. “There’s been a lot of private beach clubs, but kids like me when I grew up here, you could never access any of those. So having a public source access to the sound is very important for us.”

Although the EEG award has been invaluable in completing the first phase of Tall Glass of Water, Payne emphasized that it is not the only grant or source of funding for the project. The U.S. Department of Agriculture was also involved.

“The USDA paid for planning money and then the Environmental Enhancement (Grant) helped with the outdoor spaces that needed to be repaired,” she said. “And then the county, through legislative appropriation, and some of their ARPA (American Rescue Plan Act) funds were able to cobble together the entire picture.”

The money to complete the project though is just one part of the picture. Asked about the long-term maintenance of Tall Glass of Water, Wesson, the board chair, was emphatic that the county understood that it would take a commitment on their part.

“We would not have gone down this road unless we were sure that this is something that was not a just a short-term venture, but a long-term venture, decades really, because we need to make sure there is a reason to come to Bertie County,” he said.

Next in the series: Testing the waters.

Part of a series on pollinators.

What began as a grassroots effort in the North Carolina mountains a decade ago to save honeybees has become a nationwide initiative to protect pollinators.

The program, Bee City USA, got its start in Asheville as an independent nonprofit in 2012. Founder Phyllis Stiles grew the program by welcoming affiliates across the country and adding Bee Campus USA for colleges and universities.

In 2018, the nonprofit Xerces Society for Invertebrate Conservation absorbed the programs that provide a framework for communities and campuses “to come together to conserve native pollinators by providing them with healthy habitat that is rich in a variety of native plants, provides nest sites, and is protected from pesticides.”

The Xerces Society, like many other pollinator conservation programs, offers special programing during National Pollinator Week, June 19-25.  

The seed for the awareness campaign was planted when the U.S. Senate passed a resolution in 2006 designating June 24-30, 2007, as National Pollinator Week, and recognizing the North American Pollinator Protection Campaign, or the Pollinator Partnership, which now holds National Pollinator Week the third week of June.

Bee City USA Coordinator Laura Rost told Coastal Review that the organization celebrates National Pollinator Week with a different theme. This year, the theme is “Bee Safe” and the organization is focusing on reducing pesticides. Information on National Pollinator Week can be found on the website.

Bee City USA, and the Xerces Society’s pollinator conservation program as a whole, are based on four principles: plant native plants that bloom throughout the growing season, reduce or eliminate pesticide usage, protect natural nesting sites for bees, and spread the word.

“The key ideas of pollinator conservation are really quite simple, native plants blooming consistently, and pesticide reduction. If you can have those two elements and you’re paying attention to natural nesting sites, the habitat comes together on its own,” she said.

Rost said that while Bee City USA initially concentrated more on honeybees, the focus has shifted to native bees.

“It’s not just honeybees that feed us, it’s our native bees as well,” she said.

“We can thank bees for one in three bites of food we take,” Rost said. For example, 85% of all flowering plants rely on pollinators for reproduction, and 67% of agricultural crops rely on pollination.

“Honeybees, though they serve a lot of functions for agriculture, are nonnative,” Rost said. There are 3,600 species of native bees in the United States, but many are in decline. “There’s this whole diversity of native bees that need protection.”

She added that of the 3,600 native species, 90% are solitary nesting, so they’re not in hives, and then 70% are ground-nesting species. Most native bees rarely sting, rather they tend to be very gentle and keep to themselves.

Rost is based in Oregon and oversees both Bee City USA and Bee Campus USA. As of Thursday, there were a total of 354 city and campus affiliates in 46 states, Washington, D.C., and Puerto Rico.

To become a certified Bee City USA, a town needs to apply, establish a standing Bee City committee for the town, pass a resolution or memorandum of understanding committing to conservation measures, and pay an application fee that depends on the size of the city population.

New affiliates have a year to meet the requirements detailed in the resolution, which are to host a pollinator-focused activity, implement a pollinator-friendly habitat with native species on public and private land, create a list of recommended native plants, and adopt an integrated pest management plan that guides pesticide usage. Affiliates receive Bee City USA signage and must include on their website information about the program. 

Communities can base their native plants list on those provided by the Xerces Society’s Pollinator Conservation Resource Center. The organization recently updated its native plant lists for every area of the country. The list contains suggestions about plants that tend to be easier to grow.

There is also a new list, Buying Bee-Safe Plants, that offers ways to help find plants that are safe for bees, and includes tips and questions to use at the nursery, a guide to reduce pests without pesticides, and suggestions on creating and maintaining habitat on the website as well.

Bee City USA and Bee Campus USA are great ways to build community and create a sense of identity. You can create projects that reflect the beauty of your own ecosystem and add your own interests and priorities as a community, Rost said.

Each town or campus can create its pollinator habitat project and “it can look like a million different things” — vegetable gardens, a meadow in a park, wildflowers along a roadside, a green roof and even bioswales and rain gardens.

You can incorporate pollinators into existing projects, too, and it doesn’t have to be flowers, either.

“It could be trees and shrubs because those are kind of the unsung heroes for native bees, especially early in the season. A lot of newly emerging bees really rely on crab apples and willows and actually fruit trees in general,” Rost said, adding that trees have been called the meadows of the sky. “If you think about it, there’s so many blossoms in one tree.”.

Additionally, choosing native trees for streets that attract pollinators is “a beautiful way” to incorporate a pollinator habitat. A bonus is native plants are low maintenance.

“The nice thing about native plants is you probably don’t need to water them as much because they’re adapted to your ecoregion,” Rost said. “They may not get as much disease or pest pressure because they’re happy and healthy in their environment.”

They’re encouraging people to rethink how they see their yards, and see them as habitat, where plants and animals are welcome, Rost continued. Residents can add more pollinator habitat without eliminating your lawn. Allowing their yard to be a little messier, a little wilder “can really go a long way.”

If plants have bites taken from the leaves, that doesn’t mean that your plant is dying, especially with native plants, it means you’ve created an ecosystem by bringing in those native plants.

“Pollinators may be really subtle at first or even subtle long-term, but if you hold still, especially in the early morning and in the evening and you look at some of your flowers, you’ll be surprised by that diversity you see,” she said.

Rost, who has a degree in environmental studies, with an emphasis on social science and policy, said she feels “insects are where it’s at for conservation because if you protect the biodiversity of insects and invertebrate life, everything else comes together.”

The foundation of life is all these insects and invertebrates that all these other species rely on, she continued. “If you create good habitat for invertebrates, you create good habitat for everything else … and it’s not very often you have such a fun way to help with environmentalism … planting beautiful flowers.”

Which is what they’re doing in Southport.

Kate Singley, a representative from the Southport Beautification Committee, said the Brunswick County town’s designation was approved in April 2022.

“Being an affiliate of Bee City helps bring communities together to sustain pollinators, increase the abundance of native plants, provide habitat and nesting sites, and reduce pesticide use,” she told Coastal Review.

The Southport Beautification Committee has supported a native plant pollinator garden at Lowe-White Park, 226 E. Leonard St., since 2017, where brochures are available as well as at the Fort Johnston-Southport Museum and Visitors’ Center at 203 E. Bay St. 

“One of the goals was to plant a demonstration garden for the community to show the ease and importance of using native plants to attract pollinators and educate, regarding the important the role pollinators play in our ecosystem and everyday life,” she said. “Southport has shown that being a Bee City is important by staying aware, and the town does not spray any mosquito pesticide near the pollinator garden.”

Awareness and educational programs have taken place over the years, and the committee has a display highlighting Southport’s Bee City USA designation planned for the month of August at the Fort Johnston-Southport Museum and Visitors’ Center, she added.

“Beautification volunteers working in the garden hear many positive comments from people who frequent the garden daily or visitors to Southport. One highlight was a letter from a high school student who visited the garden while on vacation with his family. He was the editor for the school newspaper and wrote an article about the garden for Earth Day,” Singley said.

First in a series on the Albemarle region’s environmental-economic connections.

Standing on a bluff overlooking the Chowan River at Bertie County’s Tall Glass of Water outdoor education site, North Carolina Attorney General Josh Stein spoke last month about the North Carolina Environmental Enhancement Grants, or EEGs, what they have meant to communities, and what they have meant to him personally.

Stein, speaking during the May 4 event, said awarding EEGs is one of the most fun things he gets to do as attorney general. Addressing organizations selected for the EEGs, he said being able to support the good work of community organizations and civically minded folks was tremendous.

“To see these funds pour back into North Carolina … using a whole variety of different strategies … It’s my privilege to be able to do this work and it’s certainly my pleasure to do this work,” Stein said.

Earlier this year: State announces millions for park accessibility grants

The EEG program was part of a binding agreement in 2000 between Smithfield Foods and the state calling for the hog producer to phase out the use of open-air hog lagoons. As part of that agreement, Smithfield agreed to provide up to $2 million per year for 25 years of environmental projects across the state.

The EEG program began distributing grants in 2002.

“So far, we’ve done something like 210 projects in excess of $40 million,” Stein said.

Stein noted in his remarks that most, though not all, of the Environmental Enhancement Grants have been focused on eastern North Carolina, and the grants he came to Bertie County to talk about are specific to the area. The Albemarle Resource Conservation and Development Council received a grant to study algal blooms on the Chowan River, and the Audubon Society is applying a $98,000 grant to wetland restoration in Currituck County.

For many of the grants, the most apparent outcomes are visible. That is the case at Tall Glass of Water, as trails are cleared and much-needed unimpeded access to the beach becomes a reality.

For Bertie County, a Tier 1, or most-distressed county on the North Carolina Department of Commerce’s ranking of counties’ economic well-being, and facing a recent spate of violent crime, six murders this year, at least one of the grants may come to represent the human benefits of environmental enhancements.

The EEG funding for the Bertie County Hive House Virtual Learning Center at 103 Mitchell St. in Lewiston Woodville will create a green space from 4 acres of meadow, overgrown with invasive species and with limited access. But for Vivian Saunders, executive director of the Hive House, the grant, she explained to Stein, is more than just open space for the small town on the west side of the county.

Saunders spoke about “the unfortunate deaths” in Bertie County in the last couple of months, referring to the six homicides in 2023.

“What we’re going to try to do is … get our young people involved in some outdoor workforce-development training so we can get them outside (instead) of playing games and being on video games,” she said. “We’re trying to transform our young people’s minds from sitting in the house staying on video games to being back outside and around nature.”

Saunder’s remarks sparked an almost immediate response from Stein.

“That’s a wonderful articulation of the relationship of kids and mental health and nature,” he said.

Lewiston Woodville was once a small but thriving crossroads town. That was a long time ago. The few businesses that once lined the streets are now closed and falling into disrepair. The only open business by the crossroads is a gas station and convenience store. The paint on the front of the building is chipped and fading. On the west side of town is natural gas infrastructure where maintenance work in May produced a seemingly ceaseless din of venting gas and flame that resembled the sound of a jet engine.

The Bertie County Hive House, at the corner of Mitchell and Cashie streets, is just off the town crossroads. It is a rambling old house that Saunders has made into a gathering place for anyone who wants to come.

The house, Saunders said, was donated to her by her pastor, Dr. Gary Cordon. When she first got it, the house was not in very good shape, but a grant from Perdue Farms, the largest employer in Bertie County, paid for its rehabilitation.

“Perdue, they did the total renovations,” she emphasized.

The Hive House, as Saunders describes it, is a safe place, a shelter where people can come for whatever reason, and she added that space is available at almost any time, day or night.

“If you need somewhere to work, or chill, you can just give me a call: ‘Vivian, can I get into the Hive?’ And my people will come and unlock it,” she said.

For Saunders, the issues confronting the county have their roots in poverty and the hopelessness it creates, and she is uncompromising as she paints a picture of the impact on the county’s youth.

“You’re telling me, sitting in school, that I’ve got the whole world ahead of me. And then I go home, and some folks don’t have toilets. I’m in a mobile home, where I can see the dog running underneath. I don’t have lights on. Sometime my mom and dad are working so hard, I don’t get to see them,” Saunders said describing the county’s poverty.

She points out that the county has one of the state’s highest rates of juvenile diabetes related to obesity, an observation that is confirmed in the 2018 Bertie County Community Health Assessment, and to her the key is getting young adults and kids off social media and back outside.

“We got to get these babies back outside, loving nature, loving the community,” she said. “Kids don’t go outside. They want to be on MacBooks, phones and computers. One of the things that I’m going to require (on the green space work), you’ve got to leave that phone alone. You’ve got to go outside. Our project is to actually build that park.”

The work is still in its earliest stages. The design for the 4-acre green space is being handled by North Carolina State University landscape architecture and environmental planning professor Kofi Boone. He agreed that there is concern about the overall health of the community.

“The health disparities facing Bertie County broadly and Lewiston-Woodville specifically are alarming,” he wrote in an email response to Coastal Review. “That includes all sectors but especially seniors and young people. Vivian Saunders and Hive House have also expressed the need for young people to belong to the process and the transformation and see opportunities to look at workforce development associated with green space transformation.

Asked what the potential impact of creating a community green space could be, Boone was cautiously optimistic.

“The issues facing towns like Lewiston-Woodville are complex and beyond the scope of what one green space can solve on its own,” he wrote. “However, green space that can reflect and reinforce community values can engender a spirit of stewardship and care that can offer safe, and healthy open space for people to enjoy.”

That sense of cautious optimism is shared by Bertie County Sheriff Tyrone Ruffin.

“If people utilize it, yes, it will be a good thing for our county,” he said. “But do I think that is the solution to (all) issues? The answer’s no.”

Boone, however, does see the outdoor space as an important component in addressing the overall health of the community. He noted that the health concerns raised by Saunders could potentially be affected by an outdoor area for the community.

“The town does not currently have a public green space. From research, we know that a lack of access to green space can contribute to a lack of physical activity and poorer health outcomes. We know that well designed green space can help support improved physical health and mental wellbeing,” Boone wrote.

The field is going to take some work to create something usable. There are numerous ways to remove invasive species and Boone has not yet come to a decision on the best method.

“We’re going to be working with a number of partners to determine the right approach to handling invasive species. The treatments can vary,” he wrote.

There is also, evidently, material from what was once the West Bertie Elementary School that closed in the 1970s, according to Boone.

Graduate students from the N.C. State School of Landscape Architecture will be on hand to supervise the work, at times spending the night at the Hive House. Saunders mentioned that they are donating their time, and that the only request they made was, “all they’ve asked us to do is keep the fridge full for us.”

The project is still in its earliest stages, yet for Saunders even as the initial steps are taken, she sees hope in the willingness of people to work together to improve conditions in a troubled county.

“I want to thank everyone involved in helping us transform and take back our county from all the negativity that’s been going on,” she said.

Next in the series: A Tall Glass of Water.

Part of a series on pollinators.

Spring is the time of year when things start growing and blooming. It’s also when pollinators like bees come out and get to work.

An awareness campaign called “No Mow May” is urging people not to mow their lawns this month, or even this whole season, as a way to help make sure that these pollinators have enough to eat. Many of the small flowers that pop up in the spring can provide a critical food source for bees. Mowing these blooms robs the bees of this potential sustenance.

Bees are critical to the health of our ecosystems, but they are also in trouble.

Wild bee populations have experienced substantial declines due to factors including urbanization, pesticides and undiversified agriculture. Increased urbanization has led to the fragmentation of pollinator habitat — a widening in the space between areas where bees can find food or live. Without bees, our food system would never be the same.

“(When) we think of habitat loss, we think of forests being logged and things being plowed and built on,” said Matthew Shepherd, director of outreach and education for the Xerces Society of Invertebrate Conservation. “But then, every acre of featureless grass is just as much loss of habitat as anything else.”

History of the Green Lawn

The American attachment to the perfectly trimmed green lawn aesthetic has a history rooted in settler colonialism. Americans modeled their landscaping after wealthy European elites, who used a pure grass lawn as a way to signal their wealth.

This thing that originated as a status symbol is now a hallmark of the American backyard. Despite that it is an extremely common sight now, most green turf grasses are not native to the United States. Therefore, they can require a lot of upkeep — excessive water, pesticides — to keep them going.

Covering 40 million acres across the country, grass is now the biggest irrigated “crop” in the U.S. — surpassing even corn. And yet, it gives little to nothing back to native ecosystems.

No Mow May

Green grass lawns, in effect, extend the fragmentation of pollinator habitat. That’s why Plantlife in the United Kingdom started the awareness campaign, No Mow May. This movement has also taken hold in the U.S. The idea is that not mowing your lawn for even a month can allow for the growth of things like clover that bees can use for food.

Of course, not mowing your lawn can present issues, such as enforcement of local ordinances, or even just the local status quo. There are homeowner associations bylaws and legal prohibitions on any deferred lawn maintenance that could be characterized as overgrowth.

Related: Celebrate pollinators Saturday during World Bee Day

Facing ordinances like this, some U.S. residents have challenged the idea of what a yard should look like. In Maryland, one couple pushed back on an HOA requirement and it resulted in legislation that prohibits unreasonable restrictions on low-impact landscaping such as a pollinator-friendly yard.

Beyond May

Ultimately, said Shepherd, No Mow May should ideally serve as a springboard for a more comprehensive conversation about making spaces pollinator friendly all year round. Shepherd said there are three things you can focus on: creating nesting areas, flowers for food, and quitting pesticides.

If all you’re doing is not mowing your lawn for a few weeks, said Shepherd, you’re not achieving any long-term benefit. Because if you don’t have any blooming flowers in your lawn, you’re just growing long, green grass. And if you do, teaching bees that there’s a food source in your yard and then taking it away can be harmful. So ultimately, true support for pollinators has to go beyond the campaign.

“The real benefit from (No Mow May) is that people are talking about lawns — they’re talking about the bad things of lawns, how the lawns could be, what the changes can be,” Shepherd said. “And we’re seeing a much broader conversation about pollinator conservation in our neighborhoods, and what we really should be doing to support the bees.”

Advocates say focusing on native, flowering plants is also a good idea, as is spreading awareness to other people in your community and beyond. Critically important is eliminating things from your yard, like grass, that might require regular pesticide applications.

“Anything we can do to bring habitat back into our neighborhoods, our towns, our farmland and so on, is going to be beneficial,” Shepherd said.

After May wraps up, June is National Pollinators Month. Follow along for more in this series about pollinators.

Second in a series. Read Part 1.

PONSER — While thousands of acres in Hyde County have produced lucrative crops for centuries, the uncultivated peatland in the county with one of the lowest population densities in the state has the potential to offer a new kind of profitable produce: carbon credits.

Sequestration of carbon dioxide, or CO2, on agricultural and forest lands has become more urgent as atmospheric levels of the potent greenhouse gas continue to rise. And Hyde’s pocosin soil, a unique type of peat, can hold enormous amounts of carbon — peatlands are one of the largest carbon stores on Earth. That means that landowners could be paid for the amount of carbon that is locked into their soil.

According to a recent State of the Voluntary Carbon Markets Briefing by nonprofit Ecosystem Marketplace, the voluntary carbon market in 2022 topped $2 billion. But joining the carbon market is far more complex and arcane than buying stocks.

“There’s a tremendous amount of opportunity,” Eric Soderholm, the Albemarle-Pamlico restoration specialist with The Nature Conservancy, recently told Coastal Review. “There’s 250,000 acres of private peatland in North Carolina alone.”

Blacklands, as pocosin is broadly known in Hyde and neighboring northeastern North Carolina coastal counties, refer to rich, black, organic matter that has accumulated for millennia in swampy fields and forests. Starting in the 1700s, the land was ditched and drained for agriculture and timber, but now scientists are studying how to rewet and restore pocosin as a way to mitigate climate change.

Carolina Ranch, a privately owned, 15,000-acre site adjacent to Pocosin Lakes National Wildlife Refuge in Hyde County, is currently working with several academic and engineering partners on restoration of 10,000 acres at the ranch with a goal of qualifying for carbon farming, which would be valued based on measurements of the level of CO2 that the soil holds.

Carbon credits, or offsets, represent the amount of greenhouse gases removed from the atmosphere, or the amount of reduced emissions. Those credits can be sold or traded to buyers, such as large corporations, seeking to offset their carbon emissions.

Accessing the fairly new market, however, is a rigorous and expensive process that is nearly incomprehensible to most people, even those who understand the complexities of Wall Street or cryptocurrency trading.

Soderholm, who had done extensive hydraulic restoration work for The Nature Conservancy in Pocosin Lakes National Wildlife Refuge in Hyde County, boiled down the following requirements:

• A greenhouse gas project plan is submitted to the American Carbon Registry, which determines whether the proposal aligns with its standards and methodology.
• Next, a third-party auditor examines the proposal.
• Then, site data is analyzed.

“It’s sort of a step-by-step process,” he explained. “Some edits may have to be added before it’s validated.” 

Pocosin and wetland restoration is part of The Nature Conservancy’s climate change work in the Albemarle peninsula, including reducing saltwater intrusion and mitigating flood and stormwater impacts.

Of the 110,106 acres in the Pocosin Lakes refuge, which spans land in Washington, Hyde and Tyrrell counties, about 101,600 acres are pocosin, an Algonquin term meaning “swamp on a hill.” With about 44,000 acres of the pocosin ditched and drained, over time the peat had become dried. The refuge’s natural water system is dependent on rainfall, and periods of drought had severely degraded habitat and made the land susceptible to wildfires.

Working with The Nature Conservancy and other partners, refuge officials have restored more than 37,000 acres of pocosin, making it one of the largest peat wetland restoration projects in the country, according to the refuge’s website. Restoration involved rewetting the pocosin by raising and maintaining water levels using risers and other structures in the canals to allow water to be absorbed.

“Healthy pocosins are foundational to healthy ecological and human communities,” the website explained. “The restoration is benefiting wildlife and people by maintaining high quality wetland habitat. When pocosins function as nature intended, seasonal water level fluctuations moisten the soils, protecting against catastrophic fire, easing the impacts of storm flows, and repelling the ever increasing threat of salt water intrusion in surrounding lands.”

Pocosin, described as “nutrient-poor, freshwater evergreen shrub bogs,” had developed over the last 10,000 years and had once covered nearly 1 million hectares on the state’s coastal plain, according to Curtis J. Richardson, director of the Duke University Wetland Center. By 1980, after years of drainage and peat mining, the natural wetlands were reduced to 281,000 acres.

“This development has resulted in a shift of hydrologic output from evapotranspiration to runoff,” he wrote in a research paper.   “… and a reduction in habitat for rare and endangered biota, while dramatically increasing the economic value of these lands.”

In a document about the conservancy’s work, Soderholm said the restoration of the Clayton Blocks area of Pocosin Lakes served as a valuable model. Located south of Phelps Lake, bordering private land and a shared drainage canal, the project involved creating a new canal and a separation berm to control floodwaters. Water-control structures were installed that allow the refuge to manage wetland hydrology and prevent wildfires. The conservancy also worked to monitor the project’s greenhouse gas flux, which is the amount of carbon exchanged and is typically measured in gigatons per year, in carbon pools such as atmosphere, living plants or roots, land and the ocean.

TerraCarbon, an advisory firm that helps develop carbon offset projects to fund natural climate solutions, worked with The Nature Conservancy at Pocosin Lakes to develop the first peatland carbon accounting methodology that is applicable to any peat-restoration project in the Southeast coastal plain.

In its healthy state, peat that is inundated with water lacks oxygen, so microbial activity is limited. But when peatlands are drained, they’re exposed to air, the microbes kick in, consumes the peat, which is then emitted as carbon dioxide. Over the years, the drained peatlands have created an ongoing emission of CO2.

TerraCarbon’s technical director David Shoch said that the methodology he developed serves as a standardized accounting framework for tracking greenhouse gas emission benefits from restoring coastal wetlands.

“These projects are all about stopping that ongoing mission by raising water tables to where they had historically been before under natural conditions,” he told Coastal Review. “And so the water table should be much closer to the surface.”

By raising the water levels, as was done at Pocosin Lakes and is underway at Carolina Ranch, he said, the natural hydrology can be restored and emission of CO2 into the atmosphere can be stopped.

Prior to TerraCarbon, Shoch had worked for The Nature Conservancy and Winrock International.

Roughly estimated, Shoch said that raising the water tables at Pocosin Lakes would prevent about 5 to 6 metric tons of CO2 equivalent per acre, per year. A metric ton equals 1,000 kilograms or about 2,205 pounds.

But the actual amount, he said, is dependent on determining the level of emissions from the pre-drained state and those water tables and comparing the numbers to reduction of emissions achieved by raising water tables and restoring the natural hydrology. TerraCarbon has leveraged research done by East Carolina University, the U.S. Geological Survey and the Duke University wetlands lab.

Sonderholm, with The Nature Conservancy, said that the nonprofit is interested in working with private landowners not only for habitat- and ecosystem-restoration purposes but also to help them reach goals in mutually beneficial climate projects.

Private property owners own about 40% of U.S. forestland, which includes forested pocosin in northeastern North Carolina, but the process of enrolling in the carbon market has been cost-prohibitive, requiring much time and expertise.

The Family Forest Carbon Program, developed by The Nature Conservancy and the American Forest Foundation, partners with family and individual owners to manage their forests in ways that increase their health while also fostering their ability to sequester and store carbon. The program then provides income to owners by selling verified carbon credits to companies seeking to confront climate change.

“We’re doing the work on the front end, laying out these practices … (with) models and quantifications specific to that region,” Aimee Tomcho, senior forestry manager for the Southern region of the American Forest Foundation, or AFF, explained for Coastal Review.

Although the foundation has focused on hardwood forests adjacent to peatland, she said, it has not yet delved into conservation of pocosin and has limited engagement in the region.

“I do anticipate that AFF will be community-based in the South, so that may happen organically.” she said, adding that the foundation knows how to reach out to landowners of small acreage.

“I’m really excited about the research about pocosin.” she added.

Erin Swails, postdoctoral fellow at the Center for International Forestry Research, said that until recently she had worked with Shoch at TerraCarbon on the technical carbon aspects of developing a documentation and monitoring system for qualifying the climate benefits of the restoration project and applying David’s methodology to that project.

Swails said she plans to publish new research that will provide more accurate emissions data generated by projects such as those at Pocosin Lakes.

“The main idea is that to get a relationship between the CO2 emissions from peat and easily measurable parameters in the field,” she told Coastal Review.

In other words, more data from different studies covering a broader range of environmental and climate conditions was needed, she said, to fill knowledge gaps and “to get a sufficiently robust relationship to apply the methodology.”

Even for those who may have taken some college-level science classes, it’s difficult to comprehend the concepts involved in measuring carbon levels in soil. As Swails explained it, in addition to figuring out carbon levels in pocosin before and after rewetting, it involves measuring the contribution of living plants, root respiration and total CO2 flux.

Scientists also have to create cushions in carbon offset calculations to account for carbon released if there is a fire. And if there’s prolonged flooding, that won’t affect the carbon releases, but it could create methane emissions, another greenhouse gas.

“I think something else that is important is restoring the vegetation of these ecosystems because it’s one thing to raise the water table level to stop the microbial decomposition of the peat, but to build the (land), to increase the carbon storage of peat, you need carbon inputs from vegetation,” Swails said. “So besides the many environmental benefits that restoring native vegetation would bring one of them is to help restore the natural function of the peat by promoting carbon storage.”

If pocosin land in northeastern North Carolina finds its place in the burgeoning carbon market, much of it will depend on the integrity of the science that has been done at Pocosin Lakes and Carolina Ranch.

The largely unregulated voluntary carbon market can play an important role in finding funds for sequestration projects and helping the world achieve net zero carbon goals, according to a Nov. 10, 2022, blog on the nonprofit Environmental Defense Fund website.

“But the voluntary carbon market can only thrive if it is backed by standards that ensure high integrity of emissions reductions,” according to the blog. “That’s because companies will only invest in forest carbon credits to meet their net zero goals if they’re confident in the credit’s integrity.

“They don’t want to risk greenwashing.”

First of two parts.

BELHAVEN — Fourteen years separate two lightning strikes that sparked wildfires in nearly the same spot of private land near Pocosin Lakes National Wildlife Refuge.

The first blaze in 2008 consumed about 50,000 acres and took more than six months to extinguish. The second, in June 2022, burned just under 2,000 acres and was out in 10 days.

To Angie Tooley, manager of Carolina Ranch, the 10,000-acre site where both fires ignited, those contrasts illustrate the critical difference between toasty dry pocosin and spongy wet pocosin. Tooley credits the ranch’s work that rewetted the pocosin by raising water levels in the canals for suppressing the June fire.

But moist pocosin can also translate to income, she is quick to add. When peatlands are restored to their naturally boggy health, their thick mats of decayed plants sequester many tons of carbon. Carbon dioxide is the greenhouse gas that is threatening to destroy our planet. 

It’s an opportunity for ecosystem restoration that kills two birds with one stone — wildfire prevention and climate change mitigation — and Tooley intends to seize the ring. In recent years, she has reached out to environmental nonprofit group The Nature Conservancy, or TNC, and Charlottesville, Virginia, consulting firm TerraCarbon for expertise to help Carolina Ranch — and possibly neighboring properties — meet strict criteria to qualify for the burgeoning carbon credit market.

Carbon credits, or offsets, refer to the amount of greenhouse gas removed from the atmosphere, or the reduction of carbon emissions. Carbon farming creates credits based on the carbon dioxide, or CO2, held or drawn down into the soil.

“We are all looking for ways to work together in showcasing the private landowner use of the pocosin carbon offsets methodology funded by TNC and written in part by TerraCarbon,” she said in a text message after representatives of the groups had visited the site Jan. 11.

Wetland research

The Duke University Wetland Center, which is led by founding director Curtis J. Richardson, had conducted a three-year research project on pocosin in Carolina Ranch and, earlier, at the Pocosin Lakes refuge. In a paper released in September, the research data showed that rewetting and restoring 250,000 acres of previously drained peatlands could prevent 4.3 million tons of CO2 from being released into the atmosphere – equaling 2.4% of the total annual reductions in carbon dioxide emissions needed for the U.S. to be carbon neutral by 2050.

“Thus, management of hydrology and fire intensity in natural and degraded shrub/tree peatlands will be principal to maintaining peat/litter quality (phenolic/black carbon), enhancing long-term carbon accumulation, and preventing downstream (dissolved organic carbon) losses to coastal waters,” according to the paper.

In September, Richardson told Coastal Review that the Duke center is no longer working with anyone at Carolina Ranch. Although he noted “there’s a million steps that have to be done,” he hopes they move forward with carbon farming.

“I wish the project to be a success,” he said.

‘Hottest of the hot’

During a mid-September tour of the canal system within the project site, Tooley and ranch assistant Bill Ogburn of Ponser showed how the dark water sat just under the top edge of the canals that crisscrossed miles of flat grassy and wooded land.

“This is the worst part of the fire,” Tooley said, nodding towards charred vegetation off the access road on the property. “This was the hottest of the hot.”

Abutting the refuge and situated among vast farms of Hyde County’s coastal plain, Carolina Ranch totals 15,000 acres, some of which is still farmed or used for other purposes. Bumping along in an open all-terrain vehicle, views off the unpaved road showed off nature at its lovely best, mostly untouched by fire. The air had an earthy scent, with an occasional whiff of charred wood. Off the road, palm pine, wild asters, Carolina bay trees, maple, wild dogwood, wax myrtle, fern, scrub bushes and white pines grew with abandon. Wild blackberries, blueberries, gall berry, and wild Scuppernong grapes dotted the landscape in their late summer version. When the vehicle was stopped, it was quiet enough for black bear families to amble across the road. In one large section, there were patches of blackened earth and numerous downed trees.

We arrived at the fire scar.

“Look at the pine – it’s coming back,” Tooley exclaimed, pleased with the signs of recovery.

The property, today owned by Gus Schad of Albemarle, had once been part of the sprawling First Colony Farms, established in 1973 and comprised of 376,000 acres in Washington, Tyrrell, Hyde, and Dare counties. At the time, plans included clearing land for farming, forestry, raising livestock and peat mining. Much of the land was ditched and drained.

But concerns about loss of wetlands and harm to water quality, combined with economic questions, led to the project being dropped. A conservation group eventually bought much of the land at a bankruptcy proceeding, and a large portion became part of Pocosin Lakes National Wildlife Refuge.

After Schad, as Hyde County Partners LLC, purchased the 15,000 acres, he asked Tooley, an old friend, to help manage it and find a way to make a return on the investment. Tooley, an Elizabeth City native whose previous work includes serving as Hyde County planner and county manager, researched options for the land and realized it was a perfect fit for carbon farming. Much work, she knew, would be required to restore the pocosin, which had been dried out by the ditching and draining and periods of drought.

‘What we’re doing is working’

Ambitions for Carolina Ranch, which was incorporated in Sept. 2020, are big, according to its website: “Dedicated 10,000 acres to carbon offsets development in order to strengthen upland conservation, manage rainwater runoff using the peat to absorb and protect adjacent landowners, and enhance the natural environment for new biodiversity industrial job creation all while protecting the land from future peat fires.”

It would be one of the largest coastal resiliency projects in the U.S, continues the writeup on the site. TerraCarbon, which designed the American Carbon Registry methodology for restoration of pocosin wetlands, is directing development of the carbon project, along with East Carolina University and assistance from engineering firm Quible and Associates.

In addition to the prospect for carbon farming, Tooley said that scientists have discovered “never seen before” fungi deep in the peat. The ranch operation is working to continue onsite research into the find, with a goal of developing small business incubators for biodiversity jobs. At the same time, the operation is working to expand use of the property, which has 52 miles of roads, frontage on New Lake and diverse populations of flora and fauna, as a nature-tourism destination.

But without rewetting and restoring the pocosin, the biodiversity and health of the ecosystem would be at risk, Tooley noted, and it would lose any chance of qualifying as a carbon farm. That’s why it is important for the canals to hold the 9 feet of water. As Tooley described it, it was like creating a tub and putting a plug in it. Consequently, the natural sponginess of the peat was absorbed, in turn making it much less of a wildfire hazard.

“I know what we’re doing is working,” she said.

The Algonquin name for “swamp on a hill,” pocosin is the regional version of peat, known for its ability to hold water, and conversely, to burn hot and long. Fifty percent of peat – the remains of dead plants preserved over millennia – is composed of carbon. Despite being only 3% of the Earth’s surface, healthy peatlands store more than twice the carbon of all the planet’s combined forests. Desiccated or burned peat, however, releases carbon into the atmosphere.

Peat fires burn deep into the ground and are notoriously difficult to extinguish because they can spread horizontally and create hot spots that are difficult to find until they flare up. With their carbon-rich material – peat is still mined throughout the world for fuel – peat fires are some of the worst carbon polluters. Paradoxically, it is also one of the best natural solutions to keeping carbon in the ground.

John Cook, District 13 forester with the North Carolina Forest Service, told Coastal Review that the Evans Fire in 2008 happened after two years of severe drought, making the underground organic soil, which lacks sand or clay, exceptionally dry. Then once the topsoil is on fire, the heat keeps drying the soil deeper and deeper.

Even though there was a shorter-term drought going on when lightning ignited the recent wildfire, dubbed the Ferebee Road fire, the strategy at the ranch to dam canals with stacks of cement bags to sustain optimal water levels throughout the 10,000 acres is currently incomplete. The agency has a right to go on private land to stop a fire so it won’t affect somebody else, he added.

“They just don’t have the structures yet to hold water,” he said. “The ditching got ahead of the reality.”

Roads and ditches tend to eventually work like dikes, Cook said. And the problem with pocosin is that when flooded from above, the top of the “swamp on a hill” ends up becoming the center of a doughnut. Firefighters learned from the Evans Fire, which spread underground, and pumped water into canals from nearby lakes to flood the fire from below. Firefighters also cut firebreaks through the land and around the perimeter of the fire, and doused the sides and edges of the fire to keep it from spreading.

Cook said that holding the 9 feet of water Tooley had done at Carolina Ranch did help slow the progress of the Ferebee Road fire, but the more expensive water-control structures used nextdoor at the refuge are able to more efficiently pump water off and on a site as needed to move it around the network of canals.

“She’s doing what she can with what she has, until she can get structures in place,” he said.

Although Tooley wants the Fire Service to fix canal gates and remove cut trees and piles of brush left after the fire, Cook said that is not the agency’s responsibility, comparing it to expecting a fire department to repair your house after it burns. It’s not just because it’s private land, he said.

“I didn’t start the fire,” he said. “I came and put the fire out.”

But he said the service will remove sediments in wetland streams and restore access on paths and roads. Otherwise, the downed growth will be left to nature.

“Those trees are going to rot,” Cook added. “We don’t go back and landscape.”

Spurred by new urgency to mitigate climate change impacts and buoyed by a flood of federal funds, carbon offset projects are gaining momentum nationwide. Tooley remains determined to not only be one of them, but to help use pocosin as an asset to create an innovative business model for the community, while helping to stem the effects of climate change.

“That’s what makes coastal resiliency happen, because it naturally holds water,” Tooley said of northeastern North Carolina’s peatlands. “If everybody doesn’t work together – and I mean public and private – we will never have coastal resiliency.”

Second of two-part special series. Read part 1.

In Currituck County, on the northern Outer Banks, the maritime forests grow thick with southern live oaks. These trees can live up to 300 years, their twisted trunks spiraling out of sandy soil all the way down the Carolina coast. For centuries, they have borne witness to changing communities and landscapes.

On this 11-mile stretch, also known as “Carova” or “the 4×4,” which goes from the North Carolina-Virginia line to the start of the paved road in Corolla, there is a diverse range of ecosystems. The Atlantic Ocean swells, and stiff winds pound the exposed homes on the eastern side of the barrier island. Moving west toward Currituck Sound, the forest grows thicker before transitioning into marshy wetlands alongside a set of man-made canals. At the northern gates to False Cape State Park in Virginia, the forest grows tall enough to make you forget there is a beach nearby.

It was Carova’s natural beauty and quiet serenity that struck both Edna Baden and Elizabeth White, Carova residents since 1994 and 2004, respectively, inspiring them to move permanently.

Maintaining protected, undisturbed areas also is important for the survival of a 500-year-old herd of wild Colonial Spanish mustangs that are a unique breed roaming 7,544 acres of beach, wetlands and forest that surround the 700 houses dotting the landscape.

Legend has it that today’s herd is composed of the descendants of horses left behind when Spanish settlers arrived on the North Carolina coast in the late 1500s. DNA testing by the Corolla Wild Horse Fund, a nonprofit founded in 1989 to protect the horses, supports this theory. Their research confirms that the Corolla wild horses are genetically isolated from other wild horse herds like their northern neighbors, the wild ponies of Chincoteague and Assateague islands.

The herd used to roam freely from the town of Duck up to the Virginia line. But when developers extended the paved road north to Corolla in the 1980s, the fund recorded more than 30 horse fatalities caused by the increased traffic on N.C. Highway 12. The organization decided in 1997 to create a sanctuary in the off-road area to protect the 20 remaining horses. The herd’s population today is roughly 100 horses.

Meg Puckett is a native Virginian who joined the Corolla Wild Horse Fund in 2016 as herd manager. She is on call 24/7 to respond to emergencies and monitor the animals’ behavior, migration habits, and general health and welfare. Because residents see the horses daily, and often know them well enough to identify them by name, Puckett frequently gets phone calls with news about a particular animal’s activity. In that way, the horses are also part of this community.

Yet, Puckett stressed that the horses are wild animals, different from domestic horses, so the fund tries to keep their intervention as minimal as possible. But she said that the changing environment threatens the horses to such an extent that the fund has had to intervene multiple times over the past few years to keep the animals alive.

“We had one mare that died from a disease called Potomac Horse Fever, which is caused by mayfly larva in the water. That’s something that normally would be killed off in a deep freeze, but we’re not getting deep freezes,” Puckett said. Another horse recently died on the beach after suffering heat stroke.

There have also been three confirmed cases and a fourth suspected case of equine pythiosis, commonly called swamp cancer, over the past two years, including one mare who had to be evacuated and now lives on the mainland. The Chincoteague herd also lost a few horses to the disease a few years ago. “That’s an infection that historically had really only been seen in more tropical climates,” Puckett said.

The infection is caused by fungal growth in decaying plant matter that is left in standing water. Irregular weather patterns driven by climate change bring intense rainfall and drought, creating patches of standing water, especially on beach roads where tire tracks have created indentations in the sand.

“We’ll get heavy flooding rain and then nothing. So you just have this stagnant water and then it never rains again to flush it out of there,” Puckett said.

Contaminated water is also an issue for people living on a shallow water table with no coordinated sewage-management system. Groundwater is only a few feet deep on most lots. Baden said everybody used to drink water straight from the tap, but no one does anymore.

Steve Grout, another longtime Carova resident, concurred. “Most people spend thousands of dollars on water filtration systems just to get stuff that comes out clear,” he said. “For most people, it comes out of their faucets brown.”

“All of this is tied into humans,” Puckett said. “When you start messing with the marsh … it’s supposed to flood, it’s supposed to filter that water. And when it can’t do that, that’s when you start to see problems.”

The Chowanog, Yeopin and Poteskyte Native Americans are the original inhabitants of Currituck County. Seasonal settlers like fishermen, lightkeepers, waterfowl hunters and the U.S. Coast Guard have passed through for centuries.

It wasn’t until the 1960s that commercial development was poised to begin in earnest in Carova as developers from Virginia Beach looked to expand. Vehicle traffic skyrocketed along the beaches, prompting the U.S. Department of the Interior to get involved and restrict vehicle access in 1973. Today, Carova remains free of high-rises and commercial development and is a prime destination for vacationers and second-home buyers.

“Its attraction is that it is a relatively free area in terms of regulation,” said Clark Twiddy, president of Twiddy & Co., an Outer Banks property management company. “Swan Beach, North Swan and Carova have, I think, always held this place in our imagination as a free, natural environment with a minimum of human disturbance or human intrusion.”

But escaping to a seemingly wide-open space is inherently intrusive.

Along Carova’s sand roads, bulldozers idle over piles of fallen branches and dug-up sand. Horses graze between “for sale” and “no trespassing” signs on every corner.

The maritime forest grows behind the dunes, but the tree roots stretch under vacant lots awaiting clearing. Despite a designation under the Coastal Barrier Resources System, which strips federal funding to disincentivize development in storm-prone areas, single-family homes continue to spring up.

Many residents turn to work in the construction, real estate or tourism industries, which can contribute to the destruction of the environment they also aim to protect. And with the rise in lot sales over the past three years, more lots are always in need of clearing.

This gives Baden pause. “I bought my house when it was 10 years old,” she said. “For all I know, my lot could have had live oak trees.”

The lot next to Baden’s house was recently razed. Her neighbor, J-P Peron, a real estate agent and Carova resident, sold it to someone who may well become another neighbor. She watched as another neighbor cleared it. Baden refuses to walk on the lot — she feels bad energy. A lot of deaths happened there.

There’s also extensive construction in wetlands and other flood-vulnerable areas. Many of these places are on the Currituck Sound side and are likely to be underwater when sea levels rise a foot, which is almost certain to happen by 2050. More intense hurricanes, driven by climate change, on top of higher sea levels are also expected to cause more frequent floods in the coming decades.

Already in Swan Beach, which lies on lowland marsh, residents deal with flooding on a regular basis. To build in this area, property owners must bring in truckloads of sand to fill in low spots and create space for septic tanks and water systems.

“I’m astonished that they’re building where there are wetlands,” White said. “I never thought the area in front of my house would be developed because it’s clearly all wetlands, and the water needs to go somewhere.”

There are few regulations for building in Currituck County, in general, and the lack of federal support does little to hamper construction for those who can afford it. Also at issue is that the northern Outer Banks are in a roughly yearlong drought, according to White and her partner Bill Sanderlin. A common hangout area for the horses in Swan is usually waist-high with water but is completely dry these days. White and Sanderlin pointed out that many of Swan Beach’s roads are flooded 50% of the year, perhaps tricking recent buyers into thinking the land is drier than it is.

This is not enough for real estate companies to turn buyers away, however. “If you’re in the real estate business, you disclose things. And the only sin is a failure to disclose,” Twiddy said.

Once people are settled as full-time residents, it’s both common practice and a common pipe dream to try and prevent others from moving there too, whether it is to preserve the privacy of their space or, like Baden and White, to prevent more deforestation and conserve more space for the horses.

“The best buyers for vacant lots are the houses next door to them. If you’ve got the means and the opportunity arises, you jump on it,” Peron said. “I bought a lot to the south of me. I have not been able to buy a lot to the north of me. I’ve been trying for over a decade.”

“You picked that lot because it was so nice and open,” he continued, “but the last thing you want is to have a big, honkin’ house 20 feet away from you.”

The horses play into this land-grab effort, too. Residents are working to buy land and take it out of development so that the horses have enough room to roam and space to take shelter in case of extreme weather.

“The idea is to raise enough money so that we can buy all the land in a corridor that would connect from Swan Beach up to the Virginia line,” White said, who is helping with this project.

Twice, Peron has been able to get sellers to donate their lots to the Corolla Wild Horse Fund, especially in areas that are difficult to build on. Puckett is all for this practice: “I think that any lot that you take out of development is a good thing.”

Carova’s Climate Future

Climate threats are coming for Carova, and soon. What remains murky is what residents in the 4×4 area and people across the state are going to do about it.

One state project working on the ground is the North Carolina Resilient Coastal Communities Program, facilitated by the state Division of Coastal Management, which aims to provide communities with expertise and funding to complete resilience and adaptation projects. Currituck County representatives participate, but the county’s only listed project within the 4×4 area is a shoreline stabilization study to explore beach nourishment.

Farther south, on Pine Island sanctuary in Currituck Sound, Audubon North Carolina is beginning some marsh restoration pilot projects to strengthen eroding shorelines and elevate sinking wetlands through sediment application and creating structures with natural materials like Christmas trees.

The benefits that come from buying up neighboring lots can extend beyond the horses, helping improve ecosystem connectivity for other wildlife. “We are all here for a reason. The isolation, the environment. It behooves us all to protect it,” Puckett said. “If I’m protecting the horses, that means I’m also protecting the environment. If it’s healthy enough for the horses, it’s going to be healthy enough for all the rest of the animals.”

Yet, none of these projects will substantially help Carova residents prepare for higher seas, stronger storms, fiercer heat waves, or the other climate threats that are predicted to come their way.

Edward Ponton, who is one of the only full-time residents born and reared in the 4×4, wonders if these threats and other hardships are taken less seriously because people with multiple homes can escape. The Pontons are one of the families who have made Swan Beach their home for generations, and they don’t plan on leaving any time soon.

“You just wonder if some of those people are going to make their money and get out of here and we will be left with whatever is to come,” Ponton said. “My dad always likes to say piracy is alive and well on the Outer Banks.”

This is the second in a two-part special reporting series on climate change along the northern Outer Banks. Read part one here. This series is part of the Pulitzer Center’s nationwide Connected Coastlines reporting initiative.

First in a two-part special series.

On a blustery day in September, Edward Ponton studies an incoming storm as the afternoon rain meets the ocean. He points north, calling attention to the backs of the rolling waves, indicating a southeast swell. It’s the remnants of Hurricane Fiona making its way up the North Carolina coast.

“There’s something down there,” Ponton warns. “If it’s coming across a certain way, you have to be prepared … and that would have been 100 years ago, how people knew there was a storm coming.”

Ponton’s family has been a multi-generational presence in the Northern Currituck Outer Banks since the early 1960s, when Buddy Ponton, his father, came south from Virginia Beach to fish and build a family home.

From the North Carolina-Virginia line to the start of the paved road in Corolla, North Carolina, there are three unincorporated communities: Carova Beach, North Swan Beach and Swan Beach. This 11-mile stretch — often referred to as “Carova” or “the 4×4” — is the northernmost part of the Outer Banks, sandwiched between the Atlantic Ocean to the east and the Currituck Sound to the west. The only way to access this area is by driving up N.C. Highway 12 in a four-wheel-drive vehicle until the two-lane highway becomes a beach.

Ponton’s memories span a lifetime of experience. He is the youngest “old-timer”: a resident who was born and raised in the area and who still lives there full time. In the lowlands where he rowed his canoe as a child, new houses now sprout up like weeds. A 500-year-old herd of protected wild horses grazes over 7,544 acres of land that their human neighbors are racing to buy up even as stronger storms and bigger floods threaten to cut the remote community off completely.

But the changing climate has not scared off longtime residents nor big developers seeking to capitalize on the booming tourism and second home market. In fact, with each passing year, it becomes more and more expensive to buy a home and live in Carova, especially in the face of increasing climate threats.

Understanding Carova

In the 4×4 area, there are no grocery stores, gas stations, or commercial businesses of any kind. There are no hospitals or healthcare providers, though the community does run a volunteer fire and rescue service. A tightknit community has formed from years spent out on their own.

In the 1960s, a Virginia Beach-based developer purchased land and subdivided it into one-third-acre lots. “Originally, the plans had been for the Ocean Highway to come down from Sandbridge (Virginia) down to Corolla. A lot of people don’t realize development here on the Currituck Banks started from the north,” Ponton said.

Now, a southern beach gate restricts the wild horses from moving into Corolla, and two northern gates restrict vehicle access into Virginia via False Cape State Park in Virginia. Those gates closed in the 1970s to vehicle traffic, angering residents who now must drive south to the Wright Memorial Bridge and head back north on the mainland to get to Virginia. Less than 20 old-timers still have keys to the northern gate — Ponton’s key will die with his father, Buddy.

Edna Baden was a weekend warrior before she moved full time to the Northern Outer Banks 28 years ago. There were only about 50 year-round residents then, which has grown to about 200 today. “When I moved here in 1994, there were only a handful of houses on the ocean. There were a lot of trailers still. They had little shack kind of places,” Baden said, referring to the Outer Banks’ classic stilted, trailer-style home.

Those original homes are now few and far between, nestled in thick maritime forest. Many of the old-timers settled on the Currituck Sound side, along man-made canals that give them boat access.

Today, there are more than 3,000 properties and 700 houses on this strip of barrier island. Many of those houses appear gargantuan against the dunes, with some of the oceanfront homes featuring more than 20 bedrooms and bathrooms.

It is surprising to see the size of these homes considering that the entirety of the northern Currituck Outer Banks is maintained under the Coastal Barrier Resources System, or CBRS, which was created by the Coastal Barrier Resources Act, signed into law by President Reagan in 1982.

The purpose of the law is to encourage land conservation and discourage development in storm-prone coastal areas by withdrawing federal funding from Coastal Barrier Resources Act areas, also known as CBRA zones. People who build within a CBRA zone cannot access the National Flood Insurance Program protection or federal disaster assistance money.

Click on the arrows in the top left of the above map to turn on boundaries such as CBRA zones.

In most cases, researchers have found that the act disincentivizes development in those areas. But in Carova’s case, it is a desirable enough destination that construction creeps in anyways, bringing in high-end development and people willing to pay exorbitantly high insurance rates.

High Seas Ahead

At milepost 16, a house called the Laughing Gull sticks out like a sore thumb, sitting so far out on the beach that cars have to weave around it to get by. It seems like it’s closer to washing away with each crashing wave.

Researchers say that in the United States, the East and Gulf coasts will bear the worst of sea level rise. Like watching your pillow spring back after you lift your head up, a melted glacier at the poles gets pushed up by water underneath it, sending the new ice melt far away — to places like the North Carolina coastline. Over the next three decades, sea levels are expected to rise 10 to 14 inches along the East Coast and 14 to 18 inches along the Gulf Coast, the highest levels in the United States.

Scientists can estimate this rise through 2050 because the oceans trap and store heat, so high greenhouse gas emissions now do not instantly translate to higher sea levels. Instead, the sea level rise over the next 30 years is based on the warming in our world today, and there is “virtually nothing that we can do about that,” said Daniel Gilford, climate scientist at Climate Central, a nonprofit organization that researches and reports the science and impacts of climate change.

This is happening while the Outer Banks are no longer naturally moving. Over time, the islands are supposed to gradually shift westward as ocean waves and winds from the east blow sand to build up the marshes on the west. But hard structures like buildings and roads stop that steady erosion and rebuilding from happening, and instead, there is erosion without addition, whittling the island away until someday, it might not be there at all.

On the northern Outer Banks, sea level rise will first hit areas along the Currituck Sound, the side that naturally should be rebuilding, since the marsh is closer to sea level. This inevitable rise is likely to swallow swampier areas near the Virginia border, around the man-made canals, and the entire Currituck National Wildlife Refuge.

Without extreme cuts to greenhouse gas emissions, sea levels could rise more than a foot by 2050. Beyond that, global action on climate change could mean the difference between 2, 4, or more feet of sea level rise by 2100.

“In the latter days of the 21st century, the sea level rise along the North Carolina coast is really going to be dramatically influenced by the decisions that we make right now,” Gilford said.

Today, the Laughing Gull stands alone — its neighbors were moved landward to behind the dunes as the tide encroached upon their foundations. But its survival is uncertain because rising seas are not the only climate concern in Carova. Hurricane Florence, a ferocious storm that hit in 2018 and was a $24 billion disaster, didn’t hit Carova as badly as other places along the Outer Banks. But the threat of hurricanes remains, and a warmer ocean can make hurricanes worse by fueling greater flooding and storm surges.

Hurricane response is complicated because of Carova’s designation in the Coastal Barrier Resources System, which bars federal flood insurance coverage, forcing property owners to turn to private insurance markets.

“The insurance on our house gets dropped every two or three years,” said Elizabeth White, a Swan Beach resident since 2004. She is a customer at Lloyd’s of London, which she says is some of the most expensive insurance on the market.

Paying the price

Living in Carova is no easy feat in itself. Since the area is zoned exclusively for low-density residential housing, increasingly large and expensive single-family homes are the only option for buyers. While the trend had been moving in this direction for a couple of decades, the start of the COVID-19 pandemic only accelerated it.

“Sales went through the roof,” J-P Peron, a real estate agent and resident, said of the pandemic. “Overnight, my business quadrupled.” So many people were buying houses that Carova ran out of post office boxes and internet plans. People snatched up houses and land, making it even harder for the people who build, clean and service houses in Carova to live there, also.

Two of those builders are Steve Grout, a carpenter who has been a full-time Carova resident for more than a decade, and Alex, an immigrant day laborer. In September, they were working on renovating an oceanfront house that was weathered away by the wind and sea. But the new siding they were installing won’t last long, either, Grout said, as it’s hard to withstand the elements.

While Grout has a short commute to work each day, Alex lives on the Currituck County mainland and makes the two-and-a-half-hour round trip commute to Carova and back every day. “My family lives in Durham,” Alex explained, saying that he visits them every weekend, “but the rest of the time I stay out here in Powells Point.”

Powells Point is right across the Wright Memorial Bridge on the mainland, but even then, it can still take over an hour to reach Carova. Alex wishes that Carova had rentable accommodations so that he and his family, along with other workers, could live closer to the construction sites.

Because of the lack of affordable rental homes in Carova, and despite 80% of properties in the offroad area sitting empty, sourcing labor can be difficult and projects take longer to complete. Builders rely on workers like Alex, who are both skilled and dedicated, and Grout said they usually have to pay them more than a contractor would for similar work elsewhere.

At the construction site, Grout and Alex were preparing for the arrival of a crew from HGTV to film the house for an episode of the show “Beachfront Bargain Hunt.” Grout said their renovation faces unique limitations, compared to other homes that appear on the show.

“It’s hard for us because we can’t really find help out here. Normally, they probably have 30 guys out here and finish the whole project in a month,” Grout said. “But we don’t have that luxury.”

Clark Twiddy, president of Twiddy & Co., a property management company on the Outer Banks, sees that his employees who clean and service the rental homes face similar challenges. “The average cleaner for Twiddy & Co. drives 82 miles one-way,” he said. “The people who clean these homes by and large don’t live here.”

But without changing the area’s zoning to allow for multifamily housing or without a clear plan from the county or Twiddy & Co. about who is going to supply that housing, it is hard to see how people without considerable resources can afford the cost of living. “We as a destination will fail, period, unless we address housing in a meaningful way,” Twiddy said.

For those who are able to buy a house, they then need to be able to afford a car with four-wheel-drive, which quickly deteriorates from the sand and saltwater. “The life expectancy of a daily driver up here is between three and five years at most,” Peron said. “I’m on my sixth Ford Expedition for work. Then I’ve also gone through one Jeep Cherokee, two Jeep Grand Cherokees and one Jeep Commander.”

The expense of living in Carova is a factor of its remoteness, lack of federal infrastructure and exposure to the elements. In the face of imminent climate threats like storms and floods that “we live with all the time,” as Ponton described.

From an outside perspective, it can be hard to understand why people are willing to spend so much to live in a place as remote as Carova. Even when speaking with residents about their experiences, questions linger about why they choose to live there and whether they can do it sustainably.

Next in the series: Read about the steps that residents are taking to manage the environment around them, whether that is to protect the wild horses, the natural landscape, or their way of life. This series is part of the Pulitzer Center’s nationwide Connected Coastlines reporting initiative.

Second in a series.

RODANTHE — As every nor’easter blows over the Outer Banks this winter, what is top of mind for many is whether another sagging oceanfront house along the Hatteras Island beaches will succumb to the pounding waves of the Atlantic.

With a total of three large houses collapsing into the ocean so far this year, numerous oceanfront property owners in Rodanthe are scrambling to obtain permits and contractors to move their houses back from the severely eroded beach. A few of the large wooden beach houses are sitting in the surf, playing chicken with a stormy sea.

“Once it’s down, it’s considerably more difficult,” Mike Dunn, owner of W.M. Dunn Construction, LLC, of Powells Point, the contractor hired to clean up the fallen houses, said in a recent interview. “It’s cheaper, easier and more efficient to tear down a house.”

Cleanup, which is not covered by insurance, is as much as four times more expensive for the property owner, he said. A standing house can be removed for about $10,000 to $15,000; a fallen house could cost $50,000 to $100,000.

Related: A cycle of septic repairs, washouts on park service beaches

Dunn said his crew, using excavators and front-end loaders, removed 30 to 40 dump truck loads of debris that stretched along 11 miles of beach after two houses fell in May, with some crew on the job as long as 60 days. The contractor also was hired to do the cleanup of the house that collapsed in February.

“The problem with this type of work for the (owners) is they’re cleaning up everybody else’s trash,” Dunn said, referring to neighboring properties. “People lost decks, pools, fences, all that kind of stuff, during the storm.”

Although many fault the owners of the threatened or doomed beachfront houses, there is plenty of blame to go around: inconsistent real estate disclosure rules; outdated local zoning laws and building codes; gaps in state regulations; ineffective federal policies; escalating climate change impacts; inaccurate flood maps; and overall government inaction.

Whatever the reason, Dunn believes it is unfair to conclude that the property owner is at fault or irresponsible.

“They were shocked,” he said of the Rodanthe owners who lost their houses. At least two of them were from out of state, he said. “I’ve had guys literally crying to me on the phone. It’s very sad. It’s very unfortunate what happened to them — one had to file bankruptcy.”

The erosion rate in Rodanthe has long been one of the highest on the Outer Banks — as much as an annual average of 14 feet — but it has accelerated with rising sea levels, especially with storm impacts. Especially for people who are unfamiliar with the speed at which an Outer Banks beach can change, Dunn said, it can be unexpected, as it was for one of the owners.

“When he bought the house about 1 1/2 years ago, he probably had about 150 feet of beach,” he recalled. “And then, there was nothing.”

Beach nourishment is currently not available for Rodanthe, a point of contention to property owners in the small, unincorporated village. Dare County officials have said beach widening in that area would be too costly. Yet, numerous Rodanthe beachfront houses are currently listed for sale on real estate websites.

In North Carolina, real estate agents licensed by the state are required to disclose any known hazards or defects with prospective buyers, who are then to be provided a form with the information before a contract can be signed. Real estate agents are not allowed to lie if questioned about potential risks or other problems. But those same rules may not apply to out-of-state sellers, properties sold by the owner or unlicensed agents.

Bottom line, large houses are allowed to stand on the beach until they are inevitably destroyed, casting debris that is carried far and wide by currents and winds because no authority, no force of law, is demanding nor commanding that they be removed.

To wit: there’s the Federal Emergency Management Agency’s National Flood Insurance Program, a requirement for mortgaged property in a flood zone.

“The policies are not paying out anything until it’s a claim,” explained Allen Moran, an owner of Basnight & Moran Insurance Agency in Nags Head. “It’s similar to if there’s a tree over your house, they won’t pay before it falls down.”

The maximum FEMA will pay for a house when it collapses is $250,000 for the building, and $100,000 for the contents, he said. Flood insurance ratings have recently been changed to better reflect the real flood risk of property, which has increased the costs for some properties, and decreased it for others. 

Under the old rates, he said, the average policy for an oceanfront property in Dare County would cost about $3,000 a year; now it will range from $4,500 a year to $6,000 a year. 

Moran said the program also offers Increased Cost of Compliance, or ICC, coverage of up to $30,000 to help owners with property in designated “special flood hazard areas” meet local requirements to rebuild or repair flood-damaged structures, which includes relocation. An owner has to apply within six months of submitting a claim, and it must be damaged 50% or more or suffered a repetitive loss history with 25% or greater loss in each loss.

Still, as one FEMA official explained, with the increasing number and severity of disaster threats, addressing measures — whether proactive or responsive — for high-risk properties is complex and beyond the capability of one agency.

“We believe insurance coupled with mitigation is key to disaster resilience against climate change – especially flooding, the most common and destructive threat,” said FEMA Deputy Associate Administrator for Resilience David Maurstad in an email response to Coastal Review. “In the end, no single government and private sector entity can develop and implement a mitigation strategy, especially not today with climate change.”

Currently, there is a total of 4.7 million national flood insurance policies in force, according to Maurstad’s email. For context, the agency pointed out that the 2020 U.S. Census data reports 81 households in Rodanthe. Of all the nation’s disasters, flooding is the most common and costliest, impacting 98% of the United States.

“Living in close proximity of a water source, such as a coastline, the risk definitely increases that a structure may be impacted by flooding,” Maurstad wrote.

But since property development decisions are not made by FEMA, he noted, the location of properties are local decisions. “Communities that participate in the NFIP have, at a minimum, adopted the minimum federal and state requirements for floodplain management,” he said.

Costs for demolition or relocation are not covered under the National Flood Insurance Act. But they used to be. Adopted in 1988, the Upton-Jones Amendment provided coverage for structures in imminent danger on an eroded shoreline. The program would pay up to 40% of the policy to relocate endangered structures and up to 110% of the policy to property owners to demolish and remove their structure. At the time, the maximum amount of an oceanfront policy was $185,000 for the structure and $60,000 for its contents.

The amendment was repealed in 1994, and no effort since to revise it has gained traction in Congress.

As it stands now, removing the property from the risk is not the role of the flood insurance program.

“Essentially we are distinguishing between an insurance program which pays out for insured losses versus mitigation grant programs which reduce the risk of flooding to structures and therefore the risk of insurance payouts when the mitigation is focused on insured properties,” explained Maurstad.

FEMA currently offers numerous grants to address flood risk. Dare County’s Hazard Mitigation Grants Program, which offers local, permanent residents an opportunity to apply for funds to elevate their homes above current base flood levels, has been popular and effective. Other competitive grants are available through the Building Resilient Infrastructure and Communities program, which offers funds for projects such as flood control, utility protection, stabilization and retrofitting, and Flood Mitigation Assistance Grants, for projects that reduce or eliminate repetitive flood risks.

On Aug. 12, FEMA published a funding opportunity that increased the funding level for Flood Mitigation Assistance by five times, from $160 million to $800 million, Maurstad said. To date, the program has mitigated more than 8,000 FEMA-insured properties over the last 20 years. Also, he said, home acquisitions are eligible through the Building Resilient Infrastructure and Communities program funds and the Hazard Mitigation Grant Program.

Congress established the National Flood Insurance Program in 1968 in response to disaster costs following severe flood and storm damage from Hurricane Betsy in 1965, the nation’s first billion-dollar hurricane. But the original intent to provide government-subsidized property insurance for Americans living in flood-prone areas has become a Pandora’s box of budget deficits, political division and regional rivalries, pitting coastal residents against inland property owners, cities against rural communities, and victims of ocean surge against those who’ve suffered flash flooding from rising rivers and intense rains.

As described in a 32-page Congressional Research Service paper on the program, updated in October, the program has been plagued by underfunding and dysfunctional politics, especially as disaster costs have been spiking. Ridden with acronyms, complicated rules and changing risk ratings based on state flood maps, the program is difficult to understand even for the private insurance agents who handle the flood policies.

Since the end of fiscal year 2017, there have been no less than 21 short-term congressional reauthorizations of the program, with the most recent due to expire Dec. 16. Congress canceled $16 billion of program debt in 2017, which allowed it to cover claims for hurricanes Harvey, Irma and Maria. But the insurance program currently owes $20.525 billion to the U.S. Treasury, leaving $9.9 billion in borrowing authority from a $30.425 billion limit in law, according to the Congressional Research Service document.

Despite its fiscal woes, FEMA is still focused on expanding the number of properties covered by flood insurance, and is working closely with insurance and real estate industry professionals and community leaders to drive purchases, Maurstad, the FEMA administrator, said.

But flood insurance is hardly a panacea. Financial preparedness is also necessary to rebuild after a disaster, he added, helping not only restoration of homes and communities, but also reducing the need for federal disaster assistance.

Prompted by a petition in January 2021 from the Association of State Floodplain Managers and the Natural Resources Defense Council seeking revisions of the current floodplain management standards, Maurstad said, FEMA is in the process of analysis of potential updates in regulations and policy.

Eroding shorelines that threaten existing development reflect only a portion of where flood insurance is important. But climate change impacts will only increase flood risks and storm damages that will require coming together to find solutions, or adaptation.  

“It is the urgent task of each of us, as a nation of stakeholders,” Maurstad wrote. “Disaster resilience is a cross-cutting and integrated effort among a wide range of stakeholders from the public and private sectors. Each area of expertise and sphere of responsibility affects another. It is all part of one, all-encompassing story.”

First in a series.

RODANTHE — Nothing good can be said about septic tanks leaking their foul contents onto a public beach. It sounds even worse that it’s within a national seashore on the Outer Banks renowned for its beautiful, clean beaches.

That unfortunate reality illustrates the challenge adapting to rising seas under outmoded policies and a bureaucracy paralyzed by competing interests.

“We have observed septic seeping out as recently as Saturday,” Dave Hallac, superintendent of Cape Hatteras National Seashore, said Thursday.

In the wake of several houses this year falling into the sea, Hallac said that about two-dozen houses in Rodanthe remain exposed to the ocean, where much of beachfront has lost the protective dune.

The national seashore’s physical scientist Michael Flynn said that the National Park Service was notified Oct. 29 about a strong odor of sewage on Ocean Drive in Rodanthe, where a number of houses, some with exposed and damaged septic tanks, are standing on the beach just yards from the swirling Atlantic. Earlier this year, three large houses on the same road collapsed into the ocean, littering miles of shoreline.

When Flynn inspected the area Sunday, he found that the whole drain field for one septic tank was washed out, he said, and another appeared to have an unsealed pipe that led to its drain field.

“It was two hours before low tide,” Flynn said. “You could see the high tide line. (The surf) was probably washing over the pipe.”

Rodanthe, one of seven village communities on Hatteras Island, has one of the highest rates of beach erosion on the Outer Banks. At Mirlo Beach, at the north end of Rodanthe, the average annual erosion rate has been as high as 14 feet.

According to Flynn, between 1998 and 2022, the average annual rate of erosion on Ocean Drive has ranged from 9 to 12 feet. In Buxton, another highly eroding shoreline that was recently renourished, he said that the erosion rate over that same period averaged about 6.8 feet a year.

The issue was reported to the Dare County Planning Department and the county Department of Environmental Health, which administers septic permits for the state.

According to information provided in an email Thursday from the county health department, a total of 24 septic systems had been compromised by storm damage at 15 different oceanfront properties this year. Nine septic repair permits were issued for Rodanthe properties, and remaining property owners may not have applied for a permit, or are waiting for new surveys to be completed.

“Several properties had repair systems installed and then subsequently washed out again,” according to the email. “In a few instances, the repair system was installed and washed out before the dwelling was ever reoccupied and as such would not contain any sewage.”

Property owners are required by state law to have a septic contractor remove and dispose of unusable old tanks. The county health department said it was not aware of any abandoned tanks, but if the system is on park service land, the federal agency would issue the removal order.

If a property owner does not comply, the first enforcement action would be issuing a Notice of Violation, followed by an Intent to Suspend, and finally an Immediate Suspension of Operation. But typically, the real estate property manager is notified, and the property is taken out of the rental program until repairs are made. If a compromised property is occupied, the occupants must be immediately relocated. Currently, there are no legal actions pending against any property owner, the health department said.

“In any case, the real estate company and property owner are instructed to have the remaining contents of the septic tank pumped out by a pumping and hauling service immediately,” according to the email.

Dare County Planning Director Noah Gilliam said that between February and July, notices were sent to more than 20 oceanfront property owners in Rodanthe and three in Buxton about various threats to their property, ranging from fallen decks to undermined foundations to damaged wastewater systems to risk of collapse.

Gilliam said that the county works with property owners to find solutions on a “case-by-case approach” to each damaged property.

“We’re still encouraging people to seek out an alternative method,” he said, including relocation, which can easily cost more than $100,000.

So far, three Rodanthe property owners have moved their houses away from the ocean, either farther back on their lot, or to another lot, and two more are in the process of obtaining permits.

Also, a private community was recently granted its request by the state to have Seagull Road declared officially abandoned, freeing up 45 feet of land under the road to relocate 12 houses. 

On-site septic systems in North Carolina are regulated by the North Carolina Department of Health and Humans Services under rules adopted by the Commission for Public Health, according to the department’s website. The commission’s septic rules are administered by local health departments, under the supervision of the On-Site Water Protection Branch within the Division of Public Health. If more than 50% of a septic system is damaged, under the rules it is no longer eligible for repair without a permit. There are also rules regulating setback and distance the system must be located from the house.

The state Division of Coastal Management is in the process of reevaluating and rewriting septic system rules, noted Ana Zivanovic-Nenadovic, assistant director of policy for the nonprofit North Carolina Coastal Federation, which publishes Coastal Review. One place to start, she said, would be for the state to follow the Department of Health rule already in place that bars septic tanks in areas subject to frequent flooding unless they’re watertight enough to withstand a 10-year flood.

“They do not remain operable during a 10-year storm because they’re ripped apart and leak sewage,” she said.

But as Zivanovic-Nenadovic said, the issue with big houses collapsing on eroded beaches goes beyond broken septic tanks littering shorelines. The Coastal Federation is working with the National Park Service, the state and other partners to find solutions that protect the public trust beach, the overall environment, private property rights and public access to the resources.

Operating under the same rules, regulations and policies is clearly not sustainable, she said. What can be done so at-risk houses sitting in surf zones are considered uninhabitable? What are realistic rules to locate septic systems on shorelines? How can homeowners be forced to clean up their houses that fall into the ocean, and what should be considered proper cleanup?

“This is a complex interplay of things that can be done on multiple levels,” Zivanovic-Nenadovic said.

Meanwhile, if someone wants to buy an oceanfront house today in Rodanthe, they’ll have plenty to choose from on Zillow and other online real estate sites. Including on Ocean Drive. 

In an undergraduate classroom at the University of North Carolina Chapel Hill in 2017, a group of students sat in front of a plate of sushi from a local restaurant. But it wasn’t lunchtime — the students were attempting to quantify how common the mislabeling of red snapper was across North Carolina. 

By analyzing the DNA from 43 fish samples they’d collected from seafood markets, grocery stores and restaurants across 10 counties, they found that a whopping 90.7% were mislabeled as red snapper. Most often, the substitutions were tilapia or vermillion snapper. 

“It’s really hard to know where the mislabeling is happening, obviously, because a lot of seafood goes through a number of steps; it changes hands like five to seven times,” said Dr. John Bruno, instructor and creator of the class. “So it’s hard to know who’s doing it.”

Bruno was asked by the university to create an undergraduate course that gave first-year students real research experience. The idea was to engage students in science early on, and increase retention and diversity in STEM, or science, technology, engineering and math.

“They’re students that have never held a pipette. They’ve never asked a question, never developed a hypothesis,” Bruno said. “The idea was to develop a question that’s applied, that’s meaningful to them, that they can grasp, and then use that question to teach the basic research techniques.”

According to Bruno, mislabeling — essentially committing fraud — is rampant in the food industry. So diving into the mislabeling of local seafood was something Bruno felt the students could investigate.

Why is mislabeling so widespread? “I think there’s clearly a lack of enforcement and a lack of testing,” Bruno said.

Mislabeling rampant

Based on customer demand, certain fish can be sold for more than others. And this may tempt producers into mislabeling their fish when the desired product is out of season or low in availability.

“There’s obviously a big economic incentive to mislabel,” Bruno said.

Red snapper is a great example. It’s been overfished in the Gulf of Mexico and the southeastern Atlantic. 

“So there’s very little of it available … yet the public demands it year round just because it’s something we’re familiar with,” Bruno said. “It’s not necessarily spectacularly better than other fish. It’s just culturally in demand.”

There are some fishing operations that allow you to buy seafood straight from the fishers who caught it. But often, seafood found in restaurants and grocery stores has a much longer chain of production. It’s easy for information to get changed along the way, but harder to pin down exactly where the deception is occurring.

In Bruno’s course, students went out to restaurants and grocery stores and collected samples of seafood. The students then extracted the DNA and amplified it using PCR, or polymerase chain reaction, a testing method also used for COVID-19. A commercial lab then did the sequencing. Once the students had the genetic code back from the lab, they used online tools to determine what they were looking at.

This isn’t the only evidence of the mislabeling trend. Two other in-state examples include shrimp sold in North Carolina that were mislabeled as “local” when they weren’t, and a corporate officer with a Pamlico County-based company that sold crab meat marked as a “Product of USA” when it was, in fact, imported, who was convicted two years ago. 

In one of the published papers based on work in Bruno’s classes, the students found that in talking to people, many were not aware of the issue, but once it was brought to their attention, it concerned them.

“Once people realize that this mislabeling is there, I think they can pretty quickly get the sense for the impacts it might have on their health and their pocketbook, but also on the environment,” Bruno said. 

People trying to make informed decisions about what they’re eating, both for their health and the environment, may be getting foiled by the issue of mislabeling. Though sometimes, said Bruno, a more sustainable species is being substituted for an unsustainable one. An example is again red snapper. Sometimes fish marketed as red snapper in grocery stores is actually tilapia, which is lower in the food web and therefore has less of an impact on the environment when it is farmed. 

“I’d rather train people to just buy tilapia and be aware of what it is rather than paying red snapper prices for it,” Bruno said.

Choice experiment

By extension, creating more consumer demand for fish species that can be sustainably farmed or harvested has the power to direct the industry, and decrease the motivation for mislabeling.

Jane Harrison, coastal economics specialist for North Carolina Sea Grant, was one of the authors of a report detailing trends in consumer demand for North Carolina seafood.

The authors sought to find out how often respondents ate seafood at home and at restaurants, where they got it from, how interested consumers are in knowing where their seafood comes from, and how their perception of that seafood changes based on certain attributes such as product safety and environmental concerns.

Across 1,400 respondents, Harrison and her team conducted a “choice experiment,” wherein people are given several options for seafood from different countries and asked to make decisions.

The results indicated that North Carolina residents would prefer to buy state-sourced seafood over options from foreign countries and even over other states on the East Coast. 

“Most of the time, people aren’t thinking about just one thing when they’re in the grocery store (or) in the restaurant,” said Harrison. “But certainly that local sourcing does have a significant impact on willingness to pay.”

North Carolinians want the money they spend on seafood to support the livelihoods of local commercial fishermen. The respondents valued the flavorful, healthy options from the local market, the local variety and safe handling practices.

“You think about any product, there’s really a series of attributes that are going to affect the price and people’s willingness to pay,” Harrison said. Adding, look at a car, for example. People will pay based on the gas mileage, the color, the make and model. “There’s a variety of attributes that affect your choice, just like seafood.”

That said, the most common factor that would sway respondents from buying local seafood was cost. State-sourced seafood tends to cost more, and that’s a deciding factor for many people.

This makes sense, but starts to fall apart if the fish you are buying is inappropriately labeled from the start. Even if all labels were accurate, there is no one labeling certification that addresses all aspects of environmental sustainability and social responsibility. That’s why some organizations advocate buyers move away from a labels-based approach toward a values-based approach. There are resources online for helping people bypass mislabeling issues and buy direct from fishermen, such as the Local Catch Seafood Finder and Carteret Catch.

The future of food

In a future where the seafood industry is socially sustainable, more direct communication and exchange between consumers and fishermen would likely help a lot. But the industry also has to be viable for those doing the fishing or cultivation.

North Carolina has long been a hot spot for oysters, and various government actions and research have supported this industry. The state joined the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s National Shellfish Initiative in 2018 with several goals, one being to create stable jobs. Scientists at all the major universities in the state contribute to research helping farmers grow oysters successfully. But making oyster cultivation an economically viable job is still a work in progress. This summer, changes made to the state’s Noninsured Crop Disaster Assistance Program, or NAP, can help oyster farmers in case of emergency. 

The changes increase the payout per oyster in the event of a crisis like a mass mortality or a hurricane to more accurately reflect market value of the oyster, and the size that is in demand. 

“It’s a step in the right direction,” said Chris Matteo, acting president of the North Carolina Shellfish Growers Association and owner of Chadwick Creek Oysters. “It underpins the industry more effectively.”

Matteo says that going forward, he’s hopeful that NAP payouts will more accurately reflect the market value, and could even be adjusted year to year. This would make the oyster cultivation industry more economically secure for farmers in the state.

The goal of USDA programs like NAP, and of these changes, said Matteo, is to make sure growers stay in business.

All of these things will be essential to creating a socially sustainable seafood industry for the future.

This semester, UNC’s John Bruno is co-teaching a new course entitled The Future of Food. There’s a lot, he said, that he wants to cover. No one is unaffected by food.

“It’s the basis of our family lives,” Bruno said. “It’s so important in our cultures, it defines so many cultures and religious practices, and our relationship with nature now is so much just defined by food.”

This is last in a series examining the role and sustainability of seafood in a healthy diet and is published in collaboration with North Carolina Health News.

A little past 7 p.m. on a mid-September evening in Beaufort, North Carolina, pink clouds stretch across the sky and reflect in the water, surrounding the Newport River Pier as the sun fades. Scattered along the pier in clusters, are nine people who intermittently cast baited fishing hooks into the water. 

It’s a beautiful night for fishing.

When asked why they fish, many people will say that fishing is a relaxing pastime and that they often throw back what they catch. 

Aside from those who engage in recreational, commercial and sport fishing, there is a, seemingly, more elusive type of fisher — one who engages in subsistence fishing, also known as fishing for food.  

In an effort to learn more about these subsistence fishers, a group of Duke University researchers developed a research study that examines subsistence fishing. The study defines people who engage in subsistence fishing as having the following characteristics: they rely on fish to survive, have limited income, live close to the source, use basic gear to fish, and eat or sell fish to meet their needs.

In 2020, there were more than 20,000 — the number includes inland and coastal waivers — North Carolinians who received a subsistence fishing waiver, which allowed them to fish for free in North Carolina waterways, according data supplied by the Department of Environmental Quality.

An annual coastal fishing license for an adult resident is $16, and a joint inland/coastal  fishing license is $41, according to data supplied by DEQ.

Fishing waivers can be an important resource for individuals who rely on fishing to put food on the table for their household, extended family or community members. This is also important because the Dietary Guidelines for Americans, 2020-2025, encourages people to consume fish regularly because it provides omega-3 fatty acids, which are an essential part of a healthy diet.

Currently, in North Carolina, and across the country, there is a push to highlight the links between food, nutrition and health. Given that fish is high in omega-3s, for instance, makes it an ideal food to promote in this way.

A two-rod setup

Roy and Benny, stationed near the end of the pier, are friends who fish together regularly. They work for the same company that makes doors for walk-in coolers, they said. Benny appears subdued, content with letting Roy answer the questions about fishing.

Panning the scene on the bridge, one thing immediately stands out: most people are fishing with two rods. 

One rod is for catching any number of fish that might be biting, such as red drum, croaker, puffer fish, or mackerel, to name a few, the men explain. The second rod, in most cases, is used to catch “cut bait,” such as lizard fish, Roy said.

When he’s not casting his rod from a pier, Roy said he and his wife like to get out on the water.

“(My wife and I) fish in our kayaks three times a week, and I usually fish with (Benny) on Fridays,” said Roy. He lives on the other side of the Newport River and fishes behind his house about two times a week. 

Roy started fishing when he was around 5 years old, and said that his family once “owned the only tackle shop in town.”

While Roy did not say that he and his family depend on what they catch to feed themselves, he did say that his weekly fishing allows him to stock the freezer, which provides the family with a constant source of fish throughout the winter.

“I’ll keep them if they’re worth keeping, but I’m not one of those ones who is actively looking to keep fish,” he said. “I can go catch all the fish I want, so for me, I want something that is worth catching … It gives you an adrenaline rush more than anything.”

Minimizing cost

Nine o’clock rolls around and there are three guys bank fishing along the river, a few miles from the pier. One of them, James, is perched on a 5-gallon bucket, patiently waiting for a tug on his line. He is hoping artificial bait will entice Spanish mackerel to bite.

The area where James and two other men are fishing is dimly lit by light coming from a bridge located a few hundred yards away.

He says that Spanish mackerel will hang around as long as the water temperature is somewhere between 75 and 80 degrees. But once the temperature drops below that sweet spot, they’ll be gone for the season. 

“If I can catch 15 Spanish (mackerel) that are over 12 inches, that’s an awesome day,” James said.

James travels regularly from his home in Guilford County to the Beaufort/Morehead City area to fish. During the coronavirus pandemic, he said he left his delivery job because someone threatened him with a gun. Now, he’s trying to earn a living selling the saltwater fish he catches to customers back home. While James fishes to earn a living, he can’t afford a commercial fishing license, a large boat and all the gear that comes with the job. 

He says that for a beginning fisher or someone with limited means, purchasing the essential gear to get started does not have to be expensive.

“You can take a $10 rod and come out here and catch more fish than anybody,” he said. “I got a 3-foot rod in the back of my truck, and that rod has almost caught as many fish as any rod that I have … I bought that rod from Walmart for about $15 or $16.”

One aspect of fishing that can be expensive is buying bait. For that reason, James often uses artificial bait that he said can prove to be less expensive in the long run. However, he said that you don’t need to buy bait of any kind to be successful.

“All you need to fish is to catch one fish and you cut it up and throw it back out there (as bait) and you’ll get another one.”

Healthy diet, cause for concern

Fish has long been considered an important part of a healthy diet, but seafood consumption only received the nod from the experts recently in the federal Dietary Guidelines for Americans. In 2005, the guidelines, produced every few years by the U.S. Department of Agriculture, recommended for the first time that people should eat 8 ounces of seafood per week, according to Jessica Soldavini, a UNC Gillings School of Global Public Health professor. 

Yet, there are warnings that come with fish consumption.  Mercury and other contaminants can be passed from fish to humans. The Food and Drug Administration, or FDA, has a resource guide titled “Advice About Eating Fish” that offers suggestions for how much and what type of fish pregnant women and children should consume.

Additionally, the North Carolina Department of Health and Human Services includes fish consumption advisories for North Carolina on their website.

“Individuals are encouraged to check this database to see if they should limit or avoid consuming fish caught in certain bodies of water,” Soldavini said.

Some fish that are considered safe to consume for pregnant women and children are Atlantic mackerel, tilapia, catfish and whiting, for instance.

Soldavini also said that there are other affordable proteins to consider such as beans, lentils and eggs.

“Individuals may choose not to consume fish for a variety of reasons,” she said. “Other sources of omega-3 fatty acids include plant oils such as canola, flaxseed, and soybean oil and nuts and seeds like walnuts, flaxseed, and chia seeds.”

It’s a spectrum

Around 8:30 a.m. after meeting Roy, Benny and James, Daryl Mouring is the only one fishing on the pier. Mouring lives in Raleigh where he says he fishes everyday in one of the area’s freshwater sources. But once a year for the past 30 years, Mouring has made the trip from Raleigh down to Beaufort to spend time throwing his hook into the salt water.

He said he’s accustomed to catching a variety of fish during his trips to Beaufort, such as “sheepshead, black drum, croakers and puffer fish.”

But in recent years, he says, he’s noticed a change when he travels down from Raleigh to fish on the pier. 

“Ten years ago you could fill your cooler in about an hour.” This is no longer the case, he said, and he blames the change on overfishing.

That doesn’t seem to be a problem for Mouring today. This morning he’s been on the pier for about an hour and has already caught a few. Another tug on his line reveals a puffer fish, which offers little resistance as Mouring reels it in. 

As a child growing up in Washington, D.C., Mouring was taught to fish by his father –and the only fish he eats is what he catches.

“If you’re on a limited income you can’t pay (the high) price for a piece of fish,” he said. “It ain’t in your budget, it’s not worth it. I’ll look at the fish (in the store) and wish I was down here catching them.”

Aside from providing an affordable source of food, Mourning said he enjoys fishing because he likes spending time in nature and, occasionally, spending time chatting with fellow fishers.

Grant Murray is an associate professor of marine policy at Duke University and was an advisor for the “Fishing for Food” research program. When discussing the research the team did for the project, he agreed that the fishers they interviewed in the Beaufort area didn’t necessarily fit the narrow definition of a subsistence fisher, but represented a range.

“There were a few who were eating all the fish that they caught (and) depending on it daily, either for food or for income,” he said, “all the way down to people who were much more occasional in their fishing, but would give fish to family members, friends or relatives. That was a common story.”

He said he expected to hear more about subsistence fishing, but Murray said he was  surprised by some of the reasons given by people who participated in the study for why they fished that extended beyond filling the need for an affordable protein source.

“A lot of other things people talked about as benefits were camaraderie, the mental health, the social activity, the being outside, the exercise, the sense of giving to others when they’re able to share fish,” he said. “There are people out there that are out there for different reasons, different mixes of reason and (varying) dependencies on the protein.”

This is fourth in a series examining the role and sustainability of seafood in a healthy diet and is published in collaboration with North Carolina Health News.

For Debbie Callaway, life is inextricable from the seafood industry. Her grandfather was a clammer on the North River and a cook for a menhaden operation. But throughout her life, she’s watched the environment and landscape be altered by forces such as population changes, development and pollution. It feels as though access to fishable waters has become increasingly encroached upon.

“I’ve lived here in Beaufort my whole life,” Callaway said. “And the changes are just unbelievable.” 

Callaway is on the board of directors for Walking Fish, a wild-caught, community-supported fishery that distributes in Raleigh and Durham. This cooperative model is based on a common concept from land-based farming called “community supported agriculture.” The idea is that consumers buy shares of a seasonal harvest, which they pick up weekly or biweekly from a designated location. 

People who sign up get whatever is seasonally available that the fishermen catch that week — clams, oysters, flounder, shrimp, monkfish and more.

“We’re increasing the availability of seafood to people living in the Triangle, who have limited access to fresh, local seafood — delivering the seafood directly from the fishermen to the consumer,” Callaway said.

The idea behind Walking Fish is the “triple-bottom line” — that in order for something to be sustainable, it must recognize the interconnected nature of sociocultural, economic and ecological systems. The goal is to harvest only what is available seasonally, to protect the environment and use an economic model that makes the business viable for the fishermen and worthwhile for the consumer.

The environmental impact of the seafood industry is a complex issue. Overfishing has been recognized as a problem associated with large-scale commercial fishing. National Geographic reports that it emerged as an issue for the first time in the late 1800s, and through the mid-1900s affected regional fisheries poignantly. But by the end of the 20th century it was clear that the ocean, not the unlimited food resource some had thought, was approaching its breaking point. Many species, such as Atlantic cod and herring had been pushed to the edge of extinction. The pressure on biodiversity and ecosystem function grew and kept growing. 

Aquaculture — the practice of farming seafood in the ocean as an alternative to fishing — has been offered up as a partial solution to the problem. Aquaculture is not new, but has been practiced sustainably in various forms for thousands of years. But if not scaled correctly, aquaculture faces many of the same obstacles as does land-based agriculture — pollution, ecosystem disturbance, and landscape degradation — making it hardly a panacea solution.

Ryan Nebeker is a research and policy analyst at Foodprint. Foodprint is an organization dedicated to helping people learn where their food comes from and how it impacts both social and environmental systems. One of Nebeker’s recent reports for Foodprint was a comprehensive analysis of the environmental impact of aquaculture — particularly the large-scale enterprises that he calls “Big Aquaculture.”

Aquaculture has been around for a long time, Nebeker said, and comes in many forms. But when it comes to the idea that aquaculture is a blanket solution for feeding the world, Nebeker has serious doubts.

“When you peel back the hood on how aquaculture really runs, you really run into this idea that it faces a lot of limits,” Nebeker said. “The idea that the ocean is kind of this magical freebie where you can just grow fish doesn’t really work.”

A lot of this has to do with understanding that aquaculture is not a uniform practice — there are a lot of different ways to farm seafood, and it’s important to differentiate among them. According to Nebeker, many of the species that consumers demand are considered “high input” and therefore “high impact.”

These terms refer to where a fish is in the food web. For example, Atlantic salmon is a highly valued commercial fish. But it’s high up in the food chain, meaning that in order to farm it, you have to feed it other fish. The production of fish food is something that drastically increases the environmental impact of farming Atlantic salmon.

“As a result, you end up feeding them quite a bit more than you get back in terms of usable meat,” Nebeker said.

Consuming wild-caught fish that are lower on the food chain, like sardines and anchovies, can help reduce impact. As can farming other species that have positive environmental impacts, such as seaweed and bivalves. Oysters, with their natural capacity for water filtration, give something back to the environment they grow in.

“Just get friendlier with clams, mussels, oysters — they’re so easy to cook,” Nebeker said. “Most people don’t realize they have that really light impact on the environment. And they are delicious.”

Supporting local fishing operations is another good way to reduce impact, Nebeker said, but he also recognizes that for most of the country, there’s no such thing as “local” seafood. In lieu of this, traceability is of high importance.

“One thing that has become a lot easier in the last few years is direct sales from fishermen and fishing cooperatives. Not everybody can walk down to the fish market, per se, but it’s gotten a lot easier to buy direct from fishermen. There’s a verified supply chain, you know they caught it, you know where they caught it.”

Some, like North Carolina’s Walking Fish, serve inland communities in their state. But others flash-freeze their supply and ship it to other parts of the country.

Thanks to the internet, that option is available to more of the country than it used to be. The downside, said Nebeker, is often the cost. But when the cost is low, he said, it may mean someone is cutting corners. Therefore, that cost may not manifest economically, but environmentally or socially.

In his report, Nebeker underscores the importance of viewing the ocean as a shared resource. 

“This is a resource that everyone should be able to use and access,” Nebeker said. “But they should not be able to use it in a way that damages it for other people.”

For regional fishing operations like Walking Fish, the understanding that environmental health is bound up in economic and social welfare is the basis of their business. After running for about 13 years, Walking Fish has a consistent member base that also shares these values.

“We have persevered, and have maintained a member base that benefits from the availability of fresh seafood in Raleigh-Durham but also provides a market for commercial fishermen,” said Callaway. “And for this, I’m very thankful.”

This is third in a series examining the role and sustainability of seafood in a healthy diet and is published in collaboration with North Carolina Health News.

Next in the series: What’s the economic cost of seafood and who can pay it? 

The term “sustainable seafood” gets used a lot with regard to the fishing and aquaculture industries — it’s a phrase that varies in meaning and is used everywhere from policy directives to marketing strategies. But what does it really mean? 

Colloquially, the term “sustainable” is often in reference to environmental impact, with regard to overfishing and making sure that meeting human demands doesn’t destroy ocean ecosystems. Commercial fisheries in the United States are regulated against overfishing, but that doesn’t mean it is not a problem — a growing demand for seafood coupled with climate change related pressures put a lot of strain on the ocean’s capacity to keep producing fish for people to consume.

Meanwhile, the world’s population continues to grow. It is currently at 8 billion and estimated to be 11.2 billion by the end of the century. This growth puts additional pressure on the ocean. Paired with limitations faced by land-based farming, researchers have pointed to the ocean as a possible venue for growable food in light of this trend. In 2020, the United Nations released a report saying that aquaculture had already improved food security globally. Still, this conversation is not without an important caveat — farming seafood is not a panacea solution, and there are many forms of aquaculture that can harm both the environment and local communities instead of benefiting them. 

When it comes to the human diet, the ocean is a potential resource for “good” food. We have long known about the health benefits associated with incorporating fish into your weekly diet — they are abundant in healthy fats, amino acids and other things that help our bodies function well. In the U.S. Department of Agriculture and U.S. Department of Health and Human Services’ 2020 report of dietary recommendations, a document the agencies release every five years, there’s an emphasis on the importance of consuming high-quality seafood across age groups and demographic populations.

The trouble with that has long been that seafood remains one of the most difficult proteins to acquire at an affordable price point. Economically speaking, the wild-caught seafood industry provides North Carolina with 5,500 jobs and brings in $300 million in value to the state. But when we talk about this economic benefit, to the state and to the country beyond, which communities are being cut out of the picture due to economic or physical access? Who is inadvertently excluded from conversations about “sustainable seafood”?

One understanding of sustainability is that for something to be sustainable, it has to be supported by three pillars of economic, social and environmental strength. When we try to figure out if seafood has a place in a sustainable future, all three of those aspects must be evaluated. In this special series, which is a joint product of North Carolina Health News and Coastal Review, we will look at each of these pillars closely. 

Next, this series will examine the environmental impacts of both aquaculture and commercial fisheries, and how those industries may have to change or adapt in order to be practical in a changing world. We will also examine who can afford to eat seafood, and provides a mosaic look at North Carolina’s subsistence fishers. And finally, the series looks at the social mechanisms of supply and demand, education, labeling and representation. There will be overlap among these three stories, as the issues are impossible to truly extricate from each other. 

This series follows the White House Conference on Hunger, Nutrition, and Health, held Sept. 28. The conference sought to investigate how to end hunger, reduce diet-related diseases and disparities and improve nutrition for the country. The only other time that this conference has been held was in 1969, more than 50 years ago. The ways that hunger and nutrition play out in American society have changed dramatically in the last half century. Conversations around climate, conservation, social equity and business have all evolved. 

Seafood, and the important role it plays in our diets and our economies is no exception. The remainder of this series will examine the role the seafood industry plays in North Carolina’s food supply, how it has evolved to this point, and what it will look like in the future.

This is second in a series examining the role and sustainability of seafood in a healthy diet and is published in collaboration with North Carolina Health News. Next in the series: The seafood footprint.

President Joe Biden last week introduced a plan to end hunger in the United States and increase healthy eating and physical activity by 2030.

The 44-page National Strategy On Hunger, Nutrition, And Health identifies what White House officials called “ambitious and achievable actions” the administration will pursue across five pillars: improving food access and affordability, integrating nutrition and health, empowering all consumers to make and have access to healthy choices, supporting physical activity for all and enhancing nutrition and food security research.

The strategy document was released Sept. 27 in conjunction with the White House Conference on Hunger, Nutrition, and Health held Sept. 28, in Washington, D.C.

The conference was the first such event in five decades, as Biden noted in his remarks. Richard Nixon had convened the first White House nutrition conference that “led to a transformational change that has helped millions of Americans live healthier lives for generations,” Biden said.

“Since that time, advances in research and medicine have taught us so much more about nutrition and health,” the president said, adding that he had convened the conference because he believed the advances will make America a stronger and a healthier nation.

Republicans pointed to an ongoing external review of the Food and Drug Administration’s food safety inspection practices, which was requested earlier this year by the agency chief in response to criticism regarding its oversight, and said the conference should have been more bipartisan.

“At a time when food prices continue to soar under record-high inflation rates, and while an external investigation into FDA’s food safety centers—ordered by FDA Commissioner Califf himself—remains underway, it is critical this process involve all appropriate policymakers and stakeholders in any policy goals emerging from the Conference,” top Republicans said Sept. 21 in a letter to the White House.

Key principles focus on access

The White House strategy is based on three key principles: Helping Americans access the food that will keep their families nourished and healthy, providing options and information needed to make healthy dietary choices, and helping more Americans be physically active, Biden explained.

According to the plan, nearly 40 million Americans lack nearby grocery stores with affordable and healthy food options and have no access to transit to get there. Oftentimes, those with limited access to affordable, nutritious food tend to be lower-income and people of color.

In 2021, one in 10 households experienced food insecurity, meaning their access to food was limited by lack of money or other resources. Nearly 4% of households experienced very low food security, which means they were skipping meals regularly or cutting back on how much they ate because they could not afford more food. 

Diet-related diseases are some of the leading causes of death and disability in the U.S., according to the strategy. Findings show that 19 states and two territories have an obesity prevalence at or above 35%, more than double the number of states from 2018. One in 10 Americans have diabetes, one in three will have cancer in their lifetime, and more than four in 10 have high blood pressure, which is linked to heart disease and stroke.

Children in low-income families typically have fewer opportunities to be physically active because of lesser access to safe streets and playgrounds.

Hunger and diet-related diseases are not distributed equally. “These challenges disproportionately impact communities of color, people living in rural areas, people living in territories, people with disabilities, older adults, LGBTQI+ people, military families, and Veterans,” according to the plan.

Biden said the plan “recognizes the critical role that nutrition plays in our health and our healthcare system, and it acknowledges that we have to give families the tools to keep them healthy.” 

The proposed actions under the plan’s five pillars for combating hunger and diet-related illnesses include increasing access to free school meals and food during the summer for more children, updating nutritional labeling, expanding incentives for fruits and vegetables for Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP, recipients, increasing access to outdoor spaces, and providing more funding to research nutrition and food security policy, mostly on equity and access issues.

To help Americans learn to make healthy food choices, the plan proposes funding public education campaigns, nutrition education and support for Medicare recipients, expanding nutrition education for children and for older adults, offering low-income housing grantees nutritional assistant programs, and supporting regular updates to the Dietary Guidelines for Americans.

Biden said that more than 100 different organizations and businesses have committed more than $8 billion to help reach the plan’s goals.

Commitments include $2.5 billion invested in start-up companies developing solutions to hunger and food insecurity, and more than $4 billion is to be dedicated toward philanthropy to improve access to nutritious food, promote healthy choices and increase physical activity, according to an administration handout.

Among the organizations to commit is the Seafood Nutrition Partnership. The nonprofit focused on building awareness of the health and nutritional benefits of seafood said it will invest a minimum of $280,000 over the next eight years to improve public knowledge of essential nutrition that has been shown to improve brain health. The partnership plans an “eating for brain health” program to educate pregnant individuals on the nutrients required to reduce preterm birth risk and foster healthy early brain development. The group is to conduct research to measure and map Omega-3 fatty acid deficiencies across the country to prioritize the roll-out of its education programs to the areas of greatest need.

The Blue Cross and Blue Shield of North Carolina Foundation has committed to launch a two-year, $3.5 million effort to increase access to healthy food and grow the “food is medicine” movement in the state. The foundation said it would fund and facilitate partnerships between health care providers and community-based organizations to provide a range of services from food vouchers to medically tailored meals.

Other organizations that have committed include AARP and AARP Foundation to expand research on older adults’ access to SNAP and use the research to improve SNAP enrollment rates for older adults, and the Wave Foundation for an equity and climate marketplace to connect underrepresented food producers – people of color and women – with large-scale food service and retail outlets nationwide.

Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack called the national strategy a defining moment.

“It sets us on a path to end hunger, enhance nutrition, and improve health outcomes in this country. This strategy compiles recommendations from dozens of listening sessions held over the summer,” he said in a statement.

Public Health Institute Senior Vice President of Programs, Public Policy and Government Relations Matthew Marsom called the plan sustainable and effective and said it was grounded in research, focused on equity, and addresses the systemic causes of hunger, poor nutrition and diet-related chronic disease.

“The White House agenda acknowledges the upstream issues that contribute to food security, especially accessibility and affordability. It calls for addressing poverty by increasing the minimum wage, fully funding the childcare tax credit and expanding the earned income tax credit,” Marsom said. “It also underscores the role of culturally rooted practices as a critical piece of accessibility, including investing in a nutrition workforce that looks like, and comes from the communities it serves.”

The Alliance to End Hunger also commended the plan.

“This strategy is a beacon lighting the road we must now take,” Eric Mitchell, executive director of the Alliance to End Hunger, said in a statement. “We look forward to discussing these ideas and recommendations with the White House and Congress to promote greater equity, improve access to nutritious foods, and ultimately ensure that every American has food on the table every day.”

Developing recommendations

The Task Force on Hunger, Nutrition, and Health, a nongovernment, nonpartisan group, had worked through the summer to develop recommendations for the plan. “Informing the White House Conference: Ambitious, Actionable Recommendations to End Hunger, Advance Nutrition, and Improve Health in the United States,” was released Aug. 23 and provided to the White House ahead of the conference.

The task force noted in a press release that its recommendations had not been formally requested nor endorsed by the White House, but organizers applauded Biden’s leadership and the national strategy.

“The work to fix these issues cannot happen in a day, but guided by this national strategy and the non-partisan spirit of the Conference — supported by Congressional leaders from both sides of the aisle — it can and will happen,” organizers said. “We stand ready to support policymakers, industry, academia, advocacy organizations, and the entire broad community of people who are deeply invested in solving these crises in bringing this vision to life; the next phase of work for all of us begins now to ensure continued energy and attention on these critical issues and implementation of this national strategy for systemic change.”

Appeal for bipartisanship

In announcing the plan, Biden stressed the importance of a bipartisan approach to reach its goals. Republicans said they will ensure the result is sound policy but criticized the process.

Top Republicans wrote Sept. 21 to Domestic Policy Council Director Susan Rice asserting that the conference that “began with a promise to engage stakeholders in a bipartisan process has deteriorated into a partisan gathering lacking the direction and clarity needed to drive significant, long-lasting change.”

For the conference policy recommendations to be considered bipartisan, Republicans wrote, the White House should have meaningfully engaged a variety of stakeholders, including congressional colleagues from both sides of the aisle at all stages.

The letter was signed by Rep. Glenn “G.T.” Thompson, R-Pa., who sits on the Agriculture Committee; Virginia Foxx, R-N.C., who sits on Education and Labor Committee; Rep. Cathy McMorris Rodgers, R-Wash., from the Energy and Commerce Committee; James Comer R-Ky., of the Oversight and Reform Committee; and Rep. Andy Harris, R-Md., from the Subcommittee on Agriculture Appropriation.

The Republicans promised “an active oversight role, given our seats on committees of jurisdiction over the recommendations likely to stem from the Conference as Congress and the administration deliberate how to move forward to ensure we are all supporting the goals of ending hunger and improving nutrition in ways that make sound policy sense for all Americans.”

This is the first in a series examining the role and sustainability of seafood in a healthy diet and is published in collaboration with North Carolina Health News. Next in the series: What does “sustainable seafood” mean?

Second in a series.

HATTERAS — Once the quiet and well-behaved counterpart to feral Oregon Inlet, Hatteras Inlet is now repeatedly afflicted by shoaling that defeats routine maintenance of the critically important Ocracoke ferry routes.

“It’s ever-evolving,” Catherine “Cat” Peele, planning and development manager for the state Ferry Division, said in a recent interview. She added that bathymetric surveys are done regularly to keep close tabs on sand buildup. “The channel is constantly changing. We’re at the mercy of Mother Nature.”

Nearby channels outside Hatteras Inlet, the passage from sound to sea between Hatteras and Ocracoke islands, have also become bigger problems.

On Monday, June 6, for example, the Ferry Division announced that it had been forced to reduce its scheduled ferry runs to and from Swan Quarter and Cedar Island because, in addition to labor shortages, Big Foot Slough just outside Ocracoke’s Silver Lake was clogged. 

Severe shoaling in that Pamlico Sound channel, according to the announcement, had created dangerous navigation issues for the large sound-class ferries, causing the vessels to be temporarily pulled from service. Emergency dredging by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers is to happen as soon as possible, and ferry runs will return to the normal summer schedule when channels are cleared to a safe depth, the statement said.

Ferries are essential transportation for residents of this tiny barrier island situated at the southern end of the Outer Banks. Accessible only by boat or small airplane, the charming historic village and beautiful undeveloped beaches are magnets for thousands of tourists every year.

In addition to repeated shoaling issues in Big Foot Slough, just in recent months the free Hatteras-Ocracoke ferry, the busiest of the state’s seven ferry routes, has struggled to transit shoaled spots in the inlet’s ferry channel, occasionally bumping bottom. And an inlet channel used mostly by the Coast Guard and commercial and recreational fishing vessels and charter boats had, after repeated attempts to dredge, become impossible for the Corps to maintain, leading to diversion of traffic to a newly marked natural route. 

“Long range,” Peele said, “it’s hard to know what that inlet will look like.”

Essential routes, difficult challenges

At the same time, the North Carolina Department of Transportation worries that an erosion hot spot long threatening the only highway on Ocracoke Island may soon suffer one too many storm breaches.

Traffic coming off the Hatteras ferry at the north end of Ocracoke Island must drive 13 miles through undeveloped Cape Hatteras National Seashore on N.C. 12 to reach the village. The most vulnerable section of roadway is about 5 miles south of the ferry terminal. If the road becomes impassable, the island’s robust tourism economy would suffer a huge blow. 

That leaves NCDOT, which oversees the ferries, and the Corps having to contend with difficult coastal challenges — primarily erosion and shoaling — for transportation in Hatteras Inlet and on Ocracoke Island that are worsening with the effects of climate change. 

Earlier this year, Brig. Gen. Jason Kelly, who has served since June 2020 as commander of the Corps’ South Atlantic Division, met with Dare and Hyde County and National Park Service officials at the Dare County Administrative Building in Manteo to listen to their concerns, including persistent maintenance problems in the waterways.

Although no immediate action was taken, the agency has provided additional funds for emergency dredging in the inlet and found a new approach, expanding its authority in the inlet to do projects. 

In October 2020, then-U.S. Secretary of Transportation Elaine L. Chao announced the designation of the North Carolina Ferry System as a Marine Highway Project, the first in the state. Marine Highways are defined by the federal government as alternatives to traditional transportation methods. With the designation, the ferry division will be able to apply for federal funding to modernize and improve its vessels and infrastructure, according to the announcement.

The North Carolina Ferry System, the second-largest in the country behind Washington state, is celebrating its 75th anniversary this year. As part of its remembrance, the division is asking ferry passengers and staff to share ferry experiences over the decades. To contribute, visit the Ferry Tales website.

Because the ferries got their start on the Outer Banks, it’s expected that some stories will be about ferry mishaps, including being stuck on shoals — more so lately. 

Authorized in 1962, the Rollinson Channel Project, which includes the Hatteras ferry channel, has always been dredged as needed, mostly by the Corps’ government dredges.

As detailed in the agency’s Hatteras Ferry Channel Realignment draft environmental assessment issued in October 2021, the ferry channel comprises a 100-foot-wide channel with an authorized depth of about 12 feet stretching from the Rollinson Channel to the inlet gorge and another channel with similar dimensions that follows the “best deep-water route” to the gorge.

All was well until the 1990s, when the spit at the end of Hatteras Island gradually started eroding, in turn widening the inlet and allowing more sand to wash into channels. After a series of hurricanes in the late 1990s and early 2000s, the situation worsened. By 2013, the ferry channel became hopelessly clogged and unnavigable, and the Hatteras-Ocracoke ferries began using a longer horseshoe-shaped natural channel.

The former 4-mile ferry trip from the Hatteras terminal to the Ocracoke “South Dock” terminal on the north side of the island doubled in length and went from about 40-minutes to about 60 minutes. While the number of round trips had to be reduced, fuel costs increased considerably. Lines and wait times at the stacking lanes at the Hatteras village terminal in Hatteras got much longer. 

In recent years, Sloop Channel, just outside the South Dock Terminal started shoaling, which created additional delays.

A new passenger vessel, the Ocracoke Express, was launched three years ago to relieve some of the backup on the Ocracoke-Hatteras route and to give visitors another option. The ferry, which costs $5 each way for adults and operates in the summer only, can be reserved online ahead of time. Free trams that stop at numerous village attractions are also offered for passengers on the Ocracoke side.

But in Big Foot Slough, shoaling that dangerously narrows the channel can also be a problem for the Ocracoke Express, which comes into Ocracoke Village at the Silver Lake terminal.

An alternate channel

In interests of ensuring that the sound ferry operations are not disrupted, Peele said, there have also been discussions about obtaining dredging permits for a nearby possible alternate channel known as Nine Foot Slough. 

Once the Hatteras Inlet realignment is implemented, it would provide the regulatory flexibility that will foster more efficient and responsive maintenance of the portion of the Hatteras Ferry Channel that follows deep water, according to the draft assessment, “due to the changes in shoaling patterns caused by the dynamic nature of the Hatteras Inlet system.”

Peele said that with more flexibility, the Corps should be able to plan with more certainty.

“We’re hoping that with the realignment with the Corps, they’ll be able to dedicate their equipment,” she said. 

No doubt, it will be a much-needed improvement in addressing the constantly migrating shoals, but it does nothing for Big Foot Slough, nor would it alleviate the threat to N.C. 12 or any other trouble spots that may materialize outside the designated area.

An August 2020 Ferry Division overview provided by Deputy Director Jed Dixon reported that funding to dredge Big Foot Slough, a federal channel, has decreased and is inconsistent year to year

Impacts to the dangerous shoaling in Big Foot Slough, which is also spelled Bigfoot Slough, the report said, include “vessels hitting bottom, damage requiring emergency repairs, departure cancellations, schedule modified to use only certain smaller vessels.”

In 2020, the Ferry Division workforce totaled 61, according to the report, compared to 100 in 1998. To varying degrees, difficult positions to fill include marine engineers, painters, mechanics, welders and sandblasters. 

With inadequate staffing and work space, Ferry Division maintenance and refurbishment projects were delayed, the report said, and emergency repairs reduced personnel and space needed for planned projects.

The situation two years later serves as an example of that squeeze on resources. In May 2020, the division announced that three ferries running the Pamlico Sound routes and one on the Hatteras route could not operate for a brief time because of mechanical issues.

To address ongoing erosion at South Dock, the division has installed sheet pile to stabilize the point as a short-term measure, although state law on hardened structures limited its effective length. But the National Park Service, which owns the land where the Hatteras and Ocracoke ferry terminals are, and NCDOT have agreed that stabilizing the ferry terminals and the Ocracoke hot spot on N.C. 12 will not last long.

Terminal relocation

A proposal to relocate South Dock closer to the Ocracoke Pony Pens on the west side of the island is still being considered by NCDOT and the Cape Hatteras National Seashore.

Although the new location would bypass the eroding ferry basin and the problematic hot spot on N.C. 12, it would present numerous complications, including potential negative effects on submerged aquatic vegetation, and increased time and staffing requirements for ferries to travel to the new terminal.

An amended feasibility study first completed by NCDOT in 2016 of long-term solutions to erosion on the island’s north end proposed building the new terminal near the middle of the island. Depending on the ferry used, that location would add about 15 to 45 minutes to the current one-hour trip between Hatteras and Ocracoke, the document said. The number of trips would have to be reduced, unless additional staff and ferries were provided. 

If the terminal were to be moved, NCDOT would no longer maintain the portion of N.C. 12 beyond the new location. Further, National Seashore Superintendent Dave Hallac has said that, with a road no longer bisecting the land, the Park Service would likely close off the north end of the island as a pony preserve or for other natural uses.

But that’s not an idea favored by island residents, who don’t want to lose access to nearly half their island, said Randal Mathews, an Ocracoke resident and Hyde County commissioner.

But it’s not a new idea; nor is the eroded hot spot a new problem.

During a 1999 meeting with the Outer Banks Task Force, N.C. State University civil engineer John Fisher, then-chair of the task force science panel, called a dune at the hot spot that was reconstructed after Hurricane Dennis a temporary “Band-Aid.”

“We seriously think you should think about abandoning that whole stretch of road and relocating the ferry system,” he told the task force, according to a Nov. 7, 1999, article in The Virginian-Pilot.

In a January 2004 Pilot article, then-National Seashore superintendent Larry Belli had told the task force during its October 2003 meeting that beach nourishment would be a last resort.

“I think we really need to look seriously at the alternative of moving the ferry terminal while we can do it,” Belli told the panel. “I would just go up as far as I can on the island. There would be some pluses and minuses, but there is with anything.”

And 19 years later, NCDOT is still wrestling with what to do about the same hot spot.

“I’d say on N.C. 12, this is probably the top priority, if not very close to the top priority,” Paul Williams, NCDOT North Carolina Division 1 environmental officer, said during an April 28, 2021, virtual meeting of the North Carolina Coastal Resources Commission.

Between 2010 to 2021, according to department records, costs for N.C. 12 storm-recovery work on Ocracoke Island totaled $15,142,646.

For now, NCDOT will continue to patch the road together the best it can while it weighs solutions. 

Peele said a grant application, if approved, would allow continued analysis of the feasibility study to determine what needs to change to operate the ferry under the federal Marine Highway designation.

The feasibility study would likely last for about a year, she said.

If an actual move was decided on, the project would have to be added to the state’s transportation improvement plan, she said, and it’s not clear whether it would meet the funding protocol.

Fourth in a series.

WILMINGTON – When construction wraps at Cape Fear Public Utility Authority’s Sweeney Water Treatment Plant this summer, almost 3 million pounds of carbon will be in place to remove chemical compounds contaminating water pumped from the Cape Fear River and to the homes of tens of thousands of the utility’s customers.

The addition of the granular activated carbon, or GAC, system is expected to filter out on average 90% of per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances, or PFAS, from water sucked out of the river about 24 miles upstream from the plant at the Kings Bluff Raw Water Pump Station in Bladen County.

Sweeney’s existing filtration system, which includes 14 biological filters that contain GAC, removes about 35% of PFAS from raw, untreated Cape Fear River water, according to Carel Vandermeyden, the utility’s deputy executive director for treatment and engineering.

During a tour of the $43 million plant addition last month, Vandermeyden talked about the challenges the utility has faced since learning the water it’s been supplying to customers since it began operations in 2008 has been contaminated by chemical compounds discharged for decades from a manufacturing company upstream.

“We had already invested in our plant in the past. We already had the best technology here. We just didn’t have the PFAS removal.”

The Sweeney plant sits just off the river banks in downtown Wilmington on a sprawling piece of land dotted by an office building, parking lot, tanks that handle residuals left from the treatment process, and buildings that hold the plant operating room and existing filtration system.

A square-shaped grassy lot along the backside of a building where a series of large, color-coded pipes move water through the treatment process was practically the only space available for the brick and mortar expansion.

On a cool, mid-May day, construction workers bustled inside the space of concrete and pipe where the eight GAC filters are being installed.

Gravel from wheelbarrows was fed down a pipe running down a wall of one of eight large, square cement compartments. Hard-hat-clad workers in the bottom of the compartment evenly raked the gravel along a floor that consists of a perforated plastic underdrain system that collects the filtered water.

Water pumped into the GAC filters will enter at the top, then flow through 12.5 feet of carbon atop 14 inches of gravel. The filtered water will then be collected on the bottom in the underdrain system.

Each filter compartment will contain nearly 370,000 pounds of GAC capable of treating about 5.5 million gallons of water per day.

Vandermeyden said the plant will likely operate five or six GAC filters at a time. One will remain on standby and one will be the spare, used when carbon needs to be replaced in another filter.

“That’s going to be one of the more expensive and maintenance-intense aspects,” he said.

Each filter is expected to run between 250 to 300 days before the carbon in them needs to be replaced, a process that requires the old carbon be vacuumed out before a fresh batch is trucked in.

CFPUA has budgeted $3.7 million this coming fiscal year, which starts July 1, for carbon replacement. The process is expected to cost about $5 million a year in subsequent years.

GAC has been around since the early 1990s, a proven technology that’s been well researched, Vandermeyden said. 

CFPUA officials determined this filtration system was the better fit for the utility over reverse osmosis, or RO, a system the public utility in neighboring Brunswick County opted for to remove PFAS.

Brunswick County was in the midst of a multi-year, three-phase expansion of its Northwest Water Treatment Plant in response to growing demand and the population boom there when news first broke about PFAS contamination in the river.

In early 2018, the Brunswick County Board of Commissioners voted to install an advanced low-pressure reverse osmosis system in the last phase of the plant expansion project.

The county hired an engineering and consulting firm to conduct a pilot low-pressure RO testing program at the Northwest plant. Test results showed the system “reduced most PFAS to undetectable levels,” according to information on the county’s website.

Commissioners in May approved a more than $122 million contract for the construction of the plant expansion and RO upgrades.

Maysville, a small town about 70 miles north of Wilmington, received in late 2020 a little more than $500,000 grant from the U.S. Department of Agriculture to install a new filtration system in the town’s well.

After state-conducted tests revealed PFAS from firefighting foam contaminated the well water, the town switched to Jones County for its drinking water.

Cutting it off at the source

Chemours is facing several lawsuits brought on by environmental groups, utilities, including CFPUA, and local governments in North Carolina.

Cumberland County became the latest to file suit in March, alleging Chemours and DuPont, which operated the Fayetteville plant between the 1970s and 2015, has been polluting the air, groundwater and surface water with “blatant disregard.”

As part of the 2019 Consent Order between the company, North Carolina Department of Environmental Quality, or DEQ, and Cape Fear River Watch, Chemours has to remove more than 99% of PFAS being released into the environment.

Chemours began operating in December 2019 a thermal oxidizer, which proved an average efficiency exceeding 99.999% in removing PFAS during a three-month testing period in early 2020.

But weekly samples CFPUA collects from the river still have Chemours-specific PFAS, Vandermeyden said.

The presence of GenX has greatly declined, but some compounds, specifically PFMOAA, one of the shortest short-chain PFAS, has increased, he said.

PFMOAA (perfluoro-2-methoxyacetic acid) is one of the most difficult to treat because it “doesn’t want to stick to anything,” Vandermeyden said.

“It is going to drive our costs. If there’s less PFAS in the river, which we’re hoping for, the lower our operating costs will be.”

Chemours regional communications lead Lisa Randall said in an email response that the company had since March 2020 been sampling the river twice a week downstream from the Fayetteville facility at Tar Heel Ferry Road bridge. The bridge spans the Cape Fear River in Bladen County.

“The data (Appendix B of the Cape Fear River PFAS Mass Loading Assessment – Fourth Quarter 2021 Report (Geosyntec, 2022)) shows the concentrations of PFMOAA downstream in the river have an overall decreasing trend since April 2021 and have shown a consistent decrease since October 2021,” Randall said.

Chemours is in the early stages of an onsite project designed to stop contaminated groundwater from flowing into the river.

The wall will span 70 feet deep and stretch more than a mile long along the Fayetteville Works Facility’s entire river shoreline.

“The remedy will intercept groundwater presently heading to the Cape Fear River using groundwater extraction wells,” Randall said in the email. “The extracted groundwater will be treated using ultrafiltration pre-treatment followed by PFAS removal by granular activated carbon (GAC). This is the same system design that is currently successfully removing PFAS at Chemours’ Outfall 003 treat system.”

It is expected to be complete in the first quarter of 2023 “pending receipt of approvals and permits from NCDEQ and other government agencies.”

Last month, Chemours began mailing letters to properties with private wells in New Hanover, Brunswick, Pender and Columbus counties in a process to determine which wells qualify for sampling under criteria laid out in the Interim Drinking Water Plan.

The company had planned to mail out about 60,000 letters by the end of May.

During her update to the North Carolina Environmental Management Commission last month, Sushma Masemore, DEQ assistant secretary for environment, explained that private wells with water exceeding 140 parts per trillion, the current state health goal, will be provided alternative drinking water options on Chemours’ dime.

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency is expected in the coming weeks to release a health advisory level for GenX.

“We’re expecting that level to be much lower than 140 based on the reference dose that they had released in the fall of last year,” Masemore told the commission, adding that state officials expect more private well owners to be brought into the Interim Drinking Water Plan if the threshold is lowered.

PFAS are largely unregulated and therefore do not have a minimum reference dose, or a determination of at what level the health effect is so negative consumption should be reduced, to establish a drinking water standard, a surface water standard or advisory level.

Last October, EPA Administrator Michael Regan, former NCDEQ secretary, released the PFAS Strategic Roadmap, an agency-wide approach designed to increase investments in research, leverage authorities to restrict the release of PFAS into the environment, and accelerate cleanup of PFAS contamination.

“Most recently the road map did announce enforceable drinking water limits for PFOA and PFAS,” Masemore said. “EPA plans to propose that in the fall of this year and finalize next year. We want to focus on PFAS that are found in North Carolina. EPA strategy is broad and large and they’re looking at a national approach. We in North Carolina will need to examine what is prevalent and what is of most importance in our state.”

Such a move could be valuable in a state whose population depends on surface water as its drinking water source.

“North Carolina has its fair share of problems when it comes to PFAS,” said Heather Stapleton, a Duke University environmental science professor and environmental chemist who studies peoples’ exposure to chemicals. 

Stapleton is part of a collaboratory of North Carolina-based university researchers formed in 2018 to study PFAS.

Based on the data they’ve gathered these past few years, researchers estimated that at least 10% of North Carolina’s population, about 1 million people, has elevated exposure to PFAS, she said.

“I think we’re very vulnerable in this state for this type of contamination largely because we have a heavy reliance on surface water as a drinking water source in North Carolina and we have a lot of manufacturing,” Stapleton said. “While it’s not clear what the exact source of PFAS are north of the Haw River, I know there are a lot of textile manufacturing facilities up in that area. I think we need to do what we can to really understand the source of these problems, the source of the PFAS contamination, to help inform other areas and other states that might also be vulnerable, but to prevent things like this from happening again in the future.”

Setting standards

At the end of her presentation to the commission, Masemore broached the possibility of the state establishing its own maximum contaminant level, or MCL, for chemical compounds.

“We have rarely established our own MCLs at a state level,” she said. “If we wait for EPA, the earliest MCL we will have is for PFA and PFAS, that’s spring or fall next year. So, there’s an opportunity for us as North Carolinians to decide, how much of this do we take on ourselves to be proactive?”

She said a handful of other states have set their own MCLs and therefore could serve as models for how North Carolina might go about doing the same.

A little more than three weeks after Masemore spoke to the commission, DEQ Secretary Elizabeth Biser announced the department’s plans to propose MCLs for PFAS specific to North Carolina.

“DEQ is committing to proposing standards for groundwater, surface water and drinking water for North Carolina’s priority PFAS compounds,” she said. “Science-based, enforceable standards are critically needed to reduce the PFAS pollution affecting North Carolinians around our state. Drinking water standards also create regulatory certainty for industry and public water systems, allowing them to design treatment methods that are protective of human health.”

The department will implement drinking water standards through its permitting program.

Biser said the department is moving forward expeditiously with establishing MCLs for compounds “we already have data for and we’re also working with our academic partners to identify the needs for toxicity assessments and reference doses for the other compounds that we don’t quite have yet,.”

DEQ is looking to initially prioritize 10 to 15 compounds specific to North Carolina, she said.

Gov. Roy Cooper and Biser set forth the DEQ Action Strategy for PFAS  at a press conference Tuesday on the riverfront in downtown Wilmington.

The strategy details steps the state will take to protect communities, protect drinking water and continue focusing on cleanup and remediation of PFAS contaminated ground, surface and drinking waters.

“We will continue to prioritize and address highest exposure risks, especially for our vulnerable and disadvantaged communities,” Biser said. “We will continue to update and evolve this strategy as we move forward and I expect all of you to hold us accountable as we do that. We want to ensure that in the future no community experiences what you have already been through.”

Cooper noted during Tuesday’s press conference that his budget proposal includes funding for DEQ to have an established team to analyze emerging science and provide technical assistance to aid in protecting drinking water sources.

He also touched on House Bill 1095, proposed legislation that would authorize the Environmental Management Commission to adopt MCLs. The bill also would require any company that releases PFAS above health thresholds to pay costs public utilities incur to remove chemicals from their raw drinking water sources.

“Those who made money off of polluting the water should be the ones to pay to clean it up,” Cooper said, his remark followed by applause.

“We’ve come a long way in the last few years in identifying these chemicals, stopping the polluters and charting a path forward, but there is still much work to do. The challenge for us is bigger than any one company or any one chemical. This is a state-wide and a national issue that demands our attention and our action.”

Third in a series.

Official efforts to communicate the health risks of certain man-made compounds in heavily contaminated communities are falling short, according to a recent analysis.

PFAS is a class of thousands of synthetic chemicals found practically everywhere, such as in firefighting foams, stain-resistant carpets and furniture, nonstick cookware, takeout containers and microwave popcorn bags.

While most humans have a detectable amount of PFAS in their bodies from multiple sources including food, food contact materials and indoor products, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, there are millions in the United States that have been subject to significant contamination, either through work exposure or drinking water.

For the report, “Official health communications are failing PFAS-contaminated communities,” published May 10 in Environmental Health, researchers reviewed information produced by local, state and national agencies, professional societies and nongovernmental organizations geared toward the public and healthcare providers on per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances, or PFAS.

The analysis found that most official information does not evaluate the risks highly exposed communities face compared to the general population. Researchers also found that the official information doesn’t fully explain how strong scientific evidence is for certain health outcomes, though most or nearly all studies have found harm from PFAS exposure for immune, liver, reproductive, and cancer, such as kidney or testicular cancer, according to researchers. Researchers also found that the language used is often unqualified, misleading or unclear. Finally, there is a lack of material on how to reduce exposure and risk of harm.

The study concludes that immediate action needs to be taken to review and improve this messaging “intended to inform the public and health providers about the risks of PFAS exposure and guide community and medical decisions.”

Motivation for the study

Lead author Alan Ducatman, a physician and professor emeritus at West Virginia University, responded to Coastal Review by email, saying that during the first Northeastern University PFAS conference in Boston in 2018 is when he first heard a community leader express concern about how “public PFAS communications intended for clinicians or for the public were doing (unintended) harm.”

Once the concern was pointed out to him, he said it came from more directions. “It could be heard in lots of places, from different kinds of people.”

About three years ago, Ducatman said he began thinking about whether there was a useful way to consider the topic. “My first questions were what is in those public facing health communications? What message is said to clinicians specifically? How well do the communications align with the current scientific knowledge?”

The initial goal was to assess whether there was a problem, and if so, how to shed light on it, he continued. “Progress was slow at first. Clinician training is wonderful, but no one of us is as smart as all of us.”

He said that once he was joined by coauthors for the study, the pace of progress increased and led to the creation of the freely accessible online paper. Coauthors who joined him were Dr. Jamie DeWitt, a professor of pharmacology and toxicology at East Carolina University, health communicator Rebecca Fuoco and Jonas LaPier, who focused on research and data.

Fuoco, science communications officer at the Green Science Policy Institute, added that last year the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine held a series of online town hall meetings to discuss clinical guidance for PFAS exposure.

“Members of PFAS-contaminated communities voiced concerns that current government fact sheets and webpages unreasonably minimize PFAS health risks. Dismissive language in these materials can influence the attitudes of healthcare providers and policymakers and create more hurdles for affected communities to get the help they deserve,” Fuoco said.

DeWitt told Coastal Review that she became involved in the study because she had known Ducatman for some time and they serve as liaisons to the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine, PFAS clinical guidance committee.

“We also both interact with community members who express their frustration to us about health guidance,” she said, adding she also teaches medical students and know that they receive very little toxicological education.

Researchers on the results

Ducatman said that at first, he was disappointed with the results of the study.

“Surprise was a part of it, as the extent of the problem in public-facing communications was at least as great and maybe more than I had been led to expect from the expressed concern,” he said.

“Gradually, a few better health communications also became available. Those we found helpful during our review are prominently mentioned in the article,” Ducatman continued, suggesting these more useful documents be used as templates.

“They are the most important part of the article because It is much more useful to emphasize what is helpful. What remains a little surprising is that the vast majority have not yet improved that much, despite the gradual appearance of better examples to emulate,” Ducatman said.

One residual surprise, Ducatman added, is that the pace of improvement in state and federal public-facing documents remains slow, and the expressed science in so many documents greatly trails the advances in what we know about PFAS. “We naturally wonder how the most prominent problematic communications got to be the way they are. We may never know how they got that way. The key goal is to improve them.”

What stuck out most to DeWitt from the results has been emphasized in the commentary. “Uncertainty about risks tends toward language that minimizes risks. I think in other situations uncertainty leads to greater appreciation of risks.”

In North Carolina

The state has been investigating PFAS in the Cape Fear River since June 2017 and identified Chemours in Fayetteville as the company that produces the compound.

In the five years since the public got word of contaminants in the region’s drinking water, advocacy groups and state officials have responded in various ways. There have been missteps along the way.

DeWitt said North Carolina is like other states, “where I think officials try to balance fear of the risks of PFAS exposure on health with uncertainties. It’s a challenge to develop thoughtful messaging, and I think our officials did what they could given that they needed to get information out quickly after PFAS contamination became well known to the public.”

Fuoco noted that the state Department of Health and Human Services issued a letter to doctors in 2018 that discouraged blood testing for PFAS, even though the state had a wide region affected by drinking water contamination.

“Fortunately, this letter was taken offline in 2020 and replaced with an updated letter. The new letter has better messaging about blood testing, but still frames its discussion of health outcomes with language suggesting the science is preliminary or inconsistent across the board: ‘The potential for health effects from PFAS in humans is still being studied. Researchers are working to better understand how exposure to PFAS might affect people’s health. Although more research is needed, some studies of people have shown that certain PFAS may…,’” she said.

But how would busy clinicians come to know the “some studies” statement would actually be “most” or “nearly all” studies for outcomes like liver damage and reduced childhood vaccine response? Fuoco said that North Carolina residents in areas with high levels of contamination should feel empowered to advocate for themselves and their communities.

For example, they can share the accurate and helpful materials identified in the paper, such as from the Association of State and Territorial Health Officials Clinician FAQ and the clinician guidance on Silent Spring Institute’s PFAS-REACH Exchange website, with their doctors to make sure their concerns aren’t dismissed.

Benefits of the paper

For patients in high-exposure communities and the clinicians who serve them, Ducatman said he hopes the paper will empower them to do two things: “Avoid or at least recognize the worst problems in current agency documents, and, more importantly, identify useful sources they can access right now. We do provide a list. For health communicators, I hope the paper triggers reflection and honest conversations with agency leaders, leading to better official documents.”

He added its encouraging that federal agencies have asked the National Academies to convene a committee that will examine current guidance and make recommendations.

“An implication of the request is that there must be internal agency recognition that the usefulness of current communications is being questioned,” Ducatman said. “However, problems are also sufficiently evident that one wonders why obvious problematic parts are not already being removed.”

DeWitt said her hope is that the commentary will lead to better guidance for people who are worried about their health.

“I hope such guidance includes messages about what sorts of questions people could ask their physicians as well as questions that physicians could ask patients who live in PFAS-contaminated communities,” she said. “I also I hope that it leads to physicians talking more with one another to potentially discover additional associated health risks.”

Fuoco added that she hoped the study moves state and federal health officials to improve their public communications on PFAS.

“Our paper provides examples from some state agencies and nonprofit groups that are great models, so this shouldn’t be a huge undertaking,” Fuoco said. “Health communication is hard. Agencies need to walk a tightrope to convey accurate and actionable information without engendering undue fear. Often, they overcorrect and tip the balance toward understating the risks.”

Ducatman noted that the paper acknowledges that health communications are truly difficult.

“Public health agencies have ever-expanding jobs, multiple demands on resources and priorities, and shrinking funds in terms of constant dollars for most missions. The authors understand that. There is no goal to increase agency burdens at a time of too much mission and too little support,” he said. “The agencies should know that they have potential partners to help out. That is to say, it is an important problem, and public health agencies are generally good at finding allies who can help with important problems.”

He added that the quotations from different agency materials become criticisms only because they speak for themselves in ways that are problematic and have not helped affected communities, including exposed workers, whose needs are often ignored. The opportunity of recognizing the problems is that improvements are achievable, that there are good templates already available, and that both stakeholders and scientists can be engaged for support.

After the National Academies’ guidance on current federal communications comes out, “it is likely to be analytic and useful, but it is less likely to tell agencies exactly what to do. I hope agency leaders will look for ways to improve now,” he said. “A strong consideration is partnership with community leaders and scientists who can help.”

State, federal reactions

Environmental Protection Agency Deputy Press Secretary Tim Carroll told Coastal Review that the agency understands that for far too long, communities across the United States had suffered from exposure to PFAS pollution.

“That’s why EPA is taking action through our PFAS Strategic Roadmap – EPA’s bold, strategic, and whole-of-Agency approach to protect public health and the environment from the impact of these chemicals. The Roadmap sets timelines by which EPA plans to take specific actions and commits to bolder new policies to safeguard public health, protect the environment, and hold polluters accountable,” Carroll said in an email response.

“Addressing PFAS contamination is a critical part of EPA’s mission to protect human health and the environment. This important mission cannot be achieved without effectively communicating with communities, individuals, businesses, the media, and Tribal, state, and local partners about the known and potential health risks associated with these chemicals. When EPA communicates risk, it is the Agency’s goal to provide meaningful, understandable, and actionable information to many audiences. EPA looks forward to reviewing this new study to ensure the Agency continues to meet this goal,” Carroll continued.

“New scientific information increasingly highlights that negative health effects may occur at much lower levels of exposure to the PFAS chemicals PFOA and PFOS than previously understood. EPA is committed to science-based approaches to protect public health from exposure to these chemicals, including by quickly updating drinking water health advisories with new peer-reviewed approaches and expeditiously developing National Primary Drinking Water Regulations for these contaminants,” he said.

Bailey Pennington, a spokesperson with the North Carolina Department of Health and Human Services, told Coastal Review that DeWitt and her colleagues’ paper included important points.

“Communicating about health effects of PFAS exposure is challenging, but it is important to clearly state that there is a substantial and growing body of research indicating that PFAS are harmful to human health. This includes the list of studies provided on our PFAS webpage,” Pennington said. “We also appreciate the need to have different communications for the general public versus more highly exposed communities, such as those near the Chemours plant and downstream of the plant in the lower Cape Fear Region.”

She added that the department would continue reviewing and updating its communications “as we learn more and will consider the recommendations in this article as we do so.”

Although more research is needed, some human health studies have shown that certain PFAS may affect growth, learning, and behavior of infants and older children, lower a woman’s chance of getting pregnant, interfere with the body’s natural hormones, increase cholesterol levels, affect the immune system and increase the risk of certain types of cancer.

“Whether or not you develop health problems after being exposed to PFAS depends on how much, how often, and for how long you are exposed, as well as which PFAS you are exposed to. Personal factors including age, lifestyle, and overall health can impact your body’s ability to respond to chemical exposures,” she said. “Scientists are actively studying the health effects of PFAS to learn more.”

The department continues to work with various federal and state partners to review all new health and toxicity information about these compounds and shares new information with communities as it becomes available, Pennington added. The work includes the ongoing Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry (ATSDR) Exposure Assessments and Multi-Site Health Studies and North Carolina State University’s GenX Exposure Study.

Laura Leonard, public information officer for the state Department of Environmental Quality, told Coastal Review that the department worked closely with the Department of Health and Human Services to provide PFAS information to the public. “We are continuously working to provide the most relevant, accessible information to help impacted communities understand their options and make decisions.”

Second in a series.

Vaughn Hagerty was Trista Talton’s editor during her last year and a half as a reporter at the Wilmington StarNews.

This report was updated to clarify Hagerty’s career history.

You have to wonder how much longer Chemours would have gotten away with discharging unregulated contaminants into the Cape Fear River if he did not break the story.

What if Vaughn Hagerty hadn’t had the luxury of time usually lacking in bare-bones-staffed newsrooms fighting for survival in this age of social media and the 24-hour television news cycle?

What if he had missed the story by one fewer clicks of the mouse?

Would we have yet heard the now all-too-familiar term GenX?

Would tens of thousands of residents of the Cape Fear region be made aware that Chemours’ Fayetteville Works plant had for decades been releasing per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances, or PFAS, into their drinking water source, the air, and ground?

The story behind the story that ran five years ago Tuesday and ripped back the curtain on synthetic chemical waste being released into the Cape Fear River is about one man’s career that, like the river itself, features a series of twists and turns guiding the water to its destination.

A little too corny? Hey, Hagerty himself recently told Coastal Review that he was living a “charmed life.”

Just another web developer ‘Googling around’

The news editor turned media web developer turned editor again turned back again to web developer had been dabbling as a freelance journalist a few months when, browsing websites in the spring of 2017, he came across something called the Unregulated Contaminant Monitoring Rule.

“It was entirely by chance,” said Hagerty.

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, or EPA, implements the rule every five years to gather data on unregulated contaminants by sampling water utilities throughout the country.

One particular set of data that focused on legacy PFAS caught Hagerty’s attention.

Armed with his curious-by-nature journalistic instinct and background as a web developer, he loaded the data to see what would pop up for the Wilmington area. There were some local hits, enough that might make for interesting story, he thought.

He continued to “Google around,” eventually coming across a paper written by North Carolina university-based professors about legacy and emerging perfluoroalkyl substances, including one called GenX, contaminating drinking water in the Cape Fear River watershed

“At that point I knew I had probably a much better story than just this story that, ‘Hey, there’s a little bit of PFOA and PFAS in the water,’ and that’s when I started focusing on the story,” Hagerty said.

He knew nothing about the complexities of which he was to write. If memory serves, he earned a C in college chemistry.

Like any true-grit journalist, Hagerty used what he could to his advantage – people in the know and time.

“I’m definitely pretty persistent and some people might say a little obsessive,” he said. “But, also I was fortunate during this time to have access to a number of very smart and knowledgeable people who were very generous with their time and patient with my complete ignorance of this incredibly complicated topic. I think that what I had that very few other journalists had — or even have — is I could spend as much time as I needed really diving into the story without having to worry about things like covering the school board or meeting my tweet quota.”

He pitched the story early on to the Wilmington StarNews, the daily newspaper for which he’d freelanced some stories in early 2017. It’s also the paper Hagerty, as metro editor, managed the newsroom’s day-to-day operations – assigning reporters stories, editing stories and deciding what stories went where – for three years starting back in 2005.

The Cape Fear Public Utility Authority, or CFPUA, in Wilmington and other utilities that supply drinking water to residents in New Hanover, Pender, Brunswick and Columbus counties were, in particular, affected by the story about a company discharging toxins into the river.

“It really seemed like the StarNews was going to be the best place for me to do the first story,” Hagerty said.

A chance conversation in a gym

“Toxin taints CFPUA drinking water” ran front page Wednesday, June 7, 2017.

Five years before, Hagerty was working in web development for the paper when he was laid off.

He did pretty well as a freelance web developer after that, but he missed journalism.

Hagerty had continued reporting on PFAS, GenX and Chemours through 2018, including for Coastal Review.

“But, the thing is, it’s very difficult to make a decent living as a freelance journalist or a journalist in general sometimes,” he said. “So, as a result, I’d eaten into a lot of savings. A whole lot. I’d already started thinking that I was probably going to need to get a full-time job.”

Where, he did not know.

Then, call it happenstance, maybe fate, a health-conscious Hagerty was working out at a local gym when fellow gym member and CFPUA’s then-executive director Jim Flechtner offhandedly asked Hagerty if he knew anyone who might be interested in applying for the job of public information officer for the authority.

“The more I thought about it, it just seemed like the perfect transition for me that would not only allow me to get a full-time job, but also to continue really being pretty engaged in the story going forward,” Hagerty said.

He got the job, a move that made local news and spurred some negative reaction on social media. The latter frustrated him.

People who didn’t know him were calling his integrity into question, insinuating bribery landed him the job he started in January 2019.

“If you go back and look at the stories I wrote, I think you’ll see that I wasn’t ever critical of CFPUA,” he said. “What did CFPUA know at the time about this stuff at which pretty much nobody knows anything is in the water? I came to CFPUA knowing full well what this organization is and who the staff are and I know that they are focused really, truly on doing what’s best for this community, and that was important to me.”

Hagerty is now the authority’s director of communications.

The journalist and the web developer

Hagerty’s reaction when he first learned contaminants were being discharged into the Cape Fear River was likely similar to that of those who read that first story about what was in their drinking water source.

“Shock, exasperation, frustration. I think the thing for many people that continues to be so frustrating is the lack of information about the health risks for all but really a tiny fraction of the thousands of PFAS compounds, particularly when what’s known about those few is generally sort of troubling. Researchers are beginning to add to that knowledge, but I think it’s still a pretty steep climb. I’m pretty sure I have some level of PFAS in my body like about 98% of the world. I assume that that’s a fact.”

Hagerty continues to comb through the latest documents, discussing their content with coworkers in a place that 10 years earlier when he was metro editor at the StarNews, he would never have guessed he’d be working.

He’s called Wilmington home since taking that position in May 2005, leaving the West Coast where he worked as managing editor and later division director at a magazine in Santa Barbara, California.

By then he’d gone from editor early in his career, which began at a little weekly in San Antonio, Texas, to his first “real” job in journalism as an editorial assistant at the San Antonio Light, to assistant city editor, then city editor at the Corpus Christi Caller-Times.

A one-line email from his executive editor at the Caller-Times shifted slightly his career path.

“All it said was, ‘What’s the delay in getting us on the Internet?’ I remember that word for word,” Hagerty said.

That question spurred him to learn web design and a number of programming languages. He eventually became a web developer, mainly for media companies, including the Miami Herald.

“I would say that I have lived, in general, what some people might call a charmed life, but some of that, I think, is being presented opportunities and then recognizing those opportunities and then acting on them,” he said. “I’ve been fortunate in my life that that has happened enough times, whether it’s an editor saying what’s the delay in getting us on the internet and just happen to meet some guy at the local university to help me learn programming languages and then ending up at the Miami Herald. That’s sort of charmed, right?”

Later in the series: What is being done?

First in a series

WILMINGTON – Raise your hand if you had heard about GenX before the summer of 2017.

Five years have passed since we first learned that the lower Cape Fear River, the drinking water source for more than 300,000 people, was being contaminated by GenX and a host of other man-made chemical compounds called PFAS, or per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances.

The news sent residents of communities in and around this area reeling. They had questions for which there were few to no answers, particularly when it came to how they could protect themselves against something they could not see, taste or smell in their water.

Perhaps even more frustrating, no one — not the government, not scientists — could tell them whether or how GenX and other PFAS discharging from a chemical manufacturing company some 80 miles upstream might affect their health.

North Carolina-based researchers have worked diligently to find some answers to these questions these past five years.

There have been tests to determine the most effective PFAS-removing water filtration systems. Blood samples collected from more than 300 willing participants in New Hanover County have been examined for the presence of GenX and other PFAS.

Studies exploring the potential health effects in living organisms dosed with some of the PFAS flowing into Cape Fear River have taken place in university laboratories from Greenville to Wilmington to the Triangle to Charlotte.

Meanwhile, public utilities in New Hanover and Brunswick counties are investing millions in upgrades, the costs of which have inevitably trickled down to their customers through nominal fee increases that, during a time when inflation is at a 40-year high, makes it no less painful on the purse.

Related: Measure would hold Chemours liable for contamination

Under a 2019 consent order between the state and Cape Fear River Watch, Chemours Co. must reduce at least 99% of PFAS it releases into the river, ground and air from its Fayetteville Works facility in Bladen County.

DuPont started using PFOA to make Teflon in the early 1950s. In 1980, the company began making vinyl ethers at its Fayetteville Works facility, emitting PFAS into the river, air and ground. Chemours Co. was founded in 2015 as a spinoff from DuPont.

The company has been mailing thousands of letters to addresses of private drinking water well owners in New Hanover, Brunswick, Pender and Columbus counties. The letters are kicking off a process, also required by the consent order, to identify which wells are eligible to be sampled.

There’s more to be done.

Emerging answers about emerging compounds

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency keeps track of the number of individual PFAS.

At last count, that number was around the order of 10,000.

“We’ve studied a fraction,” said Jamie DeWitt, a professor in East Carolina University’s Department of Pharmacology and Toxicology. “That’s why I’ve been part of a group of scientists who have been calling for regulating PFAS as a class because there’s just so many different PFAS out there that we can’t possibly study them all in order to create regulation.”

Her research of PFAS stretches back to 2005 when she began looking into the health effects of legacy PFAS, chemical compounds that have been around the longest and largely phased out in developed countries. These include perfluorooctanoic acid, or PFOA, and perfluorooctanesulfonic acid, or PFOS, which was used to make things like stain-resistant fabrics, fire-fighting foams and food packaging.

It wasn’t until 2014 she learned about GenX. Back then it was called something else.

“I didn’t know about all of the other compounds. I didn’t realize that there were thousands of individual PFAS until I worked on with some folks a paper in 2017. I didn’t realize that there were so many different subgroups of PFAS and that this class of chemicals was so huge. It’s overwhelming.”

DeWitt is among a group 20 researchers from universities across the state who received funding from the North Carolina General Assembly in 2018 to study PFAS found in the Cape Fear.

The collaboration of researchers, known as the North Carolina PFAS Testing Network, or PFAST, launched studies examining water filtration systems effective in removing PFAS, analyzing water samples from drinking water sources across the state, determining the risks of PFAS to private water wells, how PFAS travels through air emissions and gaining an understanding of how PFAS impact human health and the environment.

In one study, North Carolina State University researchers collected blood samples from more than 300 New Hanover County residents in November 2017.

GenX was not detected in those samples, but 99% contained Nafion byproduct 2, 98% showed PFO4DA, 87% had PFDoDA, and 76% contained hydro-eve, all of which were discharged at the Chemours plant.

DeWitt’s lab has been researching how understudied PFAS like Nafion by-product 2 and perfluoro-2-methoxyacetic acid, or PMOAA, affect basic responses of the immune system.

Researchers administered doses of such short-chain PFAS to experimental models — mice.

“When we see changes in this response in our model, that makes us very concerned that we may also see changes in that response to people,” DeWitt said. “What we do know is that the PFAS that we’ve studied are persistent and or mobile and or bioaccumulative and or toxic, so PFAS have these characteristics of concern in common.”

Heather Stapleton, a Duke University environmental science professor, is part of a team working with Pittsboro, a town about 17 miles southwest of Chapel Hill, since discovering a couple of years ago that concentrations of PFAS were two to four times higher in the blood of that town’s residents than the U.S. population.

“Basically, we detected them in everyone’s blood sample and they were higher than what we see in the general population and actually were pretty similar to what has been observed in the population in Wilmington,” she said.

Legacy PFAS, including PFOA and PFOS and at least one newer chemical compound, have been found in the Haw River, Pittsboro’s drinking water source.

Researchers are looking into the potential health effects of the chemicals found in the Haw River, which flows southeast where it empties into Jordan Lake, which empties into the Cape Fear River.

Working to uncovering the effects of emerging environmental contaminants to humans and animals faces a unique set of challenges.

That’s because, in many cases, researchers start out with “absolutely no information about what the chemical might do to living organisms,” DeWitt said.

“For example, when we first started asking questions about PFMOAA, one of the compounds found in the Cape Fear River, we had no idea what it might do to living organisms and so where do you start? What questions do you ask? How do you start to figure out what these compounds do?”

A way to get at those initial questions is by gaining access to toxicological data gathered by the companies that make these compounds.

One of DeWitt’s students was able to do just that after finding a National Pollutant Discharge Elimination System, or NPDES, permit application DuPont filed in West Virginia to discharge GenX into one of that state’s rivers.

Through public records, researchers were able to get toxicological data from that permit application, which included some of the doses the company had administered to experimental models.

“That allowed us to guide our study and say, ‘OK, if this dose does this in this organism then we’re going to give this dose in this organism.’ Those toxicological databases are really important in helping to guide future studies and helping to really cement understanding about what chemicals do.”

For her, the past five years have been peppered with opportunities she did not have before: access to compounds to dose experimental models, access to resources and instrumentation, and working closely with colleagues she might not have had the opportunity to work with prior to 2017.

That kind of access to those resources has equated to some pretty big strides for researchers of PFAS in North Carolina.

“I know that individuals, especially those who live in the Wilmington area, are frustrated with what seems to be the slow pace of scientific research, but I think we here in the state of North Carolina have really moved forward in a very rapid pace,” DeWitt said. “For some researchers, this could be a lifetime endeavor, but we’ve accomplished it in five years. Although it may appear to be slow, on a scientific timescale, we’ve moved really, really quickly.”

Home sweet home filtration

By early 2020, researchers within the PFAST Network released the results of a study examining which home filtration systems are most effective in removing PFAS from drinking water.

Stapleton was part of the research team that discovered the most effective systems in removing 13 different PFAS molecules found in the Cape Fear River to be reverse osmosis (RO) and dual-stage filters, which typically include one carbon and one sediment filter.

“The (reverse osmosis) and the dual stage did work well for all the different PFAS that we tested, which included short-chain and long-chain PFAS and some of the novel ether-based compounds as well,” Stapleton said.

Until that study was completed, most of the literature and information on the effectiveness of various filtration systems were either from the manufacturers of those systems or from experiments conducted in labs, Stapleton said.

“In reality, how we use some of these filters in our homes can be very different.”

For example, not everyone remembers to change the cartridge in their filter on a regular basis.

“The type of water can make a difference because water here in North Carolina often comes from surface waters, but there’s some places it comes from groundwater and water from different areas will have different types and levels of organic carbon and other molecules so the filtration can be different in different areas,” Stapleton said. “If you look at the upper Cape Fear along the Haw River, it’s really dominated by some of the short-chain PFAS molecules and there has not been a lot of research on how well those have been removed by certain water filters. And then you get down to the lower Cape Fear near the Chemours facility and it’s dominated by the ether compounds like GenX, so there’s a number of reasons we wanted to do this study.”

The filtration systems found to work best removed more than 95% of PFAS. Those systems, however, are the most expensive, running anywhere from more than $100 to well over $300.

But some filtration, Stapleton said, is better than none.

She thinks about worried residents in Pittsboro paying for expensive filtration systems to reduce their exposure to the man-made chemicals being released into their drinking water source.

“They’re bearing the burden of exposure and the costs of these water filters when it’s likely from some manufacturer or industry upstream that may or may not even know they’re contaminating the water all because our system is so lax.”

Detlef Knappe, a professor at North Carolina State University and one of the researchers who discovered GenX in the Cape Fear River, was a panelist at Cape Fear River Watch’s State of the River forum last week in downtown Wilmington.

He said that, while PFAS levels in the river have “dramatically decreased” compared to five years ago, the chemicals will probably be in the river for decades.

In his remarks during the forum, Knappe joined a chorus of researchers calling for government regulation of PFAS as a class of chemicals rather than one chemical at a time.

Managing PFAS at the source is important to breaking the cycle, he said.

“In my opinion that’s an important aspect that really needs to be part of regulations and legislation. While there’s been improvement in water quality, there’s still a lot that needs to be done.”

Later in the series: What is being done?

WILMINGTON – No matter how incessant the public frustration or how desperate the pleas from mariners to fix clogged harbors, impassable channels or eroded shorelines, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers is struggling to address worsening problems in coastal North Carolina, especially on the Outer Banks. 

Recently, a wicked nor’easter wreaked havoc in Oregon Inlet, choking it with sand and making navigation too hazardous even for heavy-duty dredges. While such events in the dynamic waterway on the north end of Hatteras Island aren’t unusual, their impacts seem harder to fix. There is concern that as the climate is changing, the hazards and costs of channel maintenance will increase, potentially becoming unsustainable in places.    

The Corps is not alone in coping with challenging maritime conditions from rising seas and intensified storms. Numerous private dredge companies as well as state and federal agencies, often the North Carolina Department of Transportation and the U.S. Coast Guard, partner with the Corps on projects.

A May 20 statement issued by the Corps’ Wilmington district blamed the storm, which pounded the coast for five days beginning May 8, for completely shoaling a portion of the federal marked channel along the Marc Basnight Bridge. With only 2 to 3 feet of water — barely enough draft for a skiff — the area was deemed impassable for most vessels.

Days before, the U.S. Coast Guard announced that it had marked a new channel in Hatteras Inlet, which is on the south end of the island, because the last marked channel had become irreversibly shoaled. Like Oregon Inlet, storms had made the previous passage so unnavigable that it was too dangerous to dredge.

The Coast Guard is also planning to remark the channel at Oregon Inlet, where local charter boat captains have found an alternate channel under the bridge to the ocean.

Such weather-created woes have become more frequent in the last decade or two, and it’s not just an issue on the 320-mile North Carolina coastline. Numerous waterways and shorelines where the Corps works, including along the Gulf of Mexico, the Mississippi River basin and the Great Lakes region, also are experiencing more extreme conditions. 

On the Outer Banks, with its jutting geography exquisitely exposed at the northern end of the Atlantic’s hurricane alley, there have been dramatic differences in sand travel in the last two decades, requiring more nourishment on its beaches and more sand removal from its waterways. The fact that conditions at times have become too poor for a dredge to tackle is an indicator of the dire shift in coastal patterns.  

Prior to a series of severe storms starting with hurricanes Floyd and Dennis in 1999, Hatteras Inlet was stable and required little more than routine maintenance dredging for the ferry route. But since 1993, the passage from the Atlantic to Pamlico Sound between Hatteras and Ocracoke Island has widened from a quarter-mile to 2.3 miles, resulting in a precipitous increase in shoaling and dangerous exposure for vessels to wind and currents.

Still, with harbors, inlets, sounds, rivers and bays intersecting with the entire shoreline, North Carolina’s coast is exceptionally complex, environmentally and geologically. At the same time, it’s critical to the state’s maritime commerce, tourism and culture. 

“So it’s a very dynamic system we have to keep our eye on,” Kathleen Riely, executive director of the nonprofit North Carolina Beach, Inlet and Waterway Association, or NCBIWA, said in a recent interview. “And dredging is a key part of that maintenance. It’s absolutely necessary.”

Nationwide problem

Riely said that shoaling and erosion are becoming more problematic not just along North Carolina’s coast, but also nationwide. As a result, demand for dredges everywhere has increased. 

“I think with the dredges getting older that the Corps use, and having to go into repair shops is certainly an issue,” Riely said. “But there are a lot of private companies out there.”

Even in federal channels that the Corps is charged with maintaining, the agency is mandated by law to contract with private dredge companies when possible. The Corps can also work in nonfederal channels under formalized agreements. For instance, the agency is paid by Dare County and state funds under a memorandum of agreement to do work in Hatteras Inlet.

Numerous dredging projects nationwide were recently funded by the $1 trillion infrastructure legislation passed last year, which provided $17 billion to the Corps for work in harbors, ports and inland waterways, said Rep. Peter DeFazio, D-Ore., chair of the House Committee on Transportation and Infrastructure during a congressional hearing in February.

“As we authorize new projects, the other side of that coin, as always, is ensuring that the Corps has the funding necessary to complete the work,” DeFazio said, according to minutes. “We all know of the $100 billion backlog of projects due to underfunding of the Corps for decades.”

Even with the flood of newly funded projects throughout the country, there will still be enough interest from the private sector in North Carolina projects, according to an email from the Corps’ Wilmington district in response to an inquiry from Coastal Review.

But beyond what the private dredges can do, the Corps’ small and aging dredge fleet that works in the district is stretched thin. 

“As you are aware, our fleet works on coastal projects from Maine to Texas, and at times, demand does exceed the capacity of our shallow-draft fleet,” Wilmington District Corps spokesman Dave Connolly wrote in the email.

“The coastal environment has been and continues to be dynamic,” he said. “Subject to appropriations and funding, the Corps will continue to use industry (private company) and government dredge resources to maximize maintenance of waterways, embracing beneficial use of material when practical.”

The Wilmington District has made major investments in the shallow-draft fleet over the past decade, he added, including replacement of the Dredge Fry with the Dredge Murden in 2012, and  completing a major shipyard overhaul for the Dredge Merritt in 2018. Currently the Dredge Currituck is in the shipyard undergoing major restoration that will be completed in 2023.

The 78-year-old Merritt, a side-cast dredge, mostly works in North Carolina, but it occasionally lumbers over to the Charleston, Norfolk and Philadelphia districts. The split-hull, shallow-draft, or hopper, Dredge Currituck, a comparatively youthful 48 years old, toils throughout the Atlantic and Gulf regions. And the hopper Murden, a young workhorse at age 10, also covers the Atlantic and Gulf.

“Within the District the shallow draft fleet is used on about 10 federal waterways routinely, from Lockwood Folly Inlet to Oregon Inlet,” the email said. “Nationally, the fleet is used on approximately 50 projects, although all are not dredged every year.” 

With dredging restricted during the spring and summer months along the North Carolina coast when protected sea turtles breed, it can be complicated scheduling dredging windows to match needs.

As the federal government’s primary agency in charge of civil works project with roots going back to George Washington, much of the maritime-related funding over the years has been focused on large harbors and ports, leaving shallow-draft projects competing for small pools of money. For that reason, hopper dredges that are typically used to maintain harbors are an important focus for Corps’ dredging operations. Use of hoppers, large vessels that can hold a lot of dredged material in their holds to be dumped offshore, has been subject to various constraints, with mixed results, as shown in a U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO) report from 2014.

“The restrictions, however, help ensure the Corps has the ability to use these dredges to respond to urgent or emergency dredging needs when industry dredges are unavailable,” the report said. “It is not clear to what extent restrictions have affected competition in the dredging industry.” 

Although private industry hopper dredges are allowed to respond to urgent dredging needs, the report said, it added that it did not track how often that was done. 

According to federal law, the Corps is directed to contract with private dredge companies whenever possible rather than using Corps dredges. For that reason, the Corps does not plan to build or purchase new shallow-draft dredges, said Corps spokesman Connolly. 

A new dredge, he said, would cost roughly $25 to $30 million to build, although inflation could make any estimate a moving target.

“With the recent investment in the Dredge Merritt and Dredge Currituck, we are expecting several more years of useful service, and in consultation with our higher HQ (headquarters), will evaluate and analyze long-term options for replacement or future rehabilitation of these assets.”

An Aug. 2020 issue brief published by the nonprofit National Taxpayers Union Foundation found that the U.S. is lagging behind Europe and China in modernizing its equipment, resulting more expense and labor to remove less material.

“The longer dredging is not updated or improved with technology, the greater costs will be over time,” the paper said. “Despite the general trend of higher annual spending on dredging, by some measurements efficiency and productivity have lagged expenditures.”

The ongoing supply chain problems related to international shipping has brought more awareness to the value of waterways in commerce, but small harbors are still under appreciated for their value to local communities for tourism, fishing and recreation.

“There remains relatively little political action around the issue of dredging as it doesn’t occupy the top of Congress’s list of priorities,” the Taxpayers Union report said. “But those immediately impacted by the continued accumulation of sediment within American waterways have long been petitioning their representatives as well as the Army Corps of Engineers for relief.”

Miss Katie

Meanwhile, Dare County’s new hopper dredge, the Miss Katie, is expected to be delivered to Oregon Inlet in July and operating by August, said Barton Grover, administrator for Dare County Waterways Commission. He added that the dredge is just like the Murden, except it also has side-cast capabilities.

Construction of the 156-foot dredge, a public-private partnership, was paid for by a state allocation of $15 million from the Shallow Draft Navigation Channel Dredging and Aquatic Weed Fund. The dredge’s work schedule, which has yet to be determined, will be managed by the Oregon Inlet Task Force.

Riely, with NCBIWA, said that it is an interesting and creative idea that could make counties less dependent on the Corps. But she said there still are questions: How much will it cost to maintain? Where are the funds going to continue to come from? Where will it be housed when it’s not operating?

“So there’s some issues with it,” Riely said. “But I think if it can work out, having a dredge in North Carolina just for our coasts, let’s say there’s one southern going halfway or whatever, the other north coming down, I think that would be a good thing.”

Next in the series: Worsening shoaling and erosion, and other effects of climate change on coastal conditions, have been creating more difficult challenges for both dredges and ferries on the Outer Banks. That is especially a concern on Ocracoke Island, accessible only by boat or airplane, where hundreds of year-round residents and millions of annual tourists depend on the ferries for their transportation to and from the island. 

Second in a series. Read part 1.

Students in Carteret Community College’s Aquaculture Technology program accumulate hands-on experiences in the wide-ranging industry that is aquaculture. The program’s lab space, which includes countless tanks and an oyster lease, sits on the Bogue Sound in Morehead City. 

The program teaches students how to be part of an industry that is constantly changing. David Cerino is the program chair. Day-to-day, climate change doesn’t factor into their work, he said. But zooming out, it impacts their future.

“You have to look on a larger scale, I think, to see it,” Cerino said.

For example, research shows that ocean acidification may impact shellfish development. Lower pH levels in the ocean could hinder shell growth for larval clams and oysters in some parts of the world. It’s not yet a big problem for East Coast hatcheries, but he believes that someday it could be.

Changing water temperatures are another example, Cerino said. Some of the clams they work with are at the northern edge of their range in North Carolina. Warmer temperatures could eventually change that.

“It certainly can go into some of the planning of what are the next species you should be looking at,” Cerino said. “If we can expect that in the future the water’s going to be warmer, there may be some more southern species that we can grow effectively here in North Carolina.”

Growing the industry

In North Carolina, an important aspect of aquaculture is shellfish farming. In 2018, the state launched a state shellfish plan, modeled after NOAA’s National Shellfish Initiative.

The National Shellfish Initiative aims to grow the shellfish aquaculture industry through restoration activities and sustainable commercial development. North Carolina’s participation specifically prioritizes job creation, sustainable management, water quality and shellfish health. This move acknowledges that shellfish farming is an important part of culture and identity for the region.

It also shows that moving forward, the state’s environmental health and economy are intrinsically linked. Research shows that for every $1 invested in oyster restoration, the state receives benefits equivalent to $4.05. In 2017, shellfish aquaculture in North Carolina had a farmgate value of $2.6 million.

North Carolina wants to be the “Napa Valley of Oysters.” Consistent and intentional action will be necessary to grow an industry like marine aquaculture in a way that is both economically sustainable and climate resilient. 

Mass mortality

Next door to Carteret Community College is the University of North Carolina Institute of Marine Sciences. Doctoral candidate Mark Ciesielski’s research project is looking to unveil the causes behind oyster mass mortality events.

Oyster mortality events — when large amounts of oysters die off — present a great risk to the shellfish industry. There has been an increase in the frequency of these events over the last decade. Recent research has highlighted the problem up and down the coast. In North Carolina, the trend is in anecdotal occurrences. The state’s Oyster Blueprint keeps close documentation on the state of the oyster over time. 

“If there’s that significant of an economic loss, it’s not going to inspire a lot of confidence in the industry,” Ciesielski said.

These events have often been attributed to a single pathogen, but the truth is probably a little more complicated than that, says Ciesielski. Evidence suggests there are likely many contributing factors derived from the effects of climate change that might favor a myriad of pathogens working in concert. Ciesielski hopes to identify these drivers.

Four teams of scientists in North Carolina and Virginia are working with local shellfishermen to regularly monitor oysters across multiple sites throughout the coming year, starting in March of 2022. They’ll be monitoring several environmental factors such as salinity, dissolved oxygen and temperature, and using these field observations in conjunction with advanced molecular workflows and histological data. The idea is to address a complex issue holistically.

“We’re not looking at just one thing, we want to hit it from all angles, and just be as smart about it as possible,” Ciesielski said.

The future stability of aquaculture in North Carolina depends on research like this.

For Rebekah Williams of Bekah’s Bay Oysters in Morehead City, being an oyster farmer fits like a glove. The nights when she’s bartending at Southern Salt tend to be the busiest, said one of her coworkers. People come for her, and they come for her oysters on the half shell. Despite the ubiquitous threats to the industry, this is where she belongs.

“I love the water. And I love it here,” Williams said. “People are like, ‘are you ever going to leave?’ Probably not…my roots are definitely going to be here.”

If this project can help unveil the triggers behind oyster mortality, it can increase the environmental and economic resiliency of the oyster industry for the future.

“It has a lot of importance in terms of the local community — people are very interested in making sure that they can make a living off of this,” Ciesielski said.  “And so we’re trying to support them as much as possible, and just give them answers to questions, and what the limitations are. That’s an important thing if we’re going to continue to grow moving forward.”

First in a two-part series.

The sun warms the docks in Morehead City as Rebekah Williams stands on the back deck of Southern Salt, a restaurant on Morehead City’s waterfront that serves fresh seafood.

Before her on a table is a heap of oysters from her farm, Bekah’s Bay Oysters, sorted into two piles. The pile of bigger oysters will go inside and be served to guests that evening on the half shell. The others will go back into a floating oyster bag at her lease in a tidal bay near Cape Lookout.

Oyster farming is one of the United States’ most prominent forms of marine aquaculture, and Williams is one of many shellfish farmers in North Carolina. Aquaculture is an expansive industry that encompasses a lot of things — farming fish and shellfish for food is prominent among them. 

New research out of the University of British Columbia in Canada has indicated that while the marine aquaculture industry has huge potential for feeding a growing world population, a significant amount of that potential will be curbed due to climate change if we stay on our current carbon emissions pathway. 

An economically and culturally important industry in North Carolina, aquaculture has the potential to help us adapt to a changing world. But as things like warmer ocean temperatures, storms and landscape changes become more pressing factors, the industry will have to adapt as well.

Room to grow

Previous research indicates that marine aquaculture has tremendous potential when it comes to feeding the growing world population, which is expected to hit 10.9 billion by the end of the century. But whether that potential ever comes into being is another thing altogether.

Many capture fisheries around the world are either at their maximum yield or are close to overextending their capacities. This means there isn’t much room for that industry to grow in order to feed a higher world population.

Dr. Muhammed Oyinlola, lead author of the study published in Global Change Biology, said that while that food pathway is close to maxed out, the marine aquaculture industry is expanding.

“My recent research looked into marine aquaculture, because marine aquaculture production has been increasing over time,” Oyinlola said. “And most people are seeing it as the panacea for (the) decline of fisheries, particularly from the marine environment — how we’re going to increase food production.”

Oyinlola used modeling techniques to project into the future of marine aquaculture. He modeled two main pathways to see how the industry could be impacted by a suite of environmental and socioeconomic factors.

His results indicated that by the end of this century, climate change will be the driving factor influencing the production potential of the industry.

Under the more pressing of the two scenarios, Oyinlola found that global marine aquaculture production could decrease by up to 16% by the year 2090. This projected decrease was mostly driven by factors like warming ocean temperatures and changes in what areas are suitable for aquaculture.

What he found is that the future of the industry, globally, has vastly different possible trajectories. This study highlights the need for strong carbon emission mitigation measures in order to ensure a climate-resilient and economically sustainable future for marine aquaculture.

Climate extremes

The growing global aquaculture industry includes Williams, who jump-started a career in oyster farming about seven years ago. After a bit of trial and error, she started her own business and never looked back. Now, you can find Bekah’s Bay Oysters on the Southern Salt menu as well as with several regional distributors. It’s also not uncommon to see Williams driving around Morehead City in her truck, making dock to door deliveries herself.

Climate change is not part of Williams’ day-to-day train of thought. Between bar shifts at Southern Salt, tending to her oysters on her lease, and renovating homes for Airbnb on the side, Williams has a full schedule. But that’s not to say climate extremes haven’t affected her.

A few years into her business, Williams, like so many others in North Carolina, had to quickly pivot when Hurricane Florence made landfall in 2018.

“You don’t get a big heads-up on a storm,” Williams said. When she realized Florence was going to impact her oysters, she had to act fast.

She went out to her lease and gathered all of the baby oysters, leaving the more mature ones in place. She used a refrigerated trailer to bring them into the restaurant. It was a risk to bring them in, because reintroducing them to the water later on could cause them to die. 

“You’re taking a chance on bringing them in,” Williams said. But then, she didn’t have a lot of other options. “So we were like, ‘well, we’ll try it.’”

Many of the mature oysters she left at her lease did not survive the storm. But her baby oysters did.

“It’s a lot of work. You’re out there in the sun, no power … and you’re doing all this work to save the oysters, and luckily we did and we didn’t have any huge issues.” 

Others weren’t so lucky. In 2018, Hurricane Florence and Tropical Storm Michael caused nearly $10 million in damage to North Carolina’s shellfish industry.

The storm caused damage to gear, and leases were hit with an onslaught of freshwater, which decreased both salinity and dissolved oxygen. For many oyster farmers, it was a huge loss.

Research has shown that, while hurricanes are not new, climate change results in a heightened risk for more intense and more frequent storms. For Williams and many other small business farmers, these storms threaten catastrophic losses. They are a direct threat to the industry’s stability and security.

“It’s tough if you don’t have the resources,” Williams said. “But luckily, having the restaurant and coolers and refrigerators and stuff, we were able to try it and do it. And it did work. So, at least we know now.”

Next in the series: Seeding a future for North Carolina’s shellfish aquaculture industry

This is the second in a special reporting series on federal infrastructure spending and North Carolina’s navigation needs.

Lacking high-volume marine traffic or large ports, North Carolina’s northeast coast typically qualifies for far less federal funding to help maintain navigational channels and inlets than do the state’s southern coastal communities.

But mariners in Dare and Hyde counties will be getting their fair share of benefits from the $1.2 trillion Bipartisan Infrastructure Law that Congress passed in November, with nearly $60 million of it going to the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers for eastern North Carolina waterways, according to Sen. Thom Tillis, R-N.C. 

That’s on top of an additional $22.81 billion provided to the Corps in the 2022 Disaster Relief Supplemental Appropriations Act.

It’s also a nice break for the Corps, which has been advocating for funds to address smaller projects that may not rank high nationally, but are important to less populated regions and communities.

“We screamed and hollered up the line for funding, and that’s the reason we got funded,” Bob Keistler, chief of the Corps’ Wilmington District Civil Works Programs and Project Management Branch, said in a telephone interview, referring to the supplemental funds allotted in the infrastructure bill. “We’re getting a chance to come back and do some spring cleaning here on things that we haven’t been able to do in a while.” 

Northeastern North Carolina Projects

Shallowbag Bay

Funding of $6.4 million is set to go to dredge Manteo Shallowbag Bay, the inner channels at Oregon Inlet from the Basnight Bridge to Wanchese Harbor, to Old House Channel, out to the Pamlico Sound.

“We have about, I think, five or six spots that we plan to dredge where the shoaling is an issue,” Brennan Dooley, with the Corps, said in the same telephone interview, adding that the scope of the work is not finalized. 

Oregon Inlet’s inner channels are federally authorized, but the dredge work will be put out for bid to private contractors.

Although the amount of work for industry dredges has created more competition for Corps contracts, Dooley said preparation work is done before the bid is posted so that they can move quickly when a contract is signed. 

“Historically, we’ve been able to get someone in there,” Dooley said.

The main navigational channel that goes under the bridge to the ocean bar is a separate project that is maintained regularly by Corps dredges.

The Corps operates a handful of government dredges year-round to maintain waterways along portions of the Gulf and East coasts and the Great Lakes.

Work in the inner channels has not been funded for a while, said Barton Grover, Dare County Grants and Waterways administrator.

“Typically, they’re done every five to 10 years,” he said in an interview. “I’m not sure when they were last dredged.”

As Keister explained, the available Corps dredge is not always appropriate for the type of work needed, which for the Manteo channels would be a pipeline dredge. 

“We try to contract the majority of our work out,” he said. “If there’s a nonfederal contract dredge availability, we like to put it out for bid. That’s kind of our mantra.” 

The majority of the dredge material for the Manteo channels, Dooley said, will be deposited on a nearby existing disposal area known as “Island H.” Also known as “spoil islands” or “bird islands,” to describe where sand from past dredging projects has built up at certain spots in the waterway, areas such as “Island H” are running out of room for more sand.

Dooley said that with many Corps projects, the nonfederal sponsor has the responsibility for providing easements and right-of-way for disposal sites, which must be done before a project can move forward. “Island H,” he said, typically has been maintained and managed by Dare County and the state.

The Corps is coordinating with the county, which is seeking a permit to increase capacity. Dooley said that he expects no problem with obtaining the permits in time to do the dredge work. 

Dooley added that the Corps tries to deposit compatible sand at other areas where it can create habitat.

“When we can, we always like to do beneficial use of dredge material,” he said. “South of Wanchese, the material is pretty good sand for the most part. So where we can, we’re going to put that sand on adjacent bird islands.”

Silver Lake Harbor/Stumpy Point Bay

Ocracoke’s Silver Lake Harbor project, $4.37 million, and Dare County’s Stumpy Point Bay, $2.58 million, were funded as separate projects, but will be one contract.

Dooley said it is more efficient to do them in a single contract because they’re close together.

“Either one of those projects alone, it’s not a lot work,” he said. “So combining the work together makes it more appetizing for a contractor … We can share the cost between the projects to get the dredge there and then do work at both projects.”

There is an area in the Hatteras-Ocracoke ferry channel coming into Ocracoke where there is shoaling north of Bigfoot Island, an old bird island. That is the most important shoal the Corps is dealing with at the Silver Lake Harbor project.

At Stumpy Point Bay, which is one end of the emergency ferry channel between Rodanthe and the Dare County mainland at Stumpy Point, dredging needs to be done at the approach to the channel into Stumpy Point basin.

The state Ferry Division has also requested that while the Corps’ contractor is in Stumpy Point, to have it dredge an approach to the state ferry dock that is outside the authorized federal channel.

The additional work would be paid for by the state Department of Transportation, which oversees the division, under an updated agreement between the state and the Corps.

Avon Harbor

Federal funding of $1.60 million will go to dredge Avon Harbor. For years, the community has been requesting help with shoaling in the harbor, which is not a federal waterway, but it has been hampered by costs.

Even with the infrastructure funds, the project can’t move forward until there is a suitable disposal site for the dredge material.

A disposal area at the entrance to the harbor is currently at capacity, Dooley said.

As the nonfederal sponsor, Dare County has to provide the disposal area, he said. The Corps is working with Dare on finding options, potentially an upland site the material can be pumped to, or even exploring whether the material could be used on public land in Cape Hatteras National Seashore. 

The goal is to award the contracts before the end of the fiscal year, Keister said. But if the Avon issue is not resolved by then, there is still wiggle room, but he does not expect to lose the funds.   

“We don’t want to rush to failure because of a fiscal year,” Keistler said. “We have a little more leeway with (projects) like Avon Harbor that have some additional hurdles to cross that we’re not driven by the Sept. 30 date.”

Rollinson Channel

Federal funding of $1.43 million will go to dredge Rollinson Channel, which has been the only authorized federal channel in Hatteras Inlet for a long time, based mostly on it being the original channel for Hatteras-Ocracoke vehicular ferry, the state’s busiest ferry route.

Historically, charter and commercial fishing fleets had also depended on the route from Hatteras village to the end of the Hatteras spit, where they could turn toward Ocracoke or head out to the ocean.

But dramatic increases in shoaling in the channel, accompanied by rapid erosion of the spit after hurricanes Irene in 2011 and Sandy in 2012 eventually led to portions of the channel becoming impassable, and impossible to dredge. In 2014, the ferry division made a longer U-shaped channel the official ferry channel to avoid the dangerous shoaling.

Since then, additional shoaling in other inlet channels have hindered safe passage for vessels, but complicated agreements and permits were necessary to secure Corps dredging

Soon the Rollinson Channel will be realigned officially, which will expand the federally authorized area in the inlet where the Corps can dredge. Most significantly,  the South Ferry Channel and the Sloop Channel, used mostly by commercial vessels and ferries, respectively, will be allowed to be maintained by the Corps, making it easier for the government dredges to do the work when they’re already working in Rollinson.

Comparing unchecked shoaling to an overgrown lawn, Keister said that more regular dredging will also make it a lot easier to dredge. 

Once the realignment is finalized, he said, “that will allow us to be a little more creative and flexible where we can dredge and open it up.”       

First in the series: Federal dollars now available for North Carolina waterways

This is the first in a special reporting series on federal infrastructure spending and North Carolina’s navigation needs.

Millions in supplemental funds from the federal infrastructure bill signed into law last November will be spent unclogging shoaled hot spots in a handful of North Carolina’s shallow-draft inlets, giving a reprieve to the local beach towns and counties that, along with the state, have been footing much of the bill for dredging projects.

The additional funding is from the $1.2 trillion Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act, a bipartisan bill that President Joe Biden signed into law Nov. 21, 2021. The 2022 Disaster Relief Supplemental Appropriations Act pumped an extra $22.81 billion to the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers’ coffers.

A portion of the more than $84 million in additional funding funneled to the Corps’ Wilmington District will go toward cleaning out shoaled areas of shallow-draft inlets primarily from Carteret County south.

“What is cool about this infrastructure bill is we’ve got some projects that the federal government has not funded, has not been able to fund … for many years,” said Bob Keistler, chief of the district’s Civil Works Programs & Project Management Branch. “All those shallow-draft inlets have been federal projects for decades and decades and since about 2005 have not been funded very consistent. Many of these projects are just touching areas that we haven’t been able to touch because of funding availability.”

Shallow-draft navigation channels are defined as inlets no deeper than 16 feet, a river entrance to the Atlantic Intracoastal Waterway or other interior coastal waterways. There are more than 10 shallow-draft inlet navigation channels along the state’s coast.

Other projects tapped in the central to southern part of the state’s coast include dredging portions of the Intracoastal Waterway and clearing out the Wilmington Harbor anchorage basin at the state port.

Corps officials are in the process of hashing out the finer details of the projects — prioritizing which channels get dredged first, when they may be dredged and which ones may get pumped out more than once.

“We haven’t finalized the scopes and we also haven’t finalized the schedule,” Keistler said in a late February telephone interview.

And even then, he said, plans can change thanks, in large part, to Mother Nature. If a channel that is crucial to say, a ferry route or the U.S. Coast Guard for purposes of search and rescue, shoals up to the point it creates a navigational hazard, that channel could get bumped up the schedule.

“Every project is not equal,” Keistler said. “We can give you a schedule today and next week something changes and it may adjust. We try hard not to jump around too much.”

There are five North Carolina waterway projects, including Rollinson Channel in Dare County, that will be dredged by one of the Corps’ shallow-draft dredges.

The Corps owns three such dredges for operations from Maine to Texas. One of the dredges is undergoing maintenance in a Memphis, Tennessee, shipyard. It is unclear when that dredge will be back in the small fleet.

Wilmington District has a regional plan with a handful of other districts in the Corps’ South Atlantic Division to help streamline shallow-draft projects and eliminate scheduling conflicts.

“We try to be efficient so while we’re in the neighborhood we try to do projects that are close to each other so we’re not wasting money jumping around,” Keistler said.

Central to southern North Carolina coast projects

Bulkhead Channel

Bulkhead Channel is the federal channel that stretches between Morehead City Harbor to Beaufort Harbor in Carteret County.

A little more than $500,000 has been allocated to dredging the channel, something that will “more than likely” be a one-time event, Keistler said.

Kyle Garner, Beaufort’s planning and inspections director, said in an email that the town tries at least twice yearly to schedule dredging the channel to maintain cost and keep the channel at a consistent depth.

“This channel has been used for over three centuries for mariners and is critical to the economy of the Town of Beaufort,” he said. “Our waterfront docks handle hundreds of vessels each year and without an open channel would be devastating. Also, this is used daily by commercial traffic either heading out for a catch or bringing one in, carrying a long-standing tradition. So, yes, keeping the channel open is important financially and culturally to our community.”

The channel was last dredged in the fall, a project that cost $236,570, according to Garner. The town footed nearly $55,000 of the bill, with the state contributing a little more than $109,000 and the Corps $72,400 from funds remaining from previous dredging, he said.

“The Channel currently is at a depth of 13 feet on average and is permitted to be at a depth of 17 feet, which is what its depth was back in the fall of 2021,” Garner said in the email. “So yes, it has filled in 4 feet (in) a period of a few months and if not dredged will continue at this rate and limit traffic for both commercial (and) pleasure boats.”

Keistler said the channel will likely be dredged sometime this spring.

Bogue Inlet

Funds totaling $1.04 million will go to the dredging of Bogue Inlet.

“That’ll be three or four dredging cycles,” Keistler said. “When I say dredging cycles, it’s similar to cutting grass. You cut your grass today and then three weeks later or two weeks later you may need to cut it again.”

According to information from the Carteret County Shore Protection Office, the Bogue Inlet connecting channel, which links the inlet to the Intracoastal Waterway near Cedar Point’s shore, was dredged last fall.

New River Inlet

The New River Inlet project will entail dredging portions of the federal channel between the mouth of the inlet to Jacksonville in Onslow County.

A total of $3 million has been set aside for this project.

“We were funded to address speed bumps in what we call the channels of Jacksonville,” Keistler said.

Those “speed bumps” make navigation challenging for boaters, including a commercial fleet of fishing vessels based in Sneads Ferry.

This project has been tied into a pipeline contract for work in the Intracoastal Waterway.

Dredged material from this project will more than likely be placed on North Topsail Beach’s shoreline on Topsail Island.

“The scale of material that goes on the beach from this waterway contract would be a tenth of what they need for coastal storm protection,” Keistler said. “It’s a good place to put it, but as far as providing protection to the structures, that’s not what it’s designed to do. We’re dredging because of navigation and that’s a quality to place to put the sand.”

The Corps has permitted locations on which it may place the dredged material – roughly 1,500 feet from the inlet.

“And we start pumping sand away from the inlet until we either run out of sand or money,” Keistler said.

New Topsail Inlet

A little more than $500,000 has been budgeted for dredging in New Topsail Inlet at the south end of Topsail Island.

Those funds may allow for the inlet to be dredged twice, Keistler said.

Topsail Beach Mayor Steve Smith and chairman of the Topsail Island Shoreline Protection Commission said that, right now, the inlet — about 16 feet deep and 400 feet wide — is “in pretty good shape.”

“However, there are some connecting places like Topsail Creek that possibly could use some dredging this year,” he said. “That helps not only Topsail, but it also helps all the boaters docked in Hampstead and that area of North Carolina. We look at this as a one-time event that is going to allow us to take a look at the connecting channels and make sure they stay navigable year-round.”

Carolina Beach Inlet

The $1.04 million in federal funding allocated for the dredging of Carolina Beach Inlet should get that inlet “into really, really good shape,” before tourism season kicks off Memorial Day weekend and as long as the inlet is dredged in April, said New Hanover County Shore Protection Coordinator Layton Bedsole.

“We’re three months behind the eight ball now and so it’s going to be a significant hit on that $1,040,000 to restore that depth and width now,” he said.

The county’s target is to dredge the channel every eight to 10 weeks a year.

The inlet was dredged in December, which means that if it is dredged in April, nearly double the amount of time will have passed since it was last cleared of shoaling.

“The outer reach of Carolina Beach Inlet is the most challenging reach,” Bedsole said. “We still have to clean up the inside, but nothing to the degree of the outside shoals.”

The annual budget for maintenance dredging of the inlet is $350,000 from the county and $700,000 from the state’s Shallow Draft Navigation Channel Dredging and Aquatic Weed Fund.

Each year, the county budgets $350,000 for maintenance dredging of the inlet. That money is paired with another $700,000 from the state’s Shallow Draft Navigation Channel Dredging and Aquatic Weed Fund for an annual budget of $1.05 million.

Having that funding year to year allows the county to get on the Corps’ dredging schedule as soon as possible, which can be challenging.

“The Corps’ limited dredge fleet, and the Currituck (the Corps’ hopper dredge) being in the shipyard for the last year or so, prioritized callings from the Ferry Division, Department of Defense, Coast Guard up and down the East Coast, all play into us chasing the Corps’ schedule for the shallow draft inlet fleet. We’re always chasing the schedule,” Bedsole said, adding, “The Corps works really hard to provide shallow-draft inlet access in New Hanover County.”

Other projects

Funding from the infrastructure bill also includes about $4.5 million for dredging portions of the Intracoastal and conducting inspections and evaluations on upland dredge material disposal sites. The Corps is to identify “speed bumps” in the waterway that impede navigation.

“Usually they’re in the same locations year after year,” Keistler said. “We identify those, prioritize those, and then put them out for contract.”

Funding also includes the following:

• $250,000 to conduct jetty inspections and monitoring at Masonboro Inlet.
• $30,000 for environmental monitoring at Morehead City Harbor.
• $10.25 million to dredge the Wilmington Harbor anchorage basin at the state port and update the harbor’s dredge material management plan. Material dredged from the harbor is not beach compatible and therefore must be placed in a Corps’ maintained upland disposal area.

Money from the 2022 Disaster Relief Supplemental Appropriations Act, which includes additional funding for areas that have suffered loss due to hurricanes and other natural disasters, has been earmarked for the Wrightsville Beach Coastal Storm Risk Management project.

More than $11.5 million is being allocated to renourish the beach there to compensate for damage caused during Hurricane Florence in 2018. 

“This (Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act) is a three-year bill so this is FY22 money we’ve got and we’ve asked for potential projects for FY23 and FY24,” Keistler said.

Next in the series: Shoaling in Outer Banks waterways

This is part of a series of special reports by Catherine Kozak, who attended the COP26 climate conference held in November.

WANCHESE — At the start of year two of the United Nations’ Decade of the Ocean, the Coastal Studies Institute on the Outer Banks has merged into the emerging blue economy as part of a global scientific collaborative to harness the power of waves, currents and tides.

The Coastal Studies Institute, an outpost of the North Carolina university system renowned for its innovative coastal science, is partnered with three other East Coast academic institutions in the new Atlantic Marine Energy Center, or AMEC, one of only four National Marine Renewable Energy Centers in the country.

Although the new center is still being organized, it was officially announced in November. That’s about the same time that Scotland was hosting the 26th session of the Conference of the Parties, better known as the U.N. climate conference or COP26, which included the blue economy as a critical approach towards mitigating climate change impacts.

With its mission to support and expand sustainable renewable ocean energy, AMEC will focus on research and development.

“Us being part of that group, I think, really identifies us as a leader in the U.S. with advancing marine energy,” George Bonner, director of the North Carolina Renewable Ocean Energy Program at the Coastal Studies Institute, said in a recent interview.

Led by the University of New Hampshire, the partnership was awarded $9.7 million over four years from the U.S. Department of Energy. The institute, which is administered by East Carolina University, is also partnering with Stony Brook University in New York and Lehigh University in Pennsylvania.

“Really it’s about increasing collaboration on the East Coast, and the focus of the Atlantic Marine Center is on the blue economy,” Bonner said.

Blue economy is a term that broadly describes the sustainable use of marine resources to promote economic growth and social equity while reducing environmental harm.

In opening a presentation during COP26 about funding the blue economy, Peter Thomson, the U.N. secretary general’s special envoy for the ocean, characterized marine energy and other sustainable uses of ocean resources as “part of the huge revolution in technology” on a scale comparable to moving from the Stone Age to the Iron Age.

“It’s just logic, folks,” said Thomson. “Seventy percent of the planet is covered by the ocean. Ninety-five percent of the biosphere of this planet is in the ocean.”

Thomson said it will take “trillions” to fund the blue economy, but he sees it as essential to transformation of consumption and production.

‘We’re at the cusp of that time when we move from linear exploitation of finite planetary resources into an age where everything is circular, where we recycle and understand that we have to live within harmony with nature,” he said.

In December 2017, the United Nations declared 2021-2030 “The Ocean Decade,” to ensure that ocean science can underpin the U.N’s climate goals and policies.

“The Ocean Decade provides a ‘once-in-a-lifetime’ opportunity to create a new foundation across the science-policy interface to strengthen the management of the ocean and coasts for the benefit of humanity and to mitigate the impacts of climate change,” the U.N. said in a statement.

With its location alongside the Croatan Sound, a part of the Albemarle-Pamlico estuary, the second-largest estuarine system in the nation behind the Chesapeake Bay, and within miles from the Atlantic Ocean and the Gulf Stream, the Coastal Studies Institute is poised to be a valuable partner to advancing the blue economy. 

Bonner said that he envisions the Outer Banks institutes’ focus with AMEC will include aquaculture, seawater desalination and increasing resiliency for coastal communities.

“Our main part of this new consortium is going to be to advance our testing capability that’s at Jennette’s Pier,” he said, referring to the state-owned ocean pier in Nags Head where the institute conducts some of its renewable energy studies. “We’re going to be installing a microgrid, which will allow us to connect scale devices to a microgrid so we can validate the energy production that they’re producing.”

An important gain for the institute from the new partnership will be obtaining accreditation for its marine energy program with the assistance of an AMEC partner, the European Marine Energy Centre, or EMEC, in Orkney, Scotland.

According to the European Marine Energy Centre’s website, the center, established in 2003, is the world’s first and leading facility for demonstrating and testing technologies that generate electricity from marine energy. It has also developed international standards for marine energy and works to promote a global marine renewables industry.

Once the Coastal Studies Institute and the University of New Hampshire’s programs are accredited, Bonner said, it will help innovators and developers, especially since there are still only a few accredited so far.

“If you’re testing in an accredited program, then that helps with advancing your technology and getting investment opportunities as well,” he said. 

In April, the Waves to Water competition, sponsored by the Department of Energy and the National Renewable Energy Lab, is set to be hosted by the Coastal Studies Institute and Jennette’s Pier. The contest requires contestants to build wave-powered desalination systems that could be deployed during disasters.

Each of the four university AMEC partners have well-established marine energy programs, Martin Wosnik, associate professor of mechanical engineering and AMEC director, told Coastal Review.

“We’re going through establishing the center right now, developing the central structure, developing partnerships with industry and engaging with other marine energy efforts around the country,” he said.

Next, test sites for tidal energy conversion technologies and wave energy conversion technologies are to be established, in Portsmouth, New Hampshire, and off Jennette’s Pier on the Outer Banks, respectively. 

“Those facilities are key to really get technologies in the water in the correct environment at a fairly moderate cost,” Wosnik said.

For practical reasons, the locations in the ocean will allow testing at an intermediate scale, rather than full scale.

“You want to go in with something that has other meaningful scales, so you understand how it operates,” he said. “And then you can take development from there.”

The Atlantic center is also partnering with three national marine energy laboratories in the U.S., as well as the European center. While the European Marine Energy Centre is best known for its wave energy and tidal energy test sites, Wosnik said, the facility is now also getting more involved in the emerging hydrogen economy — hydrogen energy storage, fuel cell technologies — an example of how it’s looking at the bigger energy picture.

Powering the blue economy can be utility-scale marine energy, such as huge turbines deployed in arrays that produce energy that is fed to the grid, Wosnik said. But for now, it will be mostly reflected in smaller-scaled projects that provide energy to isolated communities or for emergency purposes.

“However, what we’re doing with EMEC, and at our test site, is we’re really researching all aspects of these technologies,” Wosnik said. “The center is not engaged in ‘OK, let’s find one thing that works and that’s it.’ There’s many things, many aspects of what type of technology, what type of rotors and what kind of blades work best.”

Then there are issues with corrosion, bio-fouling, operational maintenance, testing materials for resilience to the kind of loading that the ocean inflicts. What oils and lubricants are effective but not polluting?

“It’s a very turbulent environment,” he said. “There are many, many aspects that still need to be sorted out.”

But Wosnik said it’s worth remembering that wind energy, which is now cheaper than fossil fuels, was hardly on anyone’s radar 20 or 30 years ago.

The marine energy industry in the U.S. has been held back by the lack of test sites that allow inexpensive trials and provide in-water experience, he said. And that’s not including the costs for analytical and computer modeling and laboratory analysis and other work that’s required before the onsite testing.

“There’s a lot of work that leads up to maturing technologies to be ready to be tested in open water,” Wosnik said.

With the Department of Energy support, and a global network of researchers and scientists to collaborate with, the timing for diving into the blue economy may be fortuitous. 

“I would say that we are about to get serious about marine energy,” Wosnik said. “That’s really what’s happening right now.”

This is part of a series of special reports by Catherine Kozak, who attended the COP26 climate conference held in November.

PLYMOUTH — As warnings about the need to immediately and drastically cut carbon emissions were blaring full volume at November’s 26th United Nations Conference of the Parties, or COP26, climate summit in Scotland, talk of carbon markets suddenly filled airwaves and the Internet sites. And agriculture was named as the logical vehicle to sell carbon credits.

Carbon trading has been around since 2005 as a way to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and mitigate carbon’s effect on global warming, but it’s grown in fits and starts. As authorized by governments, an entity would be allowed to emit an agreed-upon amount of carbon dioxide in exchange for credits that had been purchased — say, from a farmer — to offset the carbon pollution.  Rules for global carbon trading were formalized at COP26. 

Ronnie W. “Ron” Heiniger, associate professor at North Carolina State University and professor and cooperative extension corn specialist at the Vernon G. James Research and Extension Center in Plymouth who has worked with farmers in the region for 28 years, recently elaborated on the labyrinth facing farmers in figuring the value of carbon credits, while they’re contending with numerous other climate challenges.

Corn and other crops absorb tremendous amounts of carbon dioxide, he told Coastal Review. Satellite images of eastern North Carolina in the summertime show that the carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere above its farm fields go down quite dramatically as the crops absorb the greenhouse gas.

“And you would think that was a great deal,” Heiniger said. “The problem, of course, is that we lose some of that CO2 that was absorbed into the plant. As the plants decay, they release some of that back into the atmosphere.”

Also, with tilling, the microbes in the soil survive by eating organic molecules, and they release carbon dioxide, he said. “They have to respire, just like human beings.”

Plus, a lot of the soils in the region are peat, which can be 50% carbon.

“Anytime you disturb those, some of the carbon is released,” Heiniger said. “So the issue here is how do we get this carbon that we captured in this crop to stay in the soil.”

With more talk of sequestering carbon, and no-till methods and cover crops, which can encourage a longer growing season, and fewer fallow or bare fields, the concept of selling carbon credits to offset things like oil and gas projects is a possibility. But, he said, it’s not only farmers who are skeptical, so are researchers at N.C. State.

“We’re concerned about this concept of carbon credits because we want to make sure what you’re getting paid for is actually happening,” he said. “The issue is the science needs to be better developed for how much carbon is sequestered and what practices are best for doing it. Those issues still remain to be answered from this mitigation side.”

Cover crops, which involve seeding fields with some kind of grass as a crop is being harvested, with the goal of growing biomass to cover the land. But the practice also creates conundrums. Although it can keep down the need for herbicides by suppressing weeds, as well as protect soil, the cover has to be removed when planting season returns. And the way it’s removed is through chemicals — or plowing it into the soil.

Heiniger said that records over the years reflect a steady increase since the mid-1990s in the number of days at or above 95 degrees, and changes in insect populations and the types of insects that affect crops. There is also increased saltwater intrusion in some low areas. Some of the saltwater is coming up from the groundwater, which presents an even more difficult situation than that coming in from the canals that can be blocked or flushed.

But the rain has become a huge headache.

“The intensity of these storms — that definitely has caught our attention, Heiniger said. “We get more of these 6-. 8-, 10-,12-inch rainfalls than we did close to 30 years ago, when I started here.”

Floodwaters are staying in fields for longer times, suffocating crops.

“And as I tell farmers, when your soil is saturated, that means there’s no oxygen in there,” he explained. “It’s like being in a drought because basically the crop can’t take up water, even though it’s sitting in water. So, it can’t cool itself. It’s basically like you’re in a desert then.”

Heiniger said that the drainage systems — pumps and canals — are critical infrastructure to farmers, although public funds are not provided to maintain them.

Changes in the climate converging with growing resistance to pesticides have led to an increasing problem with stinkbugs, which are better suited to warmer temperatures, he said. And there has been increased damage from bugs in corn, soybeans and cotton.

Heiniger said that corn is the largest crop in northeastern North Carolina by acreage, followed closely by soybeans and cotton a distant third.

Much of the corn grown in the region is used to feed livestock, which provides a more favorable economic return, he explained. The type of corn has also been bred to be more stress-tolerant.

The skyrocketing cost of fertilizer is leading farmers to switch to growing more soybeans, which require less nitrogen, Heiniger said. They also take steps to conserve fertilizer, using less of it, changing the timing and increasing the root system.

As a result of rising costs, he said, farmers will plant less corn, so there will be less corn in the market, and prices will be higher.

Since the 1960s or so, farms in northeastern North Carolina were generally larger than the rest of the state, and they’ve gotten bigger over time. Equipment costs have also gotten bigger — a combine can run about a half-million dollars.

“It’s like owning a beach house,” Heiniger said, chuckling. “You’ve got to get bigger to make that pay.”

Most of the small farms on the sand ridges that had been farmed since the 1600s have been consolidated now into bigger farms, or they’re leased or managed by big farms. But whatever the size of the farm, mitigation methods, including no-till and cover crops, are very early in the development stage.

“Not that we haven’t done cover crops, or that we haven’t done no-till, it’s just that we haven’t put together a system that tries to use all of these to do this,” he said.

Although cover crops can save money otherwise spent on herbicides, the technique is regarded as uneconomical because a farmer is planting something that can’t be harvested. But carbon credits would have the potential to compensate farmers to plant cover crops.

Heiniger said it would probably take up to five years for scientists to develop a strategy that promoted the maximum amount of carbon being returned. Typically, it takes at least three years of ground studies to confirm a practice as viable, and then another couple of years to introduce it to farmers or growers.

N.C. State has started programs looking at cover crops and reduced tillage systems, but more information on carbon sequestering requires soil sampling, testing and data analysis — and the money to do the work.

“We need more funding if we’re going to make progress,” he said. “As you see, agriculture is the linchpin here. They could talk all they wanted on TV about how they’re going to be climate neutral. They’re depending on these credits, and agriculture is it.”

Is agriculture able to participate yet in carbon markets?

“The answer is no,” Heiniger said. “Right now, we’re not ready.”

Once the wrinkles are smoothed out, he fully expects that farmers will be willing participants, including those who are climate change skeptics. It’s the “doomsday scenarios” mixed in with the science that puts them off, he explained. That and unrealistic talk about such fantastical things as electric tractors, which could not — at least with current technology — provide the concentrated power that’s necessary to run such heavy equipment.

“Farmers know climate is changing,” he said. “Farmers understand we adapt, you figure out how to get it done, you mitigate, you find systems that cool the crop or reduce that runoff area and get that water off quicker. You find ways to solve those problems.

“I think that’s what hurts the climate change thing, is that we end up talking about things that are speculative rather than concrete,” Heiniger said. “Farmers see the environment — they don’t talk about it. They farm it.”

Next: Harnessing the ocean’s energy

This is part of a series of special reports by Catherine Kozak, who attended the COP26 climate conference held in November.

Agriculture is a major industry in North Carolina, as well as an important source of food for the U.S.

In 2020, according to Carolina Demography, soybeans were North Carolina’s most valuable crop, at $674 million. Corn was the second-most valuable, at $483 million. Ranked third were the state’s famed sweet potatoes, valued at about $375 million, a 15.7% increase from 2019 ($324 million).

******

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, or IPCC, report on climate change and land released in 2019 reveals complex and often little understood dynamics between land, plants and water in a rapidly warming planet.

Related: Climate solutions may rely on farms, but technology lags

Findings include the following:

• About 25% of the mitigation of their carbon contributions pledged by nations in the 2015 Paris Agreement are land-based options, including soil carbon sequestration, agricultural management and bioenergy, as well as reduced deforestation and forest sinks   
• Between 21% to 37% of total greenhouse gas emissions are related to the food system, from agriculture to transport to processing to consumption. Of that, 9-14% of emissions are from crop and livestock activities, and 5-14% come from land use and land use change such as peatland degradation and deforestation. An additional 5-10% are from supply chain activities, including food loss and food waste.

Suggested mitigation tactics include the following:

• Reduction in crop and livestock emissions and modifications in food choices.
• Sequestering carbon in soils and biomass and reducing fertilizer emissions.
• Combined supply-side and demand-side actions to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and enhance food system resilience.
• Conditions to enable adaptation and risk-sharing created and supported through public policies and incentives.

“Such combined measures can enable the implementation of large-scale land-based adaptation and mitigation strategies without threatening food security from increased competition for land for food production and higher food prices,” the report said. “Without combined food system measures in farm management, supply chains, and demand, adverse effects would include increased numbers of malnourished people and impacts on smallholder farmers.”

*****

The North Carolina Climate Risk Assessment and Resilience Plan, released in June 2020, examines the climate change picture for the state.  

Findings include the following:

• The water cycle is intensifying, resulting in more severe flooding and drought.
• Rainfall patterns are changing, with heavy rain falling in once-dry places and likely increased precipitation in high latitudes.
• Continued sea level rise throughout the 21st century in coastal areas will contribute to increased shoreline erosion and more severe and frequent flooding in low-lying areas.
• Extreme flood events that used to happen once a century could occur every year by 2100.
• Intense rain deluges combined with inadequate storm drainage infrastructure increase vulnerability of inland communities to flooding, putting them at more risk of suffering economic and agricultural losses.
• Natural areas and productive land within the state’s interior counties could be impacted by more frequent flooding, resulting in losses of habitats, fisheries and protective buffers in local communities.
• Groundwater and surface waters will become more vulnerable to contamination from saltwater intrusion caused by rising seas, changing salinity levels in estuarine communities.
• Increased saltwater intrusion due to sea level rise is expected to convert lower coastal floodplains from swamp forest to wetlands.
• Freshwater that is affected by saltwater intrusion could cause crop yields to decline and make farmland unsuitable for growing crops, in addition to leaving less available freshwater for agriculture.
• Expected elevated night-time temperatures will have outsized negative impacts on agriculture and forestry due to disruptions in plant physiology.

The report’s climate change recommendations for land include the following:

• Farm and forest assets must be protected by adaptive capacities, technologies, equipment, crops and strategies. Experienced and trained personnel will be necessary to address the increasing climate change hazards.
• More research and development is needed to create adaptive varieties and species for crops and animals to increase heat resistance.
• Regenerative practices need to be developed to sequester carbon in farmlands, pocosin and forests. Also, improvements in manure management on farms is required to prevent greenhouse gas emissions.
• Protection of the state’s endemic species with adaptive management is a necessary responsibility.
• Pocosin and peatlands must be restored and/or enhanced in order to prevent soil loss and wildfire risk.

This is part of a series of special reports by Catherine Kozak, who attended the COP26 climate conference held in November.

GLASGOW, Scotland — At its essence, agriculture is science, and food is fuel. But it’s the farmer and the cook who transform each, respectively, into creative human endeavors that serve as scaffolding for society and culture. 

The 26th United Nations Conference of the Parties, or COP26, cited the interconnection of global agriculture with our global food system as one of the most critical climate issues facing humanity.

Global agriculture has suffered a productivity loss of 21% in the last 60 years as a result of climate change, yet global food production must increase 56% over 2010 levels to meet the needs of the world’s population in 2050.

That alarming assessment was part of what’s behind ClimateShot, a campaign to transform agricultural innovation featured in November during the global climate summit COP26.

Also described as the “global action agenda for innovation in agriculture,” the effort is intended to drive creative solutions with an alliance from food, farm and climate sectors. But the convergence of climate change issues in just northeastern North Carolina farms indicates the complexity of the challenges.

“A ClimateShot would make food systems more sustainable and climate-smart,” according to material about the program provided at the conference. “Such innovation will make sustainable agriculture more affordable, attractive and more widely adapted than unsustainable practices around the world by 2030, to the benefit of people, nature and the planet.”

It’s not that agriculture as an industry hasn’t tapped cutting-edge techniques, such as drones to GPS on tractors to satellite tracking that can monitor and test soils and rainfall and crops, but more nature-based practices are needed to mitigate the effects of agriculture on the climate, Robert Beach, a research fellow in agricultural, resource and energy economics and policy program at RTI International in Raleigh, told Coastal Review at COP26.

“Farmers tend to be a group that doesn’t tend to believe in climate change,” he said. “Sort of ironically, farmers are potentially one of the more affected groups.”

Beach, who grew up on a dairy farm in Pennsylvania, said he understands why people in a profession that has constantly adapted to weather and changing conditions would be skeptical. But as a scientist, he also appreciates the urgent need for agriculture to adopt new climate-friendly practices.

“Fertilizer is one of the biggest sources of nitrogen oxide in the world,” he said, referring to a top greenhouse gas culprit that can also cause dead zones and algal blooms in water bodies.

But some of the new farm machinery can access data that allows fertilizer to be applied more precisely to the needs of the crop.

“Potentially, they can save money and avoid over-application and reduce some of the runoff,” Beach said.

No doubt, agriculture has gotten more efficient, he said, but more climate-smart tactics will be required for productive and sustainable farms into the future. For instance, scientists could solve lots of challenges by creating seeds for plants that are salt-tolerant and adaptable to different conditions. 

“I guess that’s the silver bullet,” Beach said. “It doesn’t need fertilizer and it grows no matter what.” 

Jeff Sparks, president of the Blacklands Farm Managers Association, said that since about 2014, the northeast region has been pummeled by storms that come more frequently and dump record amounts of rain. Based in Washington, in Beaufort County, the group was established in 1970 to represent farmers in Beaufort, Hyde, Tyrrell, Washington and, later, Carteret counties. The group currently has about 500 paying members.

Sparks, who runs Green Valley Farms in Columbia, in Tyrrell County, said that the flooding in the last nine years or so has hurt the farm economy in the region. 

“It doesn’t really matter what farm prices are … if prices are cheap or high,” he told Coastal Review. “If you have nothing to sell, you know, you still have nothing.” 

But with more moderate weather during the last two years, farmers have been able to build back some of the lost capital.

Besides increased numbers and intensity of rain events, Sparks said there has also been issues of saltwater intrusion in some low-lying lands in Tyrrell and Hyde counties, But still, he’s not jumping on the climate change bandwagon.

“I think we’ve got climate cycles and if you go back and look at 2,000 to 3,000 years of history, it’ll show you that the climate runs in cycles. You know, hot wet spells, cool wet spells. So, I don’t know if we have anything majorly changing,” he said. “The way I view a lot of this is that man didn’t build this world and man’s not going to tear it up. So that’s just the way I look at it. The good Lord is in charge of it, whatever happens, happens.”

At the same time, Sparks is not in denial about the effects of warming temperatures — such as how thunderstorms build higher and hold more water — or the unique challenges facing his region.

“If we go back and look at all of our history and our scientific maps and everything, we’re talking whether it be climate change or climate cycles, the ocean here used to back toward the Rocky Mount way,” he said. “They’ve got evidence. Even where we are, we dig down 20 foot deep, and we’ll find seashells.

“Maybe one day this might be water. We don’t know. It’s just so many things we don’t understand. Some of these scientists we got, I get a little aggravated sometimes, I say we know more about up there where the stars and moon is than we do right here under our own feet. You know, there’s a ton to learn here, but it seems like we don’t want to.”

With elevation in the five counties ranging from 30 feet above sea level at the highest, and about 3 feet below sea level at its lowest, miles of canals and numerous drainage districts crisscross the lands. Farmers are trying to adapt to more floods and higher groundwater levels by building dikes higher and putting more pumps in to get the water out, Sparks said.

In the more isolated areas such as in Tyrrell, he said, they can pump water straight up to the Alligator River, but areas toward Washington county, drainage districts are more common, since water has to flow through the properties of multiple landowners.

Some of the older gentlemen in their 80s who have fished their entire lives in the Albemarle and Pamlico sounds and the ocean seem to think, he said, that the ocean hasn’t really risen, at least compared to the inland waters.

“They’re saying with all these big rain events we’ve had in the last 10 years that a lot of the sediment from upstream — Raleigh way, Virginia way — has filled these channels in and the water can’t get out of here. When the tide backs in, it just stays in forever.”

That means that the canals would have to be dredged to improve drainage, which Sparks said should be the responsibility of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. The issue was raised about three years ago by the association, which had hired a water drainage management specialist. They met twice with then-state Department of Environmental Quality Secretary Michael Regan, who is now the administrator of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.

“We thought we were really making some headway and trying to get stuff done, and well, then the world fell apart last year, and everything’s just been kind of forgotten about,” he said. “I think we’ve got some good momentum to move forward with it, once we get everything kind of behind us.”

Although the region’s black soil is rich and productive, the floods have taken a toll.

“There used to be a lot of vegetable crops in this area — sweet corn, cucumbers, cabbage, lettuce — and it really kind of faded out whenever the heavy rains started 10 years ago. And then you were just losing everything.”

They’re still growing corn and wheat and soybeans. Vegetable crops have been mainly moved up to the sandier regions around Chowan County that drains better but can also be irrigated if needed.

But he said that it seems that the scientists working on crop genetics and engineering are breeding plants that can cope with drought stress and dry conditions.

“They’re not really pushing for anything that can grow in 80-inches-of-rain-a-year environments,” he said. “I mean, that’s one of our issues.”

Sparks said that he has told some of the agricultural experts he has talked with at numerous meetings that they need to develop crops that can handle saturated soils for prolonged periods.

“You know, when they go back and look at the bulk of the crop area in the U.S. or the world, it’s like less than 5% is probably this way. The other 95% is facing dry issues more so than wet issues,” he said.

But the farmers are open to trying new crops — past ideas about growing hemp or mustard seed for biofuel never materialized — and innovations, as long as they can make a living.

Some innovations, such as a 2021 study that showed that covering 4,000 miles of irrigation canals in California with solar panels would save 65 billion gallons of water annually from evaporating while generating power on land that is already being used, may someday be adaptable to North Carolina farmlands, he said.

And cover crops to reduce insects and protect soil are starting to be used more.

In a normal season with moderate rain, cover crops could cut the need for one or two herbicide applications, he said. Overall, pesticides and herbicides are not working as well, and farmers are rotating their crops more than they used to and managing nutrient applications.

Fertilizer went up 600% this year, he said. In November 2020, a ton of nitrogen cost about $170. Today, it’s about $625 a ton. And it’s predicted to go up another $200 by spring.

As is the nature of the profession, farmers are trying to figure things out as they continue working.

“I know there’s all these carbon credits. So much of that, nobody knows. Everybody explains it, (but) it’s like the Wild, Wild West.”

One challenge, he said, is measuring carbon while taking into account offsets for energy and nitrogen fertilizers used to grow the crop.

“So you know, that’s kind of a Catch-22 that we’re not sure about,” he said. “We’re in a sustainability fad, and every company and organization had to have a certificate or a plan for sustainability. The beef industry, the pork industry, the corn industry, soybeans — the whole group has spent billions, I’d say, in the last seven or eight years to come up with this because this is what the consumer wants, and (what) the world wants. So, this is what we’re trying to do. And I think this carbon credit thing is kind of following suit.”

Beach, the RTI scientist, agreed that the carbon credits being used to offset carbon dioxide produced elsewhere are complex.

“Agriculture is heterogeneous,” Beach explained. “If they’re paying for a credit, they’re going to want to know what it’s for. Even within a farm, there’s some variation in terms of how much of a difference you’ve done in the past. In some land, you may get different sequestration

There’s been a lot of work, but we still need to understand the effect on yields, emissions, sequestration, cost of production. Different parts of the world will have different conditions.”

Meanwhile, farmers in northeastern North Carolina are trying to cope with getting through 2022.

“Budgets for next year are looking really tight,” Sparks said. “Even with the price of grain that you sell it for, if you have an average to above average year, you can pencil out a little profit. “But if you have a year where you have some of these storms return like we had in 2019 and ’18 and ’16, it’s not going to be a good situation for a lot of folks.”

Next: The science of agriculture

This is part of a series of special reports by Catherine Kozak, who attended the COP26 climate conference held in November.

GLASGOW, Scotland — Until this year, methane hadn’t received the attention it deserved for being a huge source of greenhouse gas in the atmosphere, despite being nearly as much to blame as carbon for overheating the planet.

Last month when the United Nations Climate Change Conference in Scotland elevated awareness of its danger to the global stage, the world was left wondering what to do about methane emitted not just from gas pipes, but also from landfills, food waste, agricultural operations and livestock.

“We’ve been working on methane for over a decade,” Fred Krupp, president of the nonprofit Environmental Defense Fund, said in an interview at the “Methane Moment” pavilion at the climate summit, also known as COP26, shorthand for the 26th United Nations Climate Change Conference of the Parties, nearly 200 nations that agreed to a climate pact in 1992. “This is the first time the issue has become prominent.”

Still, he said that the total amount of methane released in the atmosphere is only an estimate because of the difficulty not only capturing it, but measuring it. For instance, most of livestock-generated methane, a major global contributor, is dispersed from the mouths and intestines of cattle, not their manure, presenting an obvious challenge. But recent technological advances, he said, are now making it possible to precisely measure the gas detected in the air, and technology to enable its use as fuel in some conditions has become more affordable.

“Methane from the animals is basically the same as natural gas — biogas,” he said. “You can feed it into a pipeline, but it can also produce electricity on site.”

On Nov. 2, the Biden administration pledged numerous measures to address climate change impacts, including incentive-based approaches to reducing methane emissions with alternative manure management systems and expansion of on-farm generation and use of alternative energy. The U.S. and European Union had earlier announced a 90-nation pact to cut methane emissions by 30% by 2030 from 2020 levels.

If methane emissions are stopped, there quickly would be positive results.

“Dollar for dollar,” Krupp said, “this is the most effective way to bring temperatures down.”

But it won’t be easy.

In North Carolina alone, mitigating a significant source of methane emissions — hog farms — by installation of biogas technology involves diving into longstanding social and environmental justice issues, multiple legal challenges, controversial permitting and accusations of broken agreements and lopsided financial benefits.

Hog waste from thousands of swine operations in the state is flushed from barns into what are essentially dirt pits, most of them unlined and uncovered. After sitting and “digesting” for a while, the slurry is sprayed onto nearby cropland. Depending on wind direction or whims of the sprayer, residents have complained that the residue has all too frequently coated their homes and filled the air they breathe with retched smells and toxic fumes that burn their eyes and create multiple health problems.

Municipal solid waste landfills are the third-largest source of human-related methane emissions in the United States, about 15.1% of total emissions in 2019, according to the Environmental Protection Agency.

Climate scientists say that although methane accounts for about 10% of human-caused greenhouse gases in the atmosphere, it accounts for 30% of climate change impacts. The gas has a disproportionate destructive effect: a ton of methane in the atmosphere creates about 80 times more warming than a ton of carbon dioxide emissions. But it doesn’t stick around as long as carbon.

“Methane dissipates,” Michelle Nowlin, co-director or the Environmental Law and Policy Clinic at Duke University School of Law, explained in a recent interview. “I think it’s like on a 20-year timescale, whereas carbon dioxide may take a 100-year timescale, but the power that it packs in that 20 years is significantly greater than what the carbon does over that longer timeframe. So it’s a much shorter term, much more intense contribution to global warming than the carbon dioxide itself.”

North Carolina has no fracking facilities, and limited natural gas pipeline infrastructure, but the waste from millions of pigs emits enormous amounts of methane — and it’s a lot more complicated to measure and capture than what leaks from a pipe.

The 2,300 or so swine concentrated animal feeding operations operating in North Carolina today are a big reason that the state is a “leading contributor” of methane emissions in the country, Nowlin said. In addition, the state’s industrial animal operations also include large numbers of turkey and chicken farms. 

Nowlin, who has worked on numerous hog waste management issues for close to 25 years, co-authored with Emily Spiegel a chapter in a research book published in 2017 on climate change and agricultural law, wrote that about 30% of agriculture’s total contribution to greenhouse gases is from the livestock sector.

“Despite the significant role the livestock industry plays in greenhouse gas emissions, it has thus far evaded regulation in the US,” the authors wrote. “Instead, approaches to reducing livestock greenhouse gas emissions have been voluntary, incentive-based, and wholly inadequate to the scale and urgency of the problem.

“As we seek ways to lower greenhouse gas emissions and forestall the effects of global climate change, we must remove the protections long afforded the agricultural industry and adapt existing regulatory tools to address its contributions,” they wrote.

Dominion Energy and Smithfield Foods Inc. are currently proposing to build what they call “North Carolina’s largest renewable natural gas project” through their joint venture, Align Renewable Natural Gas.

Planned in Duplin and Sampson counties, the project would generate enough energy to power more than 3,500 homes, according to an August 2019 press release on Smithfield’s website. The technology involves covering the lagoons to trap methane that is then processed and converted to biogas, which is injected into existing natural gas distribution pipes. The company is also proposing to create biogas from its hog slaughterhouse in Bladen County.

Swine waste-to-energy techniques have gained support from proponents who say they address the environmental concern with methane emissions while creating an additional revenue stream and saving and/or creating jobs.  

But Derb Carter, director of the Southern Environmental Law Center’s North Carolina office, which among other legal actions has challenged permits that the state Department of Environmental Quality issued for the project, said that capping the lagoons would increase the amount of harmful nutrients in the liquified waste, and have an even worse impact on water quality.

“Numerous studies have tied the lagoon and spray-field system to increased nutrient levels that plague our coastal waters, leading to periodic algal blooms and fish kills,” Carter wrote in a December 2020 editorial, adding that Smithfield has for two decades declined to install environmentally superior systems, despite an agreement with the state attorney general to do so.

“As Smithfield has requested,” he wrote, “the state can allow Smithfield to simply cover lagoons, capture and profit from biogas, and perpetuate the flawed lagoon and sprayfield system.”

For residents along coastal North Carolina, the hog lagoons and their methane emissions may seem like a distant concern. For those that remember Hurricane Floyd in 1999, when floodwaters inundated the open pits and drowned thousands of hogs and sent the pig filth and tons of putrid sediment and floating carcasses toward the sounds and ocean in a pink-purple swath of polluted water, the concern may seem valid.

“Because even though they’re not right there on the coast, a large number of those operations are present in the coastal counties and that coastal plain,” Nowlin said. “And of course, to the extent that it’s deposited on the lands and waters of eastern North Carolina along the coast, and at the coast’s back door, and all the waste that runs off into those waters gets carried to the coast and to the sounds.

“That’s why we have nutrient pollution in the Albemarle-Pamlico sounds,” she added. “So it’s a significant issue for people on the coast, even if they don’t recognize it being so because it’s not right in their backyard.”

Methane is just one of the pollutants from hog lagoons, and biogas production — so far — offers an imperfect and inadequate solution.

As far as global warming, Nowlin said that ammonia, another byproduct of hog waste, is also a problem because when that ammonia is emitted into the atmosphere it combines with nitrogen gas and oxygen to create nitrous oxide, which is an even more potent greenhouse gas.

According to a 2020 study “Reconciling Environmental Justice with Climate Change Mitigation: A Case Study of NC Swine CAFOs,” co-authored by Ryke Longest, clinical professor of law, Duke Law School, and co-director of the Duke Environmental Law and Policy Clinic, and D. Lee Miller, lecturing fellow of law at Duke Law School, the “confinement, consolidation and concentration” of hogs in the concentrated animal feeding operations, which are located in 10 counties in the coastal plain, has caused a multitude of negative impacts to the environment and the health of nearby communities. 

The state’s hog industry is one of the largest in the United States, and according to the report, the swine slaughter facility in Tar Heel, in Bladen County, is the world’s largest. To illustrate the dramatic change the industry has made in the state, the authors said that there were about 11,000 small swine farms throughout North Carolina in 1982.  Between 1989 and 1995, they said, 700 CAFOs housing as many as 8.2 million hogs were built, and 7,000 small hog farms went out of business.

“The new mega-facilities are concentrated in a handful of socially and environmentally vulnerable communities in the Coastal Plain where the most prominent geological features are sandy soils, high water tables, and proximity to the coast,” the report said.

The CAFOs, the Duke researchers say, have created pollution and diminished the quality of life of communities. Lagoons break down the contents of the waste and turn it into polluting gases, and the liquid waste seeps into groundwater and runs off into waterways.

“Now, as global concern over climate change drives corporate demand to decarbonize supply chains, market forces exert pressure for converting existing lagoon and spray field CAFOs into biogas factories,” Longest and Miller wrote. “Biogas mitigates greenhouse gas emissions by combusting methane into CO2 while generating revenue from electricity sales and carbon offset credits.

“Reconciling the interests of environmental justice, local natural resources, and the global climate requires agribusiness to reinvest some of this financial boon into the clean technologies they have promised — and shirked — for decades.”

Next in the series: A coastal North Carolina farmer’s perspective.

This column is to introduce a series of special reports by Catherine Kozak, who attended the COP26 climate conference held earlier this month.

GLASGOW, Scotland — At a global event the size of the 26^th United Nations Climate Change Conference of the Parties, or COP26, North Carolina was barely a blip.

Numerous people, even those from Western Europe and (gasp!) England, seemed to know little about our state, including the location of our famously angled Outer Banks coastline.

“It’s where the Cape Hatteras Lighthouse is,” I said confidently. 

“Ummmm.”

“It’s where the English first attempted to colonize America.”

Polite smiles. “Oh?”

“It’s where the Wright brothers flew at Kitty Hawk.”

“Ahhh!”

Of course, how much do we Americans know about the coasts of other nations, or even our own country? And yes, there were some Americans I spoke with at the conference who had no idea where the Outer Banks, and even North Carolina, were located.

During the Oct. 31-Nov. 12 summit, which opened ceremoniously on Nov. 3 with speeches from President Joe Biden and other world leaders, North Carolina was merely part of the U.S that shares the alarming global impacts from a changing climate: rising and warming seas, hotter summers, intensifying rain and wind during storms.

As is the case in the rest of the world, wildfires, flooding and drought are likely part of North Carolina’s tomorrow because they’re part of North Carolina’s today and yesterday. It’s just a matter of timing and degrees.

Every state, every region, every nation, has different levels of threat, but judging from the breadth of attendees at the conference, every corner of the world feels under threat, whether current or looming. 

And on the periphery, most of the world has been stressed by the prolonged pandemic, divisive politics and an uneven economy. In a word, that is the value of such global events: connection. Traveling is humbling and enlightening at the same time, but more importantly, it breaks us out of the enclosed room of our lives.

Even in the other world-ness of a sprawling mini-city of the COP, participants, observers, journalists were joined in a collective, sprinting from hub to hub for conferences, presentations and meetings, in several different “zones,” which often added up to many city blocks of distance. One man shared that another participant had told him that he had walked 30,000 steps the previous day, which adds up to about 15 miles.

Big screens in the Action Zone — where a large blue Earth hovered over an expansive gathering area filled with tables and chairs and lined with broadcast areas and small meeting rooms — displayed interviews taking part on a stage. 

On Monday, Nov. 8., the room was abuzz about former President Barack Obama’s visit, which took place in another area where people had lined up to grab limited seats to watch in person. International press coverage of Obama’s speech was glowing, making our former president the big hit of the summit. Two days earlier, more than 100,000 marchers filled the streets in Glasgow, led by climate activist Greta Thunberg and other young people, to demand substantial and urgent action on climate change.

The second week concentrated on the meat and potatoes of the negotiations, which focused on finding consensus among global participants with disparate wealth, resources, populations, vulnerability, impacts and emissions contributions. Indigenous members of tiny island nations worked shoulder to shoulder with powerful representatives of wealthy nations into the night hours seeking solutions.

During the week, U.S. Climate Envoy John Kerry could be seen dashing down long hallways, trailed by reporters. Kerry was also an active negotiator at the 2015 COP21 in Paris, when he was Obama’s secretary of state. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, several Congress members and 13 cabinet secretaries also showed up — Secretary of Transportation Pete Buttigieg attended remotely — with some of their images flashing spectrally on various screens throughout the conference. 

On Nov. 13, after days of intense negotiations, an agreement was announced. Hammered out by diplomats representing about 200 nations, the parties pledged to return next year to strengthen limits on greenhouse gas emissions and to encourage richer nations to double funds to help developing countries cope with the impacts of climate change.

It was an imperfect conclusion to the ambitious two-week gathering that hosted about 30,000 attendees from all over the world, including North Carolina scientists from Duke University and RTI International, among others.

In Glasgow, Biden had characterized the meeting as the world’s “last chance” to save the planet from the impacts of climate change. World leaders at the start had set a goal to reduce emissions enough to cap global temperatures increases at 2.7 degrees Fahrenheit, or 1.5 Celsius, compared with preindustrial levels.

Biden pledged to cut U.S. carbon emissions in half by 2030, reaching net zero emissions by 2050.

But even with the nations’ new pledges and targets to reduce fossil-fuel emissions and limit deforestation, warming is projected to be 2.1 degrees Celsius, or 3.78 degrees Fahrenheit, by 2100, according to research group Climate Action Tracker. 

At the U.S. pavilion at the conference, a big interactive map provided by Climate Central, a scientific data research group invited attendees to enter their hometown location to see the impact of sea level rise under different scenarios. Nags Head, where I live, was shockingly blue under the higher emission projection.

Despite falling short of the initial goal, the summit harnessed unanimity between global leaders that more must be done to prevent climate disaster. And compared with Paris’ significant, but at times aspirational, climate pledges, the Scotland agreement included more realistic rules meant to provide more transparency and accountability in tracking countries’ actions.

“It’s meek, it’s weak and the 1.5 Celsius goal is only just alive, but a signal has been sent that the era of coal is ending,” said Jennifer Morgan, executive director of Greenpeace International, described the climate deal to the New York Times Nov. 13. “And that matters.”

US, global commitments

The following actions were announced during the summit:

• The Biden administration pledged carbon-pollution free electricity production by 2035 and to permit 25 gigabytes of renewable energy on public lands by 2025.

• The U.S. Department of the Interior committed to develop offshore wind projects, with a goal to deploy 30 gigawatts of offshore wind energy by 2030.

• The U.S. State Department announced that an agreement with the European Union and partners had been launched to reduce global methane emissions. The Global Methane Pledge represents more than 100 countries and 70% of the global economy as well as about half of the human-produced methane emissions.

• COP26 negotiators also created new trade standards under Article 6, a provision of the 2015 agreement from the Paris climate conference that deals with carbon credits. The updated standard includes more transparency on selling and trading of carbon offsets.

• About 130 countries collectively promised billions of dollars to stop deforestation by 2030, and dozens of nations pledged to phase out coal power and sales of vehicles that use gasoline.

• For the first time, the COP agreement included a vow to “phase down” coal power and government subsidies for oil and gas.

• The U.S. joined the COP26 High-Level Panel for a Sustainable Ocean Economy, or “Ocean Panel,” a multinational initiative focused on harnessing the power of the ocean to reduce emissions, provide jobs and food security, improve climate resilience and sustain biological diversity, according to a U.S. State Department press release.

Natural solutions, voluntary, incentivize — these are some of the ways suggested by a stakeholder workgroup to enhance and protect North Carolina’s coastal waters.

In all, 10 recommendations in Appendix A from the workgroup have been tacked on to the Coastal Habitat Protection Plan approved for public review by the three regulatory commissions with oversight on coastal issues.

“The goal was to identify and make recommendations on actionable nonregulatory strategies for improving and protecting water quality to safeguard fishery habitats,” said Leda Cunningham, The Pew Charitable Trusts officer.

The proposal of a workgroup was born out of the Jan. 21 meeting of the CHPP Steering Committee when committee chair Martin Posey raised the idea to form a group that would come up with recommendations with a focus on water quality-related issues that could quickly be accomplished, according to the minutes of that meeting.

Pew and the North Carolina Coastal Federation stepped up to the offer, assembling a group of nine stakeholders with expertise in farming, fishing, wetland and water quality mitigation practices, land development, local governments, environmental programs, laws and regulations, environmental engineering and management, and property management. The federation publishes Coastal Review.

“My input was not necessarily technical in nature, but my input to it was that I like the nature-based approach rather than the heavy-handed regulatory approach,” said Pine Knoll Shores Town Manager Brian Kramer, one of the nine stakeholders in the workgroup. “There’s solutions that aren’t necessarily simply regulatory-based. What that means to me is that there may be solutions that are presented right now in terms of infiltration or in terms of simple design changes that’s not necessarily anti-development, but pro-nature. If you can find a way to take advantage of what we already have to protect the water quality and such then those options should be explored.”

The Bogue Banks town in Carteret County recently completed an innovative stormwater project using recommendations from the Coastal Federation, using infiltration methods in more heavily flooded areas of town.

There’s also discussion among members of the town board about putting out public education initiatives on downspout management.

“What’s interesting to me is the degree to which everything ties together as far as impacts of man on nature,” Kramer said, adding that he both fishes and duck hunts. “When you lose (seagrass) you lose fish, you lose the things that grow and nurture, and that impacts wildlife.”

The workgroup’s meetings included North Carolina Department of Environmental Quality staff working on the CHPP, and three scientists whose expertise is in water quality and seagrass, Cunningham said.

The CHPP was first adopted in late 2004 by the state’s three regulatory commissions with oversight on coastal issues: the Environmental Management Commission, Coastal Resources Commission and Marine Fisheries Commission.

The goal of the plan is to protect, restore and conserve coastal habitats that sustain coastal fisheries. It identifies six coastal habitat types: wetlands, submerged aquatic vegetation, marshes, soft bottom, shell bottom and water column, which is the space between the water’s surface and the bottom.

The plan is reviewed every five years by environmental officials within DEQ, the divisions of which must work together to implement the recommendations set forth in the CHPP.

This year, the focus is on specific issues, identifying concerns related to those issues, researching ways to mitigate the impacts of those issues on coastal habitats, and using that research to implement rules and regulations to reduce those impacts.

The end result is an amendment to the CHPP that includes a series of issue papers addressing submerged aquatic vegetation, wetland protection and restoration through nature-based solutions, environmental rule compliance, wastewater infrastructure solutions for water quality improvement and coastal habitat mapping and monitoring.

“The group recognized that in several of the priority issue papers that were in the CHPP that water quality was kind of a cross-cutting theme so the idea was to provide tangible, measurable things that this group of stakeholders could not only identify as strategies, but could also help implement,” Cunningham said.

The workgroup’s recommendations are designed to help expand and engage public participation in implementing the CHPP, she said.

Those recommendations include the following:

• The CHPP Steering Committee and DEQ form a public-private partnership working with stakeholders to further refine and implement the strategy in 2022, as well as evaluate and refine the strategy as it’s used.
• Ask the state’s governor to issue an executive order directing state agencies to work with the steering committee, DEQ, business, industry, agriculture, federal agencies, nongovernment organizations, universities, North Carolina Water Resources Research Institute, North Carolina Sea Grant, and local governments to implement water quality actions that control and reduce nutrient, sediment, pathogen, and other pollutant loadings in coastal estuaries and, when possible, align those actions with statewide climate resiliency strategies.
• Expand financial incentives and technical assistance to encourage communities to voluntarily create and routinely update local watershed management plans.
• Focus and prioritize General Assembly-funded plans and stormwater retrofits to ensure the protection and restoration of coastal fish habitats.
• Support and promote financial incentives program encouraging public and private waterfront property owners to install living shorelines to mitigate shoreline erosion and naturally treat and reduce runoff.
• Promote the use of nature-based stormwater practices through state-funded construction in coastal counties and river basins that flow to coastal habitats.
• Create and implement a voluntary submerged aquatic vegetation protection and restoration plan for Bogue Sound.
• Encourage the state Department of Transportation and municipal transportation agencies to adopt nature-based stormwater strategies for the highways the build, design and maintain.
• Expand access to financial and technical cost-share assistance and incentives that help landowners, farmers, foresters, U.S. Department of Defense, and other property owners to protect coastal fishery habitats.
• Prioritize nutrient management as a coastal habitat protection strategy to protect and restore the health and productivity of coastal estuaries.

Cunningham and others praise the proposed CHPP amendment.

“What we do to help water quality has positive benefits and positive impacts on habitat as well,” Cunningham said. “Because severe weather, rising sea levels, and increased human use of resources, it really is more important than ever to pursue durable strategies that ensure their long-term health and sustainability. Not only does North Carolina have really special places on the coast, we have really incredible opportunities for people that want to protect and restore those places to work together and the CHPP is really the blueprint that pulls it all together.”

Next month is expected to kick off a series of meetings to accept public comment.

The meetings, which will be held by web conference, will be scheduled in conjunction with five Marine Fisheries Commission advisory committee meetings. The dates and times of those meetings, links to the web conference, as well as an online survey will be announced in a news release in the next couple of weeks, according to a N.C. Division of Marine Fisheries spokesperson.

Once public comment period ends for the draft CHPP amendment, the plan will go back to the three commissions in November for final approval. If approved, the CHPP will then go to the Joint Legislative Committee on Governmental Operations.

The amendment may be adopted by year’s end or early next year.

This is the fourth in a multipart special reporting series on coastal water quality. Read more.

An amendment to North Carolina’s Coastal Habitat Protection Plan is now approved for public review, and thrust into the forefront of proposed modifications to the long-standing document are ways to mitigate the impacts of climate change and unregulated sources of stormwater runoff to those habitats.

“This year we’re doing something a little differently in that we’re doing an amendment rather than a revision to the source document,” said Jimmy Johnson, coastal habitats coordinator with the Albemarle-Pamlico National Estuary Partnership. “We were comfortable with the source document as it was written in 2016. We wanted to specifically focus on some other issues that we felt needed to be made a priority and so we decided to do an amendment rather than revising the source document.”

The Coastal Habitat Protection Plan, often referred to as CHPP and pronounced “chip,” was born out of the 1997 Fisheries Reform Act, a comprehensive management plan for fish and shell species. The goal of the plan is to protect, restore and conserve coastal habitats that sustain coastal fisheries.

The Coastal Resources Commission voted Wednesday to approve public review of the amendment and a related appendix with input received during an early public comment period facilitated by the North Carolina Coastal Federation and The Pew Charitable Trusts with the Coastal Habitat Steering Committee’s approval.

Pew Charitable Trusts Officer Leda Cunningham said Pew encourages the public to support the plan during the comment period and learn how they can contribute to conservation efforts.

“North Carolina is a special place in terms of coastal habitat and the CHPP is a really solid plan that prioritizes collaboration for protecting and restoring that habitat,” she said. “It’s going to take many of us pulling together to achieve common goals of sustainability and resiliency.”

The CHPP officially began in 2005, shortly after it was first adopted in late 2004 by the state’s three regulatory commissions with oversight on coastal issues: Environmental Management Commission, Coastal Resources Commission and Marine Fisheries Commission.

The Marine Fisheries and Environmental Management commissions approved the amendment for public review during their respective meetings earlier this summer.

The plan is reviewed every five years by environmental officials within the North Carolina Department of Environmental Quality, or DEQ, the divisions of which must work together to implement the recommendations set forth in the CHPP. It identifies six coastal habitat types: wetlands, submerged aquatic vegetation, marshes, soft bottom, shell bottom and water column, which is the space between the water’s surface and the bottom.

Casey Knight, a coastal habitats biologist with the state Division of Marine Fisheries, explained how, this time around, officials are focusing on specific issues, identifying concerns related to those issues, researching ways to mitigate the impacts of those issues on coastal habitats, and using that research to implement rules and regulations to reduce those impacts.

The priority issues include the following:

1. Submerged aquatic vegetation, protection and restoration through water quality improvements.
2. Wetland protection and restoration through nature-based solutions. This one tackles the development of living shorelines over hardened structures and, as Johnson puts it, letting “nature be nature” by leaving natural wetlands undisturbed.
3. Environmental rule compliance to protect coastal habitats. This issue addresses the need for additional field representatives to routinely conduct compliance checks and issue notices of violations. “We just don’t have enough of those positions to do the work and so that is just trying to get the existing rules we have on the books enforced better and complies with better,” Knight said.
4. Wastewater infrastructure solutions for water quality improvement. Wastewater and stormwater underground collection systems are old and in need of repair throughout the state. But, the situation in the coastal region is exacerbated by the threat of sea level rise. “It’s fairly frequent that we read about spills and pipes rupturing and spilling wastewater into the estuaries and streams and creeks,” Johnson said. “It’s an expensive proposition and the problem in eastern North Carolina is so many of these smaller communities just don’t have the money to be able to retrofit or to repair their infrastructure and so we’re calling attention to that.”
5. Coastal habitat mapping and monitoring to assess status and trends. Mapping and monitoring the work currently being done to protect coastal habitats will help officials make more educated decisions on how to carry forth protection and restoration efforts. “Without the proper amount of monitoring and assessing of things that are already being done on the ground now we need to be able to know in which direction to move in the future and the only way to do that is map and monitor the work that’s being done now,” Johnson said. 

Issue papers have been created to address each of these priorities. And, though they’re specific issues, they’re all tied in two common denominators – water quality and climate change.

“One thing we did see with the source document is that it did not really cover climate change in the aspects of coastal resiliency in the manner that we speak of it today,” Knight said.

North Carolina Gov. Roy Cooper issued Executive Order 80, a commitment to tackle climate change and build the state’s green energy economy, in October 2018, two years after the CHPP’s was last updated.

The order led to DEQ’s creation of the North Carolina Climate Risk Assessment and Resilience Plan, a climate adaptation plan released in June 2020. Through the development of that plan, the North Carolina Institute for Climate Studies, a research institute of the University of North Carolina system, created the North Carolina Climate Science Report.

“We’ve taken a lot of that information, specifically coastal information, and created another chapter that will be part of this amendment called climate change and resiliency and that speaks to a lot of compounding issues that go along with sea level rise,” Knight said.

More frequent, heavier rain events associated with climate change and rising sea levels are exacerbating issues relating to water quality issues, with wide-ranging impacts across all coastal habitats.

During heavy rain events, rainwater gets sucked into underground wastewater pipes, overflowing systems. Heavy, frequent rainfall creates more unregulated stormwater runoff, which makes its way into coastal habitats. This runoff equates to higher levels of nitrogen in those habitats.

“We’ve done a decent job of dealing with point source pollution, but now we’ve realized that some of those gains are being outweighed by all of this nonpoint,” Knight said. “By creating and looking further into water quality standards for some of these nutrient indicators we will be able to definitively say the water quality standard here is not being met and what actions can we start taking to make sure that those standards are met.”

An overabundance of nitrogen in water causes eutrophication, a process where rapid algae growth depletes oxygen levels in the water.

Algae growth blocks the light submerged aquatic vegetation needs to survive and grow. SAV provides food and shelter for coastal fish.

“We also acknowledge that water quality improvements for SAV are going to be beneficial to most other habitats and the animals that use them,” Knight said. “Through that issue paper we are hopefully looking at developing additional water quality standards around some of these nutrient indicators or factors that could be actionable and see hopefully a difference within the next period of the CHPP review in the next five years.”

The wetlands issue paper includes ongoing research on how to help marshes keep up with the pace of sea level rise.

“If we can’t keep the marshes keeping up with sea level rise then we’ll lose the marshes altogether and that’s the last thing we need,” she said. “So, we need to plan for the migration of those marshes inland. We need to protect the areas that these marshes are potentially going to migrate to as sea level rises.”

One way to do this is potentially through a method called thin layer deposition.

Thin layer deposition takes material dredged from coastal waterways that is not suitable to be placed on an ocean shoreline and sprayed, in a thin layer, onto a marsh, giving the marsh “a little more meat at their roots,” Knight explained.

“As the tide comes in and washes over it should be bringing more sediment to them so they need that sediment to survive, which is a double-edged sword when we talk about sediment in other ways as far as water quality concerns,” she said. “We don’t like the ideas of sediment, but we’re talking about that nearshore kind of over wash during that tide change that they need just to kind of push that extra layer of sediment onto their bank just to make sure that they continue to rise as the sea level comes up and that tide pushes in farther. There’s a lot of permitting issues involved in that too that we’re going to hopefully work through. We need to be able to have the research that proves that it’s viable and feasible and then we can start moving toward some of the permitting barriers that we have there.”

Research is ongoing as to how much is the right amount to spray onto marshes.

The benefits of living shorelines and their adaptation to sea level rise as compared to hardened shoreline structures are continuing to be researched as well.

The discussion is now turning from whether they are a better shoreline protection alternative to bulkheads to how the state can incentivize property owners and companies to choose living shorelines over bulkheads.

“Leaving those big wetland buffers and creating things like living shorelines instead of bulkheads that have lawns right up to the edges of the waterway, that’s going to be key in helping kind of buffer those floodwaters both coming from hurricanes when they’re pushing water in, or these heavy rain events when they do occur,” Knight said.

The state is expected to take public comments on the proposed amendments in October.  

Coastal Resources Commissioner Larry Baldwin noted on Wednesday the months of work and stakeholder efforts to address particular water quality concerns that produced the amendment.

“I think we got it about as good as we can. I like it because it’s not heavy regulatory. It’s trying to coordinate many different groups and funding to be able to improve water quality, which I think is a good thing, Baldwin said.

Johnson said the hope is that an updated CHPP will be adopted by the end of this year or early 2022.

“We have tried to incorporate all of those main issues into what we’re trying to do,” he said. “We’ve pulled in a lot of information from other plans and the document that we have, it’s a pretty remarkable amendment that we have come up with. We just need to realize that we need to keep on the land the things that were intended to be on the land and not let them get into the water. That’s the best that we can possibly do and if it’s buffers or wetlands or whatever to make that happen then we need to do all we can to enforce that.”

This is the third in a multipart special reporting series on coastal water quality. Read more.

Assaults on the environment may be imperceptible for a period of time, but eventually natural imbalances will become evident.

In the quiet fresh waters of the Chowan River basin, its unhealthy water quality is illustrated all too well during the summer by blue-green algal blooms, whether creeping along the shoreline or exploding shore to shore. 

“They were really bad in 2015,” said Colleen Karl, chair of the Chowan Edenton Environmental Group, or CEEG. “It started in Edenton Bay. The water was turquoise.”

Algae, which are photosynthetic microorganisms, are natural inhabitants of waterways. But when conditions are off-balance, they can quickly multiply to harmful algal blooms.

Until six years ago, the Chowan basin’s river and creeks had not had any significant blooms since the 1970s, which were linked to discharges from a paper manufacturer. The problem with algal blooms this time has persisted, but no one is sure what exactly is triggering them, beyond unhealthy amounts of nutrients.

“We know the nitrogen levels are very high,” Karl said. “The big question now is we don’t know enough because these are fueled by so many different things.”

And blooms are now starting to pop up in new spots in the Little, Perquimans and Pasquotank rivers and their tributaries.

Some culprits could be leaking septic systems, fertilizer or animal feed, Karl said, but whatever the source, the problem is exacerbated by warmer waters and rising seas due to climate change.

“There seems to be more blooms after rain events,” she said. “But the stuff is here. The biomass is here. It doesn’t take much for these to explode.”

The North Carolina Department of Environmental Quality issued an advisory Aug. 2 warning the public to avoid contact with blue or green water at Arrowhead Beach to Rockyhock in Chowan County and Colerain in Bertie County.

The state determined that the bloom was dominated by cyanobacteria, which is known as blue-green algae that can contain toxins and create health hazards in humans and animals, including liver damage. Not only is swimming and boating hazardous, health officials say, any exposure to skin should be rinsed with soap and water as soon as possible.

Karl said more than once she has observed people kayaking and canoeing through waterways thick with algae.

A recent bloom at Bennett’s Millpond formed green mats of algae that coated the surface. 

“Be aware that this body of water is full of blue-green algae that may or may not be toxic,” Karl posted Sept. 1 on the CEEG Facebook page. “The smell of degrading algae was strong even though we all were wearing N95 masks. It is heartbreaking to see our beautiful waterways in this condition.”

Risks to human health

Health effects of blooms are not fully understood, including the short-term and long-term dangers of certain levels of exposure to certain toxins in the algae. For example, an algal bloom was cited as one possible cause for the recent mysterious deaths near Yosemite National Park of a family of hikers and their dog.

Little is known about the health effects of breathing airborne cyanobacteria toxins, Haley Plaas, a doctoral student in environmental sciences and engineering at the University of North Carolina Chapel Hill’s Institute of Marine Sciences in Morehead City, said in a recent interview.

Plaas, who has been researching the aerosol effects since 2020, said that Karl and other community scientists with CEEG have helped with providing study sites and water samples of blooms. In fact, she said she had visited Bennett’s Millpond in late August to take water and air samples.

New equipment, an odd-looking 4½-foot-tall steel body with a mushroom-shaped head, has been deployed on private property to collect aerosol particles. In addition to her writing a manuscript about her work in a peer-reviewed journal, Plaas said that the data will be analyzed to determine details such as the identity and concentration of the toxins, and what environmental factors may have contributed to its presence. Also, the raw data will be released to an open source database.

All sorts of different kinds of algae are known to create toxins, she said, or harnful algal blooms, although not every algal bloom is toxic. Because the data only go back 30 years, Plaas said, it’s not yet known whether algal blooms are becoming more toxic.

In general, blooms are increasing worldwide not only because of warming associated with climate change, but also because there is more nutrient pollution. Researchers hypothesize that one reason for the Chowan’s blooms could be linked to changes in land use that reduced swampland and wetlands — riparian buffers — that would otherwise be there to suck up excess nutrients.

Sources of the nutrients can be hard to pinpoint, much less control, Plaas said, and there also is a lack of epidemiological research on the harm of toxic algal blooms, in part because it so difficult to do.

“Basically, you can be exposed to these toxins by swimming in the water, or eating food (such as fish), or drinking the water, or inhaling it,” she said. “People in North Carolina are most likely exposed in recreational activities.”

But the symptoms — nausea, vomiting, rashes — overlap with symptoms associated with numerous other maladies.

“By the time someone got sick, it may be two or three days after the exposure. Then it can seven days after exposure when a doctor rules out other causes,” she said. Then there’s the complication of collecting the sample and testing it. Since blooms can not only move, they can come and go before anyone has a chance to take a sample, and there aren’t staff available to sample and test every bloom in a state as large as North Carolina.

Research is underway to develop a real-time sensor, she said. But meanwhile, there is a networking system in place that includes cell phone apps and community scientists who report blooms and take samples when possible. There are also existing digital tracking and mapping tools for harmful algal blooms.

With algal blooms becoming more of a concern globally, the recurrent blooms in the Chowan River have spurred more attention from the scientific community.

A part of the Albemarle-Pamlico Estuarine system, the nation’s second largest behind the Chesapeake, the Chowan basin’s waters are designated as Nutrient Sensitive Waters, due to the way they flush and drain.

The 2021 Chowan River Basin Water Resources Plan was approved in March by the state Environmental Management Commission. Basin plans are required by state law and approved every 10 years by the commission. Among the priorities for the plan is management and/or reduction of recurring algal blooms in region, which will require more data collection and review, said Division of Water Quality spokesperson Anna Gurney, responding to Coastal Review.

Implementation of the plan will involve interstate cooperation and best management practices to reduce the amount of nutrients entering the system, such as from wastewater and stormwater. Another important component of the plan is public engagement.

“Communicating the science will create interest and action to protect water resources,” Gurney wrote, adding that several basin stakeholders are already involved in the effort.

“Northeastern North Carolina, like many other parts of the State, are working with limited resources; however, the people are passionate!” DEQ/DWR Basin Planner Forest Shepherd said in an email. “The citizens are concerned about their waters and expressed it through the multiple public comment letters we received during the development of the Chowan and Pasquotank River Basin Water Resources Plans. These plans are tools to assist with public education, outreach, and engagement; which is vital to successful protection of these water resources.”

Karl, who has a background in science, said she sees a need for much more communication with the public, as evidenced by the folks she saw fishing and boating in Bennett’s Millpond.

“Literally, the water was pea green,” she said. “Where were the signs? Not a lot of people are aware of what these toxins can do.”

The county didn’t post any warning about the bloom on its website, Karl said, and the water resources press release has limited reach.

“Who sees that?” she asked. “Unfortunately, we don’t have any way to get the word out.”

Although she credited the progress of North Carolina’s researchers and officials, Karl said that everyone is spread thin and under-resourced. New York is an example of a state that does a better job of networking and reporting blooms, as well as using citizen scientists, she said.

“They seem to be able to get the word out wider,” Karl said. “It takes people. It takes money.”                                               

This is the second in a multipart special reporting series on coastal water quality. Read more.

Human and swine feces polluted eastern North Carolina waters sampled after Hurricane Florence’s historic flooding of the Coastal Plain.

In all, 48 sites in the Neuse, Cape Fear, Lumber and Waccamaw River watersheds were sampled as part of a study investigating microbial contamination in surface waters following the storm, which dumped up to 25-35 inches of rain in some areas of the eastern part of the state after making landfall in mid-September 2018.

In addition to human and swine feces contamination, the recently published study conducted by researchers at North Carolina State University also found a high prevalence of a little-known foodborne pathogen known as arcobacter, which has been classified as a serious threat to human health, in some of the water types sampled, including flood plains, channels and isolated waters.

“What was somewhat striking to us was that we did see both human and swine markers, but that there was an association that if a human marker was detected you were more likely to detect a swine marker as well than if you didn’t detect a human marker,” said Angela Harris, an assistant professor at N.C. State who led the study. “That just kind of highlighted to us that some of these sites were experiencing this double burden of contamination.”

The results of the study arguably underscore wastewater infrastructure issues in storm-prone areas that are anticipated to grow more vulnerable in a changing climate, one in which is expected to bring more frequent, large rainfall-producing storms.

The study notes that while the total discharges from swine lagoons during the hurricane are unknown, 29.1 million gallons was discharged from municipal wastewater facilities and more than 6,000 gallons from industrial facilities.

There are many ways in which human feces can get into the environment, Harris said.

“Things like leaky septic systems, leaky sewer pipes, these can all potentially introduce human fecal matter into the environment and when we think about flooding, a lot of our infrastructure, it’s really not designed to necessarily handle the type of flooding that we’re now experiencing. So, there is effort to think about how can we make our infrastructure more resilient to these types of events that will likely be more frequent due to our changing climate,” she said.

Wastewater infrastructure is a focus of one of the proposed revisions to the North Carolina Department of Environmental Quality’s Coastal Habitat Protection Plan, or CHPP, pronounced “chip.”

The plan, which is designed to protect and restore waters associated with coastal fish habitat, is reviewed every five years.

State environmental officials have included a proposed revision that calls attention to the fact that small, rural communities in eastern North Carolina generally do not have the funding to cover the high costs of retrofits and repairs to wastewater infrastructure systems.

The $1 trillion bipartisan infrastructure bill recently passed by the Senate and now awaiting approval from the House includes funding for climate resilience initiatives.

The bill is a step in the right direction, Harris said, but she thinks there are things that can be done better now in how we manage waste from humans and hogs.

It’s something she encourages her students to think about.

“We want students to realize that there is a lot of room for innovation in this space for infrastructure,” Harris said.

There’s also a need for more routine monitoring to help researchers understand how wastewater systems are impacted by different rainfall events and how various sources of contamination respond to rain events, she said.

For this study, researchers collected samples one to two weeks after Hurricane Florence and then one month after that.

The first round of samples showed similar contamination levels at some of the different types of waters included in the study.

“We did start to see some differences (in October) where the channel sites were more contaminated on average than the flood plain sites,” Harris said. “We don’t know for sure, but there are some hypotheses on why that might be the case. There might be some new fecal inputs during that time into the channels. Maybe because of the flooding some of the lagoons might have been quite full and so they might have been able to release some of that.”

Contamination levels could have been down in the flood plains, where water does not move at the pace it does in a channel, which may have allowed microbial contaminants to decay in sunlight.

Contamination levels remained the same in the channels between the first and second round of sampling.

Researchers went back out a year after the initial samples were collected to gather more samples, which are currently being analyzed.

Harris is working in several other sites in the eastern part of the state, including the Newport River near Beaufort, in an effort to get better measurements before another hurricane hits the area.

“Sometimes whenever you find contamination, I don’t want to just describe all the risks, I also want to be forward thinking and think about the solutions,” she said. “There’s room for innovation on how systems are managing waste, but there are a lot of designs and techniques that we do know of even now that can address some of these issues.”

Mahmoud Sharara, an N.C. State assistant professor, was part of the study. His expertise includes animal agriculture operations.

He said a lot of animal farm operators in eastern North Carolina recognize extreme weather events are becoming the norm. Those include operators who employ either wet-waste systems, such as hog lagoons, or dry-waste systems used by poultry farmers.

“Those get equally affected in different ways, but extreme weather events affect them both,” Sharara said.

Many large hog farm operations located in flood plains in eastern North Carolina have been bought out through various programs, he said, which has helped curtail the risks of hog lagoon spills during major rain events.

To avoid similar issues with the growing poultry industry, agriculture officials are working with poultry producers to ensure poultry houses are not being built in flood-prone areas and that chicken waste is not stored in places where it is likely to wash away.

“In this case having nutrients that are, say, poultry litter after cleaning a poultry house stacked outside without having a covering for even a week can release a significant amount of nutrients in runoff,” Sharara said. “Being aware that weather and planning around weather is very critical when we talk about these nutrients.”

To help with the economic challenges farmers face with costs associated with wastewater treatment, researchers have created a concept that takes a cluster of farms in an area and processes waste from those farms at a centrally located composting facility or solar drying complex. This would generate enough composted product to sell, ultimately helping to offset the costs to the farm operators.

Work is underway to implement other runoff mitigation control measures on farms, both animal and crop, including no-till systems to reduce soil erosion, adding buffers at the ends of fields, creating tidal drainage and treating drain waters, and covering hog lagoons to reduce nitrogen emissions.

Sharara said there is no one silver bullet in reducing the agriculture-generated nutrients that make into stormwater runoff.

“We’re trying to look for all the different mechanisms we can put together to capture the nutrients and export them en masse in a valued product,” he said. “Agriculture is one of the industries where the nutrients can move at large scale. Unlike point sources where there’s a discharge pipe where you know the nutrients are leaving a factory or facility, on a farm the boundary of the field can potentially be a source, the ground underneath can potentially be a source or an avenue for nutrients to migrate from. We know that nonpoint source is going to increase with increases in rainfall and with extreme weather events. Our challenge is getting greater now to make sure that there’s less likelihood of nutrients leaving ag systems to estuaries or water systems.”

This is the first in a multipart special reporting series on coastal water quality.

It’s a windy day in October, warm enough for just a T-shirt, and the Neuse River shimmers in the sunlight. As Katy Hunt approaches the bank, however, a foul smell hits her nostrils. And from the dock, she can see the cause: thousands upon thousands of dead, rotting fish.

A fish kill occurs when algae bloom and then die. The decomposition of the algae depletes oxygen levels in the water. Fish suffocate in their own habitat, and some will jump onto riverbanks in one last futile attempt to breathe. Most fish kills in the Neuse River last a few days at most. But October 2020 saw the area’s longest fish kill in decades, lasting an entire five weeks. For Hunt, the Lower Neuse Riverkeeper for Sound Rivers, the sight was disheartening. Every few days she’d walk out onto the dock to check. From there she saw thousands of pale fish floating by like a funeral procession.

“You’ll see lots of little whitish-silver things floating along the surface and washing up by the shores,” Hunt said.

The large algal blooms that cause these massive fish kills are a result of nutrient pollution. The pollution, said Hunt, is directly attributable to human activity.

Fish kills in the Neuse River are essentially an annual event. But waterways across the entire state are grappling with the consequences of excessive nutrient inputs. As North Carolina accommodates a growing population, the state’s waters are paying the price. North Carolina stands at a crossroads between finding ways to mitigate nutrient pollution damage, or seeing it get worse and worse.

‘Too much of a good thing’

The presence of nutrients in the water isn’t inherently bad. In fact, nutrient cycling is a normal part of ecosystem function. Nitrogen and phosphorus are essential contributors to plant growth and the entire food chain depends on these nutrients. But the Earth supplies its own nitrogen. Human activity has doubled the amount of usable nitrogen in the world, and this excess can wreak havoc on ecosystems.

“It sounds so strange, because nutrients are a good thing,” Hunt said. “Except we all know the old adage that too much of a good thing is a bad thing. And that’s very much the case for the Neuse River.”

Often, we see the results of this nutrient excess in the form of an algal bloom.

How many nutrients is too many? That, said Dr. Nathan Hall of the University of North Carolina Institute of Marine Sciences based in Morehead City, depends on what the water is used for.

“The cutoff point really depends on what you’re worried about,” Hall said. For example, seagrasses are especially sensitive to nutrient levels because the resulting algae will block their access to light. Without light, seagrass cannot grow. By contrast, recreational swimmers aren’t as sensitive to higher nutrient levels. “We’re not squeamish about swimming around in some water that’s a little bit green or brown — up to a point,” Hall said.

North Carolina does not have an official threshold for what constitutes too many nutrients. There is, however, a limit on how much chlorophyll-a is in the water. Chlorophyll-a is the pigment that gives algae its green color. Chlorophyll-a is essentially a measure of how much algae is in the water, which by extension, says something about nutrient levels in the water. The official level for North Carolina’s slow-moving waters like sounds and estuaries is 40 micrograms per liter.

“Forty is about where you can really start to notice the water’s green,” Hall said.

Waterways that contain more chlorophyll-a than this get placed on the state’s 303(d) list — the official record of all imperiled waters in the state. Once a body of water makes it onto this list, it sometimes stays there for decades.

Nutrient inputs into waterways, or “nutrient loading,” is regulated for waters that are considered nutrient-sensitive. Sensitivity is defined as being highly reactive to nutrient inputs. In other words, the physical conditions of the water facilitate a nice habitat for algae — things like slow water turnover and shallow depths. For example, the Neuse River is considered nutrient sensitive.

But where do the excess nutrients come from? In short, human activity. These inputs come from the fertilizer that people put on their lawns, as well as large-scale agricultural operations. They come from wastewater and sewage. A lot of these pollutants are carried into the watershed by stormwater runoff. That is, when it rains, the water washes pollutants across impervious surfaces and into watersheds. The ground is usually very good at filtering nutrients out of the water, but developed areas include high levels of impervious pavement, which don’t allow water to penetrate the ground. Impervious surfaces are things like roads, driveways and sidewalks. 

All of this is compounded by climate change. When storms get worse and rainfall increases, more nutrients are flushed into the watershed. If storms are followed by dry periods, water flow slows down and allows algae to prosper. Due to the influence of stormwater runoff on nutrient transport, nutrient pollution can be exacerbated by the number of people living in the watershed.

North Carolina’s total population has been increasing for decades. In 1990, the state population was 6.65 million, according to the U.S. Census Bureau. By 2020, that number had climbed to 10.44 million. When compared to the rest of the country, North Carolina is the state with the ninth highest population.

Not every county in the state has experienced growth — some counties bear the increase in population more than others. For example, the five-weeklong fish kill in the Neuse River last October occurred just outside of New Bern in Craven County. The population of Craven County was 82,096 in 1990, and in 2020 it reached 101,233. That’s an increase of nearly 20,000 people.

And while not every coastal county experienced growth in the past three decades, Craven County wasn’t the only one to grow substantially. New Hanover County, for example, has increased by 115,649 people in 30 years, nearly doubling its population.

This information comes from Carolina Demography, an organization nested within the Carolina Population Center at the University of North Carolina Chapel Hill. According to Melody Kramer, director of communications and business development, it’s hard to make predictions about the future of the state’s population. But projections from the department indicate that the state will gain about a million new residents every 10 years for the next few decades.

This could spell trouble when it comes to nutrient pollution.

“The more people you pack into a watershed, the more nutrients you release, and particularly for nitrogen that’s true,” said Dr. Hans Paerl of UNC IMS. “But depending on how aggressive management of those issues is, it can be attenuated.”

As North Carolina continues to see population increases and development, Paerl said that there is an opportunity to build in an effective way as opposed to a harmful way. It’s imperative to the health of the water, especially considering that many of the state’s waterways have seen aggressive nutrient inputs for several decades.

“Now, the thing to keep in mind about all aquatic ecosystems is that they don’t improve overnight,” Paerl said. “So the sooner we have an aggressive nutrient reduction management strategy the better.”

Paerl points to Lake Washington in Seattle as an example of how aggressive, proactive nutrient management plans can work. In the 1940s-1960s, Lake Washington began receiving increased amounts of secondary treated sewage as Seattle and its surrounding areas grew in population. This led to unprecedented levels of the nutrient phosphorus — 70 parts per billion in the 1960s.  And while phosphorus levels are impossible to see with the naked eye, the resulting eutrophication (algae blooms) were evidence of impending catastrophe.

Seattle began an aggressive plan to divert sewage away from the lake and through treatment plants. It was superbly expensive ($140 million in the 1960s) but also incredibly effective. The program was able to get phosphorus levels down to 16 parts per billion. Today, Lake Washington has infrequent problems with eutrophication, and water quality and clarity are high considering that the lake rests in the middle of the largest city in the Pacific Northwest.

Change has also shown itself to be possible in North Carolina. Last year’s five-week fish kill in the Neuse River was the longest one in decades. In the 1990s, however, there were a few of comparable length. This and other indicators of eutrophication alerted state officials to the need to decrease the levels of nutrient pollution into the river.

The Neuse Nutrient Strategy went into effect in 1997. It set up special rules and regulations to target nutrient sources like wastewater and agricultural runoff. This mandate was effective in decreasing the amount of inorganic nitrogen in the Neuse River.

“It has led to a reduction in nitrogen inputs from certain sources,” Paerl said. “But we’ve also seen changes in the watershed due to development and changes in agricultural activities and practices, urbanization, etc., that has led to an increase in organic nitrogen loading.”

While these regulations have made enormous strides in targeting some sources of nutrient pollution, there is still more work ahead.

“There’s still a lot of science that needs to be done in terms of understanding the linkage between where it’s coming from, and how reactive it is in our receiving waters,” Paerl said.

Paerl’s lab at UNC IMS operates the Neuse River Estuary Modeling and Monitoring Project, or MODMON, in partnership with the North Carolina Department of Environmental Quality. 

MODMON has been recording water quality data in the Neuse River since 1994. One of the things MODMON seeks to monitor is the total maximum daily load, or TMDL, of nutrients in the Neuse River. The TMDL is equal to the level of nutrients the river can accommodate while still meeting water quality standards.

According to Dr. Dean Carpenter, program scientist for the Albemarle-Pamlico National Estuary Partnership, or APNEP, long-term water quality data sets are crucial for evaluating management decisions going forward. APNEP works with community partners to determine indicators of water quality within the river basins that feed into the Albemarle-Pamlico estuarine system, including the Neuse River.

“I talk often about monitoring and assessment: two pieces of the puzzle,” Carpenter said. Monitoring data creates a baseline that helps evaluate the effectiveness of management strategies, and points the way toward optimal solutions for the future.

“When you’re instituting management actions to support a healthier, in our case, estuarine system, you want to be able to track the condition of that resource,” Carpenter said.

‘In our hands’

So far, there have been no reported fish kills in the Neuse River this year. But, said Katy Hunt, the season of vulnerability is still young. Last year’s five-week kill ran through October, and it’s only August. While Hunt is no longer surprised by fish kills and other harmful effects of algal blooms, she hesitates to call them inevitable. Humans cause them, and therefore they are in our hands.

“I think it is a kind of an unfortunate fact of life,” Hunt said. “But at the same time, we made it a fact. And we can change it.”

This is the sixth and final installment in a series on making the North Carolina coast more resilient to the effects of climate change, a special reporting project that is part of the Pulitzer Center’s nationwide Connected Coastlines initiative.

There’s a growing body of evidence on what a warmer, wetter climate holds in store for our generation and future North Carolinians.

Among the effects already being felt and already baked in for decades ahead are more frequent heavy rains and, with them, repeated flooding in vulnerable areas.

The threat of greater flooding extends to every corner of the state. Eastern North Carolina comes to mind quickest because of the stunning disasters here. But intense rain events are happening in the west as well in places like Asheville, which has seen a series of floods over the past decade.

Although most of the state’s cities and towns have been expanding their stormwater requirements and capabilities over the past few decades, none are engineered to deal with a deluge.

In the state’s farmlands, the effect of heavy rains extends beyond direct damage to crops. Floods delay planting and harvesting, strand livestock and leave fields inaccessible.

The devastation wrought by Hurricane Matthew and Hurricane Florence brought about major changes in the way the state handles long and short-term disaster response. The one-two punch of 500-year storms that struck less than two years apart washed away doubts about the risks ahead. Even though climate science is not universally embraced in North Carolina, a changing climate is evident. Strategies for dealing with it are changing, too.

After Florence in 2018 churned through many of the same places as Matthew did in 2016, taking on disasters one at a time no longer made sense. Resiliency went from buzzword to watchword.

Gov. Roy Cooper and legislative leaders, often at odds, agreed to form a new state agency, the North Carolina Office of Recovery and Resiliency, to handle both the massive inflow of federal disaster and housing aid, but also to find ways to best fit that aid into a resilience framework.

Getting proactive about flooding in the same way has not been so straightforward, in part because the impacts vary with every turn of the waterways, but mostly because of the enormous expense of raising roads, reconfiguring bridges and culverts and moving people and key infrastructure out of the floodplain.

Although there’s consensus across political and ideological lines, turning consensus into action has proven difficult, especially in an era of political polarization and a deadly pandemic.

This year, as the North Carolina General Assembly and the governor begin another fresh attempt to reach a deal on a comprehensive state budget, there’s early agreement on the need for a major effort on flooding resilience.

In his budget proposal last month, Cooper targeted $56 million for flood resilience programs and additional floodplain buyouts, along with a substantial increase for land conservation and stormwater infrastructure.

This week, a state Senate committee charged with working on major flood resilience and mitigation legislation holds its initial hearings.

Although there are differences among approaches and strategies between policy makers and stakeholders, one key theme that’s emerging in resilience and any likely legislation is an emphasis on leveraging the state’s land resources, particularly the vast areas of natural and working lands in eastern North Carolina.

The proposals come at a time when climate researchers say it is even more essential to preserve and enhance those lands because of a growing understanding of how essential they are to carbon sequestration and mitigating the state’s contribution to greenhouse gasses.

Both approaches envision converting some cropland back to forests and using farmlands, wetlands and other natural systems to reduce the severity of flooding.

As the state grapples with what to do about storms and floods to come, the nexus of resilience and sequestration found in its natural and working lands could become the cornerstone of North Carolina climate policy.

Off the charts

Last June, a working group made up of dozens of scientists, state and local officials and representatives of businesses and nonprofits published a 124-page appendix to the state’s 2020 Climate Risk Assessment and Resiliency Plan on the potential for working and natural lands.

Misty Buchanan, director of the state’s Natural Heritage Program and part of the working group that wrote the report, said that driving the push for putting natural solutions to work were findings in the state’s 2017 greenhouse gas emissions study, which revealed the scale of sequestration potential in natural and working lands.

“What drew me in, and what I think resonates with people, is when we got our greenhouse gas inventory and first started to understand where our emissions are coming from and how much our emissions are,” she said. “We determined that the land use sector, including natural areas and forest and farms and even things like oyster farms, have a huge potential to offset the emissions that are coming from the state.”

The study found that natural and working lands offset 25% of the state’s current greenhouse gas emissions, she said, more than twice the average rate of other states.

“We’re already in a great position,” Buchanan said. “We can do more. We also need to think about how we’re just going to hold on to that percentage as our state develops around us. We need to think about how we can restore land and manage our land in a way that we can continue to offset those gas emissions and sequester and store more carbon each year.”

To jumpstart the ideas and to build support, the group looked at options that provided multiple benefits, keying in on those that benefited both carbon sequestration and resiliency as well as water quality and biodiversity.

They fall under three main categories: protecting land through conservation easements or acquisition and incentives for protection; restoring lands to increase sequestration and resilience; and improving management of existing natural and working lands.

Proposals include programs for farmers to conserve and enhance lands, tools for local governments, changes to forest policies, tax incentives for landowners, further floodplain buyouts, preserving forests, restoring pocosin and coastal habitats, and improving urban land management.

Buchanan said that in assessing the opportunities, there were obvious win-wins. One that also gives an idea of the scale of the possibilities is that about 5% of the unprotected forests in the state are in the floodplain of watersheds with significant sources of pollution.

“If we just protected those forests, that would be a million acres,” she said. “So, there are some large opportunities still in North Carolina for land protection.”

The goal is 1 million acres of floodplain protection and another million acres of wetland and floodplain restoration. If that sounds like too much to shoot for, Buchanan said, consider that the Biden administration recently set far higher goals for land protection than that.

Scaling up resilience

Near the end of last year’s session, the General Assembly approved legislation to create an inventory of natural and working lands that could be used in flood control and potential incentives for private landowners to do stream restoration and wetlands enhancement and build flood-stage capacity. The bill set the stage for this year’s likely follow on.

The Senate Select Committee on Storm Related River Debris and Damage in North Carolina was set to meet for the first time Tuesday to review preliminary results from last year’s bill. The meeting was set for 10 a.m. in the Auditorium of the Legislative Building.

The committee is co-chaired by Sens. Danny Britt, R-Robeson, and Jim Perry, R-Lenoir, who represent eastern North Carolina counties hard hit by prolonged flooding during Matthew and Florence.

Earlier this month, the two announced that they were working on comprehensive flood resilience and mitigation legislation and holding a series of information sessions over the next several weeks, gathering input and reports from stakeholders and state agencies.

Perry said he and Britt believe that the state’s approach right now is too scattered and their primary goal is to focus it by establishing a sole, central agency in charge of enacting a statewide plan. In effect, Perry said in a recent interview, the state needs a flood czar.

“We think at the end of the day, somebody in the state of North Carolina needs to go to bed thinking about flooding mitigation and resiliency and needs to wake up thinking about it,” he said. The state can’t settle for a patchwork approach or sweeping problems under the rug.

Perry is among those advocating for large-scale debris removal as part of the plan as well. He said he’ll listen to the scientists in terms of best practices, but he doesn’t want a here-and-there approach.

“We don’t need to clean out the spots of river, close to the bridge because people can see it. We need to start somewhere around Raleigh and clean it out all the way down to the coast,” he said.

The whole approach to dealing with flooding has to be that way, he said.

“We got to do it right, we’ve got to be committed. And you have to have someone who has ownership who can coordinate with all these agencies who can help prioritize which thing comes next and what’s the next step.”

In addition to the state commitment, there’s an unprecedented wave of federal funding for resiliency and sequestration programs. There’s also another avenue of support expected should Congress approve an infrastructure package.

With so much money on the table and other states providing a blueprint for drawing down federal dollars for large-scale resilience programs, there is a profound sense of urgency in Raleigh to coalesce around a strategy.

Perry said states like Louisiana and Iowa have shown that having a plan opens a lot more opportunities for federal support. The state needs that, he said, if it’s going to do anything on a scale that will make a difference.

“You look at what they’ve done in Louisiana. They’re getting a $1.2 billion federal grant, because they had a great plan,” he said. “They had a great resiliency plan that could change the lives of the people there.”

Perry and Britt’s committee isn’t the only group in the legislature looking at scaling up resilience.

Late last month, a joint meeting of the House and Senate Appropriations Committee on Agriculture and Natural and Economic Resources met with officials from Resource Environmental Solutions, a Louisiana-based contractor for stream restoration and large-scale natural solutions work. The company recently acquired a North Carolina-based company and told the committee they were ready to ramp up work in the state.

Committee co-chair Rep. Pat McElraft, R-Carteret, told committee members the state would have to look to the private sector in order move quickly on bigger projects.

Broad buy-in

Although the exact policies and the dollars involved in making it work are still a work in progress, the moves by both the administration and the legislature to incorporate a natural and working lands strategy are drawing support.

Todd Miller, executive director of the North Carolina Coastal Federation and a presenter at Tuesday’s Senate committee hearing, told Coastal Review the bills so far are going in the right direction.

“The bills that have been introduced in the Senate and House are very welcome and show a lot of potential for the state making huge gains in using nature-based strategies to reduce future losses from flooding,” Miller said. “The emphasis on the need to develop a volume-based watershed management framework and empower local communities to strategically invest in reducing floods is very encouraging.”

North Carolina Farm Bureau Natural Resources Director Keith Larick said involving farmers in solutions around flooding, resilience and climate-related issues is a growing trend nationwide.

Larick, who has been gathering feedback from farmers on some of the potential flood-mitigation ideas, said most recognize that they’re likely to play a role in the solutions and they’re willing to listen.

“When we talk to farmers there’s a recognition that the types of practices that are being talked about are going to go on working lands, whether it’s forestry, whether it’s ag land, pasture or cropland. That’s where the space is to put these kinds of practices on the ground,” he said.

If the state can come up with a fair system that allows a farmer to agree to conserve land or open a field to floodwaters to take pressure off downstream, there’ll be buy-in, Larick said.

“For a long time, farmers have operated in the world of voluntary programs, voluntary incentives for conservation practices,” he said. “The flood-mitigation side of it is new but it’s an easy connection to make for a lot of folks.”

It’s obvious that farmers in North Carolina, especially those in the east, have been dealt a harsh blow by the major storm hurricanes, Larick said, but they’re also seeing other climate impacts. More frequent heavy downpours with flash flooding are happening in the spring and summer. This year was yet another wet winter that kept some farmers out of the fields. Farmers farthest east are dealing with saltwater intrusion or fouling of groundwater supplies associated with sea level rise.

“There’s been a growing recognition we’re having these issues that are climate related,” he said. “There’s the broader discussion, ‘what are we going to do about climate change?’ but we also have the immediate issue of what are we going to do to mitigate the kind of things that we’re already seeing?”

Larick said he also sees the potential dual role for farmland for flood mitigation and carbon sequestration, which is gaining traction among agriculture interests at the national level.

It makes sense, but the question is whether stakeholders and policy makers can come up with system that works, Larick said.

“The flood mitigation really isn’t the concern at the national level, they’re looking at carbon sequestration, but you know when I see that I’m also thinking in the back of my head ‘OK, there are other benefits here, too. Can we tie all this together somehow?’”

This is the fifth installment in a continuing series on making the North Carolina coast more resilient to the effects of climate change, a special reporting project that is part of the Pulitzer Center’s nationwide Connected Coastlines initiative.

Twenty-five coastal communities will have money from the state to better prepare for natural hazards.

The funding is geared to drive better-informed decision making at the local level and initiatives that reduce risk and vulnerability to flooding, storms and other effects of climate change.

The North Carolina Department of Environmental Quality’s Division of Coastal Management announced March 17 a total of $675,000 would be granted through the new Resilient Coastal Communities Program, launched in the fall to provide technical and financial help to governments in the state’s 20 coastal counties to develop resilience efforts. The application deadline was Jan. 15.

“We wish we had the funding to have accepted all interested communities into the program, but we hope to secure additional funding to offer another round of Phase 1 and 2 funding in the future,” Sam Burdick, coastal resilience coordinator with the Division of Coastal Management, recently told Coastal Review. The division received 30 applications representing 32 coastal communities  — one application was submitted by three communities — for the first two phases of grant funding.

“Building resilience to natural hazards is vital for communities to help maintain quality of life, healthy growth, durable systems, and conservation of resources for present and future generations,” Burdick explained. “However, a number of barriers to developing resilience to coastal risks exist, including economic and capacity constraints that have been exacerbated in recent times. Building more resilient communities requires careful, thorough planning efforts using sound, locally relevant data.”

Burdick is from Duck on the Outer Banks and has a background in coastal science, policy, ecology, local and regional planning, and community outreach. Before joining the division, Burdick was the community planner and disaster recovery coordinator for the Eastern Carolina Council of Governments. She has been the coastal resilience coordinator with the division in Morehead City since February 2020 and is tasked with leading the development and implementation of the Resilient Coastal Communities Program.

The program is rolling out in four phases: community engagement and risk and vulnerability assessment; planning, project selection and prioritization; project engineering and design; and implementation. The initial funds are to be used for the first two phases.

Community applications were scored across seven criteria, including the level of risk exposure to vulnerable populations and critical assets, economic status and need, and internal capacity and momentum with related efforts, according to the state.

The towns of Aurora, Beaufort, Belhaven, Cape Carteret, Hertford, Leland, Navassa, Sunset Beach, Surf City, Topsail Beach, North Topsail Beach, Vandemere, Washington and Windsor are to receive technical assistance to complete Phases 1 and 2.

Barnes Sutton, town planner in Navassa in Brunswick County, explained Tuesday that urban planning and design were once guided by the natural forces in a given area, such as navigable waters or the direction of prevailing winds, allowing cities to optimize those natural resources and by extension protect those resources.

“This created unique places that balanced city centers and residential areas with communal space and fields for agriculture,” Sutton said. He added that at some point, urban planning moved away from these principles and began to emphasize consumption over conservation.

“Being selected to participate in the Resilient Coastal Communities Program underlines the importance of natural resources and how to grow with sustainability and recyclability in the forefront, which in time, can undo the damages over-consumption has done,” Sutton said. “Navassa is poised to support exponential growth in residential, commercial and recreational sectors over the next five years, all of which will need healthy and efficient waterways to support it and will only be magnified by the restoration and protection of them.”

Beaufort in Carteret County also received a grant. Town Planner Kate Allen told Coastal Review Tuesday that storm surge and the heavy rainstorms and higher tides of recent years pose acute risks to life and property, particularly during hurricane season.

“In 2018, Hurricane Florence wreaked havoc on the town and surrounding areas. Heavy rains coupled with high tide results in frequent flooding of Front Street. Shoreline erosion, primarily caused by rising water levels and storms, increases the town’s flooding risk. These stressors individually pose risk, but are most impactful when they occur together, and often they do,” she said. “As a small community, town staff lack the time necessary to conduct thorough vulnerability and risk assessments. This grant will allow the town to place more emphasis on the risk and vulnerability assessment included in the ongoing CAMA/Comprehensive Land Use Plan update.”

The division also selected the counties of Beaufort, Craven, Currituck, Dare for Hatteras Island, Hertford, Hyde and Pamlico for the program.

Dare County Manager Bobby Outten said Tuesday that the county received a $30,000 grant through the program to study all risks and vulnerabilities on Hatteras Island. These include economic vulnerabilities, storm vulnerabilities, transportation vulnerabilities and any others that the consultant determines exist.

“Completion of this study would make Dare County eligible for additional grants to determine remedies to resolve or mitigate the vulnerabilities found,” Outten said. “Once the remedies are determined, Dare County would be eligible for yet another grant to begin implementing those remedies.”

Duck, Nags Head, Swansboro and Pine Knoll Shores have shown significant momentum in resilience planning and have been selected to complete the remaining requirements of the first two phases, the division said in the March 17 announcement.

Burdick said big barriers for communities when it comes to planning is the lack of a dedicated resilience budget, an overall reduced budget related to the economic effects of the pandemic, and a lack of capacity to plan.

A more proactive, sustainable and equitable approach to risk planning focuses on mitigating or reducing vulnerability, rather than responding after storms or flooding, she said.

The resilience program is a priority in the state’s Climate Risk Assessment and Resilience Plan and reflects Gov. Roy Cooper’s commitment to building climate change resiliency statewide while promoting economic growth and stability. It’s the product of a series of resilience efforts and events the division led in recent years to address intensifying natural hazards on the coast, Burdick said.

The division worked with five local governments from 2017 to 2018 using a process called Resilience Evaluation Needs Assessment, or RENA, to map critical assets and assess risk and vulnerability to coastal hazards.

After Hurricane Florence in 2018, Cooper signed Executive Order No. 80, calling for the development of the North Carolina Climate Risk Assessment and Resilience Plan. The state held several workshops in 2019, including in Elizabeth City and Wilmington, to ensure the plan was based on local knowledge and needs, she said.

The 2020 Climate Risk Assessment and Resilience Plan called for the development of the Resilient Communities Program, which was designed to boost resilience building at the local level with a three-pronged approach: local government funding, training and capacity building and an online resilience portal. The Resilient Coastal Communities Program falls under the larger umbrella of the statewide North Carolina Resilient Communities Program, Burdick explained.

The division received about $830,000 in funding from the North Carolina General Assembly and $1.1 million from the National Fish and Wildlife Foundation this year to begin developing and implementing the resilience framework for local governments.

Partnering with the North Carolina Office of Recovery and Resiliency, North Carolina Sea Grant and The Nature Conservancy, the division tailored a number of resilience plans from other states to needs specific to coastal North Carolina communities.

Division Director Braxton Davis said division partners and coastal communities have been working on various aspects of coastal resilience for a long time, but lacked a clear framework to help organize efforts.

“This new program will help all of us become more efficient and strategic in our investments, ensure that we are identifying and prioritizing the most important projects, and provide more targeted technical assistance that builds on previous planning efforts,” Davis said. “DCM is proud to lead this effort on behalf of our coastal communities and appreciates the ongoing partnerships we have with the N.C. Office of Recovery and Resiliency, The Nature Conservancy, and N.C. Sea Grant.”

The resilience team held two interactive webinars in August 2020 to introduce the Resilient Coastal Communities Program and the funding opportunities targeted to local governments, consultants, academia and nongovernmental organizations. A total of 225 attendees participated in these webinars, including representation from 18 county governments and 39 municipal governments.

A virtual discussion with more than 50 contractors interested in providing services to communities through this program was held in September 2020. There were 24 contractor applications for Phases 1 and 2.

“Understanding the importance of inclusivity and equity in planning processes, participating local governments and contractors will develop a Community Action Team, or steering committee, and a community engagement strategy to involve community members and local leaders throughout the process,” Burdick said. “Local knowledge and feedback are key and will help inform the process and drive the development of sound, feasible projects and action items to enhance resilience.”

Next in the series: Natural and working lands

This is the fourth installment in a continuing series on making the North Carolina coast more resilient to the effects of climate change, a special reporting project that is part of the Pulitzer Center’s nationwide Connected Coastlines initiative.

The treehouses were an early sign that Windsor, Bertie’s county seat, was onto something. When there’s a river running right through your town, resilience requires finding creative ways to coexist with the river.

“It’s a source of flooding, but it’s also a source of recreation,” County Commissioner Ron Wesson said of the Cashie River.

So, five years ago, the town took the boring concept of flood adaptation and made it fun — and a revenue-producing tourist attraction. Accessible via an elevated boardwalk, two treehouses were built among the cypress canopy along the river, each with a sleeping loft and basic furnishings, with a shared bathroom facility available nearby.

Now there’s a “village” of three of the rugged cabins, elevated safely — and irresistibly — above the water. They’re so popular, with weekend bookings filled straight through the summer, that the town is proposing to add two more.

“Two of them have trees coming through the middle of them,” Wesson said in a recent interview.

Canoes and platforms are also available to rent for “glampers,” or those who enjoy glamorous camping, rounding out offerings for the region’s nascent ecotourism industry.

Positioned in the center of the Albemarle-Pamlico estuarine system, Bertie County — specifically, Windsor — in the last two decades has suffered some of the worst repeated flooding disasters in inland northeastern North Carolina, an area increasingly beset by changing climate impacts such as flooding from rising sea levels and intense rains.

In 1999, downtown Windsor was inundated with more than 6 feet of floodwater during Hurricane Floyd, destroying dozens of homes, businesses and public buildings. It flooded dramatically again in 2016 during Hurricane Julia. Then, just three weeks later, Hurricane Matthew drove 7 feet of water into the town, destroying nearly 40 homes and numerous businesses.

The one-two punch in 2016 shook Bertie officials into realizing expert help was needed to forestall a future of constant flooding.

But after numerous scientists and engineers evaluated drainage and flooding dynamics in the Cashie River Basin, there were no easy answers.

“We have three major rivers that come together,” Wesson said. “When those rivers back up, it dumps that water into our communities, Windsor especially.”

Potential remedies, such as diverting water to retention ponds or spillways, he said, would help, although it would most likely only reduce the worst flooding instead of preventing it entirely. And although more buildings are being elevated on pilings, even that tactic is not failsafe or always possible.

Considering the billions in mitigation costs the town faces — or accept the loss of the community — town leaders are now making long-term plans to gradually relocate to higher ground.

“There is no real major solution,” Wesson conceded.

On March 17, Windsor was one of 25 communities to be awarded a total of $675,000 in funding through the North Carolina Department of Environmental Quality Division of Coastal Management’s new Resilient Coastal Communities Program. The grant funds will go toward assessing the community risk and planning, selecting and prioritizing projects, as well as engagement of citizens in the process.

Windsor, however, is just one of numerous areas within the Albemarle-Pamlico estuary forced to contend with increased amounts and days of flooding. The estuarine system, the nation’s second-largest behind the Chesapeake, has 3,000 square miles of open water, encompasses six river basins and eight sounds — the Albemarle, Pamlico, Back, Bogue, Core, Croatan, Currituck and Roanoke — and spans from the central North Carolina coast to southeastern Virginia, according to the Albemarle-Pamlico National Estuarine Partnership. It’s got enough total estuarine shoreline — 9,115 miles — and freshwater rivers and streams — 9,299 miles — to cross the country three times.

In 2006, there were 2.5 million acres of wetlands and 4.5 million acres of farmland recorded, although losses have been steadily occurring over the years since. And it has the largest amount of pocosin wetlands in the world.

To retired East Carolina University coastal geology professor Stan Riggs, the region needs to appreciate the ecotourism “golden goose” that exists in its rich natural resources: miles of quiet waters, hundreds of acres of swamp and forests filled with wildlife and star-lit dark skies unsullied by city lighting.

“People go on U.S. 64 and they go to the beach,” he said in a 2020 interview. “They never get off the highway.”

By promoting the region, its residents will find another approach to making a living with its land and water.

“This is a new resource out there. All of this used to be farming land and timberland,” Riggs said. “Alligator River — we ditched it and ditched it and ditched it. You can’t ditch it anymore because the seas are rising. Because of sea level rise that’s taken place since 1700 … it’s rising now more and more. That water comes up a little bit higher.

“Half of those counties are at sea level — it didn’t used to be that way,” he said. “We can’t farm them. We can’t log them anymore. So, let’s recreate with them!”

Riggs has worked closely with Bertie County officials in helping the community understand its flood risk. But as part of a nonprofit initiative that he chairs, the N.C. Land of Water — the focus is on the 17 counties in the northeast corner of the state, which have been hit with dual stresses of economic decline and environmental challenges from climate change.

“When I started here 55 years ago, there were working people out there on the water,” he recalled. “Everybody had a little boat, they’d go out on these black waters. Those waters are absolutely beautiful. All those streams that come into the Albemarle — awesome, awesome for kayaking. We can bring people from all over the world to paddle these waters.”

An early success in the NC LOW effort is an outdoor recreation project in Bertie called Tall Glass of Water, which recently opened the first public beach in all the Albemarle Sound communities.

But Riggs’ and NC LOW’s shared mission is one of a growing number of efforts to foster coastal resilience.

Reide Corbett, executive director of the multi-institutional Coastal Studies Institute in Wanchese and dean of the Integrated Coastal Program at ECU, has been providing data and, when possible, scientists to local communities to help them mitigate climate impacts.

“I think it’s critical that communities really start thinking about resilience,” he said recently. “Certainly, we need to think about changes we want to have in place after an event. The discussion about what that policy is has to happen before that event.”

But the first step is for a community to define what resilience means to the people there, he cautioned. Is it bouncing back from storm damage? Or is it being proactive about determining responsive options to the impacts of an event?

Being resilient is not simply putting a building back, he said.

“It involves the ecosystem, your economy, the biosphere,” Corbett said. “The concept of resilience needs to think about that interaction, that codependence and the economy that’s built. We have to frame that concept of resilience … That’s important to us, to educate the citizenry. That’s something that we need to do — sort of frame that concept. That’s something that’s done through education.”

Corbett said he is encouraged by Gov. Roy Cooper’s efforts to mitigate climate change impacts and the state’s recent outreach to communities to assist in their resilience planning.

“It’s going to take time to make significant changes,” he said. “We went years, essentially, with no science. We’ve come a long way since 2010.”

One effort that also involves the Coastal Studies Institute — among multiple other universities and agencies in the state and beyond — recently launched is C-Coast, which stands for the Collaboratory for Coastal Adaptation over Space and Time. A North Carolina-focused program funded by the National Science Foundation to address a range of challenges in coastal resilience, C-Coast is a network of coastal researchers, stakeholders and practitioners who collaborate on work that fosters better understanding of human interaction with the natural coastal system.

“We envision C-Coast having perhaps a core of participants,” said Laura Moore, professor of coastal geomorphology at the University of North Carolina Chapel Hill and the director of C-Coast. “But we also see C-Coast as a broad network.”

Even though its initial focus is on North Carolina, she added, the work that’s done will be useful to researchers and stakeholders from other regions.

C-Coast’s “theme,” Moore explained, is “connecting short term decision-making to long-term outcomes, and understanding what are the ways in which the connection between the short-term and long-term can be influenced by different actors in the process.”

As an example, Moore said, when a road is covered in sand during a storm, does removal of the sand — an island’s land — inadvertently weaken the long-term resilience of the island’s landscape?

“We aren’t looking to advocate for any particular outcome or particular future,” Moore said. “We’re looking to understand the decision process, how short-term decisions lead to long-term outcome.”

James “Bo” Dame, professor of biology and physical sciences at Chowan University in Murfreesboro, has involved students in research on water quality impacts, ideally as a way to answer specific questions, such as influences of water quality on submerged aquatic vegetation, or the health of frogs and toads.

Dame said that he is about to launch a water quality monitoring program this spring with his students near the Tall Glass of Water project on the Albemarle Sound in Bertie County.

Although the Chowan River, which empties into the northwest end of the Albemarle, in recent years has been plagued with algal blooms during the warm months, Dame said the problem happens closer to Edenton and has not been evident at the end where they’ll be working.

Their work won’t solve the Chowan’s algal issue, he said, but he hopes it will contribute to improving water quality in the area around the site.

Dame said he and the students will probably be sampling about a half-dozen locations on the northwest edge of the Albemarle Sound from Salmon Creek to the U.S. 17 bridge. Although specifics have yet to be decided, water quality monitoring could be looking at levels of phosphorus, salinity, dissolved oxygen, temperature, or clarity, turbidity chlorophyll, nutrients, nitrogen and phosphorus.

Considering Bertie’s relatively small place in the vast and complex Albemarle-Pamlico estuarine system, Dame said that its active role in resilience planning, economic adaptation and sustainable environmental restoration may be a positive contagion to other communities in the region.

The key to the appeal of Tall Glass of Water, which will include not just opportunities to camp and swim, but also to kayak, canoe and hike on trails, is the combination of environment, ecotourism and especially education, he said.

When Dame teaches his young adult students, he finds them receptive and open to climate issues, he said, but it’s still a battle with education and science literacy.

“This project feeds into that and it provides a perfect opportunity to make young people more aware of their environment, to get them out in the mud and whatever you find outdoors,” he said about Tall Glass of Water. “That’s usually when the lights go on. That’s when they get excited.”

This is the third installment in a continuing series on making the North Carolina coast more resilient to the effects of climate change, a special reporting project that is part of the Pulitzer Center’s nationwide Connected Coastlines initiative.

MERRY HILL — At the confluence of the Albemarle Sound and the Chowan River, Bertie County residents celebrated in June 2019 the grand opening of their first public beach.

Amid the joyous splashing and squeals of laughter, Ron Wesson spied a young girl trying to coax her little brother into the water. The boy would not budge, so the older man gently offered to help.

“We kind of sat there, with our toes in the water,” Wesson recounted in a recent interview. “He held my hand, and I walked out there with him. We took it real slow.”

Within a short time, the little guy found his nerve and was soon playing carefree in the water with the other kids.

Bertie Beach is the community’s first cool gulp of the “Tall Glass of Water,” the working name for the county’s outdoor recreational project.

“It’s weird, though, because I can kind of relate,” Wesson said, referring to the boy’s hesitation and that he and the boy are both Black.

In 2019, Bertie County was ranked by Wall St. 24/7 analysis as the poorest county in North Carolina. Of its population of 19,000 people, about 68% are Black. Wesson said that, historically, the county has the highest percentage of Blacks in the state.

But the experience that day transcended race, and its implications reverberated beyond Bertie County. The celebration was part of a strategic regional approach to community resilience: Bring the environment to the people and stimulate economic growth through sustainable ecotourism.

After devoting much of his career to study of North Carolina’s barrier islands and sea level rise impacts, Stanley Riggs, a professor emeritus at East Carolina University, has in recent years focused on the inland communities of the Albemarle-Pamlico estuarine system, which comprises sounds and rivers and is threatened by sea level rise and other climate change impacts. Those waterways and surrounding lands offer great opportunity but are considered vastly underutilized.

“That’s one of the world’s great water systems and it’s hardly used,” Riggs said in an interview late last year. “There’s nobody on Alligator River and the whole Albemarle Sound system. There’s precious few people out there.

“We’ve lost several generations of people. Kids have never learned to swim. You take people out on boats and they’re scared to death.”

Riggs is chairman of the North Carolina Land of Water initiative, or NC LOW, and Tall Glass of Water is one of its first success stories.

To Wesson, a county commissioner and Bertie native, the project’s multiyear effort shines new light on the county’s wealth of natural resources.

“It’s about broadening the opportunities and possibilities in a community,” he said. “You have to look at the resources available in a community. This is economic development. This is our brick and mortar.”

Perhaps more than any promotion or lecture could ever do, Tall Glass of Water is showing that climate resilience springs not only from a community’s shared investment in its environment, but also from its shared access to and benefits of that environment.

Its success demonstrates to the entire region that resilience and adaptation to changing climate conditions can enrich communities and open up new economic possibilities, while protecting their environments.

People from all over northeastern North Carolina attended the grand opening of Bertie Beach, said Steve Biggs, Bertie County’s director of economic development, in a recent interview. About 250 people were coming on summer weekends, he said. Swimming, kayaking, canoeing and paddleboarding are all allowed. Eventually, he said, he envisions families traveling to the Outer Banks stopping by for a respite in Bertie.

Biggs explained that the genesis of Tall Glass of Water, or TGOW, was in about 2014, when he was on the lookout for a piece of land for the county to build a boat ramp on the Chowan River. As he was heading into work one day, he said he noticed a “For Sale” sign on some waterfront property.

“I came in and jokingly told the commissioner who happened to be here that morning, ‘So I found your 2 acres for your boat ramp, but it comes with an additional 135 acres,’” Biggs said. As it ended up, the county purchased the 137 acres, he said, and added 10 more later.

Even though Phase I of the TGOW project was stalled by COVID-19 shutdowns, the public outdoor recreation plan has already injected a bolt of energy in talk of ecotourism collaboratives among Albemarle communities.

“We wanted to create a place where folks can spend the day,” now-retired Bertie County manager Scott Sauer said in an interview shortly before the June 29, 2019, opening day. “We think this will be a place that will draw people regionally.”

Not only does the project boast a 3/4-mile stretch of shoreline — 350 feet of which is sandy beach — and shallow, calm water bordered by soundside cliffs where the Chowan River begins, TGOW also includes opportunities for kayaking and canoeing, and will eventually offer a music pavilion, picnic shelters, hiking trails, ramps and walkways, primitive campsites and environmental educational field experiences for students and adults, according to plans. There will also be restoration of the former agricultural land and woodlands, which will help restore the wetlands.

Gov. Roy Cooper announced last September that the TGOW project would receive $500,000 through the North Carolina Parks and Recreation Trust Fund, which awarded $5 million total in grants to fund 16 local parks and recreation projects across the state.

Bertie County’s local match for Phase 1 is $529,591, for a total of $1,029,591.

The county-owned land encompasses Site Y, where archaeologists with the First Colony Foundation recently discovered artifacts that indicate some members of the 1587 Lost Colony relocated there after leaving Roanoke Island.

As luck would have it, a large area of adjacent wilderness was protected around the same time as TGOW was hatched. The new, more than 1,200-acre Salmon Creek State Natural Area was purchased for conservation by the nonprofit Coastal Land Trust, which turned it over to the state in 2019. Altogether, a total of 1,432 acres of undeveloped soundfront land is now protected.

Robin Payne, a project consultant for Tall Glass of Water, said that the citizens provided input into the master plan, which was released in March 2020. The project is being built and funded in phases.

“You know, it really all has to be sustainable, and it has to tie together community, environment and economic development,” she told Coastal Review Online last year. “And so, as we move forward, we’re making sure that we connect those three points.”

Until now, unless a family could go to a private pool or beach, it wasn’t a realistic option to enjoy a refreshing dip — especially for African Americans. There are still plenty of kids from Bertie who have never been to the ocean, Wesson said — the Outer Banks is about a 90-minute drive from Windsor.

Wesson, 70, was born and raised in Bertie County before leaving for college and beginning a 32-year career as a corporate executive in supply-management solutions with Dun and Bradstreet.

He returned home about 15 years ago, and he hasn’t forgotten what it feels like as Black kid who had never had the opportunity to swim or go to a beach. He said he didn’t get to swim until he persuaded his mother to take him at age 12 or so to a biracial pool in Rocky Mount, where one of the lifeguards informally taught him the basics of swimming.

“If you’ve never been in the water, other than a bathtub,” he said, “you’re not sure what’s going to happen to you.”

Bertie Beach is the first public access beach not only in the county, he said, but also along the entire Albemarle Sound. To this day, there is no public pool in the area.

Windsor, Bertie’s county seat, suffered extreme flooding from Hurricane Floyd in 1999 and Hurricane Matthew in 2016, but flooding overall has increased in recent years. That realization spurred residents to support efforts to make the town more resilient to flooding.

Biggs, the economic development director, said that more people are elevating their homes and businesses, but he said that, right now, there is not much state or federal help for small businesses. Still, with more people homebound as a result of the pandemic, he said, there is a lot more renovation being done, and the town is continuing to build back.

A farming community by tradition, many residents today work at the Perdue chicken processing plant or at the state correctional facility in Windsor, which houses medium- and maximum-security prisoners. Other folks raise chickens for Perdue or have jobs at Nucor Steel in adjacent Hertford County. The Hope Plantation is in Bertie County, but there are few other tourist attractions. At the same time, there are few chain stores and restaurants.

Bigg noted that more farmers and landowners in the county — as elsewhere in the region — are also leasing their land out for solar farms, which can produce steady income.

Inland coastal counties in North Carolina, especially in the rural northeast corner, are some of the poorest in the state, with losses in population and traditional industries such as timber, farming and fishing, leaving historic old towns with vacant storefronts and entire communities with too few good jobs.

Unlike the Outer Banks’ beach communities that benefit from a billion-dollar annual tourism industry, those communities in the “Inner Banks” — a relatively new term used to describe inland coastal counties —are often overlooked by visitors.

As part of NC LOW efforts, Riggs, the coastal scientist, in 2018 produced a report, “From Rivers to Sounds in the Bertie Water Crescent,” which detailed opportunities for economic development that enhances and protects the environment and culture of the region. That environment encompasses numerous rivers and tributaries with pristine, clear blackwater, filtered by the surrounding peat bogs and wetlands.

In a broader NC LOW report, recommendations include development of five educational and recreational “water hubs” for ecotourism development, with each plan designed for the unique qualities of each hub, but complementary to the whole system.

“All ecosystem components of these different water bodies and their vast swamp forest floodplains,” the report said, “are dominated by numerous forms of wildlife including a vast recreational fisheries resource.”

Within the last 15 years or so, an on-again, off-again proposal to connect the Albemarle port communities with a small ferry operation has been enthusiastically embraced by local governments for its appeal to tourists and as a potential bonanza for economic development. But for various reasons, the idea has never come to fruition. Still, it has never entirely died, and the idea may yet bear fruit.

“Every time anything about it happens, everybody gets excited: ‘When are the boats coming?’” state Rep. Ed Goodwin, R-Chowan, who was also a former director of the state ferry division, said in a recent interview. “I firmly believe that sooner or later, I’ll get it. I believe it will happen.”

A 2018 report “The Harbor Town Project,” a collaborative done by the University of North Carolina Kenan-Flagler Business School, said that a ferry system serving the Albemarle Sound could “increase tourism and create sustainable jobs and careers” and “is an attractive investment opportunity that can become profitable.”

Ferries could serve ports in Elizabeth City, Edenton, Hertford, Plymouth, Columbia and Kitty Hawk, and possibly expand to Windsor, Williamston, Manns Harbor and Manteo, the report said. As many as 140,000 Outer Banks tourists, the report estimated, could be lured to extend their vacation to hop on Inner Banks ferries.

Potentially, the system could garner about $14 million in tourism revenue and create 94 jobs, with annual ridership projected to be 107,000 in the first year.

“Tourists and visitors would enjoy visiting historic towns and sites, seeing nature, and exploring the IBX region by ferry,” the report said, playing off the ubiquitous OBX abbreviation for Outer Banks.

According to news accounts, plans were being made for a 100-foot private passenger vessel to start ferrying passengers between six towns in May 2020. But with COVID-19 shutdowns in mid-March, everything having to do with tourism ground to a halt.

“Everybody is still enthusiastic and wants it done next week, even if it’s an expansion of the current ferry system,” Goodwin said, referring to the state Ferry Division system on the coast.

Goodwin said that he envisions developing routes that highlight the uniqueness of the Albemarle’s environment, while promoting the strength of the region’s rich culture.

“Everybody loves to ride a boat,” he said. “We’ve got to maximize what we have. And what we have is quaint little towns with a lot of history in them.”

Coastal Review Online Assistant Editor Jennifer Allen contributed to this report.

Next in the series: Learning to live with water

This is the second installment in a continuing series on making the North Carolina coast more resilient to the effects of climate change, a special reporting project that is part of the Pulitzer Center’s nationwide Connected Coastlines initiative.

EASTERN NORTH CAROLINA — Craig Allen’s memory is a little hazy on the finer details of the coastal storm that pushed the waters of Scotts Creek into his grandmother’s backyard in James City.

He can’t pinpoint the precise year and time the hurricane rolled in – sometime in the early 1970s when he was in elementary school. He doesn’t recall the storm’s name.

But he vividly remembers that it was the first time in his life water flowed over the banks of Scotts Creek and crept alarmingly close to his grandmother’s house on Kennedy Drive.

“Every year since then it’s getting worse,” Allen said. “There’s some trees in the water now that when I was a kid they weren’t in the (Neuse) river.”

Allen also recalls that during Hurricane Florence in September 2018, residents had to be rescued by boat when Scotts Creek flooded the neighborhood.

James City, a community on the peninsula at the confluence of the Trent and Neuse rivers in Craven County, is in a floodplain.

That designation is part of why this community, which has a storied Black history, is one of several throughout North Carolina that has been identified by the state as a “potential” environmental justice community.

The North Carolina Department of Environmental Quality, or NCDEQ, has created maps that identify potentially underserved populations, ones that meet certain racial and economic criteria.

The state’s June 2020 Climate Risk Assessment and Resilience Plan identifies these communities as either having a population that consists of more than 50% nonwhites or a population of nonwhites of at least 10% higher than the county or state share. And, those with a population that experiences a poverty rate over 20% and households with poverty at least 5% higher than the county or state share.

The maps are designed to be a tool for local governments and organizations to use, if they choose, as a means in helping for the future, explained Renee Kramer, NCDEQ’s Title VI and environmental justice coordinator.

“Of course, there’s not one right or wrong way to use the mapping system,” Kramer said. “We really felt like we could help communities to provide a tool that has this data so that community members and, or, local governments can see what is in their community right now and help plan and envision what they want their community to be in the future. This is a screening tool. It’s not the end-all, be-all.”

The maps were created through a culmination of information pulled from various government agencies then layered to illustrate a community’s compounding vulnerabilities.

“You can’t really plan for these real-life scenarios without taking into consideration the reality of the folks living on the ground.”

Renee Kramer, Environmental Justice Coordinator, NCDEQ

The first layer is collected from across NCDEQ’s divisions identifying where and which type of government-issued permits, such as air quality and wastewater permits, exist. The second layer establishes socioeconomic and demographic characteristics collected from the Census Bureau. And, the third piece includes a community’s health characteristics gathered from the N.C. Department of Health and Human Services and county health departments.

“You can’t really plan for these real-life scenarios without taking into consideration the reality of the folks living on the ground,” Kramer said.

What is the transportation availability in that community? What’s the average income? Are there a high number of non-English speaking residents within that population?

“One thing that we have added from our data version 1.0 that is currently out is the flood layer,” Kramer said. “I think that would be a very powerful layer to consider to turn on if you’re talking about climate change and resiliency.”

James City is a prime example of a community with compounding vulnerabilities in our changing climate. It is a historically Black settlement that lies within a floodplain.

A section entitled “Climate and Environmental Justice” in the Climate Risk Assessment and Resilience Plan states, “Barriers to property ownership have resulted in a number of climate resilience concerns specific to African American homeowners and historic African American communities. A disproportionate share of African Americans live in low-lying areas in the Southeast, which are more susceptible to drainage and flooding problems.”

Located across the Trent River from New Bern, U.S. 70 now divides this unincorporated community named in honor of the Rev. Horace James, a Union Army chaplain who was charged with managing the Trent River Settlement, a haven for former slaves and their families during the Civil War in 1863.

“In 1863 if any African American could make it to that camp they were considered free,” Allen said. “As long as we stayed there, we had a right to stay there.”

By 1865, nearly 3,000 Black men, women and children lived in the settlement. During Reconstruction, James City transformed into an independent community of free Black people.

Roughly 10 years after the settlement was created, the land’s white owners began hiking rent of Black residents in an effort to evict them from the property. The owners turned down an offer of $2,000 to buy the land.

In 1892, the state Supreme Court ruled in favor of the property owners in a lawsuit brought on by Black residents.

The ruling prompted some Black families to pack up and move. Others, however, were determined to stay.

For Allen, James City embodies a sense of place, pride and resilience in the face of overwhelming. Community leaders are in talks to incorporate.

“To go back, it’s home,” said Allen, who lives in New Bern. “Home is home regardless of what people say. It’s funny that it’s called a flood zone and other neighborhoods are called waterfront. If all the Black people moved out right now then it would be a resort community because it’s surrounded by water.”

Chapter 4 of the Climate Risk Assessment and Resilience Plan pointedly discusses the connection Black property owners have to historically Black communities.

“Given the barriers to property ownership among African Americans, land often holds particularly high historical and cultural value for Black households. In some cases, land has been in the same family for many generations. The decision to consider a buyout, if offered one by a state or local program, is particularly fraught for these homeowners.”

Naeema Muhammad is organizing director of the North Carolina Environmental Justice Network and a member of the NCDEQ Secretary’s Environmental Justice and Equity Board.

She knows firsthand the challenges residents of environmental justice communities face.

“It’s about the sentimental and emotional ties and values that people are connected to in their homes and why should I have to give up my home and my family connection to my land to satisfy somebody else,” Muhammad said. “You will hear people around the state say, ‘Well why don’t they just move?’ If it was that easy then maybe people would. You hear their stories and you hear the passion that they’re speaking from. You see and hear their connection to the places they’re at. You know, everything is not always about money. It’s about the emotional ties that they have.”

Elsie Herring does not want to leave the land that’s been in her family for generations.

She’s living on a portion of the land her grandfather purchased in Duplin County in the late 1800s.

He bought the first 150-acre tract in 1891. Before the turn of the century, he had purchased three more tracts. All told, he owned more than 60 acres.

“This has been home for my family since then,” Herring said.

She and her 14 siblings were born in a house the family built in 1921.

By the time she was a teenager nearing high school graduation, jobs in and around the homestead were scarce for Blacks, she said.

She moved to New York where she lived and worked 27 years before returning to Duplin County in 1993 to care for her then-ailing mother and a brother.

The return home has been bittersweet because, for more than two decades, Herring, 72, has been fighting the pork industry.

She is part of a number of nuisance lawsuits filed against the pork industry in recent years.

In the case in which she was involved, an appellate court ruled in favor of the families — mostly Black land owners in rural areas of eastern North Carolina — where industrial hog farms operate.

Herring said she and her family have suffered years of intimidation and threats and dealing with the indescribable smell of hog waste sprayed onto fields next to, and oftentimes directly, on her mother’s land and house.

She alleges that her family’s land deeds were illegally changed for the benefit of the pork industry.

She witnessed hundreds of dead hog carcasses washed out by Hurricane Floyd in September 1999 and remembers the stench of death.

“There were dead pigs everywhere,” Herring said. “They even brought an incinerator down the road to burn the carcasses and that made it even worse. I’m very concerned about climate change. After Floyd there was always the threat of another hurricane coming by worse than Floyd. (Hurricane) Matthew was bad, but none of them were like (Hurricane) Florence.”

“My mother lived on this land for 99 years and she said the water had never been an issue coming up that high.”

Elsie Herring, Duplin County resident

Hurricane Florence’s record-breaking rainfall in September 2018 flooded Rock Fish Creek to the point the family wondered if they would have to evacuate their home.

“My mother lived on this land for 99 years and she said the water had never been an issue coming up that high,” Herring said. “It was an excessive amount of water. We had a strange feeling for the first time that we may need to leave for higher ground. What happens when another one comes? These (hog) facilities are still sitting there. These lagoons are still sitting there. They’re still just sitting there in a floodplain. We’re already dealing with enough pollution. Not only are we dealing with the pigs and their waste, we’re dealing with the chicken houses. Those two combinations right there are a recipe for disaster.”

She remains hopeful, despite a new fight, this one against a proposed facility in Duplin County that would capture biogas from hog waste lagoons at 19 industrial hog operations in that county and neighboring Sampson County.

The project would cap open-air lagoons to capture biogas, which would be transported through some 30 miles of pipeline to an upgrading facility, then injected into an existing natural gas pipeline.

Herring is one of a number of critics of the project who argue it does not address significant air pollution from the 19 operations that would be included or possible groundwater contamination.

“It’s not being treated,” she said. “It’s just being converted. We already have enough poisonous gas in our environment.”

Muhammad said communities like Herrings, overburdened with environmental hazards, are “like ticking time bombs” in a changing climate.

“These environmental justice communities are really just in harm’s way and it grows each hour because we can see how the weather can be 90 degrees in the morning and drop to 40 and 50 at night,” she said. “Any overflow of rain creates a major problem for these communities. One of the things we’ve seen during flooding (from hurricanes), you had a tremendous number of people who didn’t have a way to get out of harm’s way. They didn’t have cars. They didn’t have public transportation.”

“I read that plan and I thought, ‘You’re saying all this, but you’re still issuing bad permits.’”

Naeema Muhammad, Director, NC Environmental Justice Network

She has read the Climate Risk Assessment and Resilience Plan. She’s familiar with Chapter 4.

“I read that plan and I thought, ‘You’re saying all this, but you’re still issuing bad permits,’” Muhammad said.

“We have a long way to go. There have been some gains made, but not a tremendous amount. It’s not because of the will of the people. It’s because our local, state and federal governments don’t have the will to ring in these dirty industries,” she said. “If you are serious about protecting these communities, why are you going to keep dumping these same things in these places. You’re saying you’re going to do better and try to protect these communities but you’re not showing that. It’s wordy stuff that sounds good on paper. We’re not giving up that’s for sure.”

Neither is Elsie Herring.

“I would love to see change in my lifetime, but I don’t believe anything the industry says,” she said. “You can’t let man’s behavior take your joy away because if you do you may as well be dead. There’s no time to get tired when your job’s not complete and this job is not complete because the industry is a bad neighbor. This land means everything to me. We lived off this land. We were born and raised here. It’s a beautiful place. I’m hopeful that I’ll be able to stay on it until I die.”

Next in the series: Resilience as opportunity

Last year, a Coastal Review series for the Pulitzer Center’s Connected Coastlines initiative looked at how hurricanes, floods, nor’easters and other major events in recent years significantly dampened any remaining skepticism on the science of climate change.

In this first installment of our latest series supported in part by the Pulitzer Center, we look at how that shift in the debate is changing public policy and what kinds of plans and possible solutions are taking shape.

The 2020 Atlantic hurricane season, the most active on record, ended without a major storm, but many communities still reeling from storms of previous seasons continue to struggle to repair and recover.

The relentlessness of tropical storms and severe weather over the past half-decade has changed the dialogue on climate change statewide. State policy has shifted, too, but slowly and unevenly. While there’s consensus about some actions to further protect communities and make them more resilient, leaders are still divided when it comes to other climate-related initiatives such as greenhouse gas reduction.

In June 2020, Gov. Roy Cooper released the North Carolina Climate Risk Assessment and Resilience Plan, an extensive 372-page report on what the science is saying about North Carolina’s present and future, the state’s many vulnerabilities and an extensive set of strategies to address climate-related hazards.

The report followed through with a strategy Cooper launched early in his term to combine the effort to build resiliency with an emissions-reduction strategy organized around green energy.

A brief history

In the wake of destructive hurricanes in recent years, record rainfall in 2018, and sporadic, prolonged droughts, there was broad consensus around the need for resilience, a catch-all term that now seems to encompass every strategy aimed at weathering future storms.

The consensus on resilience has been strong enough to draw significant state funding and lead to policy changes, despite the backdrop of long-running political disagreements and budget standoffs between Cooper and leaders in the North Carolina General Assembly.

The most concrete result of the resiliency consensus is a new state agency, the Office of Recovery and Resiliency, which was formed in late 2018 to manage the massive flow of federal funds coming in the wake of the storms.

In contrast to at least a general agreement on the need to build resilience, the difference between the governor and legislative leaders on climate change mitigation, particularly limits on fossil fuels, could not be starker.

The General Assembly began the 21st century with an eye on a less carbon-reliant energy policy, passing requirements for renewable energy generation and forming a commission on global climate change to develop a state action plan.

After a series of delays and over industry objections, the commission released a 117-page report in 2010 calling for a major statewide effort to reduce emissions.

The year the report came out, Republicans won majorities in the state House and Senate and the leadership of key committees shifted to legislators openly skeptical about the science around climate change.

At the same time, lawmakers and administration officials were being courted by oil and gas exploration companies who saw potential for renewing offshore exploration as well as hydraulic fracturing — fracking — for natural gas in Piedmont shale deposits.

Within a year, the legislature embraced both onshore fracking and offshore drilling. A sweeping energy policy bill passed in 2011 declared that both industries would bring jobs and oil and gas royalties to the state.

In 2012, the legislature launched its notorious effort to limit the science used to determine the rate of sea level rise, and the legislature eventually codified skepticism of any science based on models showing an accelerated rate of sea level rise.

The legislature had a willing partner from 2013 to 2016 in then-Gov. Pat McCrory, who enthusiastically supported fracking and offshore drilling.

But McCrory’s defeat in 2016 by Cooper led to a change in the executive branch every bit as striking as the legislature’s shift in 2011, starting with unvarnished opposition to a Trump administration plan to reopen the leasing program for oil and gas exploration along the Atlantic Coast.

In October 2018, Cooper followed through on a campaign promise to reduce the state’s carbon emissions through Executive Order 80, which signed on to the 2015 Paris Agreement on climate change, and mandated a full review of state government policies and operations to reduce greenhouse gas output.

The order was significant because in addition to calling for numerous concrete steps across state government, it also knit together the concepts of climate change resilience and mitigation. The last “whereas” in the document reads:

“Whereas to maintain economic growth and development and to provide responsible environmental stewardship we must build resilient communities and develop strategies to mitigate and prepare for climate-related impacts in North Carolina.”

A different kind of plan

Coastal Review talked with four longtime state environmental policy experts about the Climate Risk Assessment and Resilience Plan, what it means and whether the governor and the legislature can bridge divides on key issues.

Cassie Gavin, director of government affairs with the North Carolina Sierra Club, said the decision to combine resiliency and climate change mitigation into the state’s strategy is a significant step forward, addressing both cause and effect.

“They have to go together. I’m glad that they are and that the state is doing both things at the same time,” she said. “The plan is a good start in that it sets a path for state agencies and local governments to follow and lays out resiliency priorities that the legislature should fund.”

She said it also gives local governments a template to work from in developing their own plans. It includes a scoring system for qualifying risk and other strategies that local governments can use.

“It’s not just the state that needs a resiliency plan,” Gavin said, “every community, especially at the coast or any community near water, needs a resiliency plan of their own.”

Bill Holman, state director of The Conservation Fund and a former state environmental secretary, said North Carolina has suffered from the lack of a long-term resiliency plan.

“Unfortunately, we have a lot of experience dealing with major floods going back more than 20 years,” Holman said. “I think what we’ve lacked is that while we’ve responded to the storms, we really haven’t done much to make ourselves more resilient for the next storm.”

Many communities would like to take action but need technical and financial support from the state to move forward, he said. Success in those communities would likely spur change in other places.

“I’m an optimist about the long haul here, because it’s an imperative and we really don’t have a choice, in particular in eastern North Carolina, where becoming more resilient is going to be critical to its long-term environmental and economic health.”

The choice for many places, he said, will be to become more resilient or wither away.

Will McDow, Resilient Landscapes director for the Environmental Defense Fund, said he agrees that the report could provide a pathway for communities looking to be proactive.

“It does a good job of providing that North Star, providing those guiding principles for where the state should go,” he said.

Attitudes among once-skeptical farmers and residents in rural, eastern North Carolina are changing, he said, and elected officials are beginning to get the message.

“There’s a shift in how people are thinking. They may not believe the science, but they believe their eyes. They’re seeing longer droughts and they are seeing higher flood waters, and that’s beginning to trickle up.”

One concept that’s resonating is using natural and working land to increase resilience capacity, a key part of the plan.

In one of the last bills passed in 2020 legislative session, the General Assembly approved a plan to create an inventory of areas where floodwaters could be diverted to reduce effects on towns and infrastructure downstream.

The bill also expands the Department of Environmental Quality’s Division of Mitigation Services to include natural-based solutions for flood mitigation in its grant program and to work with private landowners to provide floodwater capacity.

“Natural infrastructure is going to be a critical component of building the resilience of eastern North Carolina. It’s going to differ by watershed and it’s not a silver bullet, but it’s important,” McDow said. “Resilience is going to take a lot of different actions, diversity in all its different forms. There are going to be places where buyouts and getting people out of harm’s way are going to be a critical part of the conversation. There may be places where levees are actually needed or other gray infrastructure, but for the most part finding ways to make our landscapes more spongy is a critical piece of how we’re going to absorb more water when it comes.”

McDow said the climate report’s strong emphasis on environmental justice and bringing more voices into the conversation are also critical, because of the realities of the region.

The plan devotes a major section to a climate justice strategy, breaking down how aspects of climate change disproportionally affect already vulnerable communities.

It calls for the state to step in with funding and expertise for local communities that don’t have the resources, along with greater effort to add more local voices to the discussion and support locally initiated efforts.

“Historically, resilience efforts have not engaged organizations that interface most frequently with socially vulnerable populations, such as public schools, social service and healthcare providers, houses of worship, faith-based organizations, and public transit systems. These kinds of organizations could be the basis of very successful resilience efforts in the future,” the report states.

“This is the place where more conversation is needed,” McDow said. Policy decisions, he said, must be based on a community’s needs and what solutions are going to work for them.

“Resilience is more than flooding, it’s other longstanding impacts, water pollution, air pollution, economic disinvestment, there’s a lot of aspects to be thought about here, not just the flooding,” he said. “It’s got to be informed by those lived experiences.”

Grady McCallie, policy director for the North Carolina Conservation Network, said there’s broad recognition that low-wealth communities and communities of color in flood-prone areas that are hit repeatedly could get the biggest benefit from resiliency planning. But at the same time, they are often the communities that can least afford the planning and engineering costs that go into proposals.

“If you look at traditionally marginalized communities, they have the least ability to do those kinds of plans ahead of time, so that when the next big slug of money comes around, they don’t have anything ready to go and don’t have competitive applications put in.”

Looking forward

McCallie said the new plan has several important features: it establishes a baseline science on climate change; carries forward resiliency planning throughout state government; and looks to build resiliency in local communities. But without follow-through and without additional support from the legislature, he said, it will only go so far.

“The initiative on climate is all coming from the executive branch right now,” he said. “We need it from the legislative branch and legislative leaders are not leading on climate. There’s a lot of stuff that the executive branch can do and is doing, but there’s a lot that only the legislative branch can do.”

The most important step, he said, would be for the General Assembly to set up a reliable funding stream for resilience, particularly for planning at the state and local levels.

“Resiliency needs a stable, long-term funding source,” he said.

Holman said planning funds are important because having plans in place and a set of shovel-ready projects puts states in a better position to draw down federal support after major storms. He said Florida and the Chesapeake Bay region states have been able to tap federal funds from natural solutions because of forward planning and that’s allow them to suck up federal funds following major storms that could have gone to projects here.

“We’ve been missing out on money for natural solutions,” he said. “Some states were ready to go after those funds and some were not.”

McCallie said that, so far, there seems to be commitment to keep moving forward with Jeremy Tarr, the governor’s main policy adviser on resiliency and climate change, now leading an interagency working group on implementing the plan.

“If all they had done is put out this giant report, we’d be concerned about how it’s going to get implemented, but we’re really glad to see this commitment to staffing,” he said.

That’s important, McCallie said, because the buy-in across state government isn’t the same, and one criticism of the plan is that it is uneven, varying from department to department. “It’s evident some agencies thought deeper about it.”

While there are some steps the state can take now, the degree of meaningful follow-through on the plan and the ideas and challenges it raises will depend how much of it takes root in the legislature. Changes beyond what the executive branch can do, including additional funding and significant changes to law and policy, require legislative participation.

Given the political headwinds and the focus on pandemic response and recovery that could prove difficult.

Gavin said whether that changes and how fast it changes will determine how soon we see a difference in policies and funding on climate issues. So far, she said, climate change has far outpaced the General Assembly.

“The political process has been much too slow for the reaction that we need to see to address climate change in a meaningful way,” she said.

Next in the series: Helping underserved communities

The measures put in place in March to curb the spread of COVID-19 have changed how North Carolinians consume and dispose of waste. This is the fifth installment in a series examining how advocacy organizations, local governments and state agencies are adapting to these changes.

One day about five years ago, Paul Schernitzki of Maysville experienced an awakening of sorts while driving to work. The grass along the road he traveled all summer had just been mowed by roadworkers. It was as if a shaved beard exposed oozing sores.

“I was shocked how much litter there was,” Schernitzki said in a February podcast, recounting the reasons for founding his new educational anti-littering effort, The Litter Pirate. “It blew my mind.”

But safety measures related to COVID-19 have stalled The Litter Pirate’s work, along with other annual or seasonal roadside cleanups organized by the state Department of Transportation and numerous community volunteer groups.

“It just made it a lot worse when the COVID set in, but we were already having budget issues,” Kimberly Wheeless, NCDOT’s litter management program outreach coordinator, said about litter maintenance programs. “The only positive note due to the COVID is, in the beginning, more people were staying home, so there was less litter.”

Both of DOT’s annual spring and fall litter sweeps had to be canceled because of the virus, she said. Cleanups associated with the department’s Adopt-A-Highway program and Sponsor-A-Highway litter sweeps were also rescheduled or canceled.

But with more people hitting the highways as everything is opening up again, Wheeless added, roadside and parking lot litter now include the addition of masks and gloves. Cigarette butts and fast-food trash continue to be the main component of the garbage, along with plastic bags, straws and bottles, as well as aluminum cans and glass bottles.

During 2019, NCDOT spent $21,665,454 removing litter from 80,000 miles of state routes, according to state data.

To offset costs, the agency has programs such as Sponsor-A-Highway, which offers 1-mile segments of highway to businesses to sponsor in exchange for a fee to pay professional cleanup crews and a roadside sign advertising the business, and Adopt-A-Highway, which offers supplies to volunteer groups to pick up and bag litter on sections of road in their communities for DOT to collect.

Funding for most of the state prison crews that did cleanups in the past has been cut in recent years, although some local governments still use inmates to remove litter. Others pick up roadside litter as part of court-mandated community service.

With or without COVID-19 aggravating the issue, litter has been a costly and unsightly plague on North Carolina, from the coast to the mountains.

In 2019, the Sponsor-A-Highway program removed 577,035 pounds of litter, and Adopt-A-Highway picked up 1,020,870 pounds of roadside trash. Other volunteers reported a total of 77,115 pounds, and NCDOT contract litter maintenance removed 7,253,490 pounds. Also, there was a total of 3,154 litter charges issued with 983 convictions. Intentional litterers could face fines of $250 plus costs.

Keep American Beautiful, probably the most recognized anti-litter nonprofit group, has about 650 certified affiliates nationwide and about 30 in North Carolina.

The group began in 1953 when “a group of corporate, civic and environmental leaders gathered to unite the public and private sectors to foster a national cleanliness ethic,” according to a 2018 press release.

The famous “Crying Indian” public service announcement from 1971, depicting a supposed Native American man (who was actually an Italian-American) on horseback, looking at the polluted and littered environment in his midst. As the camera zooms into his face, a big tear welled from one eye onto his cheek.

But critics of the PSA, often cited as one of the most successful in advertising history, accuse Keep American Beautiful of using the campaign to blame consumers, rather than manufacturers, for the blight.

“Not only were they the very essence of what the counterculture was against, they were also staunchly opposed to many environmental initiatives,” Finis Dunaway, author of “Seeing Green: The Use and Abuse of American Environmental Images,” wrote in a Nov. 21, 2017, editorial in the Chicago Tribune.

Dunaway contended that the “Crying Indian” purposely deflected attention from responsibility for the environmental blight created by disposable packaging and container industries.

“That narrative is fundamentally untrue,” said Keep American Beautiful spokesman Noah Ullman.

Although most of the founding members of the group, initially called the “Keep Our Roadsides Clean Council,” included corporate representatives from, among others, the National Can Corp., American Petroleum Institute and Paper Cup and Container Institute, it also represented the National Council of State Garden Clubs and the National Parks Association.

Ullman cited the group’s 2019 impact report as evidence of the Keep American Beautiful’s value to communities: 11,911,783 hours volunteered; 218,056 acres cleaned or improved; 59,874 miles of trails and roadway picked up; 7,764 miles of shoreline cleaned and $304,952,284 of economic benefit to communities.

In addition to regular cleanups, other events, such as the “plogging” trash blast, which features a long implement that picks up litter, were also sponsored this year by Keep American Beautiful, but were delayed, canceled or held virtually.

“The scale we deliver is impressive,” Ullman said. “It seems obvious to us now, but people didn’t know about putting things in the bin.”

Micki Bozeman, executive director of Keep Brunswick County Beautiful, confirms that most of the affiliate’s varied tasks, including its litter index that assesses the volume of litter at different spots in the county, have been affected by COVID.

For whatever reason, she added, people seem to think nothing of throwing masks and gloves outside — out their vehicle window, or tossed aside after leaving a building.

“It’s everywhere, especially in the parking lots,” Bozeman said. “Which to me just blows my mind.”

Bozeman, who is also the county’s solid waste and recycling coordinator, said the Brunswick affiliate, working in the county for 18 years, focuses more on the rural areas that don’t receive the same attention as the beaches.

But the county places specially designed carts at beach areas, she said, that serve the purpose of a “big ashtray” to encourage people not to put out their cigarettes on the ground or in the sand.

Considering the unfortunate reality that people continue to litter, she said being affiliated with a well-known national organization like Keep America Beautiful encourages people to get involved in cleaning it up.

“I’ve never littered at all, and I’ve never understood at all why somebody throws something out the window,” Bozeman said. “I do think that it’s something good for communities to be part of the effort.”

Schernitzki, a 39-year-old K-12 teacher, was so appalled by the amount of litter he saw just commuting to work that he decided to clean the area himself. It turned out to be more than one person could handle.

“The thing is, if you drive around and notice litter on the side of the road,” he said in an interview, “it’s always way worse than you can see in a car.”

Even after connecting with Adopt-A-Highway and other volunteers, he said, picking up litter off the same roadways over and over again left him feeling jaded.

“There’s a road I drive on called Hibbs Road in Carteret County,” Schernitzki said. “The last time I picked that road, I filled 100 30-gallon bags in 2 miles.”

It soon became obvious, he said, that littering is a complex problem that needs a more comprehensive solution than some unpaid people cleaning up other people’s trash. Policymakers, law enforcers and lawmakers, religious and business leaders and many more representatives from the public and private sector, he said, need to be engaged.

“I see the problem as kind of a pie chart,” Schernitzki said. “I think volunteerism has a place, but it should have an equal share of the pie.”

As a science, technology, engineering and math, or STEM, teacher at Roger Bell New Tech Academy in Havelock who does videography on the side, Schernitzki thought he’d start by teaching young people about the waste stream and responsible disposal.

“I think people are assuming that children are getting taught that in school, but they’re not,” he said.

Less than a year ago, Schernitzki, who transplanted to Eastern North Carolina from Seattle in 2015, founded The Litter Pirate, a tongue-in-cheek nod to his outsider status as well as his mission to crew a diverse force of young and old to conquer litter. His website includes links to humorous videos and informative podcasts to help the spoonfuls of litter education go down easy.

“The goal of The Litter Pirate is to do more than pick litter,” he said in the podcast. “It’s to fight littering, not just litter.”

On the Western corner of the state, Gary Chamberlain founded North Carolina Litter-Free Coalition for similar reasons.

Chamberlain, 73, landed in North Carolina from Arizona about four years ago after visiting the state during one of his frequent cross-country bicycle trips.

“Every state has a litter epidemic, there is no state that is immune to this,” he said in an interview. “It’s a problem that nobody seems to be able to get their arms around.”

Roadside litter has served as a sad and alarming illustration of the social crisis with drugs and alcohol abuse, Chamberlain said. He has found liquor and beer bottles, opened and unopened, as well as needles and pill bottles.

The coalition has a “Cash-4-Trash” program, funded by local businesses and residents, that pays people $100 to fill 10 33-gallon bags with litter and answer six litter-related questions.

“It makes it a win-win situation for everybody,” he said. “Businesses love this program because they’re rewarding people who are doing something for their community. And the people who need funding have a way now to earn some funding rather than … begging for money for doing nothing.”

Chamberlain, a Vietnam War veteran and retired pharmaceutical data collection consultant, said he sees littering as a personal responsibility and doesn’t blame NCDOT for the volume of litter on roadsides.

“You, who are aunts, uncles, parents, or whatever, you put that trash there,” he said about his message. “So don’t complain to the NCDOT when they don’t have the time, money or funding to pick up the crap you left on the highway.”

That idea has received the approval of Republican politicians in the state, but Chamberlain said that the insists that the coalition remain nonpartisan. And the coalition’s slogan urging people to “Honor God and His Creation,” is about appreciating the environment, not “pushing scripture,” he said.

No matter a person’s beliefs or background, he said, “there’s something in this for everybody” because everyone hates litter.

“We’re an army of one,” he said, “consisting of many.”

Chamberlain said he hopes that the NC Litter Coalition eventually will be able to expand statewide.

Changing a careless behavior like littering, he agrees, will be a long-term effort.

“It’s a complicated thing,” he said. “I guess to get down to the basic thing is we need to educate the youth in elementary and middle school because they’re going to become the ones that actually make a difference long term.

“In my lifetime, I’m never going to see anything even close to what would make me happy, because we’re so far behind the eight ball.”

The measures put in place in March to curb the spread of COVID-19 have changed how North Carolinians consume and dispose of waste. This is the fourth installment in a series examining how advocacy organizations, local governments and state agencies are adapting to these changes.

Debris that litters the coast has been a longstanding problem for marine life, and coordinators for University of North Carolina Wilmington’s Turtle Trash Collectors program, which previously offered in-person educational activities, have changed how they reach audiences during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Laura Sirak-Schaeffer, grants project coordinator and lead instructor for Turtle Trash Collectors, said in an interview that the program is an environmental education initiative funded by a grant from the National Oceanic Atmospheric Administration Marine Debris Program.

Turtle Trash Collectors is a project through MarineQuest, the official marine science outreach program for UNCW,  Watson College of Education, and the Center for Marine Science to offer young people with opportunities to explore, discover and value our marine habitats.

The goal of the program is to educate youth about the impacts of marine debris and encourage behavioral changes that will reduce its generation in the future.

“This program combines both my love for sea turtles and my passion for public education. My favorite part of my job is knowing that we are making a lasting impact by teaching everyone how they can stop marine debris,” she said.

Sirak-Schaeffer explained that marine debris has major effects on all kinds of marine organisms, especially sea turtles, which can confuse plastic bags and balloons for jellyfish. The debris can end up in their system and can get stuck, making the turtle feel full so that they stop eating. Sea turtles also can swallow fishing hooks and get caught in fishing nets.

“Since sea turtles are endangered species, we need to find a way to protect them from the impacts of marine debris,” Sirak-Schaeffer said, adding ways to help include reduce using plastic and use reusable water bottles, coffee cups, grocery bags and food containers instead, pick up trash to make sure it doesn’t end up in the ocean and encourage others to help.

Turtle Trash Collectors launched earlier this year new citizen-science program to better understand how COVID-19 is affecting pollution and marine debris.  Volunteers are to pick an area to hold a cleanup, such as a neighborhood, park or beach, and hold three cleanups in the same area, once now, then again when quarantine restrictions are lifting, and once more when everything is reopened and back to normal. Participation information is on the website.

During each cleanup, volunteers are asked to keep track of what they collect using a data sheet and then report data so progress can be recorded.

Sue Kezios, director of Youth Programs and UNCW MarineQuest, is the principle investigator, or PI, for the NOAA grant that funds the Turtle Trash Collectors project.

Kezios said that there already was in place the Turtle Trash Collector badging program to encourage young people and their families to collect certain kinds of marine debris, single-use plastic items in particular.

“But during the early days of the pandemic I started to hear stories about how the environment seemed to be responding to the decrease in human impacts. People in the Indian province of Punjab being able to see the Himalayan mountains for the first time in many years due to a reduction in air pollution, Kezios said. “This got me thinking about litter and whether that was decreasing; and if so, what would we find during beach cleanups?”

Kezios continued that the idea to launch the citizen-science project grew out of this initial idea and the fact that they were starting to hear how kids were struggling with online learning and being quarantined at home.

“Our citizen-science project is a great way to get them outside, engaged in science and helping the environment. We asked them to do a trash survey of the immediate neighborhood surrounding their homes during the early weeks of the pandemic, then a follow up survey once their community started to open back up, and a final survey once the community is fully opened,” Kezios said. “Will the trash increase as people start to spend more time out of their homes? Unfortunately, the data so far seems to indicate this is happening.”

Sirak-Schaeffer said the idea for Turtle Trash Collectors was sparked in the summer of 2018.

She and Kezios were “brainstorming ideas for new outreach programs and thought ‘wouldn’t it be fun to show the impacts of marine debris by simulating a sea turtle necropsy?’ We ran with the idea, applied for a grant through the NOAA Marine Debris Program, and were pleased to receive funding. We spent many hours designing and sewing our life-like sea turtle models, officially implementing programs in schools as of January of 2019,” Sirak-Schaeffer said.

They’ve traveled more than 9,000 miles and reached nearly 12,000 students and 500 teachers in southeastern North Carolina since starting the program, she said. ““We also educated 3,800 kids and 3,000 adults at public programs, mostly at the Karen Beasley Sea Turtle Rescue and Rehabilitation Center and the North Carolina Aquarium at Fort Fisher last summer.”

Kezios said she searched for a life-size and realistic-looking model and found a green sea turtle stuffed-animal toy that was easy to adapt for a necropsy simulation.

“Fortunately, our team is pretty creative, and we have a number of skilled seamstresses. I gutted the stuffed-turtles and reinforced their side walls. Another team member used cross-stitch webbing to reinforce and apply Velcro to the removable plastron,” Kezios explained. “Then we set up an assembly line and started sewing organs – muscles and heart, esophagus, stomach, small and large intestines, then trachea and lungs. The most difficult part was making small resealable openings throughout the digestive tract so we could insert marine debris that a sea turtle might mistakenly ingest.”

This is the third grant Kezios has secured that focuses specifically on the problem of marine debris.

“I think anyone who has seen coverage of a whale or sea turtle starving to death because of the marine debris they’ve swallowed or struggling to swim and breathe because they are entangled by derelict fishing gear must feel some level of responsibility for the problem,” she said. “We all generate trash, the challenge is to reduce it as much as possible and to responsibly dispose of it in an environmentally appropriate manner. Educational programs like ours can help people recognize the small ways they can contribute to a solution for a huge problem like marine debris.”

Kezios said the success of Turtle Trash Collectors was built on a previous project, Traveling Through Trash, funded by a NOAA marine debris prevention grant.

The project involved visiting schools in rural communities throughout the region with life-size inflatable North Atlantic Right Whale classroom, during which time they formed relationships with many of the school systems in coastal and southeastern North Carolina.

“The kids attended a program inside the whale and learned about marine debris origins and impacts, as well as how they can help prevent it. The program was very successful, so we were encouraged to continue our efforts with a second grant that leveraged young people’s interest in sea turtles,” Kezios said.

The idea to create stuffed turtles to simulate a necropsy, or animal autopsy, was based on the Traveling Through Trash project.

“One of the lessons we utilized with the life-sized whale was a simulated necropsy. This was so large it could only be done as a group exercise.  So, we decided to focus on a different marine organism that was equally charismatic, also impacted by marine debris, and would allow for small group interactions. The sea turtle was a perfect fit,” Kezios said.

Sirak-Schaeffer explained that before the pandemic, “we would bring our model sea turtles to elementary schools in southeastern North Carolina and do a hands-on demonstration with third to fifth grade classes. Since that is not possible right now due to COVID-19, we have shifted to a fully virtual experience. We still do our simulated necropsy and help you learn about sea turtles and marine debris, but now we do it via Zoom or other online delivery platforms,” she said.

The free virtual Turtle Trash Collectors programs are hourlong sessions that features a simulated sea turtle dissection, learn how trash can get to the ocean, see how trash in the ocean can impact sea turtles and learn how to help stop marine debris, including how to become a Turtle Trash Collector. Dates are announced on Facebook for the virtual programs designed for third to fifth graders, though all ages are welcome. Younger audiences should attend with an adult if possible. The next virtual program is 11 a.m. Oct. 3. A private program for students, Scouts or network can be scheduled as well.

Since transitioning to virtual programs in March, “we have reached over 750 students, 100 adults, and an additional 300 participants. We are looking forward to a busy fall of virtual programs and would love for you to join in on the fun,” she said.

Kezios told Coastal Review Online that the team “has done a terrific job” pivoting the project to online delivery.

“They created resources that allow students to watch the virtual necropsy on the computer screen while still following along with a dissection guide and flip book. With NOAA’s permission, we’ve been able to expand our geographic delivery area and the team has provided programs to students around the country and even overseas in places like Austria and Uganda,” Kezios added.

To join the Turtle Trash Collector badge program designed for upper-elementary students in the southeastern part of the state, participants will need to sign up to receive a Turtle Trash Collector Handbook that helps identify what kinds of debris to collect for each badge, where to find it, and how to collect the debris safely. Participants will need to collect 20 debris items in each of these categories to earn badges: snack food wrappers and food packaging; drink items such as aluminum cans, plastic bottles, etc.; plastic straws; fast food containers and plastic utensils; and plastic bags.

The Turtle Trash Collectors program has helped young people who don’t live near the coast realize that land-based litter can still make its way into the ocean and harm marine organisms, Kezios said. “Marine debris is everyone’s problem and we encourage our students to choose to be part of the solution.”

The measures put in place in March to curb the spread of COVID-19 have changed how North Carolinians consume and dispose of waste. This is the third installment in a series examining how advocacy organizations, local governments and state agencies are adapting to these changes.

The COVID-19 pandemic has changed how we consume, which is being reflected in the recycling and waste industry.

The Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Andrew Wheeler in a message encourages Americans to recycle materials from their households to recycle more and recycle right by keeping gloves, masks, other personal protective equipment out of recycling bins and off the ground. 

“Businesses that normally recycle large amounts of paper and cardboard aren’t able to do that right now. Because of this, household recycling is more essential than ever. We are all staying home and getting more deliveries in cardboard boxes and generating more material than normal, much of which can be recycled,” according to the EPA. “Recycled materials are key for everything from making new products to boxes to ship products and other essential supplies for the everyday needs of hospitals, grocery stores, pharmacies and American homes. There are critical needs for all raw materials in the manufacturing supply chain, especially paper and cardboard.”

One concern the state Department of Environmental Quality’s Division of Environmental Assistance and Customer Service, or DEACS, has heard from local government and recycling hauler contacts is that contamination in the recycling stream has increased since March.

DEACS Recycling Business Development Specialist Sandy Skolochenko explained in a recent interview that varying factors have led to the contamination problem.

“It ties in to the use of more single-use plastic items and residents placing them in the recycling bin even though most of those items don’t belong. Other factors are more time spent at home and more material generated at the curb,” she said. “In some cases, people are simply using their recycling bin as an overflow trash container. Additionally, unfamiliar materials like gloves and masks are now commonplace in the home and I’m sure there is some ‘wishcycling’ happening with those materials.”

She explained that wishcycling, also known as aspirational recycling, “happens when you put something into the recycling bin without checking whether it’s actually recyclable.”

The division developed a social media campaign to address COVID-related residential waste to help educate the public about what can and can’t be recycled.

Skolochenko added that she’s heard anecdotally that the commercial waste stream has decreased more than 50% and on the residential side, the Solid Waste Association of America reports that volume has increased 20%.

Big picture, Skolochenko said, is that the waste and recycling stream has shifted during the pandemic from the commercial sector to the residential sector.

“Commercial facilities generate quite a bit of cardboard, so the availability of that material has decreased at a time when manufacturers really need it to make essential items like toilet paper, shipping boxes and packaging for food and medical supplies. So it’s very important that we keep our residential recycling programs intact to keep feeding recycled content into the supply chain,” she said.

Matt James is a DAECS industrial development specialist who focuses on recycling business development.

James also noted that the stream of recyclables that goes to material recovery facilities contains much more residential recyclables since the pandemic has forced more folks to stay home.

“As businesses have reduced their hours, the commercial stream of recycling has decreased. Usually, the commercial stream of recycling is higher value and less contaminated,” he said.

Residents can help reduce contaminating the recycling stream by recycling materials that are actually recyclable such as plastic bottles, tubs, jugs and jars, glass bottles, metal cans, paper and cardboard.

A recent survey from his office showed that 80% of the recycling collected in North Carolina went to a manufacturer in the southeast, about 7% of the tonnage went to states outside the southeast and 13% of North Carolina’s recyclables left the country to be recycled in another country, he said.

“The most common and troublesome contaminant in the recycling stream is still plastic bags. The plastic bags and film tangle up the recycling equipment at Material Recovery Facilities. If people want to recycle their grocery bags, they can take them back to the store, but they should not put them in their recycling cart,” he added.

As for beach towns, the trend he’s noticed is that residents demand recycling despite the struggles with the industry.

“Because coastal towns can be located further from some of the state’s material recovery facilities, towns sometimes have difficulty finding outlets for their materials. We’ve seen some coastal communities drop their recycling program only to bring it back after their residents demand that service. Our office has been working with recycling markets to find sustainable solutions for recycling on the coast,” he said.

Shanna Fullmer, public works director for Dare County, said that trash tonnage has gone up overall 7% since last summer, mostly residential trash versus commercial.

“Recycling has slowed due to departmental challenges along with the closure of private recycle company on Hatteras Island,” she said. The only beach town that unincorporated Dare County manages is Hatteras Island and the closure of private company has presented Dare County with overflow issues as well as contamination issues.

She reiterated that following instructions at recycle yards as to what materials go where is vital to keep the recycling stream uncontaminated. “Recycle only the basics — plastic, glass, cardboard, aluminum cans, steel cans, paper. Many items people want to recycle simply are not recyclable in this area due to lack of markets.”

One beach town that has figured out a way to bring recycling back to its residents is Southern Shores.

Town manager Cliff Ogburn explained that because of changes in the market, Bay Disposal, which hauls the town’s recycling, had been taking the material to an incinerator.

“We are pleased to have worked with Bay to find a way to get back to recycling,” he said in an interview in late August. The town council amended the contract with Bay Disposal Aug. 18 and will now be hauling the recycling, including glass, to Recycling & Disposal Solutions of Virginia, or RDS, in Portsmouth.

Bay Disposal notified the town in December 2019 that the company no longer had a place to deliver collected materials. Since then, Bay has been taking the town’s recycling material to a waste-to-energy facility also in Portsmouth, Virginia.

Bay Disposal cannot place any noncontaminated recycling material in a landfill. The change adds $5,701 to the original annual contract amount of $189,500. The town said it serves about 2,800 homes as part of its recycling contract, according to the town.

Across the board, Ogburn said that while he hasn’t noticed an increase in littering, there is more residential trash and recycling than in years past, “Which makes sense due to more people staying home.  It’s also reflected in that trash and recycling costs have increased due to the increased volume.”

Joe Benedetto III, president of RDS Virginia, said he’s looking forward to working with Southern Shores to find creative solutions to the challenges that recycling has, especially with the challenges that COVID-19 has brought.

He explained that RDS is a smaller processor that focuses mostly on recycling, and serves about two dozen local governments in parts of Virginia and is trying to expand to the Outer Banks. He said they take in about 50,000 tons of recycling and about 20,000 tons of trash.

Benedetto said that recycling and the recycling markets have struggled recently with China being out of the recycling market in the Unites States for the last three years — that’s what led to the closure of a lot of recycling facilities. It pushed a lot of the cost structure back toward municipalities. China no longer buying recycling materials contributed to the demise of a lot of recycling programs, especially those on the Outer Banks.

RDS Virginia has been in talks with the state to set up a small facility somewhere closer to the Outer Banks to save on some of the transportation costs, and set up a small operation to do processing.

“The challenge with the Outer Banks is the location and the fact that there really isn’t a dedicated recycling center in that area. And, and that’s partly because of location and partly because of volume,” he said.

His company, having gone through the lack of demand and market, was able “to adjust a little bit over the past few years so that’s at least one big burden that’s been off our shoulders.”

Since March, Benedetto said that because of all the shutdowns, volume on types of paper from commercial and industrial has dramatically decreased and there has been an increase in the material coming out of the households, which makes sense because people are staying at home.

The mixed materials they’re seeing come out of households changed, too. The biggest change is the additional cardboard, which he contributes to the “Amazon effect,” as well as single serve products, tin cans and aluminum cans.

Among the single-serve products he’s noticed an increase in is single-serve plastics, like water bottles, but he said he hasn’t noticed an increase in plastic cutlery.

“It just kind of reflects the shifting of people from an office building to a home,” Benedetto said, and the shift from buying at a store to ordering online and having delivery to your house.

“We have also seen a higher percentage of contamination,” Benedetto said.

He speculated that could be because there’s folks who may not have been actively recycling in the past and are not quite sure what to recycle. He said there have been some gloves and masks but “things like plastic bags and such seem to be a little more prevalent,” he said.

One way he hopes to help lessen contamination in the recycling stream is to put out printed magnets explaining what to distribute to residents. ‘Education is always, in my opinion, the thing that we need to do and continue to do to reduce contamination and improve recycling rates.”

Local and state observations are in line with a recent survey by the Environmental Research & Education Foundation and the National Waste & Recycling Association on how the industry has been affected and how it has dealt with COVID-19 challenges.

The organizations received about 400 responses, mostly from waste haulers, as well as consulting firms, municipalities, government agencies and academic institutions, all of which reported being impacted by the pandemic.

Results indicate that academic institutions were among the most impacted, with government agencies and waste haulers reporting around 90%.

“About 6 out of 10 of haulers/waste managers experienced a decrease in volumes, while nearly 3 in 10 actually managed more material and the remainder were unchanged. This reflects the decline in commercial waste from the closure of offices, retail spaces and restaurants contrasted by the increase in residential waste from being quarantined. Unfortunately, increased volumes do not necessarily translate to attendant rise in revenue as many residential contracts are fixed price,” according to the EREF.

Additionally, close to 70% respondents noted that residential waste was the largest increase, with the remaining consisting of food, yard, commercial, medical, construction and demolition and industrial waste, in that order, while 67% observed a decrease in commercial waste.

Some respondents indicated that there have been changes to recycling, with some being sent directly to the landfill or minimal sorting is taking place, some stopped manual sorting, and others allowed all recyclables to be mixed, stopping all sorting. There were a few instances where recycling was stopped completely.

Respondents observed a decrease in medical waste rather than an increase.

“Anecdotal observations via discussions with medical personnel suggest that while localized COVID-19 ‘hotspots’ could result in increased medical waste volumes, the majority of the U.S. has seen reductions in medical waste,” according to EREF. “Healthcare workers suggest this could be due to a large portion of the population working at home, which may impact the frequency of situations requiring medical care. Elective surgeries were canceled and telehealth services have increased. Many doctors and dentists closed their offices to routine care and are only now beginning to reopen. In addition, COVID-19 patients do not generate significant amounts of medical waste.”

Despite the changes in volume for the different streams, 83% indicated they’re not handling any waste differently.

The Solid Waste Association of America, or SWANA, submitted in July a written statement to the U.S. Senate Committee of Environment and Public Works about the challenges facing recycling in the United States.

The statement is in conjunction with the Committee’s oversight hearing, “Responding to the Challenges Facing Recycling in the United States,” according to SWANA.

SWANA notes in the statement the impact that the COVID-19 pandemic is having on recycling programs and facilities, similar to those being reported by other organizations. There has been a decrease in recovered material from commercial customers such as schools, offices, and stores, meanwhile residential waste and recycling volume increased nationwide in March and April, though it has declined from the peak of about 20% higher than normal, according to SWANA.

SWANA also pointed to operational changes at recycling facilities to keep workers safe, temporary suspension of some curbside collection programs, and additional personal protective equipment provided by employers in response to concerns about exposure expressed by front-line workers.

The measures put in place in March to curb the spread of COVID-19 have changed how North Carolinians consume and dispose of waste. This is the second installment in a series examining how advocacy organizations, local governments and state agencies are adapting to these changes.

Environmental organizations along the coast, which are having to adapt to precautions to slow the spread of COVID-19, are noticing more coronavirus-related litter, from gloves and masks to takeout packaging, which can become hazardous marine debris.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, or CDC, recommends that everyone wear cloth face coverings when leaving their homes, and many use single-use personal protective equipment, like gloves, wipes and disposable masks.

Another federal agency, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, or NOAA, Marine Debris Program warns that improperly disposing of personal protective equipment can create marine debris and harm the environment.

“Improperly discarded PPE can enter the environment through ineffective or improper waste management, intentional or accidental dumping and littering, or through stormwater runoff. Even if you’re at home, hundreds of miles from the shore, our trash travels and can adversely affect the ocean and harm the wildlife that share our planet,” the blog states.

Judith Enck is president of Beyond Plastics, a nationwide project to end plastic pollution. During a recent webinar, “Plastics Policy in the Age of COVID,” she explained that the World Health Organization estimates that 89 million masks are needed every month worldwide to deal with COVID-19. The disposable masks are mostly made from plastics, polypropylene, polyurethane, polyester and other polymers.

“These masks and gloves are already showing up in water bodies. There have been litter surveys in Hong Kong, Nigeria and France. An organization called Oceans Asia went to a remote beach just 11 meters (36 feet) long and found 70 masks,” Enck said. “The next week they found 30 on a remote beach. So one option is to use reusables, whenever possible. That certainly may not be possible with gloves and all the masks, although, nonmedical professionals like me can use reusable masks. I’ve been using one since the beginning of the pandemic.”

In addition to her role with Beyond Plastics, which is based at Bennington College in Vermont where she teaches, Enck is a former Environmental Protection Agency regional administrator appointed by President Obama.

“And now we have a new universe of plastic waste that needs attention: masks and gloves. Let me be clear, everyone should wear a mask in public, but no one should litter the mask. And no one should put the mask or the gloves in their recycling bin because they’re not recyclable,” she said.

“We most certainly have seen an increase in COVID-19-related litter,” said Dee Smith, Carteret Big Sweep coordinator. “I have seen numerous masks and gloves, especially roadsides and parking lots.”

​Carteret Big Sweep is the county’s effort to educate the public on litter and encourages and coordinates year-round cleanups.

Smith said another concerning item is the grocery cart wipes.

“I have seen them all over roads and parking lots as well as sidewalks and just on the floor in stores.  It is like people can’t find a trash can and they just leave them in the buggy and then it gets outside and the wind transports it,” she said.

Carteret Big Sweep has really had to adapt since COVID-19, Smith said.

“We have not stopped our efforts, we just evolved. We have individuals and families cleaning most of the major beach accesses on Bogue Banks every night,” she said.

Big Sweep has had a difficult time recruiting volunteers due to the COVID- 19 pandemic.  The summer solo cleanups were geared toward students needing to complete volunteer hours. The students were asked to commit a minimum of 25 volunteer hours by Labor Day Weekend. The students were assigned sections of busy beaches to clean during the solo effort that provides the needed social distancing, but allows for cleanup actions to continue.

As of mid-August, Smith said there were 137 documented solo cleanups on Bogue Banks.

“It is well over 2,000 pounds of debris. They are finding everything from food and beverage items to shoes, sunglasses and toys. Some notes left in the comments include lots of cigarette butts and the amount of plastic.  People also mentioned they saw an increase in masks with an increase of people,” she said.

Solo and family efforts brought in more than 2,103 pounds of debris over the course of 130 hours cleaning.

Smith said that she is recruiting small groups, families and individuals for the Ocean Conservancy’s 35^th International Coastal Cleanup or ICC, Sept. 19. “We already have a few interested groups. We will follow all of the governor’s restrictions.”

The cleanup is the world’s largest volunteer effort to remove and record trash from local lakes, waterways, beaches and the ocean, according to a recent release from Big Sweep.

“Whether engaging in this year’s ICC from home, or safely throughout the County, you are playing a critical role helping to keep plastics out of our ocean and waterways,” Smith said. “Although traditional, large group cleanups are not possible this year, ocean plastic pollution isn’t going away. It’s wonderful to see people taking action where they can.”

Ocean Conservancy will release a series of online resources to help think creatively about reducing everyday waste footprint, or conduct a small, safe cleanup.

“The International Coastal Cleanup remains one of the most effective ways for individuals to make an immediate, tangible impact for our ocean,” said Allison Schutes, Ocean Conservancy’s International Coastal Cleanup director, in a statement. “The ICC will certainly look a little different this year, but the ocean still needs us. Luckily, there is still plenty we can do to help stem the tide of ocean plastic pollution. We are so grateful for the efforts of Carteret Big Sweep and all the Carteret County volunteers in helping us achieve our shared vision for a cleaner, healthier ocean.”

Carteret Big Sweep cleanup volunteers can log the trash they collect in Ocean Conservancy’s Clean Swell app on their mobile phone. Scientists, researchers, industry leaders and policymakers use the index to inform policy and determine solutions to the growing marine debris crisis.

“Every year, millions of tons of trash, including an estimated 11 million metric tons of plastic waste, flows into the ocean, impacting more than 800 marine species and entering the food chain, the release from Big sweep. “Over the last 34 years of the ICC, 16.4 million volunteers have joined cleanup efforts big and small to remove 344 million pounds (156 million kilograms) of trash from beaches and waterways worldwide.”

In 2019, Carteret Big Sweep volunteers collected and recorded 15,051 pounds of trash from Carteret County, mostly cigarette butts and plastics.

Contact Smith at dee_edwards-smith@ncsu.edu to join the effort.

Surfrider Foundation, Outer Banks Chapter, is not hosting group cleanups or in-person events but is encouraging volunteers to grab a reusable bag or container to collect litter in their neighborhood or on the beach, document the findings by taking a picture or video and tagging the organization on Instagram, @surfrider_obx, with the hashtag #solobeachcleanup.

Bonnie Monteleone, executive director for Plastic Ocean Project based in Wilmington, said recently how surprised she was to see how many masks and gloves the volunteers picked since beginning April 22 for Earth Day. Plastic Ocean Project is a nonprofit organization conducting education through research, outreach through art, and solutions through collaboration.

“Our plan for 2020 was to do monthly cleanups for Route 421, mostly because so much debris ends up on the side of the road from trucks headed to the landfill,” she said.

“We had two cleanups before COVID. Pre-COVID cleanups, we did not find gloves and masks. When we started up again June 14, we found over 20 gloves and eight masks that day and find them every time we conduct cleanups,” Monteleone said.

“I think the more people use reusable masks, the less likely they get lost in the environment. In fact, 99% of the masks we find are the disposable kind,” she explained.

Leslie Vegas, coastal specialist with the North Carolina Coastal Federation’s northeast office in Wanchese, told Coastal Review Online that there’s been a noticeable increase in debris on the beaches and shorelines.

“Restaurants have been advised to use single-use (plastics) whenever possible, so businesses that have typically never used single-use plastics are using them now as a safety precaution. Takeout has also increased, so there have been far more plastic bags and clamshell containers in garbage bins, which we’ve also noticed have been overflowing more regularly,” Vegas explained. “Our local public waste staff noted that they are understaffed due to the virus, but have never seen so much trash here when they do their pickups. All in all, there’s a rise.”

Jan Farmer, a volunteer with the Topsail-area Ocean Friendly Establishments, said that from a trash perspective, she’s not seeing a noticeable increase in takeout containers, cups, food wrappers on the beach or along the road. “I still see and pick up plenty of those items, but not more than in previous summers.”

Ocean Friendly Establishments, which the Wilmington-based nonprofit Plastic Ocean Project launched in 2016, are businesses that voluntarily make environmentally friendly decisions, primarily reducing the use of single-use plastics by only serving straws upon request and eliminating single-use plastic bags and Styrofoam, and become certified through the program.

Katie Trout, marketing manager with the North Carolina Department of Transportation, said that the Roadside Environmental Unit staff, which oversees the Adopt-A-Highway program, has seen a decrease in reported pickups since the onset of COVID-19.

“Our spring 2020 sweep had to be canceled, which affected a huge amount of litter not being picked up,” Trout said.

“We have received some complaints from the public about masks and gloves being thrown down everywhere,” she added. “Adopt-A-Highway pickup reports are a bit slower than we typically see in the summer time. We should probably take into account the weather and temperature at this time, along with the COVID crisis.”

NOAA recommends another way to make a difference and reduce the impacts of all types of marine debris, including plastics, is to encourage others to properly disposing of trash and personal protective equipment and use the Marine Debris Tracker App to keep track of the debris including personal protective equipment.

The app is an initiative between the NOAA Marine Debris Program and the Southeast Atlantic Marine Debris Initiative, operated out of the University of Georgia College of Engineering, provides a way to log trash found on coastlines and waterways. The app records the debris location through GPS, and allows for adding the descriptions of items, attach photos of debris items and view the data on your phone.

Sara Hallas, coastal education coordinator for the Coastal Federation’s northeast office, said that the staff hasn’t been scheduling cleanups, as in the past, but is instead encouraging volunteers to have cleanups on their own and track their trash with the NOAA app.

“In the northeast we’ve been working safely in small groups outside to clean up some trouble areas that needed it, as well as arranging to loan cleanup supplies to groups who may like to organize efforts on their own,” she said. “For example, a Boy Scout was looking for a community service project. So I arranged a time to loan some cleanup supplies and advised him on a site that needed work, and he did the rest to coordinate with the group and lead the actual cleanup itself.”

The measures put in place in March to curb the spread of COVID-19 have changed how North Carolinians consume and dispose of waste. This is the first installment in a series examining how advocacy organizations, local governments and state agencies are adapting to these changes.

In recent years, a program to encourage restaurants and other businesses to use environmentally friendly practices has gained momentum along the North Carolina coast.

But organizers of the Ocean Friendly Establishments program are seeing their efforts come to a halt because of the COVID-19 pandemic, as more restaurants are being pushed to use single-use plastics.

Ocean Friendly Establishments, which the Wilmington-based nonprofit Plastic Ocean Project launched in 2016, are businesses that voluntarily make environmentally friendly decisions, primarily reducing the use of single-use plastics by only serving straws upon request and eliminating single-use plastic bags and Styrofoam, and become certified through the program.

Partners in the effort include the North Carolina Aquariums at Jennette’s Pier, Crystal Coast Waterkeeper, the North Carolina Coastal Federation and Surfrider Foundation.

Gov. Roy Cooper in March signed an executive order to close restaurants and bars to sit-down service, limiting the businesses to takeout or delivery orders only, to slow the spread of COVID-19. As a result, Ocean Friendly Establishment volunteers and businesses have noticed an uptick in use of single-serve plastics.

“With the increase in takeout business, we’ve really gone through a lot more disposable plastic ware,” Cara Godwin, assistant general manager for Blue Moon Beach Grill and Blue Water Grill, both in Nags Head, told Coastal Review Online. The restaurants are certified Ocean Friendly Establishments.

“That’s probably the biggest increase, along with plastic ramekins for ketchup and sauces for take-out. Other than that, we’ve tried to maintain our in-house operations as consistent and ‘plastic-free’ as usual. We do go through more disposable gloves.”

She added that with the lack of employees and COVID-19, “I think all of the restaurants are just trying to survive this crisis.”

Leslie Vegas, coastal specialist with the federation’s northeast office in Wanchese, began working with the Plastic Ocean Project in 2019 to expand the number of certified Ocean Friendly Establishments on the Outer Banks.

During a recent webinar, “Addressing Marine Debris in This New Norm,” Vegas explained that there are 52 businesses certified in the Outer Banks. From 2015-2018, an average of six businesses were certified a year and in 2019, when the federation and Jennette’s Pier joined the effort, 20 businesses were certified. “We saw a lot of growth last year.”

In 2020, only eight businesses were certified before March. Since then, just a handful of businesses have been certified as Ocean Friendly Establishments.

“The program has definitely lost a lot of momentum with the coronavirus happening,” Vegas said. “Restaurants have been the most affected, I think, by the virus in terms of the safety standards and sanitation standards that they have to uphold.”

Many single-use bans had been going into effect pre-COVID-19 across the country but many of those bans were postponed or eliminated completely, Vegas continued. “That’s another thing that we’ve had to sort of look at and consider as we’ve moved forward.”

The Ocean Friendly Establishments coordinators also learned more of what is required of restaurants and businesses from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and what the general guidelines would be.

The top three CDC recommendations and guidelines that most impacted the Ocean Friendly Establishments program were to avoid using or sharing items that are reusable, including menus, condiments and other food containers; use disposable food service items like utensils, dishes and tablecloths; and avoid using food and beverage utensils and containers brought by customers, she said.

“This is straight from the CDC. They’re really encouraging the usage of disposable items to be safe. However, they say that if the items are not feasible or desirable, ensure that they are cleansed and handled properly,” Vegas said.

In addition to encouraging businesses to reduce single-use plastic, Ocean Friendly Establishments encourages consumers to bring their own utensils and containers. “Those are now currently things that are not being recommended and actually being advised against by the CDC.”

Taking those recommendations into consideration, “We have to ask ourselves as we continue to promote the program are reusable safe to use?” Vegas said.

That’s a question Vegas said she’s not qualified to answer in a straightforward way. “The best that we’ve been trying to do is kind of keep up with what the latest research is saying and what we feel comfortable sharing with our local businesses.”

A group of more than 125 epidemiologists, virologists and other health experts from 18 countries recently signed a statement saying that reusables are safe as long as standard health codes and sanitation guidelines are being followed, Vegas explained.

“The CDC has also come out with a statement saying that the transmission of the virus from surface contact has not yet been documented. Right now, it’s only been transmitted from person to person through respiratory droplets that are inhaled, not from surfaces like cutlery, glasses, plates, those kinds of things,” said Vegas.

Plastic Ocean Project Executive Director Bonnie Monteleone reiterated in an interview with Coastal Review Online how important it is to support local Ocean Friendly Establishments to help eliminate single-use plastics. She said she thought the argument for not using reusable bags is contradictory.

“The items are picked up by the customer and then handled by the cashier and placed in a bag. At this point, it doesn’t matter what type of bag. We encourage people to bring their own bag and not let the cashier touch it, bag their own groceries to reduce contact. Otherwise, the cashier is touching both the items and the plastic bag, which they hand the customer,” Monteleone said.

The Plastic Oceans Project placed a radio advertisement encouraging people to support their Ocean Friendly Establishments. “And when they place their order, we asked that they mention if they do not need single-use, to-go ware or condiments. This was our way of helping mitigate the increase of plastic waste,” she said.

At the time of the interview, Plastic Oceans Project is also promising to contribute $2,000 on top of a $5,000 grant through North Carolina Aquariums that will help offset the expense of compostable products for Ocean Friendly Establishments that cannot afford them right now, she added.

Since March when the governor put in place dining restrictions, Monteleone has observed both positive and negative responses to the change back to single-use plastics.

“Positive because it allows our vulnerable business the opportunity to serve in order to stay afloat, so to speak, and negative because so many individuals shifted to bringing reusable containers and are forbidden to use them in many places,” she said.

Monteleone said that they are fortunate to have restaurants reluctantly using plastics and are trying to find workarounds.

“Slice of Life (Pizzeria & Pub in Wilmington) has been hugely instrumental in encouraging the conversation as well as donating time and funds to start a website strictly for OFEs, so more businesses can work together to reduce single use,” she said. “Ceviche’s is another restaurant working with our OFE team to bring to town a reusable to-go container program much like Green To-go in Durham.”

Vegas said in an interview that many people who are passionate about using reusables would still like to be able to freely use them. “However, there are so many restrictions around reusable products that using items like coffee cups and bags at stores are no longer an option.”

As far as the Ocean Friendly Establishments program goes, the advice is to use reusables when possible.

“If ordering to go, request that plastic cutlery is not included, ask for no bag if it’s a single item, and, if you have extra time, order an item for dine in, then place leftovers in your own container that you bring to the restaurant. Additionally, we’re advising in favor of reusable masks that can be laundered vs the single-use options,” Vegas added.

Some businesses have not been able to maintain the cost of the environmentally friendly to-go ware, including the paper-based clamshells that are extremely expensive and have been less available due to high demands, and some business owners are concerned about losing the Ocean Friendly status with the introduction of Styrofoam or single-use items.

“But we understand as a program that it’s difficult to navigate these new circumstances, and we’re hoping to work together to come up with local solutions,” Vegas said.

Vegas said they’ve had to sort of shift their recommendations but the main recommendation is to support the current Ocean Friendly Establishments.

Meredith Fish, educator with Jennette’s Pier and part of the Ocean Friendly Establishments program, added that “Several places in the area still try their best to use eco-friendly packaging options, however, given the amount of packaging that is required to carry out all the takeout orders, a lot of businesses are reverting back to single-use plastic items such as plastic bags, containers and utensils.”

Fish said she recognized that most people are focusing right now on the virus, which is understandable, “but I wish more people would see single-use plastics as a threat as well,” Fish said.

“I know that the Outer Banks is working hard right now to revamp the recycling program but hopefully everyone remembers that reducing your plastic consumption is even more important than recycling,” she said. “This is why it’s so important to avoid using plastic whenever possible, especially single-use plastics, seeing that you only use them once before they can end up polluting our Earth.”

She opts for glass, metal and paper whenever possible, and “I hope that is the mindset that local businesses will adopt as well, even in the midst of COVID.”

Jan Farmer, a volunteer with the Topsail-area Ocean Friendly Establishments, has also observed that usage of single-use plastics is up because of the large increase in takeout business.

“Businesses that were using compostable takeout or compostable straws have sometimes switched to less environmentally friendly products if their normal products ran out and were unavailable, but they appear to have switched back when they could get the better products in stock,” Farmer explained. “I actually have one establishment that has made the shift to paper cups from Styrofoam during this time.”

“I think it’s important to remember to not lose sight of problems that existed before COVID-19. While we may have to make adjustments to our original plans, the work shouldn’t stop and there will always be things we can do to make a positive impact and to reduce our single-use plastic usage while staying safe and healthy,” Vegas said.

National efforts to curb plastic use

On a national level, more than 120 environmental organizations sent letters to seven national food delivery companies — GrubHub, UberEats, Doordash, Delivery.com, Caviar, Seamless and Postmates — in July requesting that that they change their default ordering process to one that does not automatically include utensils, napkins, condiments and straws in order to reduce the amount of single-use plastic pollution entering oceans, landfills and incinerators.

“Takeout orders are up all over the country as a result of the COVID pandemic; however, the vast majority of people eating at home neither need nor want yet another set of plastic utensils, plastic straws, handful of soy sauce or ketchup packets, or pile of paper napkins. Committing to making this small change to their delivery ordering systems would help reduce single-use packaging and save restaurants a bit of money,” said Judith Enck, president of Beyond Plastics.

The letter suggests that customers would need to request no single-use items when they place their order for delivery, which would reduce costs to restaurants and take a step to reduce plastic waste and pollution. There is also a place to voice support of this initiative, Hold the Plastic, on the website.

As consumers continue to rely on delivery services for meals, the amount of unwanted single-use utensils and condiments are on the rise as well, though a recent study found that 98% of all U.S. take-out or delivery meals are consumed at home or a workplace, where reusable cutlery is typically available and preferred, according to the release.

“Food delivery platforms have the opportunity to reduce the amount of plastic entering our homes while at the same time saving businesses money by moving to an opt-in system for these items. Similar to how customers choose exactly which toppings they want on their pizza, customers should also be able to opt in to exactly which utensils, napkins, condiments, or straws they want,” said Jennie Romer, Legal Associate at the Surfrider Foundation’s Plastic Pollution Initiative, in the release.

Ordering in to support local restaurants & stay safe during #COVID? Urge @Grubhub @DoorDash @Seamless @Caviar @Postmates to follow @UberEats lead & change #singleuseplastic utensils, straws, condiments & napkins to opt-in only to cut #plasticpollution. https://t.co/Crqkr3Cjup

— Beyond Plastics (@PlasticsBeyond) August 3, 2020

Enck addressed in an op-ed April 22 in Newsweek that the pandemic isn’t an excuse to go back to single-use plastics.

“I still believe that. And yet, the Center for Disease Control has put out guidance to restaurants when they’re reopening telling them, even if people are dining on site, the restaurants should use single use disposable items single use plates utensils cups and straws,” she said, adding that if you’re trying to protect the health of the wait staff, it doesn’t matter if they’re going to be delivering and picking up single use disposables or real dishes that are washed.

“My final point is we can tackle more than one crisis at a time. Clearly, the priority needs to be protecting health from the COVID virus, so we can still address plastic pollution and climate change. We can’t return to business as usual. We need adjust recovery, and that includes making environmental protection, a priority, Enck said

This is the 11th installment in a continuing series on climate change and the North Carolina coast that is part of the Pulitzer Center’s nationwide Connected Coastlines reporting initiative.

Stormwater that pours onto our roads and drowns our yards has become the most visible and alarming harbinger of what coastal communities are facing with climate change.

As flooding has rapidly worsened in scale and frequency, people are demanding action from their governments. But stormwater management is a costly problem that is not easily solved, even if political will, funding and community sentiment are miraculously aligned.

According to a draft report in March from the Environmental Protection Agency’s Environmental Financial Advisory Board, “Evaluating Stormwater Infrastructure and Financing Task Force,” there is no comprehensive, nationally representative numbers on what is required for stormwater capital and operation and maintenance.

“The needs are great,” the working paper said, “and the funding gap is very wide — estimated to approach $10 billion annually.”

Needs, however, are also urgent.

Of the seven highest rainfall events since 1898 in coastal North Carolina, six have happened within the last 20 years, according to recent research from the University of North Carolina Chapel Hill Institute of Marine Sciences in Morehead City.

The study, published July 2019 in the journal Scientific Reports, pointed to catastrophic rain in hurricanes Floyd in 1999, Matthew in 2016 and Florence in 2018 as a consequence of the warming climate creating more moisture. Florence alone dumped an average of 17.5 inches of rain on 14,000 square-miles of the Carolinas, the report said.

To make matters worse, nontropical storms are also now dumping record amounts of rainfall. Existing drainage has been overwhelmed, exposing the inadequacy of often haphazard and poorly maintained systems. But even some well-designed, modern municipal stormwater systems can no longer keep up.

According to a 2019 study published in Geophysical Research Letters, extreme rainfall events happened 85% more often in the eastern U.S. in 2017 than they did in 1950.

“The take-home message is that infrastructure in most parts of the country is no longer performing at the level that it’s supposed to because of the big changes that we’ve seen in extreme rainfall,” Daniel Wright, the study’s lead author and a hydrologist at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, said in press release.

Depending on whether it’s an urban or rural location, stormwater runoff can be loaded with nonpoint source pollutants such as nitrogen-rich fertilizers, heavy metals, toxic pesticides and fecal bacteria from waterfowl, dogs and septic tanks. It also can be laced with oil, gas and noxious chemicals washed off streets, buildings, lawns and farmland.

In numerous North Carolina coastal communities, including on the Outer Banks, it runs, often unfiltered, directly through outfalls and pipes into the ocean and sounds, or the bays, creeks and rivers that feed into them.

As a result, big storms with lots of runoff overload estuaries and coastal waters with nutrients, sediment and contaminants. Wetlands and recreational waters can be compromised, resulting in fish and shellfish kills, algal blooms and temporarily closed beaches.

The National Pollutant Discharge Elimination System, or NPDES, created by the EPA in 1996 and implemented in parts of North Carolina in 2001, requires larger urban areas to manage stormwater with certain best management practices, or BMPs, to reduce flooding, runoff and pollution impacts on watersheds.

North Carolina’s patchwork stormwater regulations require stricter containment and discharge rules mostly to protect water quality in the 20 coastal counties from stormwater runoff impacts from new development.

But beyond those rules, local governments with smaller populations can decide how to manage its nonpoint source stormwater, that is, discharges that don’t come from a specific source such as a sewer pipe.

The volume of stormwater has become increasingly overwhelming and persistent. In many communities, the largely unseen network of pipes, culverts and ditches that is supposed to take stormwater away from streets and property has been maintained infrequently, if at all. Certainly in North Carolina’s low-lying northeast coast, numerous drainage systems are deteriorating and outmoded. Often, the infrastructure, which could be a century-old ditch attached to half-century-old culvert that’s attached to a series of various sized pipes, crisscrosses and zig-zags over different properties, public and private.

Sometimes, no one knows who is responsible when the system is clogged and numerous properties are flooded. In some areas, drainage is so antiquated, it’s not clear what exists, where it is, what condition it’s in, or who owns it. Regulations to maintain the drainage ditches and structures are spotty or nonexistent.

To complicate matters more, the North Carolina Department of Transportation is responsible for maintenance of all the roadside drainage infrastructure within its right of way. Once water leaves the right of way, however, it becomes the responsibility of the downstream property owner. And severe budget shortfalls have limited the department to mostly piecemeal improvements to its drainage or crisis responses when roads flood.

On the Outer Banks, residents in recent years have been shocked by the amount of water inundating their property even when there is no tropical low. Intense rainstorms have, in a matter of hours, transformed entire neighborhoods into lakes and rushing rivers. Water has flooded buildings that have been dry for decades.

In July 2018, for example, more than 15 inches of rain fell for 10 days straight on Roanoke Island, leaving much of the north end flooded for weeks, even months. An engineer later estimated that 50 million cubic feet of water had fallen.

“The amount of rain we got is crazy,” Brent Johnson, Dare County project manager for grants and waterways, said in a recent interview, referring to the event as a 500-year storm. “We don’t design for that level of water.”

An engineering study of the most affected areas later estimated that drainage improvements would cost about $2.6 million, not including engineering and easement acquisitions.

Dare County has so far dealt with flooding and stormwater on a case-by-case basis. But with more of the unincorporated areas of the county having frequent flooding issues, Johnson said, the county is seeking grant funds to start development of a comprehensive long-term stormwater management plan.

Johnson said that such a plan could manage the watersheds within larger areas to address natural flow and drainage challenges. Realistically, he added, funding for stormwater management would have to be shared between local government, public agencies and private property owners, likely through a combination of bonds, special district taxes and grants.

Roanoke Island illustrates the complexity of draining flooded communities on the coast, where land is flat, water bodies of some form are plentiful and sea level rise is making the water table higher. There is not enough slope or grade in spots, causing water to pool and stagnate. Numerous ditches are routinely clogged with debris, roots and overgrown weeds. Regulations forbid flow to be impeded in ditches, but enforcement is lax. Underground pipes and culverts are often different diameters, broken or improperly connected. What one property owner does or doesn’t do on their land affects whether their neighbor’s property will drain or flood, but even when the issue is addressed in stormwater ordinances, it’s difficult to resolve.

“A lot of the issues we have in our area … you can’t stop the water from coming up from the ocean and the sound,” Johnson said. “That’s what we really have to focus on: How do we get the water back to where it’s supposed to go?”

Each town on the Outer Banks is responsible for its own stormwater management. The town of Nags Head, which is upgrading its stormwater infrastructure in phases, funded through a stormwater fee, got an early start on serious comprehensive improvements.

Farther south, the city of Jacksonville in coastal Onslow County charges a stormwater utility fee, which totals about $5 a month for an average home, to pay for its stormwater management.

Two crews “do nothing but clean drainage,” said Pat Donovan-Brandenburg, the city’s stormwater manager, and other staff are charged with monitoring water quality. Stormwater controls include the slow release of water to prevent flooding and allow it to filter.

Donovan-Brandenburg, who took over the program from the state in 2005, said the city has been steadily making improvements in its infiltration, repairing broken pipes and replacing small pipes with larger ones.

“We’ve been taking care of it little by little,” she said. “No municipality has the money to take care of it all at once.”

The city is in the middle of the New River watershed and is surrounded by wetlands, which is a lot friendlier to flood control than acres of impermeable asphalt and concrete.

“We have probably a lot of storage area,” Donavan-Brandenburg said. Other advantages are that the area downstream of the city is lightly developed, and the city has no heavy industry.

Jacksonville also requires stormwater permittees to renew every January to make sure that everything is as it should be, whereas the state only requires renewal every 10 years.

“Imagine not cleaning their houses for 10 years,”  she said.

Donovan-Brandenburg, who had served for four years as director and is also currently serving as secretary with the Storm Water Association of North Carolina, which supports best practices for stormwater management, said that coastal communities hardest hit by the big storms benefit even more with resiliency measures such as green space that drains and filters stormwater and deep setbacks for waterfront properties. And whether it’s urban or rural, she said, all communities gain by planting and protecting wetlands in the watershed to control stormwater while promoting cleaner water and healthier fisheries.

“Wetlands do much better with flooding and wave energy than a man-made seawall,” Donovan-Brandenburg said.

Also, simple measures as grass alongside roads — such as grassy swales and grass ditches — slows down water to “a nonerosive rate,” she said, adding: “Curb and gutter allows water to pick up speed and velocity.”

The stormwater panel has been urging NCDOT to use some of those kinds of BMPs on Interstate 95 and I-40.

Clearly, the best answer for stormwater management, she said, “even in the mountains, is not taking away the floodplain. One thing that everybody can do is start planting more trees.”

The North Carolina Coastal Federation and The Pew Charitable Trusts in March launched a yearlong initiative, “Advancing Nature-based Stormwater Strategies in North Carolina,” to encourage natural solutions to flood risk.

By merging the expertise of academics, developers, investors, landscape architects, conservationists and others, the effort is working to promote cooperative strategies that allow stormwater to filter into the ground, rather than runoff into the waterways. Permeable pavement, rain gardens, cisterns, living shorelines and preserved green spaces are some ways to engineer roads and landscapes that help reduce runoff and erosion.

The working group is expected to issue recommendations this winter, according to Pew.

Some environmentally sensible stormwater control tactics studied by academic partners include bioretention devices, wet ponds, green roofs, stormwater wetlands, grass swales, sand filters and dry ponds. UNC campuses and North Carolina State University have programs that study stormwater issues.

In 2019, UNC-Chapel Hill’s Environmental Finance Center released a report on stormwater funding. Compared with water and wastewater infrastructure needs, the report said, it has been difficult to quantify costs of stormwater infrastructure needs.

“Recently, however, there has been a change in this trend, and more state and federal entities are starting to focus on identifying stormwater needs,” according to the report. “Communities are going to have to identify dedicated sources of revenue for stormwater and to be more intentional about matching revenue generation with capital needs as the future of the North Carolina stormwater landscape develops.”

Even in extraordinary times of overlapping public emergencies, flooding will continue. Without adequate stormwater infrastructure, communities will be condemned to a future of polluted water and flooded neighborhoods and downtowns.

“Stormwater infrastructure requires funding and it has been neglected, or inadequately funded, for far too long,” the EPA said in the draft stormwater working paper, comparing the investment to the federal highway system.

“Municipalities and local utilities need federal and state help in defining long-term reliable funding sources,” the draft report said. “Funding must be available in all states and be sufficient to support both capital expenditures and long-term operation and maintenance costs.”

This is the 10th installment in a continuing series on climate change and the North Carolina coast that is part of the Pulitzer Center’s nationwide Connected Coastlines reporting initiative.

A state assessment of sea level rise compiled a decade ago met fierce political pushback, but in the years since, North Carolina has boosted its efforts to study and prepare for climate change, and some say work to address issues now commonly associated with rising seas had begun years earlier.

In 2009, the state Coastal Resources Commission directed its panel of scientists to put together state-level data and projections regarding sea level rise, rather than relying on international and national reports.

The next year in March, the CRC Science Panel, with contributions from other state experts, released its North Carolina Sea Level Rise Assessment Report. It included high, medium and status quo projections through 2100, along with a recommended planning benchmark of 1 meter, or around 39 inches, of sea level rise by 2100.

Spencer Rogers, a member of the science panel, said that the science had “a rough start” 10 years ago, “when the Science Panel on Coastal Hazards Sea Level Rise report for the Coastal Resources Commission was prohibited by law from application by the General Assembly.” Rogers is on the faculty of University of North Carolina Wilmington’s Center for Marine Science and is the coastal construction and erosion specialist with North Carolina Sea Grant.

Jessica Whitehead, who was named last year as the state’s first chief resilience officer said in a recent interview that the science itself was sound, and the expectation was that sound policy would follow.

Ten years ago, Whitehead, who heads the North Carolina Office of Recovery and Resiliency, or NCORR, was working a split position with South Carolina Sea Grant Consortium and North Carolina Sea Grant, based out of Charleston and serving both states. In her role at the time, she attended and provided input at workshops that led into both the first state sea level rise report and another guide intended for public and private planners, the 2012 Climate Ready North Carolina: Building a Resilient Future report.

“The approaches we took 10 years ago to climate planning were state of the art for the field at the time,” Whitehead explained. “2010 was still the ‘information deficit’ model of climate planning: everyone thought that if you did a climate assessment and provided information on what the ranges of average temperature and rainfall would be under climate change, that would be all decision makers needed to come up with and implement policy to reduce those risks.”

But in response to the release of the 2010 report, two bills were introduced in the North Carolina General Assembly, one that didn’t pass followed by a successful measure that put constraints on what the state could do regarding sea level rise.

The 2012 law forbid adoption of any rule or policy that defined a rate of sea level rise for regulatory purposes. And while it made the CRC the sole state agency authorized to define rates of sea level rise, it was directed to refrain from setting rates for regulatory purposes prior to July 1, 2016.

Rogers said that the report was intended as a planning rather than regulatory document, so restricting any implementation “had little impact.”

Rogers said that to the General Assembly’s credit, the 2012 legislation also required five-year updates to the sea level analysis, “making North Carolina one of the few, if not the only state, with legislation requiring peer-reviewed, sea level rise reporting.”

The final draft of the report was complete March 31, 2015, and the report was finalized March 1, 2016.

Rogers also noted that the 2015 updated report was delivered without apparent controversy in the General Assembly or the Coastal Resources Commission.

East Carolina University geologist Stan Riggs, who was a founding member of the science panel, resigned from the post in July 2016, for reasons including lingering frustration with the General Assembly’s response to the 2010 report. He’s more encouraged with the way the latest required five-year update to the report is being handled.

“The CRC has backed off to allow the science panel to do their (2020) report based on the science, not dictated by the way the 2015 report was. We were told exactly what we could do, what we couldn’t do, who we could talk to, who would review. And that was outrageous. That was just unacceptable,” Riggs told Coastal Review Online in mid-May.

Tancred Miller is the coastal and ocean policy manager with the Department of Environmental Quality’s Division of Coastal Management. Miller said that the updated report in 2015 included regional rates of sea level rise for different parts of the coast, based upon tide gauge data and Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, or IPCC, scenarios. Although the prohibition against adopting sea level rise rates for regulatory purposes has since expired, the CRC has not yet considered adopting any sea level rise policies or regulations.

In 2019, the CRC directed its science panel to begin work on the 2020 update, and while the science panel has started, its ability to meet and work has been hampered by the COVID-19 pandemic.

“The panel has been requested to update the report for 2020 and work is underway,” Rogers said. Although COVID-19-related restrictions will delay its completion, “the primary observations and recommendations are expected to be improved and more detailed, but are not likely to be much different than in the previous reports.”

Miller said that the sea level rise report shows the state’s continued commitment to study and present the best available understanding of data, trends and projections.

“DEQ and DCM’s perspective and approach have remained consistent, and we continue to provide technical and financial support to local governments to help build resilience to climate hazards,” Miller said. “The state continues to invest time, resources, and importantly, the invaluable efforts of the CRC Science Panel, into updating the SLR Assessment Report on a regular basis. The report is available to state and local governments and all other interested parties as a resource to support planning and decision making.”

DEQ led the development of the state’s first Climate Risk Assessment and Resiliency Plan, which was released earlier this month, and worked closely with NCORR, and other cabinet agencies.

“Academic partners, led by the North Carolina Institute for Climate Studies, stepped up in a huge way, producing, pro bono, the state’s first ever climate science report,” Miller said, adding that the plan is relevant to virtually every part of the state and would be updated on a regular basis.

Miller explained that the Division of Coastal Management has been able to direct federal funds to local government resilience planning and is contracting with North Carolina Emergency Management to increase the number of tide gauges on the coast.

“DCM is also beginning to work with NCORR and other partners with funding from the N.C. Disaster Recovery Act of 2019 and a grant from the National Fish and Wildlife Foundation to create a grant program to support local government resilience planning and project development to be launched later this year,” Miller said.

Rogers said that a likely surprising observation for most, including the General Assembly and the Coastal Resources Commission, “is that sea level rise adaptation in coastal North Carolina was well underway before the first report and is still actively being enhanced today.”

Most sea level rise adaptation has been implemented at the community level. “It has been more common in coastal North Carolina than in most of the rest of the nation,” he added.

Local implementation has been typically proposed and justified as a response to other coastal hazards, such as increased coastal storm effects during the last 25 years, continuing long-term shoreline erosion threats and higher levels of interest in nuisance flooding, Rogers said.

Common coastal community responses include new requirements for construction, participation in the National Flood Insurance Program’s Community Rating System and an increasing number of coastal water level gages to measure sea level changes, he added.

“Sea level rise is an important component of climate change in coastal North Carolina,” Rogers said. “Although not typically implemented for climate or sea level rise adaptation, actions to address more immediate coastal hazards are often the same actions appropriate for longer-term adaptation. In 50 to 100 years, the communities will not care why they adapted to climate or sea level rise, only if they did.”

This is the ninth installment in a continuing series on climate change and the North Carolina coast that is part of the Pulitzer Center’s nationwide Connected Coastlines reporting initiative.

One of the most repulsive things about post-storm cleanup involves wading through fetid water filled with raw sewage.

That plight is not exclusive to post-hurricane recovery — fecal pathogens in leaks and spills now often pollute stormwater after heavy rains.

Climate change is coming for our backyard septic tanks, and eventually, our municipal waste treatment systems.

“In the long run, sea level rise is going to overrun all of this,” Lawrence Cahoon, a biology professor and researcher at the University of North Carolina Wilmington, said in a recent interview. “I think if we’re going to live on the coast for any length of time, sewer systems are going to let us down and septic systems are going to fail. They already are.”

Septic systems are widely used in coastal North Carolina to dispense with human waste, our humble byproduct and vector of disease. But higher groundwater, more rain deluges and epic flooding from intense storms have been causing systems to leak or become inoperable.

Those same climate forces also risk compromising the aged and deteriorating municipal sewer systems that service mostly urban communities.

“The solution is to fix the system,” Cahoon said. “Generally, the problem is people don’t want to spend the money to do it.”

Costs for public wastewater treatment plant systems are usually borne by the local government, which cover the expense through bonds and hookup fees to the property owner. Some governments, such as Brunswick County’s, have water and sewer systems operated through a separate authority.

In rural Tyrrell County, a northeast county with a high poverty rate, septic systems in the wetlands-dominated communities had been failing for years. Thanks to a grant from the state Clean Water Management Trust Fund, about 65% of the county’s communities have been hooked up to a complex sewer system that has a pump and tank at each property, said county manager David Clegg.

The county completed that first phase of construction in the early 2000s. A second phase was completed in 2011 and a third in 2018. The next phase is in the planning stages and county officials are seeking funding.

Since gravity systems aren’t an option, the waste has to be pumped miles away to a treatment plant. So far, the system has cost about $20 million and needs about $10 million more to be completed, Clegg said.

Tyrrell, ranked one of the most economically distressed counties in the state, could never afford such a costly system without help. But wastewater treatment plants are a fiscal challenge even for wealthier communities.

“Central sewer is hideously expensive,” Cahoon said, “and if something goes wrong, you can’t afford to fix it.”

Older infrastructure typically includes cast-iron pipes, which tend to corrode, he said. As long as the joints are sound, sewer pipes made from PVC are durable and reliable.

Upgrades to corroding systems, however, can be cost-prohibitive, and full replacement would be more so.

“There’s not enough money in the world to do this,” Cahoon said.

Along with Marc Hanke at University of Houston Honors College, Cahoon researched the effects of inflow and infiltration, or I&I, on sewer plants. Inflow is water coming from above ground, such as a manhole. Infiltration is groundwater seeping through breaches, such as cracks in pipes.

One impetus for the research, he said, was the lack of understanding about the impacts of higher mean sea level on the systems: how much saltwater intrusion was evident? What is happening with tidal influences? What effects are heavy rain and higher groundwater levels having on flow and capacity?

According to the study published in 2017 in Water Science & Technology, I&I can cause system overflows and degradation of systems and impair water quality. The research analyzed system flow responses to rainfall and temperature at 93 gravity-collection wastewater treatment plants in eastern North Carolina.

Data on hurricanes was purposely not included.

“I wanted to know what’s going on, on a regular basis,” Cahoon said.

Over two years, the research looked at coastal water gauges and daily tides, as well as data on rates of sea level rise, temperatures, and cumulative and daily rainfall amounts.

Since there’s a limit in how much to design for, even the newest plants are not immune to spills during big storms that overwhelm the system. For instance, a 2-inch rainstorm can produce about 40% extra flow.

“So if that 40% carries you over the capacity of the plant,” Cahoon said, “you probably will have spills, or poor treatment, or both.”

State regulators recognize that the systems’ design can’t accommodate huge volumes of rain and allow up to 1,000 gallons to be spilled before a reporting requirement kicks in.

Often, Cahoon said, the property owners’ pipes that hook up to the public system need repair or replacement.

“The average owner has no clue” about their condition, Cahoon said, adding: “The connector pipes are probably half the system.”

The study found that heavy rainfall, temperature — likely as effects of seasonal variation in groundwater levels — and sea level, expressed as a day’s highest tide, all had significant effects on 90% of the wastewater treatment systems in coastal North Carolina.

“These collective results demonstrate the potential vulnerability of coastal wastewater collection and treatment systems to breaches in system integrity that allow extraneous flows, primarily through groundwater elevation, to drive further infrastructure degradation and environmental pollution,” Cahoon and Hanke wrote.

Last year, another team of researchers began a study, Wastewater Infrastructure Tipping Points: Prioritizing Implementation of Climate Adaptation Plans in Decentralized Systems, focused on septic systems, including single residential tanks as well as “package” systems, onsite treatment plants that serve larger facilities or a group of properties in a neighborhood. Extreme rainfall and high-tide flooding, as well as rising sea levels, have threatened the function and effectiveness of septic systems, especially on the coast, according to the abstract.

The two-year study was funded by a grant of about $300,000 from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s Climate Program Office.

Working in partnership with the towns of Nags Head and Folly Beach, South Carolina, the team of researchers from North Carolina State University, North Carolina Sea Grant, East Carolina University, South Carolina Sea Grant, the Coastal Studies Institute and the University of Georgia will evaluate existing decentralized, or onsite, wastewater treatment systems and future alternative technology.

The project builds on prior research and will seek input from septic industry experts.

Septic on the Outer Banks has been compromised not only by the higher rate of sea level rise on the northeast coast and its vulnerability to tropical storms, but also by extraordinarily heavy rainstorms that have been happening in recent years.

As a result, there is a higher water table, said Michael O’Driscoll, associate professor at ECU’s Department of Coastal Studies.

O’Driscoll, who also works at the Coastal Studies Institute, said there should be at least 1½ feet of dry soil under a septic system to allow proper drainage and dispersal of nutrients. At the very least, there is less of that space available now, especially in older systems.

“Since the 1980s, it looks like for Dare County that the groundwater level has risen about a foot,” O’Driscoll said. “Some systems may have less soil to treat the waste, some systems have higher groundwater.”

There is also a shorter-term effect from a big storm. One event that dumped 7 inches of rain temporarily raised the groundwater table by 4 feet.

It’s hard to say how long the systems will continue to function, O’Driscoll added. But if it’s wet all the time, septic will fail.

The researchers will review available waste treatment technologies, economic analysis and legal requirements to help communities evaluate suitable climate adaptation strategies. In addition, they developed survey and interview questions to gather input from industry operators and experts.

Interviews will also be conducted with county health departments, which are only required to handle the initial state permit or reports of health concerns.

“That part of our project is to really get a better understanding of the records, permitting and monitoring,” said Jane Harrison, coastal economics specialist with North Carolina Sea Grant.

Two million households in North Carolina use septic systems, and more than one in five nationwide, she said.

At the end of the project, Harrison said, there will be a report with proposals, and hopefully a website to provide public information.

It’s not an issue that people are clamoring to learn about, Harrison said, but the public has become more interested in climate change. And they will soon understand the effect that climate is having on their toilet flushing.

“Septic has been kind of missing piece of the puzzle,” she said.

Still, with climate change happening, it’s become an issue up and down the East Coast: Miami, Florida, and Rhode Island each have done studies on how to address the problem.

“When the population density gets high, the septic systems just can’t work,” Cahoon said.

Before central sewer was available in Brunswick County, he said, Sunset Beach had as many as 10 septic tanks per acre. Restaurants in Calabash were forced to have their septic tanks pumped out every day. When infrastructure was replaced about 10 years ago, it was found that one restaurant’s septic was piped directly into the creek, and the post office’s was straight-piped into the Cape Fear River.

“But this is not unusual,” Cahoon said. “You read horror stories.”

Even though revulsion for the subject has made sewage treatment an “out-of-sight, out-of-mind” issue, Cahoon believes that the public is starting to express more concern about related pollution.

“I think there’s more attention now,” he said. “I think there’s been a shift to some degree. Sewage is like that — until it’s in your face, you tend to ignore it.”

But hurricanes and their effect on sewage treatments, he said, have “whacked us on the head.” Solutions are likely to be complicated and expensive.

“It’s going to take some leadership from people fairly high up,” Cahoon said. “The regulators are not going to do that on their own. Their job is regulation, not innovation.”

This special video feature is included in our series on climate change and the North Carolina coast that is part of the Pulitzer Center’s nationwide Connected Coastlines reporting initiative. Coastal Review Online has partnered with the Working Narratives’ Resiliency Media Fellowship to present select works from the series, which was originally published by Shoresides, a project of the nonprofit Working Narratives.

WILMINGTON — Nearly two years after Hurricane Florence, community journalists are touring a homegrown documentary series calling attention to underrepresented hurricane stories.

The series, a portion of which is presented here, takes an up-close look at the storm through the lives it changed and through the effects that continue to ripple out.

With rising temperatures brought on by climate change, hurricanes have increased in power and frequency, weakening infrastructures and increasing displacement. The team of community producers hope to use their films to talk about these problems and to lay the civic foundation for building stronger and more resilient communities.

“Mi Casita” tells the story of a family and their struggle to stay in their home after Hurricane Florence. 

This year, the Resilience Film Festival is a project of the Wilmington-based nonprofit Working Narratives, and is being made free for screenings to communities across coastal North Carolina.

The festival films were created by community journalists mentored through the Working Narratives’ Resiliency Media Fellowship. Through the Resilience Film Festival, the journalists will present stories about resilience to audiences across the state.

“When Florence Came to Wilmington” is a look at the impact of Hurricane Florence on one family and their life after.

Resiliency Media Fellowship facilitated a series of workshops training nine coastal residents to be journalists. The media training program was created in 2019 out of Working Narratives’ commitment to underserved communities and underrepresented stories.

“My challenge was to find Latinos who wanted to share their hurricane story, Latinos who are undocumented and fearful of opening up,” said fellowship participant Yolanda House. House, who’s Latinx and bilingual, created a short documentary that focuses on the aftereffects of Florence in a Latinx community in New Hanover County.

“When the Water Was High” explores how families, and communities, stuck together during Hurricane Florence.

“Working Narratives believes that good journalism and good democracy go hand in hand,” said Sarah Sloan, producer at Working Narratives. “As coastal community members use media to tell their own stories, they become an instrumental part of a civic engagement process that helps community members come together to understand, confront, and solve pressing community challenges.”

Working Narratives is an arts and social justice organization. For over a decade it has presented stories amplifying the work, voices and concerns of people of color communities and rural communities in the South. Through its media stories, it works to address historical inequalities, to result in healthier communities and a stronger democracy.

“Not Finished Yet” presents a Hurricane Florence story of the service economy and people who work in it.

Learn more

• Host a screening of the Resilience Film Festival

This is the eighth installment in a continuing series on climate change and the North Carolina coast that is part of the Pulitzer Center’s nationwide Connected Coastlines reporting initiative.

Now that the state’s 2020 resiliency plan has been submitted, the North Carolina Office of Recovery and Resiliency will begin working with other state offices to address vulnerabilities caused by climate change.

“Going forward, our team looks forward to supporting other agencies with guidance and with working across the state on some of these big cross-cutting resilience challenges as part of the North Carolina Resilience Strategy,” Chief Resilience Officer Jessica Whitehead told Coastal Review Online.

The North Carolina Climate Risk Assessment and Resilience Plan was submitted Tuesday to Gov. Roy Cooper by the state Department of Environmental Quality. The plan looks at climate stressors that include flooding, drought and extreme heat events as well as nonclimate stressors such as population growth, aging infrastructure, public health threats and increased development as well as strategies to move forward.

NCORR worked with NCDEQ to create the resiliency plan, one of the directives in Executive Order 80, North Carolina’s Commitment to Address Climate Change and Transition to a Clean Energy Economy, that Cooper signed Oct. 29, 2018.

“We have a responsibility to mitigate the damage caused by these storms and the shifting weather pattern and to make all of our communities more resilient. We have to rebuild stronger and smarter and ensure that we can withstand the impacts of climate change that we will be seeing in the foreseeable future,” which is why Cooper asked that a statewide risk and resiliency plan be developed as part of Executive Order 80, NCDEQ Secretary Michael S. Regan told the Wilmington Rotary Club during an address earlier this year.

NCORR resilience team had leadership roles writing the “Climate & Environmental Justice” and “The Path Forward for a Climate Resilient North Carolina” chapters for the 2020 Resiliency Plan. The agency will continue working to address climate change by being part of the North Carolina Resilience Strategy, which includes four elements: North Carolina Climate Science Report, State Agency Resilience Strategies, Statewide Vulnerability Assessment and Resilience Strategies, and the North Carolina Enhanced Hazard Mitigation Plan.

A division of the North Carolina Department of Public Safety, NCORR was established after Hurricane Florence in October 2018 to streamline recovery programming and assistance and administer programs for homeowner recovery, affordable housing, mitigation, buyout and local government grants and loans.

So far, the state has spent more than $3.5 billion in state and federal funding in recovery for hurricanes Matthew and Florence.

In anticipation of the release of the resiliency plan, NCORR put out at the end of April a 16-page online document, Natural Hazards Resilience: A Quick Start Guide for North Carolina Communities to help local governments be better prepared to take their own action when the resiliency plan gets published, Whitehead said.

“As we looked at the literature, there’s a lot out there on how to do a risk assessment, but not a whole lot about how to set yourself up for success in building resilience,” she said, adding some rural communities really need help with the coordination and time for data gathering that you need to even start assessing risks, much less deciding what to do.

The team at NCORR synthesized ideas in the Colorado Resiliency Playbook for state agencies with Whitehead’s experience with working with leaders at the local level to create North Carolina’s Natural Hazards Resilience Quick Start Guide, she said.

“Any local government or community group can take these principles and start building teams to be ready to divide up the work and support each other in integrating resilience thinking every day,” she said. “Now that the state published the 2020 Resilience Plan, we can build out the support the state is offering and have more communities ready to take it and run with getting to local action. It’s very much intended as a first step.”

Whitehead explained that the Quick Start Guide was put under extensive review by the resilience practitioner community, local governments, the state Department of Public Safety, other state agencies, the governor’s office and volunteers.

“The feedback we got was constructive, but universally positive – our reviewers thought it was very well done. The guide doesn’t read like a typical government document, and that’s a good thing,’ she said. “I’m so proud of my team because it was a big challenge to produce something easy to read that would also provide expert level guidance on a very bottom-up, local process.”

Though she wasn’t with the state at the time, Whitehead said she understood that plans were in motion for Executive Order 80 before Hurricane Florence hit in 2018.

“Now that the state published the 2020 Resilience Plan, we can build out the support the state is offering and have more communities ready to take it and run with getting to local action. It’s very much intended as a first step.”

Jessica Whitehead, Chief Resilience Officer, North Carolina Office of Recovery and Resiliency

“I would say Florence was less of a catalyst and more of a reinforcement that this work needed to proceed in earnest,” she said. “Another critical way Florence changed the conversation was in helping people to better understand the potential magnitude of what we are dealing with statewide.”

For example, she said, North Carolina Sea Grant, The Nature Conservancy, North Carolina Coastal Federation and the state Division of Coastal Management facilitated Swansboro’s Vulnerability, Consequences and Adaptation Planning Scenarios, or VCAPS, meeting about three weeks before Florence happened. VCAPS is a planning tool to help decision makers look at the effects of climate change and develop strategies.

“When we walked through those exercises with town decision-makers and asked them to think about absolute worst-case scenario rainfall events, it stretched their imaginations to think of 10-15 inches of rain in a single storm. Three weeks and 34 inches of rain later, it wasn’t such a stretch to think about what the impacts could be. It really changed the conversation across the board,” she said.

Before Florence, she said the VCAPS partners would have had to spend time convincing some audiences that this was a discussion worth having.

“Now we almost have the opposite problem – people accept it but want to skip the part where we plan and jump straight to what to do. There’s a danger in that – when we act quickly without planning to make sure that we are doing the most amount of good we can for the broadest variety of people, we run the risk that our action may leave some of our most vulnerable people behind,” she said. “We also run the risk of investing time in actions that make us feel safe without knowing that we are really making the best choices to actually reduce risk.”

Whitehead, who took her role at NCORR after serving as North Carolina Sea Grant’s coastal hazards adaptation specialist from 2013 to 2019, explained that the team’s definition of a resilient North Carolina “is a state where our communities, economies and ecosystems are better able to rebound, positively adapt to, and thrive amid changing conditions and challenges, including disasters and climate change; to maintain and improve quality of life, healthy growth, and durable systems; and to conserve resources for present and future generations.”

She said that there’s a lot of ideas about resilience such as building sea walls and fortifying structures that “overlap with hazard mitigation and imply that we will engineer our way out of disasters. That is not the one-size-fits-all vision we have for North Carolina.”

While those solutions may work and may be the only viable option in some situations, “so are options like figuring out how to live with water, using green infrastructure and in some places where flooding has been too repetitive, offering programs to buy out homeowners at risk and reconstruct affordable housing in lower risk areas so people have somewhere to go,” Whitehead said. “We will continue to build out how we implement that vision, but it will be across all hazards — not just flooding — and include building resilience from the mountains to the coast. be seeing in the foreseeable future.”

Funding challenges

Another challenge with resiliency and climate change is how to fund action, Whitehead explained.

“When we have so many challenging issues in affordable housing, education and health care, it’s just as easy today as it was in 2010 to budget for the next year and put off those long-term issues like disaster planning or climate change for later,” she said. “I think we have a better understanding though that everyone faces that funding challenge – worldwide, not just in North Carolina. Today, we are better equipped than we were a decade ago to network and stay in touch around the nation and the world to learn lessons about innovative or best practices to meet some of those funding challenges.”

Regan explained to the group in Wilmington how the lack of funding affects both the environment and economy.

Since 2010, the portion of DEQ staff responsible for protecting the state’s water quality has been cut by 40% by the North Carolina General Assembly, he said. “And so one could say that in 2010, 11 and 12, the rationale for cutting the enforcement arm — the scientists, the engineers — was because the economy was slow, and there was some that did not want the DEQ to get to reform and quote-unquote overregulate.”

From 2012 on, Regan continued, the state economy has been doing well and with the reduction of staff, his office has not only been unable to protect water quality for the 10 million residents the way they’d like to but the state has had an influx of businesses who are waiting up to two years just to get a permit from the state to operate.

“So, I would argue that prior to my arrival, we were on that downward slope of getting the resources that we need,” Regan said. Since being appointed secretary, he said he’s attempted in a very bipartisan fashion to approach the General Assembly and make the argument that protecting water quality is just as good for the environment, and public health, as it is for the economy.

“As you all know, our robust coastal economy depends on the protection of our beaches and our sounds and the marine life. And we stood with mayors and county leaders along the coast, who oppose offshore drilling and seismic testing,” Regan continued. “Our coastal communities, already have enough to deal with. The science tells us that if we do nothing, climate change means more intense storms. But we’re not just worried about the hurricanes. Climate experts working on North Carolina’s climate science report say rainfall events will be heavier and sea level rise will impact our beach communities.”

“Our coastal communities, already have enough to deal with. The science tells us that if we do nothing, climate change means more intense storms. But we’re not just worried about the hurricanes. Climate experts working on North Carolina’s climate science report say rainfall events will be heavier and sea level rise will impact our beach communities.”

Michael Regan, Secretary, North Carolina Department of Environmental Quality

Whitehead explained that what we know about how climate adaptation happens in 2020, or how risk is communicated, is very different.

“We understand better that defining overall trends is just a first step – to get that information to a decision, like how big a pipe should be to convey enough stormwater in 2050, is a lot more complex. You have to translate those projected precipitation scenarios into the intensities, durations and frequencies of rainfall events to be able to successfully design a stormwater pipe,” she said, adding you also need to consider other factors that go into that decision, like how expensive it is to create larger scale stormwater projects today and what is affordable.

“And then you need to prioritize – if you only have so much funding, do you put your efforts into improving stormwater infrastructure in a downstream location, or do you get more bang for your buck investing in a project upstream first? Science doesn’t have a good answer for this anywhere yet – but in North Carolina we are again asking these questions and outlining plans for how to get to answers we can implement, which puts us right back on the cutting edge of climate response,” she said.

Whitehead said that there’s “still no one-size-fits-all solution to climate change, but we know a lot better about how to engage and tailor scientific information. That said, there’s still a lot we have to learn about how to know which solutions are best in each place – or even what a viable solution is in some cases, like long-term land loss due to sea level rise, or how to make sure the rapidly urbanizing Piedmont has enough drinking water in 2050.”

She added that it’s been hard to tell how COVID-19 will impact the way people respond to climate change issues.

“COVID-19 has exposed so many of the ways our social and economic systems are vulnerable to shocks and stressors. A pandemic is definitely a shock, while climate change is a long-term stressor punctuated by shocks. I think we are still in response mode on COVID-19, and it remains to be seen in the long term how we change the ways we understand how widespread or deeply challenging something like a pandemic or climate change can be,” she said.

“I think it will shift how we process risk as a society. Importantly, as we begin to think of pandemic recovery, many of the things we do to improve social and economic resilience – the ways we care for our most vulnerable people, the ways we diversify our economies and think differently about resilience in supply chains or infrastructure so that it’s more able to handle major disruptions – are the things that will also reduce the harms and increase our abilities to adapt to climate change.”

This is an installment in a continuing series on climate change and the North Carolina coast that is part of the Pulitzer Center’s nationwide Connected Coastlines reporting initiative.

North Carolina in the last decade has gone from the state that passed a bill in 2012 restricting the use of sea level rise data for regulatory purposes, which drew criticism for “outlawing science,” to introducing this week what the state calls its most comprehensive effort to address climate change.

Submitted to Gov. Roy Cooper by the North Carolina Department of Environmental Quality, the North Carolina Climate Risk Assessment and Resilience Plan is to serve as a framework to guide state action, engage policymakers and stakeholders and facilitate collaboration across the state, officials said Tuesday. The plan is also intended to focus the state’s attention on climate resilience actions and address underlying stressors such as the changing climate, aging infrastructure, socioeconomic disparities and competing development priorities.

“Climate change impacts the health, safety, and financial stability of North Carolinians, and we must take it head on. A resilient North Carolina is a stronger and more competitive North Carolina,” said Cooper.

One of the many charges the governor gave cabinet agencies when he signed on Oct. 29, 2018, Executive Order 80, North Carolina’s Commitment to Address Climate Change and Transition to a Clean Energy Economy, the plan “is the state’s most comprehensive effort to date, based on science and stakeholder input, to address North Carolina’s vulnerability to climate change,” said DEQ officials.

DEQ submitted the 372-page document on behalf of the Climate Change Interagency Council, which prepared the resilience plan under the direction of the executive order.

In addition to the resilience plan, Executive Order 80 established several goals for the state to accomplish by 2025 that include a reduction of statewide greenhouse gas emissions to 40% below 2005 levels, increase the number of zero-emission vehicles to a minimum of 80,000 and reduce energy consumption per square foot in state-owned buildings by at least 40% from fiscal year 2002-2003 levels. The Climate Change Interagency Council was formed to help the cabinet agencies work together to achieve those goals, according to his office.

The plan is an 11-month collaborative effort with the state, federal partners, state universities, local governments, community planners, nongovernmental organizations including The Natural Resources Defense Council, NC Conservation Network, North Carolina Coastal Federation, The Nature Conservancy, NC Councils of Government, The Pew Charitable Trusts, Environmental Defense Fund, climate justice leaders, stakeholders interested in nature-based solutions and other partners.

“As we begin another hurricane season with even greater challenges facing North Carolina this year, the administration’s leadership has better positioned our state to prepare our most vulnerable communities,” said DEQ Secretary Michael S. Regan, chair of the Climate Change Interagency Council. “The Risk and Resilience Plan takes the experience and knowledge of the experts and leaders from across the state to ensure a comprehensive approach to address the risks to our infrastructure and economy.”

The 2020 Resilience Plan puts in place next steps for implementing and updating resilience initiatives and establishes the North Carolina Resilience Strategy. The four elements of the strategy include the North Carolina Climate Science Report, State Agency Resilience Strategies, Statewide Vulnerability Assessment and Resilience Strategies, and the North Carolina Enhanced Hazard Mitigation Plan.

“This plan will be tested repeatedly with every major storm that strikes our coast. Strong and persistent leadership must now translate into meaningful day-to-day policy and management decisions that actually reduce our vulnerability to extreme weather events. Today’s report establishes benchmarks by which the success of this framework will now be measured,” Todd Miller, executive director of the North Carolina Coastal Federation said Tuesday after the report was released. The Coastal Federation publishes Coastal Review Online.

Environmental Defense Fund Director Will McDow said in a statement that after devastation from back-to-back hurricanes and in the face of rapidly rising seas, “North Carolina must act with urgency to build meaningful resilience. This plan marks an important milestone towards a more resilient future for our state.”

“The Resilience Plan begins to address protecting vulnerable communities who are bearing a disproportionate share of the climate change burden,” said EDF Manager, Partnerships and Outreach Marilynn Marsh-Robinson. “What’s needed next is additional community engagement and holistic approaches developed hand-in-hand with the communities they are designed to protect. It’s critical to support those most impacted throughout the process and equip them with what is needed to implement long-term solutions.”

“The governor is starting an important dialogue on how best to prepare our state for the impacts of climate change,” added McDow. “We must now work together to move this plan into action to build meaningful resilience for our communities, businesses and ecosystems.”

Yaron Miller, an officer with The Pew Charitable Trusts’ flood-prepared communities initiative, told Coastal Review Online Tuesday that the plan is an important step for North Carolina as its residents face the impacts of frequent flood-related disasters.

“We are pleased that among the many resilience strategies identified, there is a chapter about applying nature-based and low impact development practices across the state, as well as recommendations to immediately incorporate these strategies into planning.  These are important tools to manage flooding and improve water quality,” Miller continued. “Pew and the North Carolina Coastal Federation have convened a diverse group of stakeholders to develop policy recommendations for how these solutions can be employed by state, local governments, and businesses to address flooding in the state.”

The shift in outlook on climate change has not gone unnoticed by state officials.

Regan said that following hurricanes Matthew in 2016 and Florence in 2018, audiences have become more receptive to talking about climate change.

“I think people are really feeling the implications of climate change, both from an environmental standpoint, a public safety standpoint and then from an economic standpoint,” he told Coastal Review Online following a presentation at a Wilmington Rotary Club meeting at Cape Fear Country Club earlier this year. “So our communities are experiencing these changing weather patterns, and now I think more people are open to the conversations about not only what do we do to prevent, but what do we do to recover once these events occur.”

Not only has the conversation shifted but the state’s official response is also different and includes the launch in October 2018 of the North Carolina Office of Recovery and Resiliency, or NCORR, to “streamline disaster recovery programs statewide and help communities rebuild smarter and stronger.”

NCORR Chief Resilience Officer Jessica Whitehead said that the nature of the conversation about climate change has in the last decade gone from “Is it happening?” to “It’s happening. Now what do we do?”

“What’s stayed the same is that there are still big challenges to defining what we do,” Whitehead said. “We know climate change isn’t just what we saw in the last flood – it’s droughts, and extreme heat, and landslides, and fires, and sea level rise. North Carolina has 100 counties, and they are all different places with diverse populations who will need to recover from and adapt to these diverse hazards.”

Looking to the future, “one of the greatest challenges we face is a changing climate,” Regan told the group during his talk. “As you all know better than anyone, your communities live and work on the front lines of climate change. Less than two years after Hurricane Matthew struck North Carolina, Hurricane Florence ended up being the costliest natural disaster in our history, causing the great state of North Carolina over $17 billion in damage. And last year, Hurricane Dorian hit some of our same communities.”

When Cooper, a month after Hurricane Florence, introduced the executive order to address climate change and transition to a clean energy economy, he was being proactive, Regan explained.

“That executive order is the most ambitious step ever taken in North Carolina’s history to combat climate change and transition North Carolina to a cleaner energy economy, while keeping the economy, front and center,” Regan said, adding that the order was a message that the state could no longer wait on federal government to act, “because our environment, our economy and our way of life could not wait.”

Executive Order 80 calls for every cabinet agency under the governor’s leadership to develop a carbon-reduction strategy. Cooper tasked NCDEQ with developing the North Carolina Clean Energy Plan submitted in the fall of 2019 to serve as “a visionary roadmap of viable policies for North Carolina’s clean energy future,” Regan said.

The plan requires the state’s electric power sector to reduce carbon emissions by 70% by 2030 and be carbon neutral by 2050. Carbon neutral means to function in a way that compensates completely for atmospheric carbon emissions, as through carbon offsets or tradeoffs.

“We know climate change isn’t just what we saw in the last flood – it’s droughts, and extreme heat, and landslides, and fires, and sea level rise. North Carolina has 100 counties, and they are all different places with diverse populations who will need to recover from and adapt to these diverse hazards.”

Jessica Whitehead, Chief Resilience Officer, North Carolina Office of Recovery and Resiliency

Though lauded by many, Executive Order 80 was also met with criticism.

“While arbitrary platitudes might satisfy far-left donors, our state’s energy policies have to account for the real costs they impose on the public,” Senate Leader Phil Berger, R-Rockingham, was quoted in a news report when Executive Order 80 was introduced in October 2018.

“I support an all-of-the-above energy strategy that includes renewables, but I don’t support programs that have minimal positive impact and can only sustain themselves with taxpayer and ratepayer money from those who can least afford it. The key is to find solutions that actually work in the private market, and I’m open to any and all ideas that help get us there.”

A few days before Cooper signed Executive Order 80, Berger and House Speaker Tim Moore, R-Cleveland, announced Oct. 26, 2018, appointees to the joint select committee on storm-related river debris/damage in North Carolina.

“Hurricane Florence’s devastation makes it clear that we need to work in every direction to protect lives and property from future flooding. This committee’s work will be integral to the comprehensive resiliency planning that will take place over the coming years,” Berger and Moore said in joint statement when the committee was announced.

The committee was tasked with studying flood damage mitigation caused by extreme rainfall events and are to submit a report by 2020, according to the October 2018 announcement. The scope of the study will be river basins that experienced at least 10 inches of rainfall during Hurricane Florence. The committee’s webpage on the state General Assembly website Tuesday did not have information about the release of a report.

This is the sixth installment in a continuing series on climate change and the North Carolina coast that is part of the Pulitzer Center’s nationwide Connected Coastlines reporting initiative.

RALEIGH — It was not the kind of Earth Day that North Carolina State Climatologist Kathie Dello had imagined.

On April 20, Dello opened a weeklong series of events at the North Carolina Museum of Natural Sciences, but instead of an in-person talk with the giant Earth at the museum’s entrance as a fitting backdrop, she joined via teleconference from her Raleigh home.

For the better part of an hour, Dello, on the job since last July, led a virtual walk-through of the findings in the state’s new climate report, an extensive, first-ever compilation of the science, impacts and unknowns about climate change in the state.

The major takeaways from the 236-page report are familiar: a warmer, wetter North Carolina with coastal areas threatened by rising seas and more frequent heavy downpours, along with increased flooding in all parts of the state.

Dello’s job that day and every day is to put that kind of data into context.

“North Carolina is warming and we’re expecting warming unlike anything we’ve seen in our past,” she explained to museum viewers.

Dello is the state’s fifth climatologist and the first woman to lead the State Climate Office, based at North Carolina State University. Before taking the job, she served as the associate director of the Oregon Climate Change Research Institute and the deputy director of the Oregon Climate Service.

In her talk illustrating the details in the new report, Dello pointed to effects seen around the state, breaking down the impact of warmer nights on public health and agriculture and how more intense rain events spell more frequent urban flooding. Stone fruits, like peaches, and other crops won’t do well without cool nights, she explained. Farmworkers and other outdoor laborers will experience more heat stress during the day, while warmer nights mean no chance to cool down.

It’s important, she said, to recognize that climate change is in our present as well as our future and has to be addressed accordingly.

“We’re feeling climate change now so, we don’t get to the luxury of talking about this as a future problem anymore,” she said. “It’s here in North Carolina. It’s here in our backyard and we’re seeing it through the sea level rise and extreme downpours.”

In getting to know the state, Dello said she’s been struck with its diversity, in ecological terms and the human communities within its borders.

For Dello a big part of the job of state climatologist is communicating science in a meaningful way, bringing home to people what a changing climate means. She helped author a “plain language” summary of the North Carolina Climate Science Report, which is aimed at making the science more accessible and useful for the public as well as planners and policy makers.

Creating the complex climate models, the math, is the easy part, she told viewers on Earth Day.

“I’m not being flip, that really is the easy part. The most difficult part is the human component, us, how we’re going to behave, how we’re going to react.”

In plain language

In climate science circles, North Carolina is known both for the intensity of storms and the debate here over climate science. Dello said that when she got here, only one was apparent.

“When I got the job, people were shocked that I would leave the West Coast, which seems to be a friendlier place to talk about climate,” she said in an interview with Coastal Review Online. “But I found the opposite here.”

Dello said she saw much more resistance and organized opposition in Oregon.

“I don’t know if it’s just Southern hospitality or that people are a little bit nicer, but I find that people are ready and willing to talk about climate change here,” she said. “In some cases, they haven’t been engaged at all and are grateful that someone is willing to approach the subject with them.”

Recent storms here likely played a role in that, she said. “I’m finding that folks are open and willing to have the conversation and certainly the weather and the climate over the past few years has probably helped that out.”

“I don’t know if it’s just Southern hospitality or that people are a little bit nicer, but I find that people are ready and willing to talk about climate change here.”

To understand what the future of our climate holds, Dello said it’s important to recognize that we are already seeing what climate change looks like.

“We’re in for more of it. We’re in for worse,” she said. “It’s hotter, it’s wetter, the ocean communities are dealing with sunny-day, nuisance flooding and coastal erosion.”

“Flooding is going to impact the entire state,” Dello said. There’ll be more frequent heavy rain events and more large-scale urban floods, especially when there’s a combination of events, such as a big storm after leaves have just fallen.

“The mechanism might be different — it’s not going to be high tide in Raleigh — but it may be something else.”

What that means for hurricanes is unclear, in terms of where the storms might travel, she said, but wherever they go, more intense wind and rain and more damage are likely.

“We don’t necessarily know where hurricanes make landfall. Climate models don’t reconcile that very well but we’re stacking the deck with more conducive conditions for dangerous hurricanes.”

That outlook is daunting for policy makers, and Dello said the state will have to confront repeated devastation to vulnerable communities and the disparate impact on people who work outside or can’t afford to cool their homes when heat indexes rise.

“I think this is going to take a really close look at some of our inequities across our state,” she said. “The communities that going to be hit the hardest, that have been hit the hardest are just going to keep getting hit. I think we have some tough questions to ask of ourselves.”

She said the coronavirus pandemic is reminder that it is pointless to talk about a “new normal” as if there will be a point where things plateau.

“We talk about a new normal and we were talking about a new normal before all this other stuff started happening,” she said. “But that’s not a great classification, because we’ll check in at a new normal and then there’ll be another new normal and another new normal.”

NC’s opportunity to lead

The new state climate report and its focus on the impact of climate change is one part of a state resilience and mitigation strategy put in place by Gov. Roy Cooper. The climate change report is integral to the next step in the process, a statewide resiliency plan that is due out this month.

“I think North Carolina has a really unique advantage in that we are seeing climate change loud and clear here in this state and we’re recognizing that we need to do something about it.”

Cooper’s strategy represents a considerable shift from his predecessor, Gov. Pat McCrory, who advocated for offshore drilling and inland fracking. But Cooper has been limited mostly to executive action. Following the recent series of devastating storms, the state’s legislature has been willing to back resiliency efforts, but as yet is still unwilling to enact major policy changes, such as carbon reduction goals.

Dello said that often the resistance to changes at the state level is based on the contention that it won’t make a difference.

“What people who don’t want to take action on climate use as an argument is that one individual state can’t do enough on its own. I don’t think the point is that North Carolina is trying to do this on its own. North Carolina is saying, ‘Hey, we contribute to this problem,’” she said. “Sure it’s global, but recognizing our contribution to it and knowing that the atmosphere doesn’t stop at our borders, we’re going to look closely at what we can do.”

Given its reputation, she said, North Carolina has an opportunity to show other states a way forward.

“We’ve seen with policy change in the past in the U.S., it’s the states that make the federal government act,” Dello said. In environmental policy usually those state changes come from places like California and New York.

“I think North Carolina has a really unique advantage in that we are seeing climate change loud and clear here in this state and we’re recognizing that we need to do something about it. The politics may have changed a little bit, but folks don’t see us as the most progressive state around the country. I think that North Carolina can be a leader in showing other states you can do this.”

Lessons from lockdown

“I think one of the things I keep reminding myself is that climate change isn’t stopping because of any of this,” Dello said. “This break in emissions isn’t doing very much for us.”

Still, the early reaction to the coronavirus pandemic in which most people were willing to pitch in and take the stay-at-home order seriously gives her some hope that people are willing to adapt for a common cause.

“I’m seeing folk ask questions of themselves — I’m doing it too — Why do I travel so much? Why do I go to conferences all over when really I could have them online?”

Some of those changes will carry forward, she said, but they’re only a small part of what’s needed and there’s the worry that once things return to some sense of normalcy the collective spirit will fade.

“The problem we have on our hands is really, really big, and watching people struggle with this one, I don’t know” Dello said. “I bounce back and forth between optimism and pessimism.”