Cape Hatteras National Seashore officials advise visitors to its east-facing beaches to exercise caution through Saturday because the persistent northeast winds and breaking waves forecast for the next few days could cause coastal erosion and damage to beach houses.

The National Weather Service is calling for strong winds, dangerous rip currents and longshore currents are expected for much of the beaches from Duck to Cape Lookout, as well as portions of Onslow County, over the coming days, with waves in the surf zone that could reach up to 8 feet at times, according to its social media.

In the advisory the National Park Service issued late afternoon Tuesday, officials said the potential weather could cause the partial or full collapse of one or more threatened oceanfront structures in Buxton and Rodanthe.

Officials also note that the entirety of Buxton’s beachfront is closed because of public safety hazards associated with the presence of threatened oceanfront structures in or near the ocean.

“The proximity of these structures to seashore lands poses a serious risk to visitors walking along the beach or wading in the surf,” officials said. “Additionally, a public safety closure of a stretch of beach from the south end of Buxton to just north of off-road vehicle ramp 43 remains in place.”

Currituck County’s America 250 NC Task Force has launched a yearlong challenge to visit 10 of North Carolina’s lighthouses as part of the country’s celebration of the signing of the Declaration of Independence.

Called the NC Lighthouse Challenge, participants must visit the 10 sites and submit their photos with the lighthouse visible to nc.lighthouse.visit@gmail.com by the Dec. 31 deadline. Those who complete the challenge will be awarded a personalized certificate from Currituck County upon completion, and earn a free lighthouse climb.

Organizers noted that Hatteras, Lookout, Ocracoke, and Bodie are not offering the free lighthouse climb because of either long-term maintenance or National Park Service rules.

Register at https://www.eventcreate.com/e/nc-lighthouse-visit to receive the official set of rules.

“Long before modern navigation systems, lighthouse keepers and members of the U.S. Life-Saving Service stood watch along North Carolina’s treacherous coastline. Their dedication—often in isolation and through severe weather—helped guide ships safely and protect countless lives,” organizers said in a release.

“These early services were eventually unified under the U.S. Coast Guard in 1939, continuing a legacy of vigilance and service that remains today. The NC Lighthouse Challenge honors that legacy, inviting participants to walk in the footsteps of those who helped ‘light the way’ for a growing nation,” they continued.

The 10 historic sites include the following:

• Old Baldy on Bald Head Island, built 1817.
• Ocracoke Lighthouse, 1823.
• Cape Lookout Lighthouse, 1859.
• Cape Hatteras Lighthouse, 1870.
• Bodie Island Lighthouse, 1872, on Cape Hatteras National Seashore.
• Currituck Beach Lighthouse, 1875.
• Oak Island Lighthouse, 1958.
• Roanoke River Lighthouse, 1886, in Edenton.
• Roanoke River Lighthouse 1867 replica in Plymouth.
• Roanoke Marshes Lighthouse 1877 replica in Manteo.

Tony Cerri, a member of the county’s celebration task force, said that at its core, the challenge is about more than visiting beautiful places.

“It’s about recognizing the vital role North Carolina’s lighthouses — and the people who served in them — played in guiding commerce, protecting lives, and supporting the growth of our nation,” Cerri added in the release.

Currituck County’s America 250 NC Task Force is one of the county committees that plan and organize events, projects, and initiatives at the county level as part of America 250 NC. The state’s official commemoration of America’s 250th anniversary is a program of the North Carolina Department of Natural and Cultural Resources.

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.

Work is set to begin this week to repair and restore the Bodie Island double keepers’ quarters that was damaged in an electrical fire more than a year ago.

Once the damages are repaired, Cape Hatteras National Seashore plans to install new exhibits on the first floor of the building, which has been closed since the Jan. 7, 2025, fire.

“Restoring the interior of the Bodie Island DKQ, with support from Outer Banks Forever, will allow the Seashore to once again tell the stories of the light station’s important history,” David Hallac, National Parks of Eastern North Carolina superintendent said in a release.

The project is a partnership of Cape Hatteras National Seashore and its official nonprofit partner Outer Banks Forever, which is funding the repairs.

“We’re honored to partner with the National Park Service to restore this beloved, historically significant building so park visitors can have an immersive experience learning about the lightkeepers and families who played important roles in Outer Banks and United States maritime history,” Outer Banks Forever Director Bryan Burhans stated in the release.

Outer Banks Forever has received a special use permit for the project.

Guest Commentary

To stimulate discussion and debate, Coastal Review welcomes differing viewpoints on topical coastal issues. Opinions expressed by the authors are not necessarily those of Coastal Review or our publisher, the North Carolina Coastal Federation.

Early this February, the Outer Banks battled severe winter weather, a closed main highway due to overwash, and iced-over ferry terminals. But amidst the freeze, a more permanent disaster unfolded. On Feb. 1 and 2, the Atlantic Ocean claimed its latest prize: four homes in Buxton.

This brings the total number of properties lost to the ocean since 2020 to 31. While these collapses create a spectacle on social media and news outlets, for coastal managers, they are anticipated events and a reminder of our losing battle against an ever-encroaching sea.

The consequences from each collapse extend beyond the individual homeowners. Scattered debris creates hazardous conditions that close shorelines, deter tourists, and threaten the local tourism economy.

While homeowners are technically responsible for hiring contractors for debris removal, county and National Park Service crews from the neighboring Cape Hatteras National Seashore are often left to fill the gap. And until cleanup is complete, waves of nails, furniture, septic systems, and splintered wood create dangerous conditions for neighbors, tourists, and wildlife. Ultimately, we are trying to force static buildings onto dynamic barrier islands, and the islands are fighting back.

The sand subscription trap

Most of these threatened homes were built on these barrier islands between the 1970s and 1990s, originally standing hundreds of feet from the Atlantic Ocean. Today, homes in the Outer Banks cling to a shoreline eroding at rates of up to about 20 feet per year. This erosion is driven by rising sea levels, expected to increase locally by 15 to 22 inches by 2050, and intensified coastal storms.

Currently, our primary adaptation strategy is beach nourishment, the artificial pumping of sand onto existing beaches to resist erosion and protect inland structures. However, this strategy is proving unsustainable. The rate of erosion has simply outpaced our administrative capacity to fund, permit, and engineer new projects. The beach in front of the latest collapses in Buxton was nourished less than four years ago. In essence, we are signing up for a recurring subscription to sand, one that costs more every year while protecting homes for a shorter period.

The case for buyouts

What most reports on these collapses fail to highlight is that a financially viable solution exists. A 2023 Western Carolina University cost-benefit analysis of Rodanthe, a community on the Outer Banks that has seen 12 collapses since 2020, found that long-term beach nourishment would cost the municipality approximately $120 million over 15 years. In contrast, it would cost just over $40 million to proactively buy out and remove the 80 most at-risk homes.

While the recent collapses in Buxton are making headlines, Buxton and Rodanthe, as the two communities where homes have collapsed, face different realities. Buxton is largely a year-round community where erosion threatens the broader tourism-driven economy, though the collapsing oceanfront homes themselves are primarily second homes. Conversely, Rodanthe is largely composed of vacation homes with a relatively small tax base.

Further, the somewhat recently completed “Jug-Handle” Rodanthe Bridge bypassed Rodanthe’s erosion hot spot, which has mitigated need to protect that stretch of highway. The exorbitant costs of beach nourishment and limited funds make Rodanthe unlikely to afford nourishment, and make buyouts the most logical strategy.

Buyouts are a tool for managed retreat where local, state, or federal governments purchase hazard-prone homes to relocate residents and demolish the existing structures, creating open space that naturally buffers against coastal flooding.

While beach nourishment projects in this region are projected to last about five years, a buyout is a permanent removal of the risk. There is already a precedent for this in Rodanthe as well. In 2023, the National Park Service used funds from offshore oil and gas leasing earnings to buy and demolish two threatened homes before they collapsed.

Breaking the insurance cycle

Critics often point to the loss of local tax revenue as a barrier to buyouts. However, the WCU study found that property tax revenue lost from these 80 homes, valued between $7 to $10 million over 30 years, is still significantly less than the cost to maintain the beach through nourishment. Further, our current system under federal guidelines creates deep regional inequities. Reimbursement for beach nourishment projects is only available to communities that can first afford millions to construct an engineered beach.

Only when a disaster is declared does a beach become eligible to receive emergency funding for the volume of sand lost during a specific storm-related disaster. Because of the steep costs of nourishment, only affluent communities with wealthier tax bases can afford to protect their homes.

Where federal dollars don’t pay for sand, the inherent risk of living along an eroding shoreline is subsidized through the National Flood Insurance Program (NFIP). Local and federal agencies lack the authority to force homeowners to demolish their compromised properties and therefore proactive removal is entirely voluntary and costs homeowners over $25,000 out-of-pocket. Homeowners with mortgages in these flood zones are incentivized to wait for the inevitable to be eligible to receive up to $250,000 for the structure and $100,000 for contents from the NFIP only after their home has collapsed.

Congress is largely unresponsive to escalating climate risks associated with intensifying hazards and subsequent uninsurable flood risks. Even when there have been legislative reforms to the NFIP, there have been unintended consequences for homeowners who are unable to afford higher premiums and also unable to sell their properties, with disproportionate impacts on vulnerable communities. With Rodanthe consisting primarily of vacation rentals, there is a deep equity question about how to fairly allocate taxpayer funds when low- and middle-income households are disproportionately impacted by flooding nationwide.

There is bipartisan recognition that this system must change. In 2025, Rep. Greg Murphy, R-N.C.-3, co-sponsored the Preventing Environmental Hazards Act (H.R.3161) to address this issue. The bill would authorize advance NFIP payouts of up to 40% of a home’s value up to $250,000 to proactively help homeowners demolish threatened homes before they collapse. To build on this, experts propose a “discounts for buyouts” reform to the NFIP, offering homeowners lower premiums in exchange for their agreement to sell their home and relocate once their home is substantially damaged by flooding. In addition, by prioritizing residences valued at under $250,000, the NFIP could equitably relocate vulnerable primary homes over wealthy second-home owners.

Proactive planning over reactive cleanup

Buyout programs are not a “silver bullet” to ongoing erosion and sea level rise. They come with emotional consequences, including homeowner displacement and impacts to community identity. Also, a large-scale buyout program would undoubtedly require significant local, state, and/or federal funds to remove these at-risk properties. However, voluntary programs that give homeowners autonomy over decisions on whether to participate in buyouts can mitigate these social costs.

One of the biggest hurdles is politics. Supporting government-funded buyouts can be seen as admitting defeat to the environment and is a political liability. Andrew Coburn, the associate director of the program for the Study of Developed Shorelines at WCU, noted that it is hard to imagine that a politician would ever tell their constituents, “Well, I guess it’s time we retreated.” Instead, we let the ocean decide when retreat from the shoreline happens, often at a much higher long-term cost.

The Outer Banks is an early warning sign for the rest of the U.S. coastline. While the only option appears to be expensive and temporary beach nourishment and insurance bailouts, there is a more holistic, science-based solution where long-term benefits outweigh the costs.

The logical solution is based on the values and needs of the broader Outer Banks community, U.S. taxpayers, the long-term health of the ecosystem, and equity. In the face of the 32nd collapse, we must shift from the cycle of federal subsidies and reactive cleanups toward insurance reforms and proactive retreat programs that offer homeowners a viable way out, before the Atlantic decides for them.

The North Carolina Department of Environmental Quality’s Division of Coastal Management has issued a permit to Dare County for a beach nourishment project planned for this summer at Buxton.

The division also announced Wednesday that it had issued a letter to the county affirming that the proposed work to rebuild one of three groins near the former site of the Cape Hatteras Lighthouse qualifies as “repair” under the Coastal Area Management Act and Coastal Resources Commission rules and does not require a CAMA permit for the project to proceed.

“North Carolina’s ocean shoreline is a dynamic environment with challenges driven by extreme shoreline erosion, rising sea levels and more frequent and intense storms,” the division said in its announcement. “Communities along the Outer Banks have been particularly affected by recent weather events and extreme erosion. Along many parts of the state’s coastline, local governments may pursue projects such as beach renourishment to reduce vulnerability to storm damages and protect critical public infrastructure. DCM reviews these projects to ensure they are consistent with CAMA and the CRC’s rules.”

Related: Winter storm takes 4 Buxton houses, leaves inches of snow

The village’s beach, which is part of the Cape Hatteras National Seashore, has suffered severe erosion over the past few years that has led to houses collapsing into the ocean — 31 on the national seashore’s beaches since 2020 — and uncovered long-buried petroleum contamination at the site, which has been used in decades past as a naval facility and a Coast Guard station.

Beach renourishment is one of the primary erosion response strategies allowed under state law. Hard structures such as groins are subject to strict statutory limitations and case-by-case review. All permitted projects include conditions to minimize environmental impacts, maintain public access and safety and require ongoing monitoring.

The project documents are available online.

This report first appeared Feb. 3 in NC Newsline.

North Carolina Insurance Commissioner Mike Causey says even as snow from last weekend’s storm begins to melt, his office has received a flurry of calls from business owners and lifetime Outer Banks residents upset to see more homes falling into the Atlantic Ocean.

The powerful storm, packing winds of 60 mph, brought down four more unoccupied structures in Buxton.

“There’s some angry people out there,” Causey told members of the Council of State on Tuesday. “That makes a total of 31 homes that have collapsed since 2020.”

Related: Winter storm takes 4 Buxton houses, leaves inches of snow

Causey said while his office doesn’t have a solution to deal with the continually eroding shoreline, the state should listen to the locals.

“The complaint that I hear is there’s been too much finger-pointing with the multiple agencies involved, the federal government, the parks system, environmental groups, on down the list,” said Causey. “But what they’re telling me is that we need emergency help to stop the bleeding, because we can’t let these houses keep collapsing.”

Buxton typically loses six feet to eight feet of shoreline each year, but rising sea levels and an active storm season can accelerate that erosion. And a collapsed home can leave a debris field that stretches for miles.

“It is an economic nightmare and it’s an environmental nightmare when that happens,” said Causey.

Property owners are responsible for removing debris when a home collapses, but currents can spread the wreckage far down the coast, so responsibility has increasingly fallen on park officials to protect the shoreline.

Last year the Cape Hatteras National Seashore hauled out over 400 truckloads of debris from fallen houses.

Causey said the residents he’s spoken to this week want to see manmade reefs or hardened structures, which are currently banned, reconsidered. Beach renourishment, which has been used in other coastal communities, is an expensive and temporary solution.

This is not the first time Causey has pressed for help for Outer Banks homeowners.

Last November, Causey and Gov. Josh Stein urged Congress to pass the Preventing Environmental Hazards Act of 2025. The bipartisan bill would allow National Flood Insurance Program (NFIP) payments to be made before an imminent collapse caused by erosion.

Standard homeowners’ insurance doesn’t cover shoreline erosion damage, so property owners can’t collect on it, even if the property is condemned, until the house collapses. The proposed legislation would give homeowners financial help to demolish or relocate a condemned structure before it falls into the surf.

“Federal NFIP pre-collapse authority would reduce hazards, protect visitors and wildlife, and save taxpayer dollars on emergency response and cleanup,” Causey and Stein wrote in their Nov. 2025 letter.

But the bill, co-sponsored by U.S. Rep. Greg Murphy (R-NC3), has not moved since last May, when it was referred to the House Committee on Financial Services.

“I think those people deserve to be heard,” said Causey.

While Causey was focused on the coast at Tuesday’s Council of State, Stein turned his attention to disaster recovery out west.

The governor’s office continues to push for Congress to authorize $13.5 billion requested for Hurricane Helene relief, Stein told the council. While North Carolina’s congressional delegation is supportive, the wheels of the federal government move very slowly, tied up in red tape due to new FEMA review requirements.

North Carolina has only received about 12% of the federal aid it has requested for Helene recovery, Stein said.

“I’m so glad I’m not in Congress because I can only imagine trying to get anything constructive done in that body,” said Stein. “But we need their help, Western North Carolina needs their help, and we’re going to keep asking for their help.”

For now, Stein said he’s incredibly grateful for the state employees who helped North Carolinians weather back-to-back winter storms in January.

Transportation crews pre-treated state roads with over 10 million gallons of brine, Stein said. Over 100,000 tons of salt was spread across North Carolina’s 100 counties, with another 20,000 tons expected to be needed in the next day or two with more wintry weather in the forecast.

“They’re just working nonstop to try to minimize the impact on our lives,” said Stein.

NC Newsline is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. NC Newsline maintains editorial independence.

Popular sites and attractions along the North Carolina coast are closing Friday in anticipation of a winter storm expected to bring this weekend snow, blustery winds, dangerously cold temperatures and some coastal flooding.

The National Parks Service announced Friday morning that it is closing all of its visitor facilities at Cape Hatteras National Seashore, Fort Raleigh National Historic Site and Wright Brothers National Memorial through at least Monday morning.

Oregon Inlet and Ocracoke campgrounds were to close at noon Friday.

Portions of the beach in Rodanthe and Buxton already have been closed because the presence of threatened oceanfront structures.

In Rodanthe, the beachfront is closed from East Point Drive south to Surfside Drive. Buxton’s ocean shore is closed from the north end to near off-road vehicle ramp 43.

The North Carolina Maritime Museum in Beaufort, which has been closed since November 2024 for renovations, has rescheduled its reopening from Saturday to Feb. 21 because of this weekend’s forecast, officials announced this week.

The North Carolina Aquarium at Fort Fisher in New Hanover County will close to the public Saturday and Sunday. Updates, including plans for Monday, will be provided on the aquarium’s media pages on Facebook, Instagram and Threads.

Powerful winds, sound-side flooding, and the potential for as much as 1 to 1.5 feet of snow is expected to impact areas along the coast begging late Friday into Saturday. Residents are being urged to make preparations for the storm by Friday evening.

The combination of snow, cold and wind are expected to create life-threatening conditions.

The National Parks Service will provide operational updates its Outer Banks Group’s severe weather webpage and social media accounts.

BUXTON – Faced with devastating destruction across a significant segment of its beachfront, this small Outer Banks village is seeking help for coastal solutions, including measures that could require potentially controversial legislative action by the state and federal governments.

Since September, 15 houses have collapsed on a stretch of beach in Buxton just north of Cape Hatteras, the distinctive point of land midway along the East Coast that juts far into the Atlantic. Adaptation to storms and natural forces have fortified the community since its establishment in the late 1800s, but now stunningly rapid erosion is endangering its future.

“Today, small areas of our oceanfront have deteriorated to the point where we can no longer shoulder these challenges alone,” Dare County Board of Commissioners Chairman Bob Woodard wrote to members of the North Carolina General Assembly in November. “With your support, we can preserve our coastline, protect public infrastructure, and sustain the economic engine that benefits all of North Carolina.”

The county is one of the few “donor counties” in North Carolina, with more than 3 million people annually visiting Dare’s beaches and national parks and generating significant state tax revenue, he said. So far, he added, the county has spent about $275 million for beach nourishment as well as additional millions to maintain inlets, with little state or federal assistance.

In addition to a beach nourishment project in 2026 for Buxton, the county is planning to repair a purportedly half-intact groin, one of three installed in 1969 to protect the former Navy base constructed in 1956 near the original location of the Cape Hatteras Lighthouse.

Dare and Hyde counties also have asked the state Division of Coastal Management to lift the 1985 state ban against hardened structures so the remnants of the two deteriorated groins at the site can be replaced.

But beach stabilization of any sort on the Outer Banks, with its extraordinarily high-energy coastal conditions, is becoming more challenging in a changing climate with quickly evolving and often unpredictable consequences: Sea levels are increasing faster than projected, storms are intensifying, rainfall is heavier.

In recent years, Hatteras and Ocracoke islands on the barrier islands’ southern end have been suffering dramatically increased shoaling in its inlets and far worse erosion at numerous hot spots along N.C. 12, the island’s only highway. Over wash, loss of dunes and road damage is becoming more frequent and difficult to mitigate, sometimes resulting in loss of vehicular access for hours or days. 

People say things feel different. Residents — from old timers to long-time transplants — have noticed places flooding where they never did before, shoaling in waterways that had never clogged before, and erosion consuming an entire shoreline that had been wide and stable just a few years before. And this fall and winter, even seasonal nor’easters have switched to overdrive, with the storms coming in one after another and more often than some ole salts say they’ve ever seen. 

“When we really developed these islands in the ’70s and ’80s, it was a different system, and we need to recognize that, acknowledge it, and plan accordingly,” Reide Corbett, executive director of the Coastal Studies Institute and Dean of the Integrated Coastal Program at East Carolina University, said in a recent interview. “We can’t let self-interest lead the way. We need to understand what this looks like, and we need to get behind better policy. And it starts with how we develop.”

Responding to increasing numbers of house collapses in Buxton and Rodanthe, the Hatteras Island’s northernmost village, state leaders are urging Congress to pass legislation introduced by Rep. Greg Murphy, a Republican from North Carolina’s 3rd District, that would authorize proactive Federal Emergency Management Agency flood insurance payments to remove threatened oceanfront houses before they fall.

While the proposal has garnered bipartisan support, FEMA is currently understaffed and targeted for downsizing, reorganization or even elimination, and its flood insurance program is woefully underfunded.

A delegation representing local, state and federal officials toured the damaged area in Buxton on Nov. 24, where dozens of additional oceanfront houses are scattered willy-nilly, awaiting near-certain demise. Numerous members of the group expressed shock at the disarray and destruction at the scene.

Meanwhile, North Carolina Department of Environmental Quality Secretary Reid Wilson has directed the Coastal Resources Commission’s Science Panel to analyze shoreline stabilization options, including the potential effectiveness or negative impacts of groins.

Erosion on Buxton’s oceanfront has been a persistent problem for many decades, at least to the infrastructure on the beach, such as the Cape Hatteras Lighthouse.

“It was quite obvious to everybody that in the course of time the lighthouse would topple into the Atlantic Ocean and the thousand acres of park land, upon which no tree and scarcely any blade of grass grew, would be swallowed up by the warring ocean currents that swirl around the point of Cape Hatteras,” author Ben Dixon MacNeill wrote in an article published on July 30, 1948, in the Coastland Times. At that point, he noted, in just the lifetime of a middle-aged man, erosion had already whittled away 1,500 feet of beach. 

Despite the 1937 congressional directive to the National Park Service to preserve what would later become Cape Hatteras National Seashore as a “primitive wilderness,” until the early 1970s, according to park documents, the agency spent more than $20 million to stop the “natural process” of barrier island movement. Projects included installing in 1930 steel sheet pile groins along the beach by Cape Hatteras Lighthouse; installing in 1933 additional sheet pile groins at the lighthouse; nourishment of the beach in 1966 near the Buxton motel area with sand dredged from Pamlico Sound; and in 1967 placement of revetment of large nylon sandbags in front of the lighthouse.

In addition, the U.S. Navy built three reinforced concrete groins in 1969 to protect its facility near the lighthouse; the beach near the Buxton motels was nourished again in 1971 with material dredged from Cape Point; and the beach near the Navy operation was nourished in 1973 with Cape Point sand. 

Those actions were in addition to construction and repeated reconstruction of sand dunes, as well as beach fences and planting grasses, shrubs and trees to hold the dunes. 

Finally, in 1973, the National Park Service acknowledged the futility and unsustainable costs of stabilization, and abandoned its efforts. The agency, however, did continue various attempts to protect the lighthouse with riprap, offshore artificial grass, sandbags and a scour-mat apron. With the sea by then lapping at its base, the lighthouse in 1999 was relocated a half-mile inland.

In a letter dated Jan. 9, 1974, from the U.S. Department of Interior to a Buxton resident, the agency promised that all available data would be analyzed before determining future beach stabilization management decisions in the Seashore, including relative to the groins.

“The most reliable scientific data we have obtained thus far offer no evidence that the existing jetties or groins at Buxton provide acceptable protection from ocean forces,” the department added. “While some stabilizing effect may be gained in the immediate area, the jetties actually cause more erosion in adjacent locations.”

A report the year earlier published by University of Virginia coastal scientist Robert Dolan, et. al, to analyze the effects of beach nourishment in Buxton, in fact, said that the groins — short jetties extending from a shoreline — rapidly increased erosion by the motel area, causing dune destruction and ocean over wash into private property.

“The groins, somewhat unexpectedly, are trapping sediment at the expense of the beaches to either side and as a result of their success, the reach protected by the groins has become stable,” the report said, adding that the localized erosion problem at Buxton had followed construction of the groins.

Barely more than four years after they were built, the groins were damaged by storms and required repairs with new sheet piling. Patches and reinforcements continued until the Navy in 1982 abandoned the base, apparently leaving the groins to the elements.

By the time heated discussions kicked in about whether the lighthouse should be saved in place or moved, the community tried to persuade the federal government to not only maintain the by-then-deteriorating existing groins, but also to add a fourth groin. The petition was soundly rejected, and the Navy, the Park Service and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers appeared to want nothing to do with the groins.

Today, the county sees the sand trapping barriers — even a single groin — as a way to prolong the effectiveness of a $50 million beach nourishment project, and importantly, as a way to buy time while consultants determine a long-term strategy for Buxton.

Dare County Manager Bobby Outten reported in March that, according to Coastal Science & Engineering, the firm hired to do the beach nourishment and groin work, the southern-most groin would meet the state’s 50% rule that allows repair of an existing structure that has 50% or less in damages. The county is currently awaiting approval from the state, as well as acknowledgement that the application meets the exemption criteria for an exemption from the hardened structures statute, he said.

If the groin work is approved, contractors estimate the $2 to $4 million project would take up to two months to complete this summer and involve about 640 feet of repairs, using steel sheet pile and riprap scour protection within the original footprint.

As Outten summed up the current dilemma facing Dare and other North Carolina coastal communities: There are two extremes, either hold the coast in place as it is, and build sea walls. Or let nature take its course, let the houses fall and see the economy crumble.

“And neither one of those extremes is acceptable,” he told Coastal Review. “To anybody.”

Reprinted from Island Free Press.

Debris from five oceanfront home collapses continues to cover the shoreline in Buxton as the Cape Hatteras National Seashore (CHNS) moves forward with a coordinated cleanup response, despite the ongoing federal shutdown.

The public is advised to avoid the beach south of Old Lighthouse Road, where pilings, broken construction materials, and household debris remain scattered along the surf zone and are shifting with each tide, creating dangerous conditions.

Beach access from the north end of Buxton to near ORV Ramp 43 remains closed. 

Tuesday’s collapses sent debris across National Seashore property and into nearby neighborhoods, where a significant portion of debris has reached private property inland. Dare County has previously contracted private debris removal crews to assist along Old Lighthouse Road after earlier home collapses in September and October, and similar support is anticipated as the latest cleanup continues.

Meanwhile, CHNS crews are conducting emergency, safety-focused cleanup operations and maintaining limited public access where possible, despite ongoing federal service limitations.

“We’re continuing to respond in an emergency fashion to help maintain public access to general areas,” said CHNS Superintendent David Hallac. “Most of our staff are working to protect the property of the seashore.”

Tuesday’s incidents mark the 12th, 13th, 14th, 15th, and 16th oceanfront home collapses on Hatteras Island since mid-September, which all occurred in Buxton except for one collapse in Rodanthe.

Homeowners are technically responsible for the cleanup of their property debris, but cleanup efforts often involve a combination of private contractors, county resources, local volunteers, and the National Park Service.

Hallac noted that while some of the 15 affected Buxton property owners have requested special use permit applications to help remove debris on Seashore lands, “they have not attempted to clean up on any National Seashore property south of the village, to my knowledge.” The situation differs somewhat from recent 2024 and 2025 collapses in Rodanthe, where homeowners — in several cases — undertook extensive cleanup initiatives along miles of shoreline.

Conditions remain hazardous in the impacted area, with sharp debris, exposed nails, buried pilings, and unstable materials continuing to wash in and out with the surf. Officials warn that the beachfront remains unsafe and urge the public to avoid the area until further notice while cleanup crews work to remove debris and stabilize access.

This story is provided courtesy of the Island Free Press, a digital newspaper covering Hatteras and Ocracoke islands. Coastal Review partners with Island Free Press to provide readers with more environmental and lifestyle stories of interest along our coast.

Updated 7:15 p.m. Tuesday.

Five unoccupied beachfront houses in Buxton collapsed within hours Tuesday, resulting in layers of lumber, siding, section of decks and other building materials to be spread along Cape Hatteras National Seashore beaches.

The first house collapsed at 10:45 a.m. at 46002 Ocean Drive, then the unoccupied structure at 46223 Tower Circle Road fell about 15 minutes later. At 12:45 p.m. the house at 46003 Ocean Drive fell, followed at 1 p.m. by 46016 Cottage Avenue, states the National Park Service’s Threatened Oceanfront Structures webpage.

The fifth home at 46213 Tower Circle Road, collapsed around 4:30 p.m. Tuesday, Island Free Press reported.

Including the five houses from Tuesday, 15 houses in Buxton and Rodanthe have fallen since mid-September, making the total 27 structures to collapse since May 29, 2020.

National Weather Service’s Morehead City office meteorologists expect the strong winds, large waves, coastal flooding, ocean overwash and other hazards that began Monday to continue through Wednesday.

Officials warn that the ongoing combination of strong surf, elevated tides, and shoreline instability could lead to further damage or additional home collapses in the coming days.

The ocean overwash has already resulted in North Carolina Department of Transportation officials closing Tuesday sections of N.C. 12.

The state agency around lunchtime Tuesday posted on its social media that the roadway was closed between the Basnight Bridge and Rodanthe, on the north end of Ocracoke between the park service’s Pony Pens and the ferry terminal, and at the Buxton turn, from just north of Buxton to Old Lighthouse Road.

“But even where open, there are spots with sand and standing water on the road. It’s an ideal day to stay home, but if you must drive the open sections of NC12, slow down and drive with EXTREME caution,” the agency wrote.

The 18.8 million visitors to North Carolina’s nine National Park Service sites in 2024 injected $2.3 billion into the state’s economy, second only to California’s $3.7 billion, finds a recent report.

Of that $2.3 billion statewide, around 4.7 million visitors spent $732.2 million in the communities around the coast’s five National Park Service sites, according to “2024 National Park Visitor Spending Effects: Economic Contributions to Local Communities, States, and the Nation” made available to the public Sept. 25.

Park service officials release the annual report detailing what visitors paid the previous year on lodging, camping fees, restaurants, groceries, gas, local transportation, recreation industries and retail in gateway regions, which are the communities or areas that surround a site. An easy-to-use interactive online tool breaking down the report is on the website.

With the ongoing government shutdown that began Oct. 1, and ongoing at the time of this publication, next year’s numbers will likely show a different story.

Visit NC Executive Director Wit Tuttell told Coastal Review that the report “makes it clear that national parks, seashores, historic sites and trails enrich our state and local economies.” Visit NC is the state’s official destination marketing organization.

The study looked at the Wright Brothers National Memorial, Fort Raleigh National Historic Site and Cape Hatteras National Seashore, all on the Outer Banks, Cape Lookout National Seashore in Carteret County, and Moores Creek National Battlefield in Pender County, and, in the western part of the state, Guilford Courthouse National Military Park, the Blue Ridge Parkway, Great Smoky Mountains National Park, and Carl Sandburg Home National Historic Site.

“Beyond the monetary impact, there’s endless value in preserving our scenic wonders and the experience of what humans as well as nature have achieved,” Tuttell continued. “Travelers come here to channel the Wright Brothers, camp on the beach at Cape Lookout, and view the foliage along the Blue Ridge Parkway. Knowing there’s an economic boost to go along with these priceless experiences makes us doubly appreciative.”

Nationwide, more than 85 million acres make up the 433 federally managed sites found in every state, Washington, D.C., American Samoa, Guam, Puerto Rico and the U.S. Virgin Islands.

The report states that across the country in 2024 a record 332 million park visitors spent an estimated $29 billion in gateway regions at the 404 sites that counted the number of visitors. The previous record was set in 2016 with 330.9 million visits.

Total visitor spending estimates increased by almost 10% in 2024 compared to 2023, which the report authors credit to a 2% park visitation increase of around 6.36 million. Data also shows that more than 55% of parks had an above-average off-season in February-June and October-December. 

Using this report, the National Park Conservation Association estimates that the National Park Service is losing $1 million a day nationwide from fee revenue for each day the government is shutdown.

“Based on the Park Service’s shutdown plan, almost 9,300 people (nearly two-thirds of Park Service staff) are now being put in the scary position of not knowing when their next paycheck will arrive. Additionally, park concessioners and partners now face the prospect of lost revenue and further economic hardship — local economies could lose as much as $80 million in visitor spending every day parks are closed in October,” the association stated on its website.

National Park Service on the coast

On the Outer Banks, Wright Brothers National Memorial saw 407,000 visitors who spent around $28.6 million. The site in Kill Devil Hills “encompasses the spot where Wilbur and Orville made their world-changing first flights, the historic sand dune where they did most of their gliding, and the location they lived while they were experimenting in the Outer Banks,” the park service states.

Fort Raleigh National Historic Site is on Roanoke Island and its 275,000 visitors brough in an estimated $19.3 million to the local economy. The site “preserves and interprets the site of the first English Colony in the New World, is the site of the theatrical production, The Lost Colony, and interprets the historical events of the Native Americans, European Americans, and African Americans who lived on Roanoke Island, North Carolina,” according to the park service.

Cape Hatteras National Seashore saw 2.8 million park visitors in 2024 spend an estimated $650 million. This national seashore is roughly 70 miles from north to south and is made up of Bodie, Hatteras and Ocracoke islands. The nation’s first national seashore, Cape Hatteras was established in 1937 “to preserve significant segments of unspoiled barrier islands along North Carolina’s stretch of the Atlantic Coast,” the National Park Service said.

Bryan Burhans is the director of Outer Banks Forever, the official nonprofit partner of three parks, and a branch of Eastern National, a nonprofit that promotes America’s national parks and other public trust partners.

“The National Parks are a money generator. They generate a lot of tourism dollars for the Outer Banks,” he said, but more importantly, these sites are “such an integral part of the fabric that makes up the Outer Banks, which he called “a unique and special place.”

Outer Banks Forever is the official philanthropic partner and does not receive any federal funding. Its work is funded by local businesses, donors, state and county partners, and through various grants. “And our goal is simple. It is to preserve and enhance the visitor experience of our national parks here on the Outer Banks,” Burhans said.

One of the group’s recent projects is the pathway at Cape Hatteras connecting the lighthouse to the beach. It’s in the second phase of the project and is under contract with a company to build a restroom facility with outdoor showers with hot water. “The restroom facility alone is about a $380,000 investment by Outer Banks Forever.”

Cape Lookout National Seashore in Carteret County brought in 552,786 visitors that spent $28.9 million. The site protects a 56-mile stretch of barrier islands where sea turtles and shorebirds nest, a herd of wild horses roam free, and Cape Lookout Lighthouse and two historic villages are a snapshot into the past.

“People come to Cape Lookout National Seashore to recreate at the beach and end up supporting the U.S. and local economies along the way,” said Katherine Cushinberry, the acting superintendent, in a release. “We’re proud that Cape Lookout generates $32 million in revenue to communities near the park.”

Moores Creek National Battlefield is an 88-acre site in Pender County that welcomed 691,000 visitors who spent about $5.4 million. The battlefield preserves the site of a Feb. 27, 1776, Revolutionary War battle. “Loyalist forces charged across a partially dismantled Moores Creek Bridge. Beyond the bridge, nearly 1,000 North Carolina Patriots waited quietly with cannons and muskets poised to fire. This battle marked the last broadsword charge by Scottish Highlanders and the first significant victory for the Patriots in the American Revolution, according to the website.

“The two leading drivers of tourism are natural resources and history. Moores Creek National Battlefield is rich in both,” Greater Topsail Area Chamber of Commerce & Tourism Executive Director Tammy Proctor said in an interview.

“This national park is a treasure that attracts thousands of visitors each year, not only from the Pender County beaches but from the Wilmington area and Brunswick Isles,” she said, adding that the park and its history “had a significant impact on the Revolutionary War. Those fighting for independence from England experienced their first decisive victory at Moores Creek Bridge.”

Moores Creek is a tributary flowing to the Black River and a perfect kayaking location, with a kayak launch at the park. “The creek is pristine and leads to one of the nation’s most pristine rivers. The trails in Moores Creek provide visitors with an experience of the great outdoors and a walk among historical events,” Proctor continued.

“Regarding Moores Creek National Park staff, I can’t say enough about the educational opportunities, programs, and events this staff orchestrates in collaboration with the Friends of Moores Creek Battlefield Association, the nation’s oldest National Park friends organization,” she said.

National Park Service and the shutdown

As of Wednesday, the United States Government had been shut down for three weeks because, according to Oct. 10 post by the National Conference of State Legislatures, on Oct. 1, “lawmakers failed to resolve a budget deadlock, halting some federal operations and putting approximately 750,000 employees on unpaid leave. Triggered by partisan clashes over funding beyond Sept. 30, the shutdown has created uncertainty for many federal programs.”

The National Conference of State Legislatures was created in 1975 by state legislators and legislative staff to provide research, technical assistance and opportunities for policymakers, according to its website.

During a government shutdown, the organization continues, “the administration retains limited spending flexibility by prioritizing funding for programs that the president deems essential for public safety or national security, such as military operations or emergency services.”

As a result, national parks have remained partially open to the public. Many of the sites advise that some services may be limited on their official Facebook page by way of a reshare from the National Park Service dated Oct. 1, with a link to the Department of the Interior’s “Operations in the Absence of Appropriations” that includes the park service’s contingency plan dated September 2025.

Lincoln Larson, an associate professor of parks, recreation and tourism management at North Carolina State University, explained to Coastal Review that during a government shutdown, much of the park staff is furloughed, “meaning they don’t work and aren’t paid but retain their job and benefits when the shutdown ends. Overall, a shutdown presents enormous challenges for park management, members of the public who want to visit parks, and for the park employees themselves.”

In most cases, the decision to close depends on the park itself, but many park managers want to keep their sites as open and accessible to the public as possible. However, that is difficult to do with limited staffing, he continued.

While basic services such as roads and restrooms are usually open, they are not monitored or maintained at the same level as during regular operations, and other services, including visitor centers, entrance kiosks, campgrounds, websites, programming and permitting systems, might not be available at all.

Most National Park Service staff view stewardship of natural and cultural resources as a major part of their job, but when they’re not available to protect and conserve these valuable assets, many threats arise, including the effects of overtourism.

Threats like littering, graffiti, human waste, and off-trail behavior often increases under these conditions, causing irreparable damage to fragile park resources. “We saw this happen during the COVID-19 pandemic, when excessive visitation and limited staffing created unprecedented challenges for parks,” Larson said.

Limited staffing also creates safety issues, particularly if law enforcement or search and rescue operations are negatively impacted, which led to many parks closing during the pandemic because of concerns about degradation in the absence of enforcement. A government shutdown poses similar problems.

Larson said it’s difficult to quantify the broader economic impacts of park closures or service reductions.

“Although a shutdown clearly impacts operations within a park itself, the negative effects outside of parks can take an even greater and longer-lasting toll on nearby communities,” Larson explained. Adding, in many parts of rural America, including eastern North Carolina, national parks are major economic engines that, through outdoor recreation and tourism, power local economies.

“These gateway communities depend on park visitation to survive and thrive. Many park workers also live in communities near the parks, and their salaries breathe life into these towns. When parks shut down, many of these economic benefits are lost, making life much tougher for people living nearby. If shutdowns happen during peak tourism seasons, the economic impacts can be even more devastating and leave a lasting effect on the social and cultural landscape of an area,” Larson said.

The National Park Conservation Association urged in a Sept. 29 letter that the National Park Service close all parks during the shutdown to avoid the damage to infrastructure, vandalism and sanitation issues, like human waste and trash, many of the federally managed parks experienced during the last shutdown that lasted 35 days in December 2018 to January 2019.

“NPCA will not stand by and watch history repeat itself… We know what happened last time park staff were forced to leave parks open and unprotected, and the impacts were disastrous … If the federal government shuts down, unfortunately our parks should too,” NCPA President Theresa Pierno said in a release.

Dare County is going to cover the cost for its debris-removal contractor to make one last round on Wednesday to collect the lumber, siding, appliances and other remaining debris from the 10 unoccupied houses that collapsed in recent weeks along the Buxton oceanfront.

The county asks that the private contractors move the debris they’ve collected to the right-of-way along the east side of Old Lighthouse Road in Buxton no later than Wednesday morning. Once placed there, the county’s contractor will collect and dispose of the material.

Dare County had previously coordinated an emergency debris removal with its contractor, Dupon, from Oct. 8 until Oct. 18 after eight unoccupied Buxton homes collapsed into the ocean between Sept. 30 and Oct. 3 because of severe beach erosion caused by a strong coastal storm, officials said Tuesday.

“This initial cleanup effort was conducted as an emergency response to an unprecedented situation in order to protect public safety and facilitate a timely cleanup of the affected area; however, it is not financially feasible for Dare County to continue to provide debris removal services for private properties,” county officials said, adding that property owners will be responsible for working with their private contractors to coordinate any debris removal going forward.

“Dare County appreciates the cooperation and understanding of the affected homeowners, their contractors and the Hatteras Island community as this final debris collection effort is completed,” officials continued.

Another unoccupied oceanfront house collapsed in Buxton over the weekend, bringing the total to 11 to fall on the Outer Banks since Sept. 16, according to the Cape Hatteras National Seashore.

The house that fell into the Atlantic Saturday night was at 46006 Cottage Ave., according to the seashore’s “Threatened Oceanfront Structures” webpage. The seashore, under the National Park Service, manages the beaches.

On Sunday afternoon, the house owner’s contractor demolished the remainder of the structure, which had remained mostly intact except for some debris and pilings that scattered along the beach, according to an Island Free Press report published Sunday.

About 20 National Park Service staff were to begin on Monday clearing a 2.5-mile section of shoreline from Cape Point to the Buxton Formerly Used Defense Site at the end of Old Lighthouse Road.

The house that collapsed Saturday is the fourth on the same street to fall since last month. The first three collapsed within 45 minutes of each other, along with two on Tower Circle Road, starting at 2 p.m. Sep. 30. Tower Circle Road had two more houses give way, one on Oct. 1 and another Oct. 2, and then a house collapsed in Rodanthe Oct. 3.

The National Park Service has continued to update the Threatened Oceanfront Structures webpage as houses fall since the government shutdown went into effect Oct. 1. The lapse in federal appropriations resulted in most National Park Service sites only partially opening and being operated by those who are considered essential, while the rest have been furloughed.

Post has been updated.

The nor’easter that swept up the East Coast this past weekend stripped ocean beaches of sand, inundated areas with floodwaters and pushed seawater over dunes and roads along North Carolina’s coast.

The Outer Banks suffered much of the brunt of the powerful system that brought wind, rain and coastal flooding.

On Saturday the North Carolina Department of Transportation closed sections of N.C. 12 on Ocracoke. Overwash forced officials to close portions of the road Sunday on Hatteras Island, where crews spent the weekend pushing sand and water from the road and rebuilding the dune line that divides the beach from the road.

As of late afternoon Tuesday, N.C. 12 on Ocracoke was the only road closed and the Hatteras-Ocracoke Ferry service remained suspended, NCDOT’s Assistant Director of Communications Jamie Kritzer said in an interview.

N.C. 12 is closed on the north end of Ocracoke Island between the ferry terminal and the National Park Service Pony Pens.

“This afternoon, we’ve been forced to close N.C. 12 again on Pea Island from Marc Basnight Bridge to Rodanthe, due to ocean overwash,” Kritzer said. “The stretch on Pea Island was reopened at 5 p.m. (Monday) but the wind increased this afternoon and we saw overwash around high tide.”

Kritzer said that NCDOT crews were continuing to push sand and water from N.C. 12 and restore the protective dunes on both islands.

“Our ability to reopen N.C. 12 will depend on whether the dune holds through the next high tide cycle,” he said.

In addition to NCDOT’s highway crews, the state’s Ferry Division played a critical role during the response to this weekend’s nor’easter, Kritzer said.

“At one point, all seven ferry routes were suspended this weekend. However, when the winds subsided, the ferries were able to make a special run to take Ocracoke visitors back to Swan Quarter,” he said. “The Hatteras-Ocracoke ferry have helped transport highway crews and equipment between Hatteras and Ocracoke, so the crews could work on clearing N.C. 12.”

Cape Hatteras National Seashore Superintendent Dave Hallac told Coastal Review early Tuesday afternoon that there has been a lot of coastal erosion in certain areas of the national seashore.

At the time of the interview, the National Weather Service forecast much of the Outer Banks to experience flooding through Wednesday. Hallac said that he expects oceanfront flooding as a result, which could make driving on the highway through the seashore hazardous.

“The beaches continue to remain hazardous, especially the beachfront in the Buxton area and the beachfront in the Rodanthe area due to the waves and high-water levels battering many threatened oceanfront structures,” he said.

Between Sept. 30 and Oct. 2, eight unoccupied beachfront houses fell in Buxton, five of which collapsed within 45 minutes of each other. Another unoccupied house gave way on Oct. 3 in Buxton, bringing the total number of houses that have succumbed to encroaching ocean waters to 21 within the past five years.

As of Oct. 3, nine homes on Hatteras Island have toppled into the sea, “but there are a number of significantly threatened oceanfront structures, and you know, collapse is definitely possible,” Hallac said. “Even if collapse doesn’t occur, pieces and parts of those homes have broken off over the last couple of days, including large structures like decks. So that’s the reason that the entire beach front in the village of Buxton remains closed.”

He recommended travelers avoid taking N.C. 12 during the high-tide window, adding that there’s a likelihood of some minor soundside flooding as the winds are switching more to the north and northwest.

“That could also make some of our access points on the sound side flooded, and also make highway driving hazardous,” he said.

Conditions were less dire further south along the state’s coast.

Carteret County’s Public Information Officer Nick Wilson said that the county didn’t see any significant damage from last weekend’s coastal low.

“Most of the impacts were primarily in the Down East,” he said, where some roads in Cedar Island and a few other areas experienced overwash.

“A couple of our convenience sites were closed on Sunday for safety but were back to normal on Monday,” he continued. “There haven’t been any reports of building damage or injuries. The high tides over the weekend, combined with king tide conditions, did cause some flooding in low-lying spots, but it quickly receded once the low passed.”

Carteret County Shore Protection Manager Ryan Davenport said Wednesday morning that Most of Bogue Banks fared well during the recent storm.

“We did see moderate erosion and some dune escarpments in western Pine Knoll Shores, Indian Beach, and Salter Path, but the impacts were no worse than what we typically expect from a winter storm. We remain on track for the island-wide nourishment project scheduled to begin in fall 2026,” he said.

Town officials from North Topsail Beach in Onslow County to Holden Beach in Brunswick County reported experiencing some erosion and escarpment.

North Topsail Beach officials assessed the town’s little more than 11-mile stretch of ocean shoreline throughout Monday and found most erosion to have occurred along the northern end of town toward New River Inlet.

“We noticed our typical hotspots had erosion,” North Topsail’s Town Manager Alice Derian said Tuesday. “There’s some escarpment there. There was some scarping south, but the dunes are still intact.”

All of the town’s public accesses remain open.

Topsail Beach’s ocean shoreline “held up well except at the very south end,” Topsail Island Shoreline Protection Commission Chair William Snyder said.

He said that there is some escarpment to the natural dunes that front a portion of the undeveloped southern tip of the island.

New Hanover County Coastal Protection Coordinator Bryan Hall said in an email Tuesday afternoon that Wrightsville, Carolina and Kure beaches all experienced some erosion over the weekend. Wrightsville Beach’s ocean shoreline also suffered some escarpments.

“As far as I’m aware, there was no significant public or private infrastructure damage or significant established dune damage, which is a testament to the well-established dunes and the County’s Coastal Storm Risk Management (CSRM) projects,” Hall said.

Officials in Brunswick County beach towns that responded to Coastal Review’s requests for comments also reported minor erosion, including Bald Head Island and Oak Island.

“Honestly, I think we fared pretty well,” Ocean Isle Beach Town Manager Justin Whiteside said Tuesday afternoon.

One end of a privately maintained road that runs through a gated neighborhood at the eastern tip of the island has been partially eaten away.

Whiteside said roughly half of the cul-de-sac within The Pointe, a relatively new development of luxury homes, is gone.

“They’re sandbagging around the perimeter of where the cul-de-sac was,” he said.

“There have not been any reports to us of damage besides some flooding caused by tides and winds,” Holden Beach Town Manager Bryan Chadwick said in an email Tuesday afternoon. “We do feel fortunate because it could have been a lot worse.”

Storm recap

Warning Coordination Meteorologist Erik Heden with the National Weather Service office in the Newport/Morehead City office said that with this last storm, “we wanted to make sure people knew that despite it not having a name,” nor’easters can produce the same winds, flooding and rain as hurricanes.

There have been multiple offshore storms that have beaten and battered areas of the state’s coastline, particularly the Outer Banks, where N.C. 12 on Ocracoke and Hatteras islands has been closed for most of the last few days and Down East Carteret County has experienced high-water levels.

There was also a king tide, which means at certain times of the year the tides come in higher and go out lower than normal, that began early last week, leading to some flooding, which was not storm related, in Beaufort, Buxton and other spots on the Outer Banks, Heden said.

The combination of higher water levels with a king tide, a storm with gale-force winds, large waves and swells, and 3 to 4 inches of rain made everything worse, especially in low lying areas, he said.

Flooding occurred up the Neuse and the Pamlico rivers, pushing water levels in New Bern to their highest since Hurricane Ophelia in 2023.

Down East Carteret County had a “tremendous amount of water on the roads,” but nothing they haven’t experienced before, Heden said. The Outer Banks experienced significant ocean overwash, especially at the March Basnight Bridge southward to the Pea Island Visitor Center, where the man-made dunes are built.

Heden said that while the coast will experience slow improvements and fall temperatures the remainder of this week, some areas will continue to experience issues with water, especially at high tide.

“Today’s Tuesday, and we’ve got this advisory through Thursday, so it’s not going to be worse than it was this weekend. We don’t have the wind, we don’t have the swell, but it takes a while for that water to calm down,” he said.

Dare County’s debris removal contractor will begin collecting Wednesday the tons of debris that resulted from a spate of oceanfront houses that collapsed within the last week, ahead of the bad weather forecast for this weekend.

County commissioners during their regular meeting Monday in Manteo discussed the aftermath left behind when eight houses in Buxton and one in Rodanthe fell between Sept. 30 and Oct. 3, littering Cape Hatteras National Seashore beaches with lumber, furniture, insulation, siding, nails and other debris for nearly 20 miles.

County Manager Bobby Outten explained that the intention was to wait until next week to bring the contractor in but decided to start sooner because of the impending weather.

“Let’s get those contractors in there to get finished taking the debris that’s there now and get it to the road so we can get it out,” Outten said. “And then we’ll deal with the weekend on Monday. We’ll see where we are. If there’s more houses and there’s more debris, then we can get the contractor back down here.”

Assistant County Manager Dustin Peele explained to the commission that last week he saw a “substantial amount of debris” at the right-of-way of Old Lighthouse Road, the designated area for private contractors to deliver what they cleaned up. The county’s contractor will pick up the debris from there starting Wednesday.

The debris field in Rodanthe was heavy for the first few miles, and then it tapered off, stretching approximately 18 miles north to Avon, Chairman Bob Woodard said in his opening remarks.

He explained that the total assessed value of these nine houses as of 2025 was $5,457,200. The houses were built between 1973 and 1998, and vary in size from about 1,130 square feet to 2,188 square feet.

One of the nine property owners has a mailing address in Dare County, three have property owners somewhere else in North Carolina, three have Virginia addresses, and two have Maryland addresses.

Woodard thanked Cape Hatteras National Seashore Superintendent Dave Hallac, who is working with a limited staff because of the government shutdown, for the cleanup that’s already taken place in Rodanthe and Buxton over the weekend.

“Ocean overwash and hazardous conditions from Thursday through Tuesday are potential,” Woodard said Monday. “As you know, today starts another high tide situation that could bring some more damage to both the Buxton area and Rodanthe with knocking down some potential other residences. So we just have to hold our breath and keep our fingers crossed.”

Brian Harris with the Buxton Civic Association reiterated during the public comment period that nine houses have already fallen and there’s “13 more in the ocean” that could fall.

Harris said that with the weather forecast for this weekend being absolutely horrible, he expects three or four more houses to fall as a result.

“There’s just no way around it,” he continued, adding they’ve “got to be smart with this nourishment and, you know, retreating is definitely the answer. You know these houses got to go.”

Harris, who told the commission that he is the official lobbyist for the association, intends to lobby in Washington, D.C., for funding to buy the houses.

He thanked the county for the work taking place to help the communities, adding “we’ll get through this, but Buxton is about to look a lot different. It already does.”

Reprinted from an Island Free Press report dated Oct. 6.

Cleanup efforts are continuing this week in Buxton and Rodanthe following the collapse of nine oceanfront homes last week — eight in Buxton and one in Rodanthe — as National Park Service crews, area organizations, and volunteers work to remove large volumes of debris scattered along the shoreline.

In Buxton, cleanup teams have already hauled away roughly 140 truckloads of debris from the beach as of Sunday, said Cape Hatteras National Seashore Superintendent David Hallac.

Large piles remain, including one near the former Navy base site that may contain a similar amount of material. Another pile near the Cape Hatteras Lighthouse measures about 100 feet long, 35 feet wide, and 5 feet high. Crews have been separating plastic, large lumber, and small lumber to facilitate disposal, and Dare County has reported eight septic system washouts in the Buxton collapse area.

“The odors from sewage were noticeable in several beachfront locations,” Hallac said. “And north of the jetty, petroleum odors were so strong on Sunday that we made the decision not to clean up in that area for safety reasons.” Petroleum smells were also strong on Saturday, but had briefly diminished enough to allow heavy equipment into the area.

Related: ‘Messy situation’: Buxton beach closed after 8th house falls

The cleanup zone in Buxton remains challenging due to its dense neighborhood layout, which caused debris to become trapped between collapsed structures, pilings, and sandbags when the homes fell. This has created a more concentrated debris field compared to Rodanthe.

“In Buxton, the water line was so high when these houses collapsed, and the area is so dense, that many of the homes and pilings and sandbags trapped this debris,” Hallac said.

Hallac emphasized that National Park Service crews have been working long hours daily alongside local partners to make progress.

“I’m extremely proud of all the National Park Service staff who have been working on this, some for hours a day, every day, and extraordinary thanks for the incredible efforts of the North Carolina Beach Buggy Association, Cape Hatteras United Methodist Men, and many community members who have come up to help,” he said.

In Rodanthe, the debris field from last week’s single home collapse extended around 18 miles, although most of that distance contained light debris, such as polyester filling, carpet padding, and small bits of wood that washed south to around Ramp 32. The initial few miles nearest the collapse site contained heavier material.

Cleanup in Rodanthe has benefited from a swift response by the homeowner, who began working on the beach the morning after the collapse and has remained actively involved. “He has worked continuously, and we worked as a team with him,” Hallac noted.

Over the weekend, the Rodanthe homeowner used an excavator to remove the remnant structure from the beach, which prevented additional debris from washing away. The North Carolina Beach Buggy Association also played a major role in the Rodanthe cleanup effort, according to Hallac.

While significant progress has been made, continued cleanup is expected in both locations.

In Rodanthe, National Park Service crews will use a mechanized beach rake to remove debris that has become buried in the sand. In Buxton, seashore staff are assessing remaining debris south of Ramp 43 to develop the next phase of the cleanup strategy.

Beachgoers are urged to use extreme caution in these areas, as nails, sharp debris, and other hazardous materials may be buried beneath the sand.

This story is provided courtesy of the Island Free Press, a digital newspaper covering Hatteras and Ocracoke islands. Coastal Review is partnering with the Free Press to provide readers with more environmental and lifestyle stories of interest along our coast.

Update: A ninth oceanfront Hatteras Island house fell late Friday; an unoccupied structure at 23047 G.A. Kohler Court, Rodanthe, collapsed shortly before 6 p.m.

Original report follows below:

BUXTON — It started two weeks ago, when one small, unoccupied house here fell into the ocean, long before two powerful tropical storms were approaching Hatteras Island.

But by mid-afternoon Tuesday, shortly before high tide, both hurricanes Humberto and Imelda, while well offshore, had supercharged the ocean off Cape Hatteras, where the Outer Banks bend out farthest into the Atlantic. In a highly unusual spate of structural surrender, five houses along the beach in Buxton — all unoccupied and all off Tower Circle Road or Cottage Avenue — collapsed, apparently one after another and all within 45 minutes after 2 p.m.

Before midnight, another nearby house gave way to the pounding surf.

Then, at about 8 p.m. Wednesday, the eighth house fell onto the same stretch of beach, adding to a staggering amount of debris scattered along the oceanfront and buffeted by swirling surf.  

“We’ve got at least one or two more tides to go before this thing calms down,” John Robert Hooper, the owner of Lighthouse View Oceanfront Lodging in Buxton, told Coastal Review Thursday. “It’s a messy situation right now.”

Debris is spreading south through much of the village oceanfront, which is part of Cape Hatteras National Seashore. But unlike in Rodanthe, Hatteras Island’s northernmost village that experienced 12 house collapses from 2020 to 2024, the debris has not spread as far or as wide along the beach. Instead, much of it has been trapped under houses and driven by wind and surf into neighborhoods.

“We are working very closely with Dare County to coordinate cleanup activities,” said Dave Hallac, superintendent of Cape Hatteras National Seashore.

Hallac told Coastal Review Thursday that the National Park Service had been in contact with the property owners before the homes collapsed and is working to again communicate with them.

“We are implementing emergency cleanup activities to protect these federal lands and waterways and to prevent continued impact from the spread of debris,” he said. “We’re planning on starting tomorrow (Friday) morning.”

From what he had seen, Hallac said that it appears many of the houses still had contents inside when they fell. He said the park service had also observed “pieces and parts of septic drainfield lines and other wastewater system components.”

About two dozen park service personnel were planning Thursday to start collecting debris Friday between the southern end of Buxton and Cape Point.

The entire stretch of beach from the north end of the village to the Off-Road Vehicle Ramp 43 will remain closed until further notice.

Dare County Board of Commissioners Chairman Bob Woodard said Thursday that county and park officials expected to meet with the county’s contractor in Buxton Friday morning to assess the site and coordinate the cleanup response.

“We’re trying to get the homeowners to get contractors to move that debris to the road, so that our guys can come in with bucket trucks and pick it all up and haul it all away,” Woodard told Coastal Review.

Woodard said he believed that most, if not all, of the fallen houses were owned by out-of-town people. But there are an additional dozen or more homes along the same area of beach that are still vulnerable to collapse, he added. 

“We thought there would be a lot more going down yesterday, with that high tide at three o’clock,” Woodard said, referring to Wednesday’s rough conditions.

Considering the extensive impact of the offshore storms, the chairman couldn’t help lamenting the bad luck in the storm’s timing, saying it wouldn’t have happened if a beach nourishment project now planned for 2026 had been in place. 

“We were all praying once we’ve moved the nourishment from ’27 to ’26, just hoping and praying that we wouldn’t have any damages until then,” he said. “But unfortunately, with Mother Nature in 2025, we’ve had three weather systems that kicked us in the butt down there.”

Hooper, who was born in Buxton in 1954, said that these multiple collapses over such a short period of time is dramatically worse than he can recall happening before. 

“Oh, yes, it is,” he told Coastal Review. “There is something else going on here, rather than this normal erosion. You know, clearly the ocean’s higher, but … where is the equilibrium?”

A beach nourishment project in Buxton a few years ago seemed to have mostly ended up at Cape Point a couple of miles south, he said. Yet, Hooper, who had served as a Dare County commissioner from 2000 to 2004, said he has seen ebb and flow of the shoreline over the years, a slow rebalancing.

“And we may be there today, and this may be the end of it, I don’t know,” he said. “But clearly, as quick as all this stuff happened, this is a new element.”

Hooper has had sandbags – technically, a temporary measure only — in front of his oceanfront motel and cottages in Buxton since about 1992, he said, and he repaired and expanded them in 2013.

“Until now, we’ve been able to manage,” he said. The cottages, located south of the motel, have been most affected by the swell.

“I’ve been here fighting this thing for 50 years now, off and on, and probably this morning it’s my first house (that’s) unsafe because of the sewage,” he said. “It’s been tough, but it’s been really tough this fall with some of the PR, and certainly storms like this don’t help”

Since about Aug. 20, he said, visitation in Buxton had been hurting. Since mid-August, he said, he figures that businesses are off 60-70%.

Still, Hooper said that even though it hurts in the short term, losing the houses that were so close to the surf was a looming threat that seemed inevitable. 

“But at least in my viewpoint, you know, we got that over with,” he said. “Because nothing is worse than a house sitting out in the ocean.”

Update 11 a.m. Thursday: The seventh oceanfront house in Buxton to collapse in less than 48 hours fell around 8 p.m. Wednesday at 46207 Tower Circle Road, Cape Hatteras National Seashore officials reported on its website. This remains a developing story.

Update 10 a.m. Wednesday: An unoccupied house collapsed overnight at 46203 Tower Circle Road, bringing the total to six since 2 p.m. Tuesday, per an update from the National Park Service on its threatened oceanfront structures webpage.

Original report of 5 p.m. Tuesday follows below:

Five unoccupied houses in Buxton collapsed into the Atlantic within 45 minutes of each other Tuesday afternoon, and officials warned that there could be more because of conditions associated with two hurricanes offshore.

Cape Hatteras National Seashore officials said that, as of 3:30 p.m. Tuesday, they were unaware of any bodily injuries associated with the collapse of the structures on Cottage Avenue and the two on Tower Circle Road.

Including the five that fell between 2 p.m. and 2:45 p.m. Tuesday, 17 privately owned houses have collapsed since 2020.

The entire beachfront from northern Buxton to the northern section of off-road vehicle, or ORV, ramp 43, is closed for public safety. ORV drivers using ramp 38 should avoid traveling to the south and anyone using ramp 43 should avoid traveling north.

The street numbers for the structures on Cottage Avenue are 46001, 46002 and 46007, and 46209 and 46211 for those on Tower Circle Road.

The National Park Service urges visitors to avoid the closed areas where the structures collapsed and to use caution along the beach south of the sites because of potentially hazardous debris.

“This is an ongoing incident; further collapses are possible due to the ocean conditions,” national seashore officials said.

The National Weather Service office in Newport, in a 3:45 p.m. Tuesday briefing, forecast a long duration and impactful swell event for coastal North Carolina associated with Hurricane Humberto, with added impacts from a strengthening Hurricane Imelda.

“Coastal flooding impacts have already begun and are expected to continue. We still expect the peak impacts to be focused through Thursday, with the greatest impacts occurring around high tide Wednesday afternoon,” forecasters said. Dangerous surf conditions are expected through the rest of the week.

The park service said plans are to announce on the national seashore’s threatened oceanfront structures webpage, go.nps.gov/cahatos, any additional collapses during the storm period.

Precariously perched as a narrow strand protruding into the stormy Atlantic Ocean, Ocracoke Island and its vulnerable highway have been a longtime headache for coastal scientists and road engineers.

Worsening erosion, flooding and storm damage exacerbated by climate change have heightened the urgency for the year-round community: What can be done to save their beloved island?

Researchers met with islanders Sept. 10 at the Ocracoke Community Center to present a study that modeled what the island’s future may hold under different scenarios, from the status quo to new efforts at beach nourishment and bridging.

The bottom line is that the very road itself, along with ongoing attempts to block the ocean’s advance with dunes and stabilize the roadbed with sandbags, has instead resulted in the narrow, low landscape that is currently so under threat by natural forces.

“The heart of the challenge is that the storm events we need to protect roads and buildings from would actually otherwise provide a lifeline for barrier islands in the face of rising sea levels,” Laura Moore, professor and associate chair of research with University of North Carolina Chapel Hill, said in an interview before the meeting. “It’s an extremely difficult reality, but unfortunately, the more successful we are in preventing storm impacts, the more quickly we’re managing the barrier islands out from under us.”

Accessible only by ferries, private boats and small planes, Ocracoke Island, most of which is part of Cape Hatteras National Seashore, depends on a single, highly vulnerable highway stretching about 13 miles from the ferry dock on the north end of the island to the village.

The road, N.C. Highway 12,  has been protected by oceanside sandbags for years along one section about 5 miles from the northern ferry terminal known as the South Dock because of the link to Hatteras Island. But not only are the sand barriers unable to withstand the overwash during storms — the road was impassible and closed for several days after Hurricane Erin in August — the stacking lanes by the ferry dock have also suffered severe erosion.

“It’s very threatened,” Moore told Coastal Review. “I mean, we spend so much time thinking about the road, and yet (potential loss) at that terminal is a storm away, maybe two.”

The multiyear study, led by the UNC Chapel Hill researchers as part of a team that also included scientists from N.C. State University, Duke University and East Carolina University, as well as representatives from the N.C. Department of Transportation, the National Park Service, Hyde County and Tideland Electric Member Corp., is intended to provide information based on scientific modeling, and does not make recommendations or propose solutions.

“What we were charged with was to consider how different management strategies might influence the future landscape,” Moore said. “So, we have looked at different management strategies under different sea level rise scenarios, and we are able to say something about how the different strategies will likely influence Island width and island elevation and the persistence of the island in the future.”

In other words, as Moore explained, the study did not set out to design and test strategies; it instead modeled, which is essentially, “if you do ‘X’, this is what is likely to happen.”

“We’re really looking at relative differences between the management strategies in terms of their effects on the island,” she said.

Moore said that researchers studied current coastal conditions and processes and worked off data and prior research provided in the N.C. 12 Task Force report and NCDOT feasibility studies for guidance as the team developed the strategies to be reviewed: the status quo, i.e., dune road and/or sandbag rebuilding and maintenance; beach nourishment, i.e., widen or nourish the eroding shoreline with sand pumped from stored dredged material or offshore deposits; or road alternatives, i.e., relocate the ferry dock(s), which would eliminate the need to maintain hot spots on N.C. 12,  or build a bridge or causeway to Hatteras Island.

What the modeling revealed is that under the status quo, the island would continue to narrow until, within years or decades, it would become impossible to maintain the transportation corridor. With use of beach nourishment, there would be short-term improvement for 10 to 20 years. But elevating or bridging the road would help to rebuild the landscape.

It’s the first time that the coastal scientists have been able to customize a barrier island model that includes all these processes for a particular location, Moore said, as well as conduct hindcast to calibrate that model.

“Not only are we supporting the local community and the stakeholders … we’re also supporting the scientific community and barrier island communities more broadly because what we’re learning also advances the science so that we can do even better next time,” she said.” It’s really been a beautiful next step to both be coproducing the science in a way that contributes to the local conversation and also contributes to the scientific advancements so that other communities throughout the world on barrier islands can also learn from one another.”

The Ocracoke erosion and road problem has been the target of much study by several iterations of an N.C. Task Force, a multiagency panel of coastal scientists and engineers and government officials that focused on seven vulnerable areas — the “hot spots” — all but one on Hatteras Island. The most recent group was established by the Dare County Board of Commissioners in 2021, with a report released in 2023.

Back in 1972, renowned University of Virginia coastal scientist Robert Dolan, who died in 2016 at age 87, warned in a study published in the journal Science about the consequences of development on the Outer Banks.

“Barrier dune development has been encouraged by man along the Outer Banks of North Carolina to stabilize the barrier islands,” according to the study abstract. “This modification of a delicately balanced natural system is leading to severe adjustments in both geological and ecological processes.”

Dolan, who was credited with being the first scientist to determine that the Outer Banks, rather than being anchored to coral reefs, was instead a 30-foot-deep shifting “ribbon of sand,” later elaborated, saying that the islands’ dune system “may be detrimental to the long-range stability of the barriers and may become more difficult and costly to manage than the original natural system.”

While other coastal scientists have built on Dolan’s research, including Moore, it is undeniable that the complex tension between natural forces and humanity’s need to control them where they live is becoming more difficult in places like Ocracoke.

“And so, the only reason the barrier islands exist in the first place is because of these processes that move sand from the front to the island interior,” Moore said. “That’s what formed these islands, right? And so now that things are changing more rapidly, we’re just really getting pinched in a way that we haven’t seen before.”

In simple terms, barrier islands are built higher and broader by overwash and wind carrying sand over the land. Where the ocean is battering away at the shoreline, the swath of land from the ocean to the sound side collects the sand, unless it’s blocked.

“We are understandably wanting to protect road and roads and infrastructure,” she said. “It makes perfect sense from that perspective, to build a dune to protect the road.”

As sea levels are getting higher, and storms intensify, the battering is more powerful. “And if we don’t allow the island elevation to build up, it will eventually become fragmented and drown in these areas,” Moore said. “So we’re kind of fighting a losing battle, unfortunately.”

Sea levels have been rising ever since the islands formed, she added. But it’s now rising much faster. Between the year 2000 and 2050, seas have been expected to rise 12 inches, a rate Moore called “very significant.”

“It’s so unfortunate, but if we can’t quickly slow the rate of sea level rise, we’re definitely going to have to find different ways to live at the coast,” she said. “In the case of barrier islands, if we want them to persist, we need to find a way to allow them to shift underneath us or accept that we may lose the ability to live on them at all.”

Still, with adjustments, there is hope, Moore said. Citing the 2.4-mile Rodanthe “jug handle” Bridge” and, farther north, the 2,350-foot-long Richard Etheridge Bridge as examples, she said sand will rebuild the island and the shoreline when the natural processes are allowed to happen.

The main goal of the research is to provide the scientific models of several scenarios so the community can work with partners in planning their island’s future.

“It’s really an opportunity to be an incredible example and posterchild leading the way for coastal communities broadly, because they are at the forefront,” Moore said.

Naturally, islanders can see that conditions are changing, and something has to be done, said Randal Mathews, chair of the Hyde County Board of Commissioners and an Ocracoke resident. For the time being, he said, the consensus seems to be to do beach nourishment.

“Well, it’s going to buy some time, because there’s no long-term plan, and there’s no real good short-term plan.”

What could be a reasonable solution, he said, is to “harden” the area with a jetty by the South Dock Ferry Terminal.

What the island folks don’t want to do is move the ferry terminal toward the Pony Pens in the middle of the island, as has been proposed in the recent past.

“They did a survey, and it was 90% of the people don’t want to move south and don’t want to lose access from Hatteras, because they know, like after Dorian, that’s what it was like here, logistically,” he said. “We were dying.”

Mathews said he is truly grateful for Moore’s and her research team’s work, and islanders are listening. But meanwhile, Ocracoke can’t withstand repeated hits to its economy, and the ferry system and road access are major concerns. And he knows that they need political support and funding.

“You know, in the big picture, there’s a lot of moving parts that we have to address, we have to come up with these short-term solutions,” he said. “And we’ve got to  go to Raleigh, and we’ve got to go begging, you know, and that that’s how it works.”

This report has been updated to include information on the Thursday meeting.

Officials with the Cape Hatteras National Seashore urge visitors to avoid the beach and stay out of the water near Buxton where another house has fallen into the surf.

The unoccupied house at 46227 Tower Circle Road in Buxton collapsed about 4 p.m. Tuesday, according to a Hatteras Island resident.

It was the 12th house collapse on National Seashore beaches over the past five years.

A preexisting beach safety closure from the north end of Buxton to around off-road vehicle ramp 43 may need to be expanded, depending on the extent of the debris field, officials said.

Cape Hatteras National Seashore officials in a release urged visitors to avoid walking on the beach at the north ends of Radanthe and Buxton, “due to the potential for partial or full house collapses.”

The warning was issued Monday as a low-pressure weather system moving toward the area was expected to produce some oceanside and soundside coastal flooding, moderate to strong winds, heavy rain and minoring flooding, and dangerous surf conditions.

“Many threatened oceanfront structures have been damaged over the last several weeks in Rodanthe and Buxton,” the release states.

Beach drivers are advised to use caution on ocean-side off-road vehicle routes as well.

Dare County is hosting a public meeting Thursday on the problem of threatened oceanfront homes from 6 to 8 p.m. at the Coastal Studies Institute on the East Carolina University Outer Banks Campus in Wanchese and online for those who register in advance.

The Army Corps of Engineers’ Savannah District has awarded a contract for the second phase of cleanup at the former Buxton Naval Facility site in Dare County.

The petroleum-contaminated property is being handled under the Defense Department’s Formerly Used Defense Sites, or FUDS, program. The Buxton Beach access is also part of the Cape Hatteras National Seashore.

The Interim Response Action contract awarded Thursday to Eastern Shawnee Bay West JV, a joint venture between Eastern Shawnee Professional Services and environmental cleanup firm Bay West follows the first phase, for which Bay West LLC was the contractor, and includes work along the beach to further investigate the site for petroleum-impacted soil and groundwater.

The contractor is to bring in heavy excavation equipment and roll-off containers to remove and containerize any petroleum-polluted soil encountered, transporting and disposing the material at an off-site waste management facility. The equipment is due to arrive within the next two weeks, officials said.

The contractors and Savannah District personnel have been at the site since Aug. 8, monitoring conditions and containing the contamination, when needed, by placing oil-absorbent booms around any observed petroleum.

A 0.3-mile stretch of beach at the site at the south end of Old Lighthouse Road has been closed since Aug. 2 because of the presence of petroleum odors and sheens. Strong surf caused significant erosion that exposed contaminated soils on the same stretch of beach that had reopened June 12 following the lifting of a precautionary public health advisory by Dare County’s Department of Health and Human Services and after consulting with the U.S. Public Health Service.

In addition, the entire beachfront from Buxton village to 0.4 miles north of off-road vehicle, or ORV, ramp 43 is closed to public entry due to damage to dozens of houses and associated septic systems caused by Hurricane Erin in August. Officials said leaking septic systems, along with compromised decking, HVAC systems, pilings, concrete parking areas, and wiring, poses a serious public health and safety threat.

No petroleum sheens or odors were detected last week at the site of former military installations at Buxton Beach when federal, county and National Park Service representatives visited there.

On Thursday, Army Corps of Engineers headquarters and South Atlantic Division officials visited the Buxton FUDS property in Dare County, along with the Savannah District commander, Formerly Used Defense Sites, or FUDS, Program team and Bay West contractors to check out damage from Hurricane Erin, and plan how to best clean up the site. National Park Service officials and members of the Dare County Board of Commissioners also joined the walkthrough.

“We are committed to doing everything we can within our authorities to remove petroleum-contaminated soil and groundwater from the property,” said Col. Ron Sturgeon, Savannah District commander. “This project remains a priority of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers and the Savannah District.”

Officials said that after the storm had passed, about 100 feet of asbestos-cement pipe used for water distribution, storm drains and sewer lines was removed from the site surface and secured for proper disposal. A small remnant of the asbestos pipe remains attached to a sump associated with the former wastewater treatment plant, officials said, and that pipe has been temporarily stabilized and wrapped in place.

In addition to the removal of asbestos pipes as authorized under the FUDS authority because of possible risks, the park service has already moved to clear additional debris left behind by Hurricane Erin, utility workers addressed a downed powerline, and an alternate road is being used to access the site until the county repairs Old Lighthouse Road.

When Hurricane Erin passed by, the team was in the process of awarding a contract for phase two of the interim response action that began Aug. 8.

The team is weighing whether to postpone the comprehensive sampling, because of the interim response action. 

“The comprehensive sampling fieldwork can begin once the Quality Assurance Project Plan (QAPP) is accepted. However, since the recent weather events have created a need for the additional (interim response action) excavations in the project area, that work might hinder sampling efforts,” said Sara Keisler, Savannah District FUDS program manager, in the statement. “Therefore, we’re evaluating the possibility of postponing the sampling efforts, so we can ensure unhindered access to all sampling locations. If we do that, the comprehensive sampling fieldwork won’t start until December or January.” 

Update 4:30 p.m. Tuesday:

Gov. Josh Stein declared a State of Emergency Tuesday ahead of the anticipated impacts from Hurricane Erin, which was about 650 miles south-southeast of Cape Hatteras and moving at 10 mph at around 2 p.m. Tuesday.

“Hurricane Erin will bring threats of coastal flooding, beach erosion, and dangerous surf conditions,” Stein said in a statement. “North Carolinians along the coast should get prepared now, ensure their emergency kit is ready, and listen to local emergency guidelines and alerts in the event they need to evacuate.” 

Original post 6 p.m. Monday:

Eastern North Carolina should expect to see impacts from Hurricane Erin, including coastal flooding, starting Tuesday.

The center of the storm was predicted to remain off the coast by a couple hundred miles, but “We still expect impacts across eastern North Carolina, specifically coastal areas,” National Weather Service Meteorologist Erik Heden said during a webinar briefing at lunchtime Monday.

Effects will likely include dangerous surf and rip currents, storm surge, damaging beach erosion, major coastal flooding and overwash.

The storm was about 820 miles south-southeast of Buxton, or 810 miles south-southeast of Morehead City, according to the National Weather Service’s 5 p.m. Monday update. The Category 4 storm was moving northwest at 10 mph.

A storm surge watch and tropical storm watch were issued for eastern Carteret County, Hatteras Island, the northern Outer Banks and Ocracoke Island.

From Duck to Cape Lookout, water levels could reach up to 4 feet above ground, and 1 to 3 feet north of Duck and south of Cape Lookout.

“Elevated water levels will likely be accompanied by large and destructive waves,” forecasters said, adding peak storm surge forecast is generally provided within 48 hours of storm surge occurring in the area.

Heden, who is with the National Weather Service’s Morehead City/Newport office, said Monday that meteorologists began watching the storm Friday, and the storm is expected to increase in size in the coming days.

Updates throughout the weekend showed that as of midday Saturday, the storm was a Category 5, which has winds at 157 mph or faster on the Saffir-Simpson hurricane wind scale. The major storm weakened to a Category 4, then to a Category 3, with winds from 111 to 129 mph, by Sunday evening.

The storm restrengthened overnight Sunday to a Category 4, with 140 mph winds, Heden said. Sustained wind speeds for Category 4 storms range from 130 to 156 miles per hour.

Forecasters said Monday that tropical storm force wind gusts were possible for the coast, with the highest probability for the Outer Banks, but stronger gusts were possible in any passing outer rainbands associated with Erin.

“The earliest reasonable time of arrival of tropical storm force winds for the immediate coastline is sometime Wednesday morning,” forecasters said. “However, the most likely time this area could see tropical storm force winds will be during the evening on Wednesday.”

The main concern with the winds will be the potential for soundside flooding on a north to northeast wind for Down East Carteret County, Ocracoke and Hatteras Island on Thursday.

Coastal flooding could begin as soon as Tuesday, more than 24 hours before any tropical storm force winds arrive, peaking Wednesday into Thursday and slowly easing up later in the week, according to the National Weather Service.

Forecasters also advise that extensive beach erosion could occur because of strong, long periods of wave energy with waves as high as 15 to more than 20 feet in the surf zone. These waves will also make the surf extremely dangerous Wednesday into Thursday, as well as the life-threatening rip currents expected the majority of this week.

Hyde, Dare counties

Hyde and Dare counties have issued states of emergency and were evacuating Ocracoke and parts of Hatteras Island ahead of the storm’s arrival Monday.

States of emergency went into effect for Dare County at 6 p.m. Sunday, and for Hyde County’s Ocracoke Island at 8 p.m. Sunday.

Dare County officials announced Sunday afternoon a mandatory evacuation had been issued for Hatteras Island Zone A, which includes all of Hatteras Island, including the unincorporated villages of Rodanthe, Waves, Salvo, Avon, Buxton, Frisco, and Hatteras.

Visitors were to evacuate by 10 a.m. Monday and residents must begin evacuating beginning at 8 a.m. Tuesday.

The mandatory evacuation order for Ocracoke visitors began at 8 p.m. Sunday and for residents starting at 6 p.m. Tuesday.

“It is extremely likely that Hyde County EMS services will not be available in Ocracoke due to Highway 12 being inaccessible. Please take this warning seriously, especially if you have medical issues or are likely to need special care,” Hyde officials said in a release, adding plans to continue monitoring the forecast and issue advisories as appropriate.

The North Carolina Department of Transportation’s ferry division announced Monday that only residents, homeowners or vendors with an Ocracoke re-entry sticker on their vehicles will be allowed on ferries inbound to Ocracoke, in coordination with the mandatory evacuation order.

“While we don’t expect Hurricane Erin to make landfall on the Outer Banks, there will likely be large waves, ocean overwash and major coastal flooding that impact Highway 12,” said Ferry Division Director Jed Dixon. “We hope everyone will heed the evacuation orders for their own safety.”

No visitors will be allowed access to Ocracoke Island until the evacuation order is lifted.

Priority boarding will be suspended for all vessels leaving Ocracoke, and tolls have been waived for ferries heading from Ocracoke to Cedar Island or Swan Quarter.

The Ocracoke-Hatteras, Ocracoke-Cedar Island and Ocracoke-Swan Quarter routes will run the published schedules until the evacuation is complete.

Service on the Ocracoke Express passenger ferry, which runs between the village of Ocracoke and Hatteras Island, is suspended until further notice.

For real-time travel information, please check NCDOT’s DriveNC.gov and the agency’s social media accounts. People can also receive text or email notifications on ferry schedules and changes through the Ferry Information Notification System, or FINS.  

National Park Service

To be consistent with Dare and Hyde counties, Cape Hatteras National Seashore will be closing beach accesses and facilities, the National Park Service said.

“The Coastal Flood Watch indicates that extreme beach erosion and coastal damage is likely along the oceanside, resulting in a significant threat to life and property. Large, dangerous waves will likely inundate and destroy protective dune structures,” according to the press release. “Severe flooding will likely extend inland where there is vulnerable or no protective dune structure, flooding homes and businesses with some structural damage possible. Roads will likely be impassable under several feet of water and vehicles will likely be submerged.”

Museum of the Sea at Cape Hatteras Lighthouse and the Discovery Center on Ocracoke Island will close by 5 p.m. Monday. 

Cape Point, Frisco, and Ocracoke campgrounds were to close by 3 p.m. Monday and Oregon Inlet Campground will close at noon Tuesday. Bodie Island Lighthouse will close Wednesday and Thursday.

Off-road vehicle ramps were to close by 9 p.m. Monday. To view the status of beach access ramps, visit http://go.nps.gov/beachaccess.

Due to the presence of threatened oceanfront structures, the Seashore will close beach access in Rodanthe from the terminus of Old Highway 12 to the end of the Ocean Drive and in front of the village of Buxton southward to Ramp 43.   

Visitors should stay off the beaches completely and discontinue use of all beach trails and boardwalks beginning Tuesday morning.

Hurricane Erin is forecast to be a potential threat to Cape Lookout National
Seashore, with North and South Core Banks expected to experience the most significant impacts, Lookout officials said, adding that coastal flooding will likely be a long duration issue with impacts lasting late into the week.

Cape Lookout National Seashore officials plan to close facilities starting at noon Tuesday, including the Light Station Visitor Center and the Keepers Quarters Museum, through at least Friday.    

Island Express Ferry Service will cease operations out of Beaufort and Harkers Island beginning Wednesday through Friday.   

Great Island and Long Point Cabin Camps reservations have been canceled for Tuesday through Friday. The closure could extend beyond Friday, depending on the impact on the seashore. 

“I hope Erin will remain off the coast and head out sea, but hope is not a good way forward.  I really hate to impact people’s plans, and we aim to reopen as soon as possible afterwards,” acting Superintendent Katherine Cushinberry said Monday in a statement.

The National Park Service staff will be monitoring ongoing developments with Hurricane Erin and will post updates as needed on the park website at go.nps.gov/stormwatch.

Cape Hatteras National Seashore and North Carolina Wildlife Resources Commission are planning to host a public workshop in Ocracoke Village on the behavior and biology of coyotes.

Scheduled for 12:30 p.m. Wednesday, Aug. 27, in the Ocracoke Community Center, attendees will have the opportunity to learn laws and regulations regarding coyotes, and practical methods to prevent or reduce conflicts with the species of canine native to North America.

Though similar in appearance to red wolves, coyotes are smaller and usually dark gray but can range from blonde, red and black, with a long, bushy and black-tipped tail. The wild canine has pointed and erect ears, and a long, slender snouts, averaging about 2 feet tall at the shoulder and 4 feet in length. Adults are about the size of a medium-sized dog, weighing between 20 and 45 pounds, according to the commission website.

“Coyotes are not new to the Outer Banks, but the frequency of observation has increased in recent years,” because of the animal’s “unique ability to adapt to a wide range of habitats, including suburban environments, along with the loss of their own habitat due to rapid human population growth across the state,” according to the National Park Service.

As a result, visitors and residents to the Outer Banks may spot coyotes wandering populated beaches and neighborhoods, the park service continued. “Coyotes are not going away; therefore, we must learn to coexist with the animal in a safe manner.

BUXTON — A newly emerged area of petroleum pollution on Buxton Beach will be addressed by a U.S. Army Corps of Engineers-contracted response team, the Corps’ Savannah District announced late Wednesday.

After residents here again reported the presence of fuel sheen and odors, as well as the appearance of long-buried infrastructure and debris on the shoreline after a storm late last week, Col. Ron Sturgeon, the Corps district commander, visited the site Tuesday with Cape Hatteras National Seashore Superintendent Dave Hallac.

“We are committed to the health and safety of the community,” Sturgeon stated in press release Wednesday. “The beach environment is difficult and changes from day-to-day, but we are dedicated to finding the petroleum contamination and removing it.”

On Aug. 1, the National Park Service temporarily closed Old Lighthouse Beach lifeguard area and a 0.3-mile section of beach extending south from the southern end of Buxton village to about 0.4 miles north of Ramp 4, an area adjacent to what is officially known as the Buxton Formerly Used Defense Site.

The U.S. Navy, followed by the Coast Guard, operated bases on Buxton Beach from 1956 until 2010. Buxton Beach Access is at the south end of Old Lighthouse Road.

Hallac said the meeting with Sturgeon and members of the Corps’ response team was “very productive.”

“We had an opportunity to inspect the site and discuss next steps,” he said in an Aug. 5 text, responding to a question from Coastal Review. “They will be providing public information as they continue to evaluate options and advance a plan, but I am confident that they are moving very rapidly, as fast as they can, and are committed to mitigating the current threat to the environment.”

The contamination and debris problem had first revealed itself after a series of coastal storms in late summer 2023. Those storms caused severe erosion along the shoreline at Old Lighthouse Beach, exposing chunks of fuel-soaked peat and large pieces of buried infrastructure left behind from the Navy and Coast Guard bases. As a result, the beach was closed for safety and health reasons from Sept. 1, 2023, to June 12, 2025.

Since 1991, the Corps had been responsible for remediating the former Navy property as one of the Defense Department’s Formerly Used Defense Sites, or FUDS, under the Defense Environmental Restoration Program. Over the years, the program had removed tons of polluted soil and set up numerous monitoring wells.

After the 2023 exposure of petroleum contaminants on the beach, the Corps conducted numerous investigations but was unable to isolate a direct source. Still, the FUDS office took responsibility for removal of tons of soil with evidence of petroleum. Although its authorization does not include removal of buried infrastructure, the Corps’ contractor was permitted to haul away tons of debris, including concrete, pipes, cables and wires, that had to be removed to access the contaminated soil.

Meanwhile, the Coast Guard had conducted a Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation and Liability Act, or CERCLA, investigation at the Buxton Beach site. According to an October 2024 press release, the Coast Guard Civil Engineering Unit Cleveland initiated the site investigation in August 2023 to identify any potential contamination resulting from operations at Old Group Cape Hatteras between 1982 and 2013, when the base was abandoned.

The final CERCLA site inspection report, released in August 2024, includes details of vast amounts of herbicides, pesticides, wastewater, petroleum and various chemicals spilled, leaked and deposited at the site over the years, by either, or both, the Navy and the Coast Guard. 

One draft assessment of tests performed in 2011 at the fueling station found certain chemicals, such as PCBs, at levels that were deemed above acceptable for residential or laboratory detection limits but below permissible for commercial/industrial sites.  Other contaminants, such as arsenic and certain metals, were determined to be naturally occurring. Even evidence of per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances, or PFAS, at the site was considered acceptable because it’s normally found in sea spray.

But the passage of time, the overlapping pollutants from both bases, in addition to regulatory complexity, apparently has satisfied the Coast Guard’s responsibility for the current environmental condition, from its point of view.

“In accordance with the U.S. Code and U.S. Environmental Protection Agency regulations the CERCLA investigation sought to determine actionable remediation levels associated with volatile organic compounds, semi-volatile organic compounds, heavy metals, and chlorinated solvents,” the Coast Guard said in an Oct. 4, 2024, press release. “The investigation findings concluded that there are no actionable levels of these contaminants resulting from past Coast Guard operations at the sites.” 

Coast Guard officials did not respond by deadline to an email asking whether the Coast Guard had plans to remove any remaining infrastructure that may be associated with Group Cape Hatteras. Both the Navy and the Coast Guard were obligated to remove all their buildings when they left the site, according to the park service, which owns the land.

Brian Harris, a Buxton resident and a founding member of the Buxton Civic Association, said that the latest petroleum was evident on the beach on the morning of Aug. 1, along with a portion of the remains of what some believe was from the Coast Guard’s wastewater treatment infrastructure. As typically happens on the beach, the exposed pollution and debris was soon recovered by sand, he said, and could be uncovered again at any time.

But unlike the initial incident in 2023, Harris said he has total confidence in the Corps’ FUDS team and Sturgeon, whom he can now call directly to discuss concerns. 

“A year ago, we were screaming and sending emails to all our congressional representatives and senators,” he said. “And we have contacts now.

“The Army Corps of Engineers isn’t going to tell you what they’re doing until they do it,” he continued. “But (Sturgeon) was here, and they’re working on a plan right now.  At this point, it’s light years above where it was last year.”

The Corps’ contracted response-action team will arrive as early as next week, the Corps said in the press release, and will continue to monitor the site conditions to determine the appropriate actions, including containment with oil-absorbent booms.  

“The Savannah District will concurrently mobilize equipment and personnel to excavate and remove petroleum-impacted soil from the beach and dunes,” it said. “These actions will not affect the upcoming petroleum comprehensive soil and groundwater sampling that begins in September/October 2025.”

The Outer Banks are known for vast, uncrowded beaches, towering lighthouses, and unique cottages, and while these features beckon millions of visitors, some Outer Banks communities are not as well-known.

Rather than towns, most communities here are unincorporated villages, each home to residential homes and unobtrusive tourist accommodations, a few businesses, and a post office. Hatteras may be one of the best known of these villages.

While it is much smaller than incorporated coastal towns like Beaufort or Edenton, Hatteras is home to centuries of history and a number of notable sites, particularly on the southwest tip of its namesake island.

Hatteras Island was populated in the 16th century by the Croatoan Native Americans. They hunted, fished and ate oysters, depositing the shells in massive middens that are one of the few remaining visible indicators of where they lived. They were one of the many Native peoples that the Roanoke Colony interacted with in the 1580s.

The Croatans allied with the Europeans and counted among their numbers Manteo, the first Native American christened by the English in the New World. They factor into the story of the Lost Colony, since Hatteras Island was one of the many areas where the colonists were rumored to have gone after leaving Roanoke. Due to the shifting sands of Hatteras and the lack of definitive records, the fate of the colonists remains a mystery to this day.

Europeans returned to the area in the middle of the 17th century. Historian David Stick notes in his book, “The Outer Banks of North Carolina,” that the first documented English settlers on Hatteras Banks, Patrick Mackuen and William Reed, likely arrived there by 1711. People on Hatteras lived by fishing, farming, and piloting boats. They also took cargo from the many shipwrecks that regularly washed ashore from the Graveyard of the Atlantic.

Despite a growing number of families living on Hatteras, the area was slow to develop as a proper town. Isolated and accessible only by water, Hatteras did not abut one of the major inlets that was open during the colonial period. As a result, it was ignored by the same legislative assemblies that facilitated town construction at nearby Portsmouth and Ocracoke islands. Although numerous people resided on the southwestern portion of the island by the late 18th century, colonial maps often showed just the empty banks and the cape. The area known today as Hatteras Village finally gained its first post office in 1858.

Hatteras remained mostly isolated through the 18th and early 19th centuries. But while it did not have obvious economic importance, it did have military significance to any group wanting to approach or protect North Carolina by water. This led to the construction of Confederate forts Hatteras and Clark on Hatteras Inlet in 1861.

The forts were surrendered to Union in the first combined action of the Army and Navy during the Civil War. This success, the first by Union Gen. Ambrose Burnside, helped the Union gain control of the North Carolina coast and allowed for future invasions of Roanoke Island and the eastern part of the state.

The post-Civil War period saw the emergence of coastal life-saving stations. These buildings housed crews organized to rescue victims from shipwrecks using the latest technology, such as the Lyle gun used to shoot rescue lines.

Three U.S. Life-saving Service stations lined Hatteras Island by 1905, from Durants near the village to Cape Hatteras at the eastern end of the island. Along with greater lifesaving capabilities came a new effort at political organization. Dare County, one of the last counties formed in North Carolina, was created in 1870 from what had been parts of Currituck, Hyde and Tyrrell counties to help administer the far-flung islands of the Outer Banks. Its southern boundary was the western tip of Hatteras Island.

The modern village of Hatteras began to develop in the early 20th century. Locals built a string of houses such as the Ellsworth and Lovie Ballance House, circa 1915, one of the oldest structures in the village and a survivor of numerous hurricanes over the past century, according to state historic preservation records. The house was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 2001.

Growth came mainly from tourism. Greater rail and automobile transportation helped more and more visitors reach the beach from such areas as Raleigh, Charlotte and northern cities. More tourists meant an increase in ferry traffic and the growth of roads that made those ferries accessible, such as the highway that became U.S. 264 connecting Belhaven, Swan Quarter and U.S. Highway 64 near Manns Harbor.

In the 1930s, the conservation movement also brought nature tourism to the island through the authorization of the Cape Hatteras National Seashore in 1937, one of the first seashore-protection programs in the country. Conservation protected a unique ecosystem that continues to bring thousands of birding, fishing, and native plant enthusiasts each year. 

With these dynamics in place, Hatteras became a popular vacation destination. Thousands flocked to the coast every summer and engaged in new recreational activities such as surfing and kiteboarding. Demand led to new transportation outlets. The state began to pave roads on Hatteras Island in the 1950s, but it was the completion of the Herbert S. Bonner Bridge in 1963 that provided a direct land connection between Hatteras and the rest of the country.

Soon, the island became home to shops, restaurants and hotels, as well as the familiar fishing shacks and isolated tourist cottages. A 1990 New York Times travel article that praised Hatteras Island’s beach as “one of the loveliest on the East Coast,” also singled out the village for offering “the color of a commercial fishing hub.”

Hatteras has become one of the most popular tourist destinations on the East Coast, growth that has fundamentally altered life in the sleepy fishing village. About 500 residents now live in Hatteras Village fulltime. There are about a dozen restaurants, several seafood markets, general stores, visitor centers, and the Graveyard of the Atlantic Museum. A number of these businesses operate year-round and cater to both locals and the summer influx of tourists.

Despite these changes, residents largely are thankful that Hatteras retains much of its village charm.

Patricia Peele, a lifelong resident of the island, told Coastal Review that as recently as 15 years ago, it was like “they used to roll the streets up at 9 p.m. on Labor Day.”

Now, there are always tourists, filling a plethora of mini-hotels across the island. But Peele said that despite the changes, she knows that Hatteras is still secluded compared to the rest of the Outer Banks. It is “not built up like a lot of other places are,” and with the protections provided by the National Park Service, growth will likely remain limited.

Still, Hatteras Village faces many of the same challenges as the rest of the Outer Banks, including those related to rising sea levels, limited resources and strong coastal storms.

The Basnight Bridge, which replaced the Bonner Bridge when the 2.8-mile, $254 million project was completed in 2019, keeps Hatteras Island connected to the mainland, and no matter the challenges, people of Hatteras will likely continue to adapt to life on their ocean sandbar — just as they always have.

The public can hear an update on the work taking place to clean up the former Buxton Naval Facility site during the next Restoration Advisory Board meeting.

Doors open to the public at 5:15 p.m. and the meeting starts at 5:30 p.m. Thursday, July 17, in the Cape Hatteras Anglers Club, 47231 Light Plant Road, Buxton.

The public will be able to ask questions the last 15 minutes of the meeting, starting at 7:15 p.m. People from the community are encouraged to submit questions to CESAS-FUDS@usace.army.mil.

Now called the Buxton Formerly Used Defense Site, the area around the Buxton beach access on Hatteras Island was a base for both Navy and Coast Guard operations from 1956 until 2010, when it was returned to the National Park Service. The Formerly Used Defense Sites Program manages the environmental restoration, or cleanup, of properties formerly owned or occupied by the U.S. Defense Department.

Back on Sept. 1, 2023, officials with the Cape Hatteras National Seashore announced that the beach beside the former military site had eroded, uncovering potentially hazardous infrastructure associated with the military’s previous use. This was after surfers and visitors reported a strong smell of petroleum.

Gayle Garland, project manager of the Buxton FUDS property for the Army Corps of Engineers, is to provide an update about the current property environmental restoration projects during the meeting.  

The Corps said last fall that it had removed nearly 4,600 cubic yards of petroleum-laced soil; nearly 100,000 gallons of petroleum-contaminated water; 278,000 pounds of concrete; 1,153 feet of pipe; and 1,088 feet of metal cable and wire.

The section of beach was closed in 2023 because of health and safety concerns related to petroleum contamination and potentially hazardous remnant military infrastructure, until it reopened in June.

This is the second meeting of the advisory board that was selected March 25. The first meeting was April 10. The board does not make decisions, but allows for the community to take part in the cleanup process.

Before composing over two dozen volumes of poetry, before becoming a professor at the prestigious Cornell University in upstate New York, and long before winning any of his numerous national literary awards, Archibald Randolph Ammons was a poor boy working on his father’s Columbus County farm during the Great Depression.

Ammons would eventually achieve fame under the byline “A.R. Ammons,” a heralded poet noted for his beautiful but also scientifically precise descriptions of nature. However, with those who knew him personally, including those who knew him during his formative years in coastal Carolina, he went by the less precise but more identifiable name “Archie.”

‘Alluvial country’

Archie Ammons was born in his family’s farmhouse just outside of Whiteville on Feb. 18, 1926. The fields he helped his father plow during his youth were 6 short miles from Lake Waccamaw and only 35 miles from the Brunswick County beach communities his family would travel to for the occasional fish fry or oyster roast. Ammons spent these hardscrabble years mostly behind hitched mules, furrowing the soil in which he and his father grew corn, tobacco, peanuts and other cash crops so typical of eastern North Carolina agricultural districts.

Though he would not begin writing poetry until some years later, his experiences on the farm and in what he called the “alluvial country” of the coastal plains impressed him deeply and would eventually find voice in his writing.  

For instance, in the poem “Silver,” about a mule his family owned during his childhood, Ammons remembers how he and Silver would “fall soon again into the slow requirements of our dreams / how we turned at the ends of rows without sense to new furrows and went back / flicked by / cornblades and hearing the circling in / the cornblades of horseflies in pursuit.”

In the poem “I’m the Type,” Ammons would look back at his early life on the farm in light of his later career as a famous writer and note how he “misses the mules and cows / hogs and chickens, misses / the rain making little / rivers, well-figured with / tributaries through the / sand yard.” Ammons learned in his childhood to be attentive to the living world around him, including not only the plants and animals but also the physical forces that shape living things. They entered his imagination as a boy and stayed with him the rest of his life.

From the South Pacific to the Outer Banks   

According to Roger Gilbert, a professor of English literature at Cornell University who is writing a biography of his former colleague, the Ammons family farm was not particularly successful, so a young Ammons sought employment in the largest nearby city.

“He had been working in the shipyards in Wilmington after high school and one day he came home and the farm had been sold,” Gilbert said in a recent interview. “That farm had been his world growing up. So when that was gone, when it was no longer a place that belonged to him, I think he felt he’d lost that sense of having a home.”

This bitter loss began a whirlwind period in Ammons’s life. American involvement in the Pacific theater of World War II was ramping up just as he graduated high school. With no more family farm to tend, Ammons enlisted in the Navy. He was deployed as a sonar operator aboard the destroyer U.S.S. Gunason, on which he sailed through the South Pacific, listening for the pings of reverberating soundwaves that could signal the underwater presence of enemy vessels or weapons.

It was also during this time, on the long voyages at sea, that Archie began writing his first poems. He was training the precision of his ear in more ways than one.  

When the war ended, the poor country boy from Whiteville took advantage of the GI Bill to attend Wake Forest College. Ammons graduated in 1949 and left town with a Bachelor of Science and, more importantly, a courtship with his future wife, Phyllis.

He moved almost immediately to the Outer Banks village of Hatteras, where he would spend the 1949-50 academic year as principal of tiny Hatteras Elementary School — and where Phyllis would join him after their wedding during Thanksgiving break.

Though he was only on the Dare County island for a year, the dramatic seascapes of the Outer Banks entered his poetic imagination just as the sandy farmland of Whiteville had. In an unpublished poem written during his first summer on Hatteras, and kindly provided by Professor Gilbert out of the Ammons archive at Cornell University, Archie tried to capture in words the strange magic of the Banks at night: “Night has come to this small island, / Drowsing on the golden dunes cool-mist opiates. / Far out at sea, a ship’s sea-lantern sways / And a lost gull screams.”

Gilbert noted that Ammons, by this point, had not yet found his unique poetic voice. But “the Hatteras landscape stayed with him and influenced some of those early poems,” he said.

A Second Vision of Land and Sea

By “those early poems,” Gilbert was referring to Ammons’s first collection of poetry, “Ommateum,” which he self-published in 1955. By this point, Ammons was living in New Jersey and working at his father-in-law’s manufacturing firm, which made glassware for laboratories.

In “Ommateum,” Ammons began to dabble in the scientific specificity and abstraction that would later become a hallmark of his style. More central to his first book, however, is one of Ammons’s mainstay themes: the transience of nature and human life.

In fact, the very first poem in “Ommateum” draws on the windswept ecology of Cape Hatteras to show us a narrator, Ezra, seeking his voice amid a powerful vortex of natural forces. Reworking many of the specific images and themes of his unpublished poem from his year in Hatteras, Ammons describes how Ezra speaks his name to the sea, “but there were no echoes from the waves / The words were swallowed up / in the voice of the surf.” The protagonist has to turn away “from the wind / that ripped sheets of sand / from the beach and threw them / like seamists across the dunes.”

Finally realizing the futility of fighting the wind, Ezra decides instead to adapt to and even become part of the landscape. “So I Ezra went out into the night,” the poem ends, “like a drift of sand / and splashed among the windy oats / that clutch the dunes / of unremembered seas.”

The poem sets the tone for the rest of the volume and, in a way, for the rest of Ammons’s career. It is somehow fitting that a poet from coastal North Carolina would begin his first book looking for meaning in a sea squall.  

According to Alex Albright, a retired professor of creative writing at East Carolina University and the editor of the indispensable Ammons volume “The North Carolina Poems,” “There’s a journal entry from when (Ammons was) in the Navy that provides a controlling metaphor for his life.”

“He sees off in the distance the fine line of the horizon,” Albright said in a telephone interview, “and as he gets closer and closer to it, it’s not really a straight line. It’s that second vision that he brings to a lot of his landscapes.”

Becoming a classic

“Ommateum” sold barely any copies when it first appeared. But little by little, Ammons began making inroads into the professional poetry establishment. Individual poems started getting picked up by journals and magazines here and there throughout the 1950s, and in 1964 he was hired to teach poetry writing at Cornell University, where he would later become a full professor and befriend Roger Gilbert.

The same year also saw the publication of his second collection, “Expressions of Sea Level,” this time by a major university press. From that point on until his death in 2001, Ammons would never go more than four years without releasing a new volume.

From the 1970s through the end of the 1990s, Ammons’s star rose without cease. He won the National Book Award for one collection of poetry in 1973, then the prestigious Bollingen Prize for Poetry for a different collection in 1975. It was around this time that the influential literary critic Harold Bloom said that “No contemporary poet, in America, is likelier to become a classic than A.R. Ammons.”

As if to prove Bloom’s point, Ammons released a volume in 1981 that received the National Book Critics Circle Award, and another volume 12 years later that won him his second National Book Award.  In October 2000, just five months before his death at age 75, he was inducted into the North Carolina Literary Hall of Fame.

Albright, who knew Ammons personally through their work together at the North Carolina Literary Review, pointed out that the shy, affable farm boy from Whiteville was aware he had a gift.

“He knew that he was in a rare class,” Albright said. “He had a Southern way of deflecting praise, but there were very few poets that he imagined were as good as he was.”

Not Deep down but across

Ammons is by no means omnipresent in Whiteville today, but neither is he or the world of his childhood totally forgotten. His family home was torn down years ago, but Whiteville High School has a couple of old buildings he would have sat in as a student in the 1930s, and the Pentecostal church he attended with his parents still stands out by Spring Branch. There is no plaque for him in town, but the Reuben Brown House, a historic preservation group in Columbus County, runs an annual poetry contest in his honor.

The fields and swamps he roamed as a boy are in a similar state of in-between. “Until very recently he would have recognized the Columbus County landscape,” Albright said. “The bridges are a little better, but it’s still swampy. There’s still bugs, it’s still quiet, and you’re still really close to the coast out there.”

According to Albright, even the Brunswick County beaches of Ammons’s youth have not yet been totally transformed.

“There’s a little place when you go to the right on Ocean Isle, that’s where they went for their oyster roasts,” he said, “and on the back end, you can sort of forget that the high-rise bridge is going over to Ocean Isle, and it can feel very isolated.”

Still, Ammons was powerfully attentive to and protective of the natural world. The poet would likely have some strong opinions about the lack of care taken for the soil, water, trees and animals of southeastern North Carolina if he saw it today.

“He could be looked at as an early environmentalist,” Albright said of his old friend. “His feel for the land was just something. And part of what he would see would be heartbreaking. The factory tree farming, especially.”

In “Making Fields,” one of his most moving poems about his North Carolina roots, Ammons describes the give and take between the land and his ancestors who worked that land going back to his father’s father.

The life he presents to readers in this poem is a hard one, and it unfolds overtop a thin coastal soil stratum that doesn’t always offer bounty and wealth. But at the end of the poem, Ammons can still clearly see and hear his connection to the place of his birth.

“… the land is not deep down but across, as into time” he writes. “the runs, the / ditch banks, the underbrush, the open fields with a persimmon tree / or wild cherry call, they call me.” 

Update 4:30 p.m. Tuesday: The Ocracoke fireworks have been canceled due to the threat of thunderstorms and high winds forecast for Wednesday, July 2. The pre-fireworks gathering at the National Park Service docks has also been canceled.

Original post:

There are two fireworks shows planned for this week in celebration of the Fourth of July holiday on Cape Hatteras National Seashore.

A permitted show is scheduled for 9:15 p.m. Wednesday at the south end of Ocracoke Island and at 9 p.m. Friday at the Avon Fishing Pier.

Seashore officials are taking the opportunity to remind the public that it is illegal to detonate fireworks, or have fireworks in your possession, on all seashore beaches, including those on Ocracoke Island and in Rodanthe, Waves, Salvo, Avon, Buxton, Frisco and Hatteras Village.

“In addition to fireworks being illegal and a significant fire risk to local communities, the personal use of fireworks can be a considerable nuisance to humans, pets and wildlife,” officials said, adding that seashore law enforcement are to patrol beaches throughout the holiday week.

Featured Image

A wall of sandbags extends along the roadside far into the distance aside N.C. Highway 12 on the north end of Ocracoke Island. This is where washouts and erosion from storm surge repeatedly chew away at the barrier island beach and roadway, part of the normal ocean dynamics that humans often try to control. Photo: Dylan Ray

The new Cape Hatteras Lighthouse multiuse pathway in Buxton was officially opened Thursday with a ribbon-cutting ceremony.

The 1.25-mile-long, 10- to 12-foot-wide, accessible concrete pathway connects Cape Hatteras Lighthouse and Old Lighthouse Beach. There are interpretive signs along the path explaining the history of when the lighthouse was moved to its current location in 1999, the seashore’s ecology and its distinction as a watersports destination.

Outer Banks Forever is the official nonprofit partner of the seashore, Fort Raleigh National Historic Site, and Wright Brothers National Memorial and began raising funds to build the pathway in the fall of 2022.

Outer Banks Forever and Cape Hatteras National Seashore held the ceremony for the pathway that “quietly opened to the community in the fall of 2024,” and “hundreds of parkgoers have been using it for walking, biking, strolling, dog walking, and more, now safely separated from traffic,” according to the nonprofit.

Outer Banks Forever and the seashore are currently working to build and install an accessible restroom and shower facility at the Old Lighthouse Beach Access, with a target completion date of early 2026.

Donors to the nonprofit, a Tourism Impact Grant from the Outer Banks Visitors Bureau, and grants from the Federal Highways Administration helped fund the pathway.

Outer Banks Visitors Bureau Executive Director Lee Nettles announced that the Dare County Tourism Board was proud to support the project.

“Dare County tourism is a $2.15 billion industry representing 46% of the jobs within our county, but visitor spending also provides funding for the Tourism Board’s grant programs,” Nettles said in a news release. “The Cape Hatteras Lighthouse Pathway project is an example of how tourism can improve safety and the quality of life for both visitors and residents.”

The nonprofit partner for national parks on the Outer Banks has opened its annual program that allows supporters to symbolically adopt sea turtle nests along Cape Hatteras National Seashore.

Outer Banks Forever, a a 501(c)(3) nonprofit and the official fundraising partner of the Cape Hatteras National Seashore, Fort Raleigh National Historic Site and Wright Brothers National Memorial, organizes the Adopt A Sea Turtle Program raises funds for projects at the national seashore, which protects more than 30,000 acres from south Nags Head to the Ocracoke Inlet.

A donation of $100 or more reserves a 2025 sea turtle nest. Nest assignments begin in early June and will be assigned on a first-come, first-served basis.  

As nests become available for adoption, the donor will be assigned a nest and will receive an adoption certificate by mail or email with initial information about the nest.

When the nest hatches later in the summer or fall, the supporter will receive a personalized update in the mail with information National Park Service rangers collect about your nest, including the number of hatchlings that made their way out to sea. The average incubation time for our nests is 61 days.

National Park Service rangers monitor the 70-plus miles making up the seashore and gather data about the hundreds of sea turtle nests laid each season.

Leatherback, loggerhead, green, Hawksbill and Kemp’s Ridleys are the five species of sea turtles that typically nest on national seashore beach. There were more than 300 sea turtle nests in 2024 along the national seashore, including rare Kemp’s Ridley and Leatherback sea turtle nests.

“No individual or group who participates in this program can claim ownership of a sea turtle nest, eggs, or hatchlings. Nature is also unpredictable. If your adopted nest is lost to a weather event or damaged by some other means, we will assign you a new nest that may or may not be shared with another individual or group,” organizers said.

Contact Development & Adoption Programs Manager Nicole Erickson at nicoleerickson@obxforever.org with questions.

Visitors to Ocracoke Island this summer can learn a little about the cozy village during the Ocracoke Preservation Society’s 2025 Free Porch Talk Series.

The society was founded in 1983 with the goal to “provide access to education, research, and exploration of the island’s rich history and culture through programs, events, and exhibits,” its website states.

The nonprofit organization has maintained since 1992 a museum in the David Williams House built around 1900, where the porch talks will be held at 49 Water Plant Road. Parking is available at the National Park Service docks. Attendees are encouraged to bring drinks, snacks and their pets. Offered at no charge, the nonprofit organization welcomes donations.

Organizers have announced the June talks and plan to publicize each on its social media.

The following is the June schedule:

• 10:30 a.m. Thursday, June 5: “Stories on the porch” No. 1 with Donald Davis and his Ocracoke storytelling workshop participants.
• 1 p.m. Tuesday, June 10: Ocracoke lighthouse history, details and “My Most Memorable Climb to the Top of the Ocracoke Lighthouse” book signing with author Philip Howard.
• 1 p.m. Thursday, June 12: “Ocracoke A.D. (After Dorian)” with authors Ann Ehringhaus and Heather Johnson.
• 1 p.m. Tuesday, June 17: Ocracats Inc. Rita Thiel will discuss the clinic that manages the village’s feral cat population.
• 10:30 a.m. June 19: “Stories on the porch” No. 2 with Donald Davis and his Ocracoke storytelling workshop participants.
• 1 p.m. Tuesday, June 24: “Language and Life on Ocracoke” with authors, Jeff Reaser, Candy Gaskill and Walt Wolfram.
• 1 p.m. Thursday, June 26: Seashells of Ocracoke Island with North Carolina Shell Club member and island resident, Charlie DeCarlo.

The society is currently working on the series schedule for the remainder of the season. Contact admin@ocracokepreservationsociety.org to give a talk on a Tuesday or Thursday afternoon.

Beachgoers to Hyde or Dare counties during the busy season can sign up for ocean and beach condition text alerts from Outer Banks lifeguards, ocean rescue agencies and the National Weather Service.

To receive Dare County Emergency Management’s rip current forecast alerts, text OBXBeachConditions to 77295.

“Swimming in the ocean is not the same as swimming in a pool or lake. Wind, waves, the change of the tide, the slope of the beach and other factors can cause strong currents to be present in the water even on the calmest days,” according to Cape Hatteras National Seashore officials.

Rip Currents are “fast flowing channels of water that extend from close to the shoreline through the surf and past the breaking waves,” according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

The easiest way to spot rip currents is from an elevated position overlooking the beach. Look for darker, muddy, or choppier waters than surrounding areas and where waves are not breaking, NOAA continues.

Seashore officials warn that the ocean presents additional hazards, such as lightning, high surf and shore break, and urgers beachgoers to avoid swimming in dangerous situations such as in rough seas and inlets, around fishing piers and surfers, at night or during extreme weather.

To learn more about safely visiting the ocean, beachgoers can check out Dare County’s Love the Beach, Respect the Ocean website, where information on the rip current risk for the day, beach conditions, and more can be found.

Seashore officials recommend swimming at one of its five beaches staffed with lifeguards from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. every day from Memorial Day weekend through Labor Day.

Lifeguards are at the following locations:

• Coquina Beach Access is across from the Bodie Island Lighthouse site.
• Rodanthe Beach Access, provided by Dare County, is at 23732 N.C. 12.
• Cape Hatteras Lighthouse Beach Access is adjacent to the old Cape Hatteras Lighthouse site.
• Frisco Beach Access is just south of Frisco Village.
• Ocracoke Beach Access is 1.5 miles south of the seashore’s campground or half-mile north of Ocracoke Village.

BUXTON — As anyone who owns an old house knows, repair projects often reveal unfortunate surprises. Such is the case with the first complete restoration of the 155-year-old Cape Hatteras Lighthouse, but the remedy will be considerably more complex.

Halfway into the $19.2 million project, potentially dangerous cracks in critical structural components of the tower’s ironwork have been discovered deep in the tower’s upper wall, creating inevitable project delays and unbudgeted cost increases.

In an update on the project provided Thursday during a virtual presentation, Lindsay Gravel, project manager for North Brookfield, Massachusetts-based contractor, Stone & Lime Masonry Restoration Services Inc., detailed recently uncovered degradation of iron support brackets near the top of the 198-foot-tall lighthouse.

Signs of deterioration had been first detected in 3D scans done in August, and engineers decided that further investigation was warranted inside the wall, Gravel told a small group of media.

“After we did this first round of exposure, we had the architectural and engineering team come out on site, and they had some concerns,” she said. “So with the shoring in place, we decided it was beneficial to expose the entirety of these brackets, each and every one.”

Out of the 16 brackets, 13 were severely cracked on the interior flange, and 15 had cracks on the exterior elbow, which engineers determined to be a structural concern. Looking deeper, more cracking was found in the interior web.

“So this has a large crack in this exterior component,” Gravel said, pointing to a slide showing the bracket. “And this is where the observatory deck plate sits on top. So this is where visitors will be walking, which is why these brackets are such a large component of the lighthouse for visitor safety.”

Gravel later added that each of the brackets weigh 2,200 pounds, while each deck plate weighs 1,000 pounds. “So 16 of those brackets, and 16 of those deck plates, it’s a lot of weight up there,” she said.

Cape Hatteras National Seashore Superintendent Dave Hallac said that the National Park Service has not yet determined what the additional work will cost. After a structural engineering model is developed to determine the cause of the cracking, recommendations will be devised for proposed repairs.

“And once we know what that repair prescription looks like, we will develop an estimate to do that work,” he said. “And then once we know what that total is, we’ll determine how we’re going to fund it.”

While he was not happy about the kink in the restoration plan, Hallac emphasized that he is pleased with the overall work.

“We actually have not seen a lot of unknowns in this project,” he said.

The project, which began in late 2023, was initially supposed to be completed in about 18 months.

The unexpected is to be expected during restoration of historic structures, Hallac said, and he lauded Stone & Lime for their expertise.

“They have made incredible progress on this project and done a really good job of working with us as a team to work through the challenges that have come up,” he said. “Because no project on a structure like this that’s unique and over 150 years old is going to move forward without some surprises.”

During her comprehensive review, Gravel provided a brief history of the lighthouse, followed by a head-spinning recitation of the work that has been completed, is underway, and is upcoming.

An overview

First, 25 levels of scaffolding were installed around the lighthouse. Then coatings on the exterior, including the famed swirled black-and-white day mark, and interior, including stairs, hand railings, landing beams, window sills, were removed. Metal components were primed to prevent rust. Mock-ups of new day marks were developed to test how they weather in different lighting.

Also about 700 bricks have been replaced, and 75 bricks repointed with natural cement, the historic stockade fence that went around the keepers’ buildings is being installed, the ornamental fence that had once encircled the lighthouse is being replicated, and landscape plantings have been installed.

Extensive work has also been done on many of the 269 lighthouse steps, parts of which had signs of corrosion, Gravel said. After a small crack was detected in one stair tread, the 255 stairs up to level 10 were surveyed, as well as some others. More than 100 stair treads will be repaired, and 44 treads, four brackets, 200 bolts, 120 nuts and 75 spindles will be replaced.

Gravel showed a photograph taken high up on the spiral staircase, with a missing step providing a dizzying peek of the black hole at the bottom — a view most lighthouse climbers would prefer to avoid.

“It’s not every day that you get to see the lighthouse with a missing tread in it,” Gravel said.

By incorporating the project’s modeling and precision molds created for components, Gravel said the technology helps the contractor’s team streamline its workflow, prevent errors and accurately capture the as-built conditions.

“This result is a high modern, high value approach that supports long term preservation efforts and leaves a detailed digital record to use for the future,” she said.

In 1999, the lighthouse was moved 2,900 feet inland to protect it from the Atlantic Ocean that swirled at its base. Although the dramatic and successful move protected the tower from being taken by the ocean, the historic 1870 lighthouse structure itself was not restored. But after the move, there were projects done to replace degraded stair treads, according to an email from the Park Service, responding to questions from Coastal Review.

After a chunk of metal fell in 2001 from a bracket on the lower staircase, the lighthouse got more attention.

Most of the stair treads were replaced in 2002 and 2008, the Park Service wrote. The current project will install tread replacements to replace those that were not originally replaced and those that are damaged, according to the information. The stair system’s spindles and bolts that hold them and the treads onto the stair stringers have corroded over time and “will be repaired or replaced based on their condition,” the email said.

Cracking in a couple of brackets had been known from investigations in the 1980s, the email said.

“At that time, architects and engineers recommended leaving the damaged lighthouse brackets alone because the load paths — the way that forces on the metal was routed from the top of the lighthouse to other areas — had likely been reestablished through the masonry following the cracking,” the email said. “In other words, any downward forces on the structure from the weight above was now being held up by the bricks in the limited areas where the cracked brackets were observed.”

Though potential cracking was anticipated, the email continued, the extent could not be known without removing multiple layers of brick.

“With substantially more cracking being observed now, bracket repairs or replacements will be necessary for the long-term structural integrity of the tower.”

Typically, about 1,500 visitors a day between April and October climb the lighthouse, the tallest brick beacon in the nation. The lighthouse is likely not going to reopen before 2026, or later depending on the bracket repair timeline. Meanwhile, Cape Hatteras National Seashore is currently developing new plans for climbing, the Park Service said.

“We expect that at least the same number of people will be able to climb annually,” according to the email. “There may be fewer people in the lighthouse at a time to help reduce crowding, but we expect at least the same number of people to be able to climb annually through expanded climbing opportunities throughout the day and year.” 

The Cape Hatteras Light Station store, restrooms and portions of the grounds remain open to visitors.

Guest Commentary

To stimulate discussion and debate, Coastal Review welcomes differing viewpoints on topical coastal issues. 

The Outer Banks is known for its beautiful coastline and rich ecosystems, drawing millions of visitors each year. Millions of dollars in tax and business revenue are collected as a result. Unfortunately, beach erosion poses a significant challenge to homeowners, business owners and vacationers along the barrier islands, particularly those in Rodanthe. Last year, the community lost seven oceanfront homes, a record high and an indicator of a worsening problem.

Beach erosion, which has occurred for millions of years, is the defined result of changing sea levels, currents, wind patterns, and severe weather events. In fact, the Outer Banks would not exist if not for this natural process. However, erosion is consuming as much as 15 feet of shoreline each year along the Cape Hatteras National Seashore.

To preserve structures in place, federal, state, and local governments have launched coordinated responses, investing heavily in beach nourishment, inlet relocation, and terminal groin projects in a race against the sea. To put the severity of this issue into perspective, a 2020 review by the North Carolina Department of Environmental Quality’s (NC DEQ) Division of Coastal Management found that nearly 9,000 oceanfront structures are at risk.

Despite the growing problem, many property owners are forced to wait until their home collapses before they can file a claim through the National Flood Insurance Program (NFIP). Shoreline erosion damages are excluded from standard homeowners’ insurance, and the NFIP only covers flood-related damages, creating confusion and prohibiting proactive planning.

That is why I introduced the Preventing Environmental Hazards Act, a commonsense bill to address the unfortunate reality of beach erosion coastal homeowners face. The bipartisan legislation would authorize NFIP compensation for structures condemned due to chronic erosion or unusual flooding and allow advance payouts for demolition or relocation of up to 40% of the home’s value, capped at $250,000 – the same terms as current NFIP policy. The purpose here is to use the money to remove the structure before it collapses, rather than wait until it creates an environmental disaster.

As erosion continues to accelerate, thousands of homes across the Outer Banks are at severe risk of being swept away by the sea. Additionally, when a home collapses, debris can spread up to fifteen miles along the coast, contaminating groundwater through failing septic systems, harming aquatic species, shorebirds, and their habitats, posing safety risks to beach visitors, and creating other serious environmental hazards. Our coastal communities cannot afford a delay any longer for proactive solutions to address these challenges.

Since coming to Congress, I have worked tirelessly to address the challenges created by our shifting shoreline, meeting regularly with local officials, representatives from NC DEQ, and the National Park Service. It is a privilege and a top priority of mine to secure federal funding to help cover the cost of projects to protect our beach communities. However, mitigation programs intended to protect threatened homes are often slow, suboptimal, and difficult to access. Advance NFIP payouts will empower homeowners by providing flexibility to prepare for or recover from natural disasters while at the same time mitigating risks to beachgoers and mariners.

Opinions expressed by the authors are not necessarily those of Coastal Review or our publisher, the North Carolina Coastal Federation.

Visitors to the Bodie Island Lighthouse will soon get the option to climb its more than 200 steps to experience breathtaking views of the Pamlico Sound and Atlantic Ocean.

The National Park Service recently announced that the lighthouse will be open daily for climbing between April 18 to Oct. 13.

A total of 214 steps spiral to the observation deck of the 156-foot-tall lighthouse.

Tickets for this experience may be purchased only on the day the visitor intends to climb. Tickets go on sale at 7 a.m. and are available for purchase at  www.recreation.gov/ticket/252034/ticket/10087143.

Visitors are encourage to create their own recreation.gov account before purchasing tickets. For additional information about climbing lighthouses, you may visit www.nps.gov/caha/planyourvisit/lighthouseclimbs.htm.

Ongoing restoration efforts of the Cape Hatteras Lighthouse will shutter climbing opportunities this year.

Featured Image

An immature white ibis nearly blends into its surroundings as it forages just off a Bodie Island trail that ends at a series of creeks southwest of the lighthouse. Photo: Kip Tabb

BUXTON — The federal cleanup of Buxton Beach has been remarkable, if only for the stark improvement in its appearance compared with a few months earlier.

With the surface building debris mostly gone, and petroleum-soaked soil removed, now the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers is turning its attention to the long-term well-being of both the site and the community.

“The dune is clean, the oil is gone from the groundwater, and the beach is clean,” said Brian Harris, co-vice president of the Buxton Civic Association in a recent interview with Coastal Review. Still, he said, a lot remains to be done at the Cape Hatteras National Seashore beach where a secret submarine survey base once operated.

The Coast Guard also operated a base at the site from 1982 until 2010.

“All those buildings that were once there, they’re still there — all the foundations,” he said. “So, it’s great that the beach is clean … but as this thing keeps eroding, I don’t want my son to have to deal with this in 10 years.”

Harris said that he is looking forward to participating in upcoming meetings of the Restoration Advisory Board, or RAB. Within months, the structured group of community and agency members is expected to start meeting regularly to discuss environmental restoration at the Buxton Naval Facility.

“You know, we’ve got everybody at the table now,” he said. “And that’s really what the RAB is going for — to keep this thing going forward, and the plan for the future.”

Contractor Baywest, a St. Paul, Minnesota-based environmental services company, completed removal of petroleum-contaminated soil and water before Christmas and did a final walk-through with the National Park Service on Jan. 17, according to Corps of Engineers Formerly Used Defense Sites (FUDS) Program Manager Sara Keisler.

The $4.8 million contract will end in June 2025, after Baywest completes beach plantings.

Keisler said another contractor, Yuma, Arizona-based Nicklaus-Ensafe JV, will begin a comprehensive survey of the site in February or early March that will investigate whether more contaminants remain underground.

“Currently, the initial deliverables, which is our work plan and our safety plan, are in the process of being written and reviewed,” Keisler told Coastal Review. “Those will be reviewed by many entities, including the Corps and then we have an independent technical review that has to be done, which is done by our center of expertise.” After several other reviews, the work will be able to start.

The $177,000 contract is scheduled to end in May 2026, she said, but it can be extended if needed.

In 1991, the former Naval base in Buxton, which was a submarine monitoring station from February 1956 until June 1982, was designated as a Formerly Used Defense Site, leaving the responsibility for its cleanup to the Corps. Starting in 1989, the FUDS team removed tons of petroleum infrastructure at the 50-acre site, as well as polluted soil and water, and continued to monitor groundwater. In the last test in 2024, the contaminant levels were below state standards.

But increased beach erosion, exacerbated by rising sea levels and coastal storms in September 2023, exposed chunks of concrete and oily clumps of sand, creating dangerous debris and a strong diesel odor. As a result, the park service closed three-tenths of a mile of Buxton Beach, and a FUDS team returned to the site.

The teams spent month after month investigating the site, and after the September 2024 reoccurrence of petroleum evidence, they developed a response plan, and hired the contractors.

FUDS teams only have the authority to remove petroleum, they’re not allowed to remove underground structures unless they’re in the way. 

“While the primary purpose of the ongoing response action is to remove petroleum-impacted soil, some of the remnant infrastructures that impede excavation access to the petroleum-impacted soil have been removed, too,” the Corps’ FUDS team in Savannah District said in a press release. But workers ended up removing considerable amounts of material.

“The team began excavations Oct. 2, 2024, and … they have removed 1,442 cubic yards and 24,126 gallons of petroleum-impacted soil and water, as well as approximately 138,400 pounds of concrete, 1,153 feet of pipes and 1,088 feet of metal cables and wires.”

As of Dec. 11 2024, a total of 4,599 cubic yards of petroleum-impacted soil has been removed; 99,526 gallons of water; 278,000 pounds of concrete; 1,153 feet of pipe; and 1,088 feet of metal cables and wires, according to the Buxton Naval Facility page on the Corps’ website.

Although it took nearly a year after the first report in 2023 for the Corps to start aggressive removal of petroleum contamination, no single source has yet been identified, despite numerous early efforts by the agency.

“From our perspective, the source is previously unremoved contaminated soil and groundwater,” Cape Hatteras National Seashore Superintendent Dave Hallac told Coastal Review. “In other words, at this point, there’s no evidence that there is what you would call a traditional source of bulk product, for example, a tank that’s sitting in the ground that’s just been leaking … Rather, what’s been observed just appears to be soil and groundwater that was contaminated, perhaps decades ago by the Navy.”

Hallac added that the Corps has done some geophysical work, including with ground-penetrating radar and an “excellent” study using a magnetometer looking for anomalies. Between reviews of that work, and similar ground studies done by the park service, combined with the comprehensive survey by the contractor, the superintendent said he is confident that any remaining petroleum source will be found.

Even after frustration with the slow start on remediation and disagreements about how to address the problem, Hallac said he is appreciative of the FUDS team’s partnership.

“Yes, we feel that the Corps has made a solid effort to remove the heavily contaminated soil from the beachfront area and mitigate the impact of those soils or ground waters washing into the Atlantic Ocean,” he said.

Hallac said he’s pleased that most of the huge chunks of concrete and other surface debris on the beach are now gone. His main focus, he said, was “to stop the bleeding” with the petroleum problem.  But he’s not giving up on getting the remaining buried infrastructure removed. 

“We’re moving forward in that level of priority order,” he said. “We are still in conversations with the Corps, the Navy and the Coast Guard about what to do about everything underground.”

Corps officials are also encouraged that, at least for now, the issue with the intermittent petroleum contamination at Buxton Beach seems to have been alleviated.

“We actually didn’t have any odors after this contractor was on the site,” said Keisler, with FUDS, “and there hasn’t been any since.”

MANTEO — The structure that serves as the visitor center and park store for Bodie Island is closed indefinitely after fire damaged parts of the interior earlier this week.

The fire on Tuesday in the Bodie Island Double Keepers’ Quarters was extinguished with no reported injuries.

According to the National Park Service, staff from Eastern National, which operates the building’s retail store, spotted smoke and called 911 at around noon Tuesday. Everyone evacuated to safety.

Cape Hatteras National Seashore officials were evaluating the internal damage to the structure and working with the Nags Head Fire Department to investigate the cause.

The building will remain closed pending completion of the investigation and needed repairs.

The Nags Head Fire Department, upon arriving at the scene, reported seeing smoke coming from the structure’s four chimneys.

“Cape Hatteras National Seashore is grateful for the timely response to this afternoon’s fire by multiple local fire departments,” Cape Hatteras National Seashore Superintendent Dave Hallac said in a statement. “Their efforts minimized damages to this historic structure.”

In addition to Nags Head, the Roanoke Island Volunteer Fire Department, Kill Devil Hills Fire Department, Colington Fire Department and Dare County Emergency Medical Services all responded to the incident, according to the park service.

A portion of Buxton’s ocean shore will remain closed to the public as officials continue monitoring the section for likely contamination.

The closure entails three-tenths of a mile of shoreline adjacent to the Buxton Formerly Used Defense Site, or FUDS, an area that was as a submarine monitoring station by the U.S. Navy for decades.

In September 2023, soils on the beach adjacent to the site, also known as the Buxton Beach Access, tested positive for petroleum contamination.

The Dare County Department of Health and Human Services, in consultation with Cape Hatteras National Seashore, issued the updated public health advisory Tuesday.

The decision to keep this portion of beach closed “was made after factoring in the amount of contaminated soil and water removed by the Corps (of Engineers) and the prolonged period of time between the last report of apparent petroleum sheens or odors in the area,” according to a release.

About two-tenths of a mile of beach starting at the southernmost jetty in Buxton and continuing south was reopened.

Additional information on the Buxton beach access and conditions may be found online.

The hundreds of cold-stunned sea turtles that washed ashore after temperatures fell earlier this month on the Outer Banks have been given a second chance.

Over the last few weeks, staff at the Sea Turtle Assistance and Rehabilitation, or STAR, Center at the North Carolina Aquarium on Roanoke Island have been caring for close to 600 sea turtles that were cold stunned, which happens when water temperatures quickly drop before sea turtles can migrate to warmer water. Cold stunning can lead to death if not treated. 

The Roanoke aquarium’s Animal Husbandry Curator Leslie Vegas told Coastal Review Thursday that most of the sea turtles are rescued in the Pamlico Sound. They enter the sound through inlets because they are foraging for food in the subaquatic vegetation, or seagrass, beds. A few wash up on the ocean side, but the vast majority are rescued from the sound.

Vegas is among the more than 135 aquarium staff and volunteers to care for the 553 cold-stunned sea turtles delivered to the aquarium between Dec. 1 and Dec. 7.

As of Dec. 17, the aquarium had received 576 sea turtles including the state’s most common species, the loggerhead, green and Kemp’s ridley, according to the aquarium.

“Because we are still ensuring our numbers are accurate, we don’t have exact species counts yet — and because the event is not technically over — but for this event so far, we have received approximately 580 turtles, with the most being 163 in one day,” Vegas said. So far, 399 turtles have been released as part of this event, some are being cared for at other facilities and about 50 arrived dead or died shortly after arrival.

As of Friday afternoon, the STAR Center was caring for 60 animals, and more releases were expected to take place in the coming weeks, Vegas said subsequently. With temperatures expected to drop again, aquarium staff are preparing for more cold-stunned turtles. 

The North Carolina Wildlife Resources Commission manages the state’s sea turtles, which are protected under the federal Endangered Species Act.

“The great success in returning these turtles quickly to the wild is due to the combined efforts of many different volunteers and collaborators with the NCWRC Sea Turtle Project,” Commission biologist Matthew Godfrey said.

More than 20 different sea turtle project groups along the coast help monitor sea turtle nesting and stranding activities along the coast, including the Network for Endangered Sea Turtles, or N.E.S.T, the National Park Service, North Carolina Aquariums, the College of Veterinary Medicine at N.C. State University, the Coast Guard, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s National Marine Fisheries Service, and the Karen Beasley Sea Turtle Rescue and Rehabilitation Center.

For this recent cold-stunned event, aquarium staff, the STAR Center, and N.E.S.T. volunteers worked with Cape Hatteras National Seashore, the Wildlife Resources Commission, the Outer Banks SPCA, area veterinarian clinics, Phideaux fishing vessel, and the U.S. Coast Guard Stations at Hatteras Inlet and Fort Macon worked together to care for and release the sea turtles.

“Sea turtles are important to coastal ecosystems,” and because sea turtles are endangered species, any efforts to protect them are important, Vegas said.

Green sea turtles use sea grass beds as feeding grounds and they eat the subaquatic vegetation itself. “Just like plants on land, the SAVs and sea grass beds require ‘maintenance’ and ‘pruning,’ which the sea turtles provide. Without that maintenance, it’s possible that those beds would suffer enough damage to not thrive,” Vegas said.

Sea turtles use oceanic coastal shorelines to nest and lay eggs and these nests provide stabilization and nutrients to an ecosystem that is often nutrient depleted. These nutrients support the minimal plant life that exists on dunes, which also aid in shoreline stabilization, she continued.

Vegas explained that cold stuns occur naturally.

 “If the decrease in temperature is gradual, the turtles will naturally migrate to southern waters, but if there’s a rapid decrease, the turtles miss the environmental cue to migrate, and the stunning event occurs,” she said.

Sea turtles are exothermic and they cannot regulate their own body temperatures. When the temperature drops, typically below 50 degrees Fahrenheit, the sea turtles become weak and lethargic, sometimes appearing deceased due to their extreme inactivity and lethargy. The turtles usually float to the water’s surface and from there, winds, tides or both can wash the turtles onto the shore, she added. Cold-stun events have been documented since the 1800s, and because it is not preventable, the response to these events is human intervention and rehabilitation to rescue as many as possible.

When temperatures drop, “our partners with the Network for Endangered Sea Turtles, the National Park Service, and N.C. Wildlife Resources Commission scout the soundside shore for turtles and transport them to us at the aquarium,” Vegas said.

NEST Director Jerrica Rea told Coastal Review that the volunteer-run nonprofit organization is thankful for partners in the NPS, ferry system and aquarium.

“Without the collective work from everyone, managing an event like this would not be possible,’ Rea said.

During the cold-stun season that takes place from December to around March, NEST volunteers patrol the soundside waters of Hatteras Island looking for sea turtles.

“We monitor different things like wind direction and water temperature to determine when the turtles may start to struggle. Sea turtles will generally migrate to warmer waters as our water cools in winter but occasionally we will have a perfect storm like this event,” Rea said, referring to the cold-stunning from earlier this month.

The sea turtles are typically juveniles who are content to feed in sound waters and don’t get the cue to leave when the temperature goes from warm to cold quickly. The sudden drop in temperature and the prolonged nature of it led to NEST finding over 560 sea turtles in one week.

Those turtles are taken to a staging site in Buxton where NEST volunteers take measurements, photos and document them, Rea said. They are then transported to STAR center at the aquarium, a more than 100-mile round trip ride.

“As an all volunteer organization, we are extremely proud of the efforts from our cold stun team. They work in the worst conditions-rain, snow, wind and freezing temperatures. We have over 20 patrol responders, 50 staging site volunteers and many more transporters,” Rea said. “The dedication our volunteers have to rescuing sea turtles is indescribable. It’s an honor to be part of such an incredible team and to see the community come together to help this endangered species.”

Turtle triage, treatment

Once the turtle arrives at the aquarium, staff administer fluid therapy since the turtles have likely been exposed and may have become dehydrated while stunned.

The length, width and weight of each sea turtle is recorded as well as any abnormalities or injuries. Blood work determines if there are nutritional or other deficiencies, like organ impairment. Because their organs are not functioning optimally while stunned, additional medication is not typically dispensed until they are gradually brought to healthy, warm temperatures, Vegas explained.

Bringing sea turtles up to the right temperature cannot happen fast, either. For this process, the turtles are moved to different sections of the aquarium, each set at a slightly warmer temperature, to ensure that the warming is gradual.

The Roanoke Island aquarium uses an incident command system and emergency response in the form of triage, like how humans are triaged in emergency care, to rehabilitate the sea turtles.

“We split the turtles up based on the level of care necessary to release them, as well as by species and size. Some species can be housed together and some cannot. In an event this large, those that are most likely to survive are prioritized to maximize our number of turtles released,” Vegas said. “We provide supportive care to those with more complicated medical issues until we can devote more time to them, after healthier turtles are released.”

The sea turtles that only needed to be warmed up were released within two to four days of rescue. “The more complicated medical cases could be here for weeks or months depending on their rate of progress and the care they may require,” Vegas said.

“If the individual turtle has additional medical needs, we keep the turtle in house for treatment, to go through the full rehabilitation process that addresses their specific medical needs,” Vegas added, but if no other health issues are identified beyond cold stunning, the turtles are released to the Gulf Stream as quickly as possible after they are at temperature, their bloodwork is cleared by veterinary staff, and they exhibit normal sea turtle behaviors.

“The releases are made possible through our relationship with the U.S. Coast Guard at Cape Hatteras, who are kind enough to transport our turtles to the Gulf Stream,” Vegas said.

The incident command system ensures that all departments within the aquarium are engaged to provide excellent turtle care and supportive care for humans,” Vegas said.

“This event involved many partners and staff, and that has been the highlight of it all for me. Seeing the dedication and teamwork that was fostered, along with the animals that were saved, are the things we are most proud to share,” Vegas said.

Sea turtles that appear still or sluggish in the sound water or on a beach during winter months should not be pushed back into the water or moved. Report any turtles under duress to the Sea Turtle Stranding Hotline via N.E.S.T. at 252-441-8622.

The N.C. Aquarium on Roanoke Island operates under the N.C. Wildlife Resources Commission’s Sea Turtle Permit No. 24ST46.

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

BUXTON — When the Cape Hatteras Lighthouse was rescued 25 years ago from the edge of the Atlantic, the nation’s tallest brick beacon was relocated with just an ordinary airport beacon in its lantern room.

It could be argued that return of the majestic first order Fresnel lens atop the 1870 lighthouse will be nearly as remarkable a feat as moving the 4,800-ton tower about a half-mile inland. But to the man crafting the replica, it’s the apex of a 40-year fascination with the unique lens that began with another lighthouse.

Dan Spinella, owner of Artworks Florida Classic Fresnel Lenses, has been meticulously replicating the design of the original Cape Hatteras Lighthouse lens as part of the current comprehensive lighthouse restoration project. The new prisms, made of a super-strong acrylic, are dyed to exactly match the sea foam green of the glass prisms they’re replacing.

Spinella is likely the only man in the nation, maybe the world, who knows about manufacturing those prisms. But when he visited the 1874 St. Augustine Lighthouse in the 1980s, it was the first time he had been even inside a lighthouse.

“And when I saw the lens, it’s like, ‘Whoa, what the heck is this?’” Spinnella recalled during a recent telephone interview. “I had no idea.”

St. Augustine’s Fresnel lens, the same impressive size as the Hatteras lens, immediately captivated him and set off an unusually productive obsession. Before he knew it, Spinella, who then was and still is employed as an engineer at Walt Disney World, offered to take dimensions and do some drawings to help in the lens restoration.

“Yeah, I went from volunteer to volunteer/business, and it just evolved over the years,” he told Coastal Review, speaking from his Orlando home. “Nothing that I planned; it just kind of worked out.”

The website of the nonprofit St. Augustine Lighthouse and Maritime Museum credits the efforts of the Junior Service League of St. Augustine and others, including Spinella and Joe Cocking, the lampist who had later saved the fixed Fresnel lens atop Bodie Island Lighthouse, for restoring its lens after being damaged by a vandal’s gunshots.

After working on the St. Augustine project for about a year, Spinella, a professed history lover, said he had learned a lot about how Fresnel lenses worked. He started with engineering books from the 1850s he had located that were written by Scottish lighthouse engineer Thomas Stevenson, the father of writer Robert Louis Stevenson.

He found optic formulas that explained the lenses’ ability to refract and reflect light, allowing him to design a cross-section of the lens “perfectly,” he recalled. And while he kept learning, he kept going. Next, he volunteered at Ponce Inlet, Florida, then continued the work by helping to replace parts at other lighthouses. All along, he was experimenting with cast acrylic, machined acrylic.

“I tried several different ways of getting these prisms made,” Spinella said. “Then in 2004, I started making reproductions.”

Around that time, John Havel, then a graphic designer at the Environmental Protection Agency’s campus in the Raleigh area, had developed a fascination with the Cape Hatteras Lighthouse. After focusing on its original blueprints and plans and collecting old photographs, Havel recounted in a recent interview, he was soon doggedly researching deep into historic lighthouse archives.

“When you study the lighthouse, you see that it is this magnificent, incredible, amazing example of American Victorian architecture,” said Havel, who is now retired from the EPA and the owner of Havel Research Associates in Salvo, a Hatteras Island village north of Buxton.

The Hatteras lens, as well, is an extraordinary piece of art.

“Every first order lens is different,” he said. “There are no other lenses identical to the Cape Hatteras lens, or to the Bodie Island lens, or to the Currituck Beach Lighthouse lens. Every single factor except the height and circumference of the lens is different.”

There are a total of six orders of Fresnels lens, with the smallest able to be slipped into a purse.

A couple of years into his research, Havel recalled, he was visiting the office of the historian with Cape Hatteras National Seashore and noticed a small prism on his desk.

“And he started telling me about this guy down in Florida who made these lenses and wanted to offer a replicas lens through the park service for Hatteras,” he said.

But it wasn’t until 2015, after speaking about the lighthouse restoration at the Outer Banks Lighthouse Society Keepers Weekend, that Havel flew to Florida meet Spinella.

To put it mildly, Havel was impressed. In the years since, as a member of the Lighthouse Society board, and as a dedicated volunteer, he encouraged the National Park Service to tap Spinella’s expertise. Today, Havel is employed as a historic preservation consultant for Massachusetts-based contractor Stone & Lime Historic Restoration Services Inc., as well as an assistant and consultant for Spinella.

The $19.2 million restoration project, of which Spinella is being paid about $1.25 million, began in early 2024 and is expected to be completed by late spring or early summer 2025.

“He’s doing this entire thing,” Havel said of the skilled lens maker. “He’s doing this by himself, while he has a full-time job at Disney … He’s a genius.”

Initially, the park service was considering the possibility of restoring the original 1853 lens, the remains of which are on loan to the Graveyard of the Atlantic Museum in Hatteras, a part of the North Carolina Maritime Museums system, which under the state’s Department of Natural and Cultural Resources.

“Yes, we did talk about the option of doing that, and consulted with lampist Jim Woodward,” said National Park Service Deputy Chief of Cultural Resources Jami Lanier in a recent interview. “It was determined that it would probably not be feasible to do that for a couple of reasons (including) some issues with the frame of the lens not being exactly aligned to be able to accept the new prisms. And so it was felt that there could be some potential damage to the frame, or the lens itself, if that was attempted.”

Then there was the cost of replacing all the prisms — only 268 of the 1,000 or so prisms were salvaged — which “would have been astronomical,” she said.

The lens had been removed from the 1853 lighthouse, which was a taller version added to the 1803 tower, and installed in the1870 lighthouse, Lanier said. The lens was removed again in 1949, and in 1953 the lighthouse became part of Cape Hatteras National Seashore. But in the years before and after World War II, the lighthouse was essentially abandoned and the lens was vandalized, she said.

Lanier explained that Woodward and his team had removed the original pedestal from the Cape Hatteras Lighthouse in 2006, put it together at the museum with the remains of the lens stored in a park facility on Roanoke Island.

Lanier said that the park service also discussed the potential of retrofitting the original lens with acrylic or glass replacements.

“You know, we went through all those discussions,” she said. “But in the end, it was just decided not to retrofit the original lens either way, and we knew if we were going with the replica that it would be acrylic.”

Indeed, it would cost four to seven times more to make the replica prisms in glass, Spinella said. Some prisms in glass restorations he has done cost $4,000 each, and some were as much as $20,000 each. And multiplied by 1,008 prisms, that could mean millions of dollars. Plus, glass is heavier and would put an additional load on the structure, he said. The original lens weighed 4,500 pounds, while the reproduction will weigh a mere 1,600 pounds.

A first order Fresnel lens, which is shaped like a beehive, is 8 1/2 feet high and 6 feet wide. Not only is the acrylic lighter, Spinella also used anodized aluminum frames that are a third the weight of bronze. Also, the aluminum will not deteriorate or tarnish, but it looks the same as brass except it’s not quite as shiny.

“Polished brass looks absolutely beautiful when I install them, but I can go back a couple months later and they look terrible just because of the humidity and condensation in the lantern room,” he said.

In 2009, Spinella worked with Woodward, who has worked on more than 400 lenses, to measure the lens, and he went back to his workshop and created a 3D model of it. During the intervening years while the park service mulled over having a replica lens, Spinella had continued his experiments, perfecting his acrylic prisms. The initial cast acrylic lacked the quality he wanted, and he eventually settled on optical acrylic.

“It’s a very high-quality acrylic,” he said. “I mean, they use it in fighter jet windows, and it’s UV stable, and it’s easy to machine, sand and polish and it can be tinted.”

Optical acrylic also is clearer than glass and transmits more light, he added. Although it’s strong and durable, it doesn’t last as long as glass.

Importantly, the reflective and refractive ability is nearly the same, with only slight differences.

“It actually bends light a little,” he said. “It’s got a slightly lower index of refraction, so … I’ve adjusted the formulas and adjusted the profile of each prism and shape of curvatures according to the refractive index of acrylic.”

A modern Fresnel-specific LED bulb, installed on a little stand on the pedestal, is hooked up to a sophisticated controller that, at $10,000, costs more than the $8,000 LED, Spinella said. But even with the light source now drastically different than the original kerosene oil lamp, the prisms are in the same arrangement around it.

“That lamp was a flame or omnidirectional light, so it spread 360 degrees spherically in all directions,” Spinella explained. “So that was the purpose of these lenses, to capture as much of that light as possible.”

As Havel noted, another engineering feat that Spinella accomplished was his replication of the lens’ clockwork mechanism, which was based on the 1853 original at the Graveyard museum. There are no known photographs or even descriptions of the lens and its machinery, he said.

“Dan has replicated that with all new gears, metals and whatever (mechanisms) rotated the lens so that it would flash out to sea,” Havel said.

The clockwork had been run by hemp rope, which was extremely strong but messy.

“Hemp sheds,” Havel said. “Dan found synthetic rope that looks the same but isn’t hairy like hemp.”

The rotating beacon’s original flash pattern of every 10 seconds, instead of the former 71/2-second burst, is being restored, and it will continue to be visible for up to 20 miles. As Spinella explained it, each minute the mechanism rotates a quarter turn, a full rotation takes four minutes, “And what that’ll give you is a 10-second flash interval,” he said.

Each lighthouse has its unique flashing characteristic and daymark, which are listed for mariners by the U.S. Coast Guard.

Once Spinella and Woodward reinstall the beacon — probably in June — there will be a day when people who climb to the top of the tower will be able to see for themselves the mesmerizing beauty of the Cape Hatteras Lighthouse’s First Order Fresnel Lens.

Spinella said he has modified the lens with modern elements, but he said it’s still correct to consider the lens a replica because it follows the original design. For instance, while the clockwork mechanism and chariot wheels that rotated the lens are still part of it, the real rotation will now come from a 1/3-horsepower electric motor operated by a controller.

“I’ve done some things that make it more durable and more modernized,” he said. “But you really won’t see any of it.”

WANCHESE — The National Park Service’s historic architect overseeing structural rehabilitation at the Ocracoke Light Station is the featured speaker this week for the “Science on the Sound” lecture series at the Coastal Studies Institute on the ECU Outer Banks Campus.

Historical Architect George Jaramillo of the park service’s Outer Banks Group will present “Elevating Stations: Preserving the Ocracoke Light Station Double Keepers Quarters.” The free lecture is set for 6 p.m. Thursday.

With more than 20 years of architecture, heritage and design experience within the private and public sectors, Jaramillo explores the history, architectural significance and key adaptation strategies for preservation.

The monthly, in-person lecture series brings perspectives from all over the state and highlights coastal topics in northeastern North Carolina.

“For two centuries the Ocracoke Light Station has maintained watch over the waters of Silver Lake,” organizers said in a statement. “Today, its continued threat from stronger storms has brought the need for climate-forward adaptation preservation strategies. We explore the entanglement of history and adaptation within the site and the current strategies implemented at the Ocracoke Light Station Double Keepers Quarters. Old and new techniques are promoted for the rehabilitation of the structure providing ‘tangible interventions’ (Anderson et al, 2018) to adapt our unique maritime legacy for our changing futures.”

The program will also be livestreamed on the CSI YouTube channel for those unable to attend.

Dave Hallac called it.

Within 48 hours, the Cape Hatteras National Seashore superintendent’s prediction came true. Another unoccupied, imperiled home on Rodanthe’s ocean shore toppled into the Atlantic Ocean.

“I would not be the least bit surprised with this weekend’s king tide and elevated seas from the north winds if they collapse by Sunday,” Hallac said last week to the state’s Coastal Resources Commission. “I hope that doesn’t happen, but that’s possible.”

The house that is no more at 23241 Surf Side Drive crumbled some time during the night between Thursday and Friday. Its tattered remnants littered Rodanthe’s shore, forcing the Cape Hatteras National Seashore to temporarily close the beach.

The low-pressure system that descended on the North Carolina coast Thursday evening, whipping up strong wind gusts, elevated tides and heavy rain and the closure of N.C. Highway 12 between the Basnight Bridge and Rodanthe hindered cleanup operations.

All the while, national seashore officials kept an eye on two other threatened structures Hallac said were at imminent risk of collapse.

“This is going to be one of the most significant problems that Cape Hatteras National Seashore faces and, of course, many areas of the coast,” he said last week.

Two years had passed since Hallac last met with the coastal commission to update its members on a situation that is becoming increasingly common along the national seashore on the Outer Banks.

Hallac made the five-hour drive to Ocean Isle Beach last week to talk about what he anticipates to be a looming increase in threatened oceanfront structures as seas rise and possible solutions to address the problem.

It’s a topic, he said, that is important not only to the national seashore, “but what we’re seeing is really the tip of the iceberg,” as problems associated with coastal erosion along, not only areas of the East Coast, but also the rest of the country’s ocean shores.

Although Rodanthe’s beachfront is not the only erosion hot spot along the North Carolina coast, it has gained notoriety in recent years as house after house after house has succumbed to powerful ocean waves that are increasingly unattenuated because of the vanishing shore.

In the two years since Hallac last spoke to the commission, 10 houses have collapsed on the national seashore. Six of those, counting the house that fell last week, have broken apart and tumbled to the ocean since May.

This is occurring in spite of decades-long efforts to keep erosion at bay in, what by all accounts, is a story of how the government tried, and failed, to hold a barrier island in place.

‘The Great Wall of Carolina’

The story goes back more than 80 years, when Congress authorized the creation of the park — the first national seashore — in August 1937.

During that time, single men aged 18 to 25 could enlist in the Civilian Conservation Corps, one of a series of programs created under President Franklin Roosevelt’s New Deal, a government work program aimed at lifting the nation out of the Great Depression.

Roosevelt established the conservation corps in 1933 to improve America’s parks, public lands and forests.

Cape Hatteras National Seashore was officially established in 1953. The park includes 75 miles of ocean-facing beaches spanning portions of Dare and Hyde counties.

Within its boundaries are three lighthouses, two fishing piers, two marinas, two boat ramps and three airports.

More than 150,000 people stayed overnight last year in its four beach campgrounds. During that same time, the national seashore had more than 3 million visits, ones Hallac described as long-duration, high-density visits where people rent beach homes and stay for a week.

Nine villages are either adjacent to or within the national seashore, one with a dune system that was largely built by the conservation corps.

Workers in the program erected more than 600 miles of sand fencing – called The Great Wall of Carolina – during a dune-building effort, which Hallac said was “really the beginning of the fight-the-ocean stage.”

The black and white photographs Hallac displayed on a projection screen for the Coastal Resources Commission last week showed park service employees in the 1950s planting American beach grass to try and stabilize the dunes that had been partially created by the fencing.

In all, more than 13 million square feet of grasses and millions of trees and shrubs were planted to try to hold in place the barrier island, Hallac said, adding, “which is really nothing more than a pile of sand.”

The park service had a helicopter for arial fertilizer spraying on the dunes to help make the grasses grow as quickly as possible. As erosion and storms kept sweeping away the ocean shore, workers kept pushing sand up from the sea, back onto the beach.

Significant erosion in Buxton was easily tracked at the Cape Hatteras Lighthouse. The nearly 200-foot-tall beacon was built 1,500 feet from shore in 1870.

By 1919, only 300 feet of sand separated the lighthouse from the Atlantic Ocean.

“So, it just goes to show you how fast the erosion is in some areas of the Outer Banks,” Hallac said.

After 37 years and more than $20 million, virtually the entire federal investment in the park’s beaches and dunes, the “erosion control program had been lost to erosion control,” Hallac said.

“We decided we were now going to follow most of the National Park Service processes, the same policies that we have in places like Shenandoah National Park, Yellowstone National Park, which is to allow natural processes to occur, including erosion,” he said. “Even after investing a lot to try to control this, we just determined we were not successful. We could not keep up with it and so here we are.”

Today, nearly 7,000 feet of sandbags have been placed within the park facing N.C. Highway 12 to try and protect the vital roadway from the ocean.

Debris ‘becomes part of the beach ecosystem’

The breathtakingly tragic scene of an oceanfront littered for miles by debris from a collapsed house doesn’t fully capture the full impact fallen houses have on the shore.

Tens if not hundreds of thousands of remnants of tar paper, the layer of material typically installed beneath roofing shingles, ends up buried in the sand, Hallac said.

“You never get rid of all of this,” he said. “The debris associated with these home collapses becomes part of the beach ecosystem.”

Hallac hires biological technicians in the summers to oversee sea turtle nests and shorebirds. The technicians spend several hours every week picking up septic drain-field cells, diverter boxes and other pieces of septic systems that wash down the beach and come to rest on areas of the national seashore.

The park keeps handy a stack of signs supplied by the North Carolina Department of Environmental Quality’s Recreational Water Quality Program to post in the event of a wastewater spill caused every time a septic tank is compromised by the encroaching sea.

There were 23 septic spills on the national seashore between Aug. 12 and Oct. 1.

“This problem is going to get much worse with sea level rise,” Hallac warned.

A gauge the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration keeps at Oregon Inlet is tracking sea level rise at 5.56 millimeters per year, he said.

“When I started giving presentations like this it was in the 2 millimeters per year range, and this is expected to increase. But I can tell you right now, if it doesn’t increase at all, we will have a major problem based on the presence of threatened oceanfront structures,” Hallac said.

A recent study measuring erosion rates on the national seashore show that the beach is eroding and the shoreline is moving westward.

“What you’re seeing is an endpoint erosion rate of 4 meters per year and a linear regression rate of 3 meters per year,” Hallac said. “It doesn’t matter which one you pick. They’re both very rapid erosion rates.”

At these rates, he said, it’s time to start thinking about houses that are now across the street from oceanfront homes.

There are places like Avon, where dozens of houses will become threatened unless the beachfront is perpetually renourished or they are moved, Hallac said.

Those are some of the options in what he refers to as “the four Bs: build out, build back, build up, or, ultimately, build a boat.”

Beach nourishment has been successful along many areas of the North Carolina’s coast, he said, but it is not a silver bullet solution.

Renourishments are causing “an inadvertent loss of the barrier island area,” Hallac said.

“Normal barrier islands overwash. They deposit sand in the middle of the island. They build elevation and sometimes the sand gets washed over to the sound side. The marsh colonizes. You can maintain the width of the barrier island as it migrates slowly to the west. We have completely halted all of those processes. We have drowning at the interior of our barrier islands, and we now are having significant erosion of the sound side of our barrier islands,” he said.

Hallac said there had been several public meetings and expert panels where discussions centered on financial assistance, the role of public and private insurance, and legal and regulatory hurdles associated with threatened oceanfront structures.

“And I think what we’ve done is, we’ve put forward a series of ideas for further discussion that can help advocate this issue,” he said as he wrapped up his presentation. “There is no silver bullet, as I said before, but we really do need to work on this and come together to find solutions because this is a problem that is going to get worse over time.”

Commission Chair Renee Cahoon said threatened oceanfront structures are a never-ending problem up and down the North Carolina coast.

“We’re going to have to start looking at other solutions to help mitigate the damages because what we’re not covering, we’re cover the cleanup, but we’re not covering the damage of the water as well as to our sea turtles and other wildlife that’s out there,” she said. “It’s going to continue to grow I’m afraid as sea level rise keeps happening and erosion keeps getting worse.”

The sixth house to fall into the ocean in Rodanthe this year collapsed Thursday night, and Cape Hatteras National Seashore officials have temporarily closed the beach there to protect the public from the associated hazardous debris.

The National Park Service notified the public early Friday that the unoccupied structure at 23241 Surf Side Drive had crumbled into the ocean.

“Efforts to respond to and begin cleanup operations is currently limited due to severe weather conditions and the closure of N.C. Highway 12 between the Basnight Bridge and Rodanthe,” officials said, adding that they are communicating with the owners.

A look back: ‘Total mess’ after third Rodanthe house in four days falls

Visitors are being urged to avoid the beach and ocean for potentially many miles to the south of Rodanthe because of hazardous debris.

Threatened, unoccupied structures at G A Kohler Court and Sea Oats Drive are being monitored during the severe weather affecting the Outer Banks this weekend.

In the fall of 1927, G. Albert Lyon, millionaire businessman, gifted inventor, and renowned sportsman was restless and looking for a challenge.

It could be almost anything: a new gadget to tinker with in his home laboratory, a journey to an exotic country to hunt big game, or maybe a fall fishing adventure in Cape Hatteras, one of his favorite places in the world.

Lyon grew up in Philadelphia and worked as a mechanic. By day, he repaired engines, but at night, he tinkered and explored. Friends described the ebullient entrepreneur as bursting with energy and ideas. A dropout, Lyon was smarter by years than many of his better-educated companions, and more ambitious as well.

At the age of 19, he was awarded his first patent for an automobile bumper, and soon thereafter borrowed $100 to start a manufacturing company. As with many of Lyon’s ideas, the one for a bumper came from everyday life. One morning, Lyon was walking to his job at the garage when he saw a woman lose control of her sedan and crash into a street lamp, crumpling the hood. The accident left Lyon to wonder why the sedan didn’t have some sort of protective girdle or skirt, and he set about designing one. His timing was impeccable. Automobiles were transforming the daily lives of Americans and sales were booming. Within a few years, Lyon had earned his first million; many more would follow.

Patents would also keep coming, year after year: for bumpers, hub caps and stainless-steel wheel covers, fender wells and skirts, steering wheel attachments, luggage carriers, rims, disks, radiator baffles, side mirrors, horns and, later, helmets, sailboats, even aluminum masts for yachts. In all, Lyon would be awarded nearly 1,000 patents, establishing him as one of the most prolific inventors in history.

But Lyon’s unique spirit of inquiry wasn’t limited to tinkering. He also painted portraits, designed his own vacation home, studied the planets and stars, dove on coral reefs in the Bahamas, kept two or three chess games going at once, and amused his friends with his skills at the slingshot.

Lyon later moved to Allenhurst, New Jersey, from Philadelphia, but also spent part of his time in Detroit.

According to century-old newspaper stories, Lyon first visited the Outer Banks in the early 1920s to go fishing with his friends Rex Beach, a popular author of outdoor adventures tales, and Van Campen Heilner, a silver spoon explorer, and the son of a wealthy coal magnate. Heilner and Lyon both lived near Asbury Park, on the northern New Jersey coast, then a kind of arcadia for sportsmen, artists, and writers. They fished and hunted for waterfowl along Barnegat Bay with the noted illustrator, Frank Stick, who also lived nearby.

During one of their adventures, Lyon’s yacht, Alberta, exploded and burned to the waterline near the mouth of the Barnegat Inlet. Lyon and Stick saved themselves by jumping into the swirling waters.

Lyon and his pals made the long journey to the Outer Banks to take advantage of the world-famous fishing there. The warm waters of the Gulf Stream hug the coastline near Cape Hatteras, drawing some of the Atlantic’s largest and most-prized species – yellowfin tuna, blue marlin, and red drum.

Heilner already had a small fishing camp between Hatteras Village and the inlet. He also owned a 1920 Model T outfitted with fishing rods and gear, known locally as “The Pride of Pamlico.” They used the sedan to travel up and down the banks in search of fishing holes, landing 100 channel bass during one adventure, scores of red drum during another.

Lyon decided it was time to own a piece of Hatteras for himself. He purchased a 1,500-acre tract at the southern tip of Hatteras Island, not far from the world-famous inlet, from Andrew S. Austin, a local merchant. The following year, Austin helped Lyon build a hunting lodge, later named the Gooseville Gun Club. The simple structure wasn’t as large or elaborate as some of the other hunting lodges, but it served its purpose and over the years was greatly enjoyed by Lyon and his guests. Aptly, the land surrounding the lodge was shaped like a fishhook and included a creek, nearby sand reef and two miles of unspoiled oceanfront.

Luther Austin, the brother of Andrew and the longtime manager of the hunting lodge, recalled that Lyon would “travel down to Gooseville on his yacht,” which was also named Alberta, for one of his daughters, to hunt and fish with his family and friends. Rex Beach was a frequent companion and kept a houseboat nearby.

“He stopped in here and they hunted. This feller Rex had a houseboat. He had all of his hunting equipment on it. They stopped in here and old man Lyon was with him. That’s why he built the place here,” Luther Austin explained to Elizabeth Farrow and several co-authors in a history of the Gooseville Gun Club.

The hunting parties used a small boat to get out to the sand reef, where they had blinds, batteries and sink boxes, Austin recalled. The boxes were made from concrete and sunk in the sand. When the tide came in, they pulled a canvas cover around themselves and used iron decoys to sink the wooden batteries low in the water. Of course, there were wooden decoys as well. So many, it took several trips to haul them all out, Austin told the authors.

In the 1930s, Lyon hired a well-known local pilot, David Driskill, to ferry wealthy guests from Manteo and other locations to his hunting lodge. The design and operation of airplanes had improved dramatically since the Wright Brothers made their first heavier-than-air flight in 1903. But coastal flight, with its unpredictable winds, layers of marine fog, and beach landings, was still challenging. As if to prove the point, Driskill lost one of his wheels during a takeoff when it became stuck in the beach sand, according to published reports.

During the Great Depression, Driskill delivered mail, food and supplies to the federal work camps scattered up and down the Outer Banks. Thousands of poor, itinerant workers were building an artificial sand dike from the Virginia border to Ocracoke Island. According to a 2018 Driskill profile by the historian Casey Huegel, Driskill also flew more than 500 injured workers from Cape Hatteras to a Marine Corps base hospital in Norfolk. Later, Driskill became one of the first test pilots for prototype helicopters and flew one over the Outer Banks photographing the government’s sand dune. In October, 1949, Driskill was killed while testing an experimental helicopter near Moorestown, New Jersey.

Over the years, Lyon entertained scores of visitors at the Gooseville Gun Club. Many of them were wealthy business acquaintances and artists. At the same time, he tried to maintain good relations with locals from the nearby villages. In 1930, he donated $35,000 for a club building and library for high school girls in Hatteras. The hope, speculated one writer, was that the club would positively direct the girls’ “energies which in some instances, might otherwise go astray.”

Lyon’s attitude toward the locals stiffened after he found hundreds of red drum left to rot on the beach by a careless angler. Afterward, he positioned a guard on his property and angered locals by blocking them from hunting and fishing. For a time, he also battled efforts by the National Park Service to condemn his property for a national seashore on the Outer Banks. In 1954, Lyon finally sold his club and land to the Park Service for $47,000.

Lyon shifted his attention to the tiny tropical island of Bimini, in the Bahamas, where he built a million-dollar mansion on Paradise Point and spent his days snorkeling and fishing the gin-clear waters for bonefish and tuna. In 1957, a writer for Sports Illustrated profiled Lyon, calling him “The Commodore of Bimini.” The writer described a typical Lyon day this way:

“Guests find a typical day can begin in the predawn darkness with the Commodore rousing the house to come look at a favorite star through his telescope on the roof. A swim in the pool or sea may follow, and after breakfast the day really gets under way. The morning may be taken up with deep sea fishing for giant tuna or blue marlin; or a skin-diving expedition, led by the Commodore, to the wrecks around the reefs and an hour of water skiing, and always a continuous chess game aboard either of the two fishing cruisers which act as floating bases for the day’s sports.”

HATTERAS ISLAND — With ongoing removal of petroleum-contaminated soil from Buxton Beach, along with a considerable amount of remnant building debris trucked away since September, a community meeting hosted Monday evening by U.S. Army Corps of Engineers representatives revealed notably less frustration and even a hint of a friendly partnership vibe.

“I expect them to do the very best they can,” said Jeff Dawson, a member of the Buxton Civic Association, speaking after the meeting at the Fessenden Center in Buxton in reference to the Corps’ current response.

That’s a big difference from the alarm bells the newly formed group of village residents had been ringing about the petroleum pollution and old building debris first exposed on the eroding beach by a series of storms about a year and a half earlier.

“It’s like ‘Yay!’” Dawson added. “But why did they take so long?”

Brief updates of the cleanup project were provided, but the main impetus for the meeting was to present an overview about creating a Restoration Advisory Board, or RAB in government-speak.

In a slide presentation, Alexandra Jangrell-Tackett, program manager with Dawson, the Corps’ public outreach contractor, explained that a RAB would provide an option for the community to share information about work at what is officially known as Buxton Naval Facility, a Formerly Used Defense Sites, or FUDS, as a way to keep residents updated on the actions taking place at the Buxton Naval Facility.

The 50-acre site is entirely located within the Cape Hatteras National Seashore.

While a RAB allows for “concerns, needs or values” of a community to be conveyed, similar to a public meeting, it is more formal, with two co-chairs who conduct regular meetings that have agendas and minutes. It serves as a liaison between the Corps and the affected community.

“It’s important to note that a RAB is not a decision-making body,” Jangrell-Tackett said. “However, it’s that avenue for communication exchange.”

RABs are established with “sustained and sufficient” interest from communities where active environmental restoration projects are being done at Department of Defense sites, Jangrell-Tackett said during her presentation.

But a community also has the option of just holding public meetings concerning the cleanup work, she said.

While a RAB allows for “concerns, needs or values” of a community to be conveyed similar to a public meeting, Jangrell-Tackett explained, it is more formal, with two co-chairs — one from the community, one from the defense department — who conduct regular meetings that are structured with agendas, a mission statement, operational procedures and minutes.

Each RAB could have up to 30 members, each with two-year terms in the role of liaisons.

A survey on the community’s interest in a RAB was provided by the Corps, which will evaluate it after the deadline in 30 days.

Brian Harris, a member of the Buxton Civic Association, said after the presentation that he was very pleased with the Corps’ latest cleanup efforts and willingness to communicate with the community.

“Everything’s great — we love it,” he said. “Obviously, we want the RAB.”

Harris added that either a member or the overall association would be willing to serve as the RAB community member, but they’ll know more after the results of the survey are completed and further discussion is held with the Corps.

Since the Corps’ FUDS office took responsibility in 1991 for environmental restoration at the former Naval base near today’s Buxton Beach, it had removed 50 storage tanks and 4,000 tons of petroleum-contaminated soil. It has also conducted groundwater remediation and continued monitoring.

After a series of summer storms in 2023 exposed huge chunks of concrete that was once bits of buried Navy buildings, surfers and other locals started noticing strong diesel odors at the beach and a sheen in the ocean.

FUDS investigators responded, but over the months they had had difficulty determining the source of the intermittent petroleum stench.

Then, in September, more storms left an even stronger petroleum odor on the beach, resulting in the current, more visibly aggressive FUDS response.

“It was really that event that was a catalyst to get us out to that site,” said Col. Ronald Sturgeon, the Corps’ Savannah District commander, while speaking with reporters after the meeting.

Sturgeon noted that severe erosion had complicated detection of the petroleum.

“There was 15 more feet of beach there … That Building 19, the major source of the infrastructure, was 2 to 300 meters away from the ocean,” he said. “Now it’s in the ocean.”

After being back and forth doing testing at the site for more than a year, the Corps finally saw the evidence before their eyes in September, and responded.

Related: Work gets underway to pinpoint Buxton pollution source

“The release of the petroleum out of the site was a shock,” he said. “My team really pulled together and got a contractor to the site in record time. It was under two weeks … for this type of thing, it’s actually really fast.

“And once we started digging up some of the soil, removed some of the infrastructure and started to take those readings, yeah, there was a lot of (petroleum) contamination there that we weren’t tracking.”

Sturgeon said that the contractor had removed a large amount of infrastructure in order to test and access the petroleum contaminated-soil underneath, but the Corps does not have the authority to remove any additional remnant infrastructure unless it is hampering the petroleum contamination removal.

The contractors also removed about 18,000 gallons of water from the site, which was put in a machine to sort out whatever contaminants it may contain, he said.

Excavations began Oct. 2, according to the Corps, and were expected to be completed in 60 days. To date, 505 cubic yards and 11,000 gallons of petroleum-impacted soil and water, as well as approximately 82,400 pounds of concrete, 1,133 feet of pipes and 1,030 feet of metal cables and wires have been removed, the Corps said.

A contract for comprehensive sampling is expected to be awarded by Nov. 15, Sturgeon said. The sampling will delineate the nature and extent of any petroleum contamination remaining at the FUDS property.

The cleanup will be considered completed after it falls within the state Department of Environmental Quality standards. The Corps is also working closely with the National Park Service.

“We have focused in on immediate action that was required in specific zones,” Sturgeon said. “We will continue to sample within the FUDS boundary.”

But, Sturgeon said, the source of the petroleum is still unknown.

“If I knew that, I tell you what, we’d solve the problem already,” he said, adding the mystery is why the Corps is doing further work. “We have plans to sample the entire site.”

North Carolina Coastal Resources Commission members, during the their November meeting, are expected to consider adopting rules to reinstate Jockey’s Ridge as an area of environmental concern.

The two-day meeting, which will also include an update on Cape Hatteras National Seashore, from Superintendent Dave Hallac begins at 3 p.m. Nov. 13 at the Ocean Isle Beach Town Hall, 111 Causeway Drive. The public may attend the meeting in-person or watch by web conference. The meeting is expected to reconvene at 9 a.m. Nov. 14.

The Coastal Resources Advisory Council will meet in-person only Nov. 13, at 1 p.m., also at the town hall.

An in-person public comment period is scheduled for 4:30 p.m. on Nov. 13.

Development activities in and around Jockey’s Ridge State Park in Nags Head have been regulated since 1984, when the commission designated the sand dune system as a unique geologic feature area of environmental concern.

In October 2023, the Rules Review Commission returned during the periodic rules review process the rules designating Jockey’s Ridge as an area of environmental concern. The rules were removed from the state Administrative Code. The commission then adopted emergency and temporary rules reestablishing the area of environmental concern and use standards, according to division documents.

The emergency rules went into effect on Jan. 3, and expired May 13, when the Rules Review Commission objected to the temporary rule. The commission decided to go ahead with permanent rulemaking on April 25, which designated Jockey’s Ridge as an area of environmental concern with use standards that are nearly identical to the original 1984 standards.

The Division of Coastal Management held a public hearing Oct. 15 at Jockey’s Ridge State Park. There were 17 oral comments all in support of the redesignation, and the division received 32 written comments also in support.

Also during the meeting Nov. 13-14, the commission is expected to consider adopting a handful of rules related to the permitting process, the fiscal analysis for the existing bridges and culverts replacement general permit, and consider oceanfront setback variances in Avon, Nags Head and Oak Island, riparian setbacks in Holden Beach, and impervious surface limits in Figure Eight Island  

A full meeting agenda and briefing materials can be found on the commission’s website. Times indicated on the agenda for individual items are subject to change.

A contractor out of New York has been selected to begin next month a five-month-long paving project at Oregon Inlet Marina.

Cape Hatteras National Seashore, which owns the marina, announced Wednesday that Yorkshire Industries was awarded the contract to remove the top layer of asphalt, regrade and apply a new layer of asphalt in the approximately 195,650 square foot parking lot.

The project is expected to be completed by March 31, 2025.

The resurfaced parking lot will be elevated to address flooding issues, and the parking lot striping and drainage system will also be repaired, according to seashore officials.

The road-based fueling station will be closed for about 45 days, starting Nov. 4. Access to the public kayak launch and to the Oregon Inlet Campground’s RV dump station will be closed starting Dec. 9 for about 60 days.

“Campers should make other arrangements during this time,” officials said.

Access to water-based marina charters, the future air station, the public boat ramps and Oregon Inlet Fishing Center’s replacement facility, restaurant and tackle shop, are not expected to be impacted by the paving project.

The Army Corps of Engineers announced Monday that it is set to host a presentation next week to update the public on the ongoing response to petroleum pollution on the beach in Buxton.

The presentation set for 7-9 p.m. Monday, Nov. 4, at the Fessenden Center, 46830 N.C. Highway 12 in Buxton will also include information regarding a restoration advisory board related to the cleanup at the Buxton Naval Facility Formerly Used Defense Sites, or FUDS property near the original location of the Cape Hatteras Lighthouse.

The presentation will be followed by an open house session.

The Navy formerly used the as a submarine monitoring station, and then the Coast Guard subsequently used the property until it was returned to the National Park Service.

The Corps is working to remove visible petroleum-contaminated soil and collect soil samples in areas along the beach and dunes where odors and sheen have been observed.

The Corps said subsequent actions will include comprehensive soil and groundwater sampling in the area to delineate the nature and extent of petroleum contamination.

For more information, visit the Army’s Buxton Naval Facility project website
or email Cesas-FUDS@usace.army.mil.

A meeting is planned for early November for the public to learn more about the ongoing excavation of petroleum soil and other infrastructure at a former military site in Buxton.

Army Corps of Engineers Savannah District representatives scheduled the meeting to begin at 7 p.m. Monday, Nov. 4, at the Fessenden Center in Buxton. The meeting will include remarks, an overview presentation, and a chance for visitors can speak to subject matter experts until 9 p.m.

The Buxton Naval Facility Formerly Used Defense Sites property is at the Buxton Beach Access within Cape Hatteras National Seashore. The access has been closed since Sept. 1, 2023, because of “petroleum contamination that has been entering the ocean on a recurring basis and the remnants of unsafe military infrastructure,” according to Dare County.

Since the last Corps’ last news release dated Oct. 9, excavation work has continued at the site, and some remnant infrastructure was removed from the beach so the contractors could access and excavate any underlying contaminated soil, according to a news release from the Corps Friday.

“As a reminder, the area is an active construction site,” Terry Brooks, Army Corps of Engineers mechanical engineer and on-site manager, said in a statement. “For safety reasons, it is off-limits to anyone other than those working there or the National Park Service personnel, and the public should remain outside of the roped off area.”

Removed so far from the site are 37,000 pounds of concrete, 400 feet of pipes, 50 feet of cable/wire, 75 feet of listening cable that was used to detect enemy warships off the coast, and 45.5 cubic yards of petroleum-soil, Corps officials said. Once all excavations are completed, the contractor will replace any removed sand and restore the beach.

The Coast Guard completed a site inspection report of the former facility, identifying lead in the soil and groundwater near the former small arms range, which belonged to the Navy. The Buxton property does not have any open projects that address the small arms range.

“In anticipation of creating a new environmental restoration project and to prepare a Project Eligibility Recommendation, the Army Corps of Engineers is gathering information, to include the Coast Guard’s (site inspection) Report, about the small arms range. Project approval is required for environmental restoration activities to occur. The timeline is currently undetermined,” officials said.

The second Rodanthe house to collapse into the ocean within 24 hours fell Friday night.

Cape Hatteras National Seashore officials announced that Dare County dispatch called at 9:18 p.m. Friday about the collapse at 23009 G A Kohler Court.

“Seashore law enforcement rangers arrived on scene and confirmed that the unoccupied, one-story house—the same house that sustained damages as a result of the first house collapse of the day—had collapsed and apparently washed out into the ocean before the bulk of it returned to the beach at the south end of G A Kohler Court,” officials said in a press release.

Related: Another house collapses in Rodanthe; 8th since 2020

Debris had apparently washed out into the ocean “before the bulk of it returned to the beach at the south end of G A Kohler Court.”

Park officials urge visitors to stay out of the water and wear hard-soled shoes when walking on the beach to avoid injuries from hazardous floating debris and nail-ridden wooden debris. Due to potentially dangerous debris on the beach and in the water to the north and south of the collapse site, temporary beach closures for public safety may be necessary.

Park officials said they are in communications with the property owner of 23009 G A Kohler Court and expect a contractor to be secured for debris cleanup.

National Park Service staff will be on the beach again today to assist with moving debris above the high tide line.

Debris has been seen for miles to the south of the collapse site.

The collapse of the house at 23009 G A Kohler Court was the ninth house to collapse on park beaches during the past four years.

Learn more about the threatened oceanfront structures that border the Seashore on its website.

Reprinted from Island Free Press

Another oceanfront home in Rodanthe collapsed Friday during the early morning hours.

This is the third home on Cape Hatteras National Seashore beaches to collapse in 2024, and the eighth since 2020.

The four-bedroom, three-bathroom house at 23001 G A Kohler Court in Rodanthe was built in 1992 and was owned by a resident of Hampton, Virginia. It was unoccupied at the time of the collapse and had a total structure and land tax value of $280,600, according to Dare County records.

National Park Service officials are urging visitors to avoid the beach and stay out of the water near the north end of Rodanthe, and potentially for miles to the south. In addition, the seashore is monitoring an adjacent house that sustained damages because of the house collapse.

Dangerous debris may be present on the beach and in the water to the north and south of the collapse site, which will likely lead to temporary beach closures for public safety.

A debris removal contractor, hired by the property owner, is expected to begin cleanup work Friday. Debris removal activities may also be conducted by National Park Service staff.

Earlier this year, an unoccupied home in the G A Kohler Court area collapsed Aug. 16 and a home at the end of Ocean Drive in Rodanthe collapsed on May 28.

In March 2023, an oceanfront home collapsed at East Point Drive in Rodanthe.

On May 10, 2022, two unoccupied homes located on Ocean Drive, collapsed within a 12-hour period. 

In February 2022 and May 2020, two additional Rodanthe homes in the Ocean Drive vicinity also collapsed into the ocean.

All of these home collapses resulted in a large debris field on Hatteras Island, which was addressed and cleaned up by the National Park Service, local volunteers, and/or contractors enlisted by the homeowners themselves.

No personal injuries were reported in connection with any of the collapses.

This story is provided courtesy of the Island Free Press, a digital newspaper covering Hatteras and Ocracoke islands. Coastal Review partners with the online publication to provide readers with more environmental and lifestyle stories of interest along our coast.

BUXTON — As storm-roiled ocean surf continued to unbury noxious reminders of an old submarine surveillance base, aggressive action is finally being taken this week to address the ongoing blight of a Cape Hatteras National Seashore beach.

Contractors for the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers are scheduled to start work Friday near Old Lighthouse Beach in an intensified effort to locate the source of intermittent fuel odors and oily soil clumps first exposed more than a year ago by storm erosion.

“The overall objective of the response action is to remove visible petroleum-impacted soils from the beach and dunes,” said Cheri Pritchard, media operations chief at the Corps’ Savannah office, in a Sept. 18 email response to questions from Coastal Review. The specific amount of material that will be removed, Pritchard said in the email, was “yet to be determined.”

The Corps in 1991 designated the former Naval facility as a Formerly Used Defense Site, or FUDS property. The Corps has since taken responsibility for cleanup of petroleum infrastructure and spills and leaks in surrounding soil at the 50-acre site. But during numerous visits over recent months to the site, the FUDS teams said that the current source of the petroleum had been difficult to pinpoint due to increased erosion, ever-changing conditions and the passage of time.

Bay West, a St. Paul, Minnesota-based environmental services company, was recently awarded a contract by the Corps to remove contaminated soils at the site.

According the information the FUDS team provided to Pritchard in the email, the contractors will work in up to four quadrants of various sizes along the beach and dunes, likely using heavy equipment such as excavators and roll-off containers.

“The contractor will excavate and containerize the petroleum-impacted soils from these areas and then properly transport and dispose of the material at an offsite waste management facility,” according to the email.

Depths of excavations of oily soil will vary, but generally would be expected to go down to the water table.

After fielding numerous questions and concerns from the community during the Sept. 3 Dare County Board of Commissioners meeting, Col. Ronald Sturgeon, the Corps’ Savannah District commander, traveled down to Buxton with other Corps officials.

About a week later, the Corps announced that it would send a district-level team in response to the fuel sheen and odors to monitor the site. According to the FUDS email, the team, which will stay until the contractors are onsite, has performed test pits on the beach and west of the dunes to identify petroleum-impacted soils.

 “We are committed to the safety of the community. Together with our federal, state and local partners, we’re going to find the contamination, and we’re going to remove it,” Lt. Gen. Scott A. Spellmon, Corps of Engineers commanding general, said in a Sept. 9 press statement.

In September 2023, the National Park Service closed three-tenths of a mile of Buxton Beach after reports of oily peat clumps on the beach, a strong odor of diesel, and an oily sheen in the nearshore ocean.

In addition to the fuel issues, the beach was littered with remnants of Naval base infrastructure, including large chunks of concrete and rusted rebar and wiring.

In the year since, the debris has been covered or partially covered by sand, then reexposed, depending on storms, tides and winds. And the fuel smells and sheen have also come and gone, although their appearance is more mysterious. But as the ocean eats away at the shoreline, each exposure seems worse than the time before.

Related: ‘Strong petroleum smells’ lead to expanded beach closure

With strong northeast winds on Sept. 5 carrying powerful petroleum odors along the beach near the FUDS location, as well as exposing more debris, Cape Hatteras National Seashore announced in a press release that it was expanding the size of an already-closed beach area.

“The precautionary expansion, implemented in consultation with the Dare County Department of Health and Human Services, closes the beach from the southern end of the location of beachfront homes in the village of Buxton, located at the end of Old Lighthouse Road, to approximately 0.25 miles south of the old lighthouse jetties,” according to the statement.

“We are working with the Coast Guard Sector N.C. and the EPA’s Regional Response team to see if there is some way the saturated sections of petroleum soil that are being uncovered can be removed to mitigate the releases into the ocean,” Dave Hallac, the superintendent of National Parks of Eastern North Carolina, said in a Sept. 5 email.  “We are also asking if something can be done to prevent the sheens that are coming out of the sand/water interface from washing into the ocean.”

Hallac was unavailable to be interviewed for this report.

Although the Buxton Naval Facility, decommissioned in 1982, qualified as a FUDS property — a status for sites transferred outside Department of Defense control prior to Oct. 1986 — the Savannah district says it does not have the authority to remove the remnant infrastructure from the property.

Still, in the process of removing petroleum-impacted soil, if it is found under remaining infrastructure, the Corps will respond.

“The response action will include excavating, with the possible removal, of petroleum-impact soil beneath some of the remnant infrastructure which may require removal of limited amounts of infrastructure that is incidental to accessing the impacted soil,” the FUDS team said in the email.

The site cleanup is made more complicated by the fact that the Coast Guard most recently used the property as a base until 2010, and left behind its own hazards, which are currently being reviewed by the Coast Guard.

According to a portion of its special use permit issued in 1956 to the Navy that the Cape Hatteras National Seashore cited on its website, it appears that the Navy may have slipped out of town before meeting its part of the deal.

Condition 11 of the permit states that “The permittee shall remove all structures, foundations, and pavements, and clean up and restore the site prior to or immediately following termination of use.”

“The Navy concluded operations at NAVFAC Cape Hatteras in June 1982;” the park service website said, “however, all buildings and infrastructure remained at the site.”

But with the Navy long gone and the Corps saying it lacks authority to get rid of the growing amount of debris, all eyes are now focused on getting rid of the petroleum pollution that is washing into the Atlantic and coating the beach.

The debris cleanup will be for another day.

Travelers using N.C. Highway 12 on the Outer Banks should expect the return to off-season speed limits Monday and expect a short delay in Rodanthe early Tuesday morning.

North Carolina Department of Transportation officials announced Friday that speed limits will return to 45 mph from their seasonal speed limits of 35 mph in areas of Rodanthe, Waves, Salvo, Corolla, Frisco and parts of Cape Hatteras National Seashore, such as near the Haulover Parking Lot south of Avon.

Speed limits were lowered May 13 ahead of peak travel season. Seasonal speed limits will return May 15, 2025.

Motorists are advised to continue driving with caution, as there are still many motorists, bicyclists and pedestrians on the Outer Banks in the fall,” officials said.

North Carolina Department of Transportation crews are expected to reinstall the speed limit signs along sections of N.C. 12 on Monday, weather permitting, officials said.

NCDOT crews also intend to close at 5:30 a.m. Tuesday the intersection of Trade Winds Drive and N.C. Highway 12 in Rodanthe to remove an unused overhead sign structure. There is no detour.

There is no detour for the closure that should last about 20 minutes. Motorists should plan accordingly, officials said.

Because of “strong petroleum smells” noted early Thursday, the Cape Hatteras National Seashore staff has temporarily expanded the boundaries of a previously closed section of Buxton beach adjacent to a former military site.

About 0.2 miles of beachfront where the U.S. Navy and Coast Guard had bases from 1956 until 2010 have remained closed since Sept. 1, 2023, “after naturally occurring barrier island erosion uncovered potentially hazardous infrastructure associated with the Navy and Coast Guard bases and visitors reported a strong smell of petroleum.” Since then, the park staff has been working with other agencies to mitigate the issue.

Staff said that over the past 24 to 36 hours, several feet of sand had washed away, exposing the soil and groundwater. The erosion uncovered a significant amount of hazardous remnant Navy and Coast Guard infrastructure, such as concrete, rebar, wires, PVC and metal pipes, metal fragments, and cables that have been left in the ground.

Around 8:30 a.m. Thursday, staff reminded visitors that the 0.3-mile-long section of beach was closed at what is now the Buxton Formerly Used Defense Site, or FUDS, because the “soil and groundwater that is apparently contaminated with petroleum from historic military use of the site is now exposed to the beachfront during low tide, and wave action during high tide.”

About an hour later and after consulting Dare County Department of Health and Human services, staff said the closure had been expanded 0.25 miles south of the old lighthouse jetties. The closure includes the beach in front of the southern groin and the Old Lighthouse Beach parking areas.

“The odors were impacting the area due to the strong northeast winds and erosion which is apparently exposing historic petroleum contamination at the FUDS,” according to the 9:30 a.m. Thursday update.

Seashore staff reported the observed petroleum exposure to the National Response Center, operated by the Coast Guard, Army Corps of Engineers and other state agencies that assist with pollution response. Staff also asked the interagency Regional Response Team, which coordinates response and provide technical advice during oil spills or pollution events, for help.

The closure may change over the coming days based on ongoing field observations and will update the public as information comes available, staff said.

Historical information about the former military site is at http://go.nps.gov/buxtonbeach. Recent and historical photos of the site are in the Buxton Beach Access photo album. 

Cape Hatteras National Seashore is teaming up with researchers and government representatives to begin a multiyear study on transportation and resource management challenges on Ocracoke Island.

Working with the University of North Carolina Chapel Hill, North Carolina State University, Duke University, East Carolina University, North Carolina Department of Transportation, Hyde County and Tideland Electric Membership Corp., the study is to answer a series of questions relating to transportation adaptation and mitigation strategies to improve transportation reliability and management of natural barrier island processes.

An information and feedback session is scheduled from 1-2:30 p.m. Sept. 4 at the Ocracoke Community Center.

“Transportation strategies that have been used for decades to maintain N.C. Highway 12 and the South Dock Ferry Terminal can impact seashore lands and may have inadvertently contributed to the low elevations and narrow island widths that currently make transportation susceptible to disruption from multiple sources including ocean overwash, soundside flooding and heavy precipitation events,” according to a seashore release.

The overall goal of the project is to inform decision making as Cape Hatteras National Seashore, NCDOT, Hyde County and the village of Ocracoke work to address transportation and resource management-related challenges along the east end of Ocracoke Island as well as access to and from Hatteras Island.

The results from initial modeling and public feedback will be incorporated into the second year of research, which will evaluate the effects of other transportation strategies before concluding with a second information session during the summer of 2025.

To learn more about the study, including additional opportunities to provide feedback, visit the website.

RODANTHE — It’s as awesome as it is awful to watch the ocean take down a house, as happened again last week on an eroded beach in Rodanthe.

Once again, the ocean’s power was pumped up by a storm, this time Hurricane Ernesto churning far offshore, and once again, the stunning image of the otherwise sturdy looking house swaying on its pilings before collapsing into the surf was caught on video and shared with national media.

It’s the seventh house within the Cape Hatteras National Seashore to be taken by the sea over the last four years. But it undoubtably will not be the last.

“I’m so disappointed in what happened,” Cape Hatteras National Seashore Superintendent Dave Hallac told Coastal Review Monday. “But I’m not the least bit surprised.”

Related: Cleanup continues after beach house collapses in Rodanthe

Hallac said he received a phone call at about 5:30 p.m. Friday informing him that the unoccupied house at 23214 Corbina Drive, which was teetering in the surf for days, had fallen.

State and federal laws currently seem powerless to prevent houses on eroded beaches from continuing to fall into the ocean and spreading debris for miles over public and private lands. Homeowners cannot collect on their National Flood Insurance Program policy until the house is destroyed, and even then, only up to a maximum of $250,000.

Last year, the National Park Service, through a pilot program, was able to buy out two threatened oceanfront homes that it later demolished, but the grant program is limited.

So for now, homeowners who can’t afford to move their houses from the ocean, or those who don’t have the land to move it to, have few if any options to get it off the beach.

In addition to correspondence from Dare County, the National Park Service had sent letters of concern to the owners on June 5 and again on Aug. 14, Hallac said.

After the collapse, the superintendent said, the owners hired contractor Mike Dunn of W.M. Dunn Construction, LLC, of Powells Point, who has handled numerous cleanup operations on seashore property. Even though the contractors were limited by the heavy surf conditions from doing the heaviest work, they began gathering large pieces on Saturday and making piles on the beach.

“We appreciate that the owners have moved quickly to begin cleanup,” Hallac said.

Typically, the longshore current carries everything to the south, but in this instance the hurricane swell was moving to the north, Hallac said. By Sunday, the chunks of wood and nails, siding, insulation, PVC piping and other construction debris had traveled about 11 miles to near the N.C. Highway 12 Canal Zone. The majority of debris washed up by the north entrance to the new Rodanthe Bridge.

Beaches are closed from the northern boundary of Rodanthe to the northern end of the Rodanthe Bridge, or “jug handle bridge.” The park service and officials at the Pea Island National Wildlife Refuge are also warning swimmers and beachgoers to avoid the beaches and stay out of the water around all areas of the beaches and surf in Rodanthe.

Purchased in 2019

According to Dare County records, the 1,516-square-foot house, which had four bedrooms and two bathrooms, was built in 1973. It was purchased in 2019 for $339,000 by David M. Kern and Teresa T. Kern of Hershey, Pennsylvania. The deed lists the lot at the time as 10,018 square feet.

Coincidentally, Hallac had displayed the rapid rate of erosion on the section of beach in front of the Corbina Drive house as part of a broader, more general presentation about the national seashore on Aug. 12 in Buxton.

In a photo dated July 30 included in the presentation, the house was shown up against a dune, with all its pilings in dry sand and numerous feet of beach between it and the ocean. But in another photo taken Aug. 12, the pilings were in the surf, the dune was gone and the house was listing toward the ocean.

“You can see how dramatic the change was,” Hallac told Coastal Review, referring to the photo comparison. “And just a few days later it collapsed.”

Five other houses in the area of GA Kohler Drive in Rodanthe are also now sometimes standing in surf, even at low tide, he said. Some have various damages, including pilings that sway back and forth, and broken pools, beach accesses, decks and stairs.

Dare County Planning Department Director Noah Gilliam said that two septic systems in Rodanthe and one in Buxton were at least partially compromised as a result of Ernesto. Also, he said, about 23 structures had minor damage from the storm. In addition, there were about a dozen houses that had previously been characterized as threatened oceanfront structures.

Gilliam said that ocean water sitting, or even surging, under a house is not in and of itself a rationale to suspend occupancy certificates — properties are decertified only if aspects of damage is covered in the North Carolina building code, such as nonfunctional septic systems, compromised electrical systems, and lack of egress and ingress.

The Corbina Drive house, he said, was decertified Aug. 8. The house was also decertified on April 1 after showing signs of structural failures of some pilings, stairs and the septic. The house was recertified July 16, he said.

Gilliam said that the owners had another lot across the road and he believed they had been investigating moving their house there at the time it collapsed. Although he has no details, Gilliam said he knows from permits for other houses that were moved that it is expensive to move a house even to the other side of a lot. Moving it across a road requires additional permits.

A larger house that was moved about 100 feet back from the ocean on the same lot, for instance, was estimated in its permit to cost about $350,000 to move, he said.

The owner of the house at 23214 Corbina Drive requested that his name not be used but told Coastal Review that marine engineers who were consulted before the house was purchased said it would be fine for a while, and the other lot was purchased as a contingency for later years.

“We really weren’t aware (then) of the erosion rate,” the owner said, adding that the real estate agent did not raise any concerns about the issue.

Although the house was damaged earlier this year, he was caught off guard with how fast the beach disappeared this month.

“This was just way unexpected,” he said.

Although the house is gone, he said he appreciated the help and kindness of the people of Rodanthe.

“It’s a beautiful community,” he said. “We enjoyed our time there — we enjoyed it very much. Unfortunately, the amount of beach erosion is far more than we ever considered.

“We’re heartbroken at the loss of our home,” he said.

RODANTHE — Contractors on Monday continued to remove debris strewn along miles of Cape Hatteras National Seashore beaches following the collapse Friday evening of a multilevel, unoccupied beach house into the Atlantic.

No injuries were reported in connection with the collapse. Seashore officials have closed public entry to the beaches from the northern boundary of Rodanthe to the northern end of the 2.4-mile Rodanthe, or “jug handle,” bridge.

The 1,428 square-foot house at 23214 Corbina Drive was built in 1973. The four-bed, two-bath structure used as a vacation rental was sold in 2018 for $339,000, according to real estate websites.

This is the seventh structure since May 2020 to crumble into the ocean in the unincorporated community on Hatteras Island in Dare County.

Cape Hatteras seashore and Pea Island refuge teams coordinated with the owner of the house to manage cleanup, which began around 1 p.m. Saturday.

“The homeowner’s contractor continues to clean up the beach,” Seashore Public Affairs Specialist Mike Barber told Coastal Review Monday. “As of yesterday, debris was spotted approximately 11 miles north of the collapse site in Pea Island National Wildlife Refuge.”

Park officials said in an update Sunday that several other threatened structures in northern Rodanthe suffered “substantial damage” and they are communicating with the county on a detailed assessment of the associated debris and hazards.

“Coordination will occur between house owners, rental property management companies, and the Seashore once elevated surf conditions subside, and the full extent of damage is known,” officials said.

In Buxton, there is “ongoing erosion and elevated surf conditions” that have resulted in ocean overwash under many homes and into neighborhoods, as well.

“Hazardous debris, broken from beachfront houses, may be present on the beach and in the water. Seashore staff have observed evidence of compromised septic systems; therefore, the Seashore is advising that the public should not go in the water until follow up inspections are made,” officials added Sunday.

The National Park Service has devoted a webpage to the threatened oceanfront structures that border the seashore and action being taken.

Published jointly with Island Free Press

MANTEO — If there is a hurricane on the Outer Banks that renders Hatteras Island’s only highway impassable, the emergency channel between the island at Rodanthe to the Dare County mainland at Stumpy Point currently would not be accessible for ferries to provide supplies or evacuations.

“This needs to be very clear to our county commissioners,” said Ernie Foster, a Dare County Waterways Commission member, during the panel’s meeting Monday evening. “Emergency operations right now do not exist and (it’s) hurricane season.”

Foster, a Hatteras charter boat captain, made a motion to inform the Dare County Board of Commissioners that the emergency channel is not an option until a shoaled area in the Rodanthe Harbor basin is cleared. The commission approved the motion.

“There is no planned project right now with the Corps for Rodanthe,” said Catherine Peele, interim assistant director of marine asset management planning and development manager with the North Carolina Ferry Division, who spoke remotely to the commission.

The Army Corps of Engineers is responsible for maintenance of federal channels in the county’s inlets and waterways.

The Ferry Division is concerned that the shallow, shoaled area in the Rodanthe basin makes it too dangerous for ferry travel, creating risk of expensive damage to the vessels and danger to the operators and passengers. Although the remainder of the federal channel in the emergency route is navigable, that bad spot creates a controlling depth that renders the route inaccessible.

In a later interview, Peele said the Ferry Division and the county are working together “to see how we can overcome the challenge” of the Corps not being able to dredge in Rodanthe.

Meanwhile, she added, the division continues to do test runs with ferries at least twice a year in the state-owned Stumpy Point approach channel and basin and, so far, have been able to get in every year.

“So, we have been monitoring conditions,” she said. “We’re OK. We did a contract project in the basin a few years ago.”

Still, Peele added, the state is looking proactively at all its options to see if a project needs to be contracted, or if the division needs to schedule to do the project itself later this year. The division is also talking with the Corps and the county about the amount of available capacity for dredged material disposal in Stumpy Point.

A recent survey found that a relatively small area in the Rodanthe basin has only about 5 feet of water, Todd Horton, chief of the Corps’ waterways management section, speaking remotely, told the commissioners. Ferries require at least 5.5 feet of water.

A similar problem developed in 2018, when removal of shoaling was stymied because there was not adequate space available to dispose of the dredged material in Rodanthe. Dare County, which is responsible for maintaining dredged material disposal sites in the county, subsequently made repairs that addressed the capacity issue.

Fortunately, there has been no need in recent years for the backup evacuation route, but the channel is doing no one any good if some spots are too shallow for ferries to use when it is needed, said commission chairman Steve “Creature” Coulter.

“It’s a federal channel going into Rodanthe that we use for emergency operations,” he said, noting that the county does not have the authority to maintain it.

As another example of overlapping jurisdictional issues on the Outer Banks, clear passage through the emergency channel depends on the federal, state and county governments doing their respective parts, whether dredging the channel, building and repairing disposal areas, providing funds or doing channel surveys.

The state is responsible for the basin and an estimated 1,200-foot-long approach channel in Stumpy Point Harbor, and the federal government is responsible for the rest of the channel in Stumpy Point and all of the channel and the basin on the Rodanthe side. The county provides disposal sites for the dredged material, and a share of nonfederal funds to the Corps for projects.

An emergency transportation route was created in 2009 by the North Carolina Department of Transportation, which oversees the Ferry Division, to bypass washed-out N.C. Highway 12 in Mirlo Beach at Rodanthe’s north end. Ferry terminals were created in Rodanthe in 2001 and in Stumpy Point in 2002, and both were upgraded in 2013.

Emergency ferry service was implemented after Hurricane Irene in 2011 and Hurricane Sandy in 2012, as well as in 2013 when the aged Bonner Bridge was closed for safety reasons. Before the service was available, islanders were cut off from the world for weeks in November 2000 after a storm-tossed barge struck and severely damaged the bridge. And after Hurricane Isabel in 2003 destroyed part of N.C. 12 south of Frisco, ferries brought supplies to the island from Stumpy Point to Hatteras village.

Horton said that the Corps has $316,000 in nonfederal funds transferred by the county remaining from 2019, but he did not elaborate on when or if a project could be done in Rodanthe.

Joen Petersen, the Corps’ chief of floating plants, said in a later interview that the recent survey showed that 602 cubic yards would have to be removed from the shoaled area just outside the channel basin in Rodanthe to bring the channel to project depth of 6 feet.

Petersen said that the remainder of the channel on the Rodanthe side is sufficiently deep. Although he confirmed that there is no scheduled work at this time at the shoaled area in Rodanthe, he said that the Corps is in the process of planning a dredge project in the federal channel in Stumpy Point.

Information was not immediately available from the Corps, the state or the county to clarify when the Rodanthe channel was last dredged. But in general, the emergency channel has been dredged on an “as-needed” basis, Barton Grover, the Waterways Commission administrator, said in a later interview.  And in last year’s survey, it showed a 6-foot depth, which the Corps said did not require attention.

Considering that the most recent survey showed only 5 feet in Rodanthe — a foot shallower than the federally authorized depth of 6 feet — the Corps may change its assessment about doing a project, Grover said, adding that discussions are still in early stages.

While the agencies and the county continue to work toward a solution, the reality for the time being is that, with warnings of a potentially bad hurricane season swirling in the background, the just-in-case fallback for a transportation option on and off Hatteras Island is not going to be available.

The ferry service would still do its best to provide a workaround, Peele said.

“If there was an emergency,” she said, “we would do a test run from Hatteras to Stumpy Point to see if that’s a viable option for an emergency route.”

Reprinted from the Ocracoke Observer

One can feel helpless at times as to what one can do in the face of large-scale environmental catastrophes such as the unfathomable amount of plastic in the ocean. But individuals can take some actions that can make a positive difference and keeping the night as dark as possible is one of them.

Kaye and Rick Kohler are longtime vacation visitors to Ocracoke, during their visit in June they discussed their efforts in a talk in the Ocracoke Community Library: “Dark Skies: How to Preserve and Protect One of the Island’s Natural Wonders.” Rick also was a guest on WOVV’s “What’s Happening on Ocracoke.” 

The Kohlers live in Rappahannock County by the Blue Ridge Mountains and Shenandoah National Park in Virginia.

As longtime members of the Rappahannock League for Environmental Protection, they have been concerned with the harmful effects of artificial lighting on the health of people and wildlife.

In 2019, the League, working with others, was successful in getting the Rappahannock community park certified as a Silver-Tier Dark Skies Park by the DarkSky International (IDA).

The IDA’s mission is to raise awareness about the negative effects of artificial light at night on human health, wildlife, and to provide the public with information and resources to help restore the night.

They have their work cut out as every year light pollution is increasing by about 10 percent around the USA, Rick said in his talk.

Rick and Kaye’s talk focused on what the IDA says, there is overwhelming evidence that light pollution can have harmful impacts on both people and wildlife and they provided examples.

Like many animals, humans have biological clocks called circadian rhythms regulated by the natural light-dark cycle.

Artificial lighting can disrupt these rhythms, which can cause insomnia, eye strain, headaches and lead to stress, anxiety and depression.

Artificial light can harm animals and even plants.

Nocturnal frogs and toads rely on darkness to make their mating calls. Excessive lighting can adversely impact their reproduction rates.

During nocturnal migration, birds become disoriented by bright lights causing millions of deaths every year by fatal collisions with tall lit buildings, some with reflective glass walls.

Last October, more than 1,000 birds were killed striking just one lit building in Chicago which lies along a major migratory route.

Fireflies are facing a worldwide decreasing population. Their flash of light is their mating signal and without darkness, they cannot find mates.

Some plants rely on specific lengths of daylight to trigger flowering and artificial lighting can cause them to grow more rapidly, flower out of season or not at all. Light pollution can disrupt the behavior of nocturnal pollinators like moths. One study showed that moths flew toward the street lamps and away from flowering plants. This resulted in a reduction of plant pollination. 

Artificial lighting can cause sea turtle hatchlings to become disoriented and wander inland, where they often die of dehydration or predation by ghost crabs, raccoons, opossums and coyotes, according to the Sea Turtle Conservancy.

Its website notes scientists believe the hatchlings have an innate instinct that leads them to the brightest horizon, which, historically meant over the ocean.

The Cape Hatteras National Seashore provides information on how artificial light is harmful to hatchlings and what steps can be taken to reduce lighting.

Coastal communities around the world have passed ordinances that require residents to turn off beachfront lights during turtle nesting season, but not everyone complies.

In the upper Outer Banks, when sea turtles are getting ready to hatch, physical barriers, like screens or shades, are put up to block light from reaching the beach.

Ocracoke village is surrounded by dark skies, which makes stargazing and astronomy an attraction.

But Ocracoke village has grown brighter in the last several years, creating what is known as a sky glow that reduces the ability to see the stars at night.

The Kohlers say a lot of this diffused light can be remedied by using down-shielded light fixtures that direct the light downward where it is needed and does not allow the light to go upward.

Other steps include using warm-colored LED bulbs with a color temperature of 3000K or lower. These bulbs emit less blue light, which is more likely to scatter in the atmosphere.

Smart lighting systems, motion sensors and timers ensure that lights are only on when necessary, thereby reducing overall light output.

In 2021, Cape Lookout National Seashore became an International Dark Sky Park designated by the IDA. It joined 121 other national parks and is the first to receive this certification on the Atlantic Coast. This was achieved by community support from the Crystal Coast Stargazers Club, the Core Sound Waterfowl Museum and Heritage Center and the Carteret County Chamber of Commerce.

Cape Hatteras National Seashore has completed some steps in the process, but an official application has not been submitted, according to Mike Barber, the public affairs specialist.

Unlike the challenge of combatting human-caused climate change, reducing light pollution is as easy as simply leaving lights off at night whenever possible and by directing outside lighting downward.

So, comparatively, drastically reducing one of our many forms of pollution is as easy as, well, the flick of a light switch.

Also from the Ocracoke Observer: Let’s get Cape Hatteras National Seashore designated as an International Dark Sky Park

This story is provided courtesy of the Ocracoke Observer, a newspaper covering Ocracoke island. Coastal Review Online partners with the Ocracoke Observer to provide readers with more environmental and lifestyle stories of interest along our coast.

The Army Corps of Engineers said Thursday it plans to begin as soon as this month geophysical work to identify any potential fuel distribution components remaining at the Buxton Naval Facility site that’s part of the Cape Hatteras National Seashore.

In its announcement, the Corps said the subsurface survey work would begin no later than early July and that a contractor would perform comprehensive sampling at the Formerly Used Defense Site, or FUDS, site in Dare County sometime later this year.

“We’re committed to advancing our investigative efforts at the Buxton FUDS project,” said Col. Ron Sturgeon, the Corps’ Savannah District commander, in a statement. “After thoroughly reviewing the data collected to date at the site, we have determined that a more comprehensive investigation is needed within the project area to further assess the site based on current conditions.”

Officials said that once the geophysical work was complete, the results would be used in drafting a plan to follow in the comprehensive sampling. A contract for the additional work is anticipated to be awarded in October.

The Corps said these next steps were identified after recent investigations and the completion of an internal review by its Environmental and Munitions Center of Expertise. The review included thorough assessment of data from a site visit, interviews with Corps, National Park Service, Coast Guard and contractor personnel, as well as a evaluation of 40 or so documents pertaining to prior and current observations, investigations and corrective actions taken at the FUDS site. The document, called The Strategic Optimization Technical Memorandum, is available in the center’s report.

The Corps said it also completed pipe removal work at the Buxton FUDS site last month, work that also included soil sampling. The contractor was waiting to receive the raw data from the laboratory, the Corps said, and once that is received and reviewed, final results will be publicly shared.

The public can officially join the effort to keep Cape Hatteras National Seashore beaches clean and safe.

Seashore officials announced Wednesday its new Adopt-A-Beach program that allows groups to adopt a 2-mile section of beach.

The 18 sections available focus on the year-round, off-road vehicle routes north of Oregon Inlet and on Hatteras and Ocracoke Islands. More sections could be added in the future, officials said.

“So many local families and businesses already provide exceptional support to the Seashore by helping to steward our beaches,” National Parks of Eastern North Carolina Superintendent David Hallac said in a statement. “Through this program, the Seashore will be able to better support and recognize individuals and organizations that want to help maintain beautiful beaches.”

A group must commit to four cleanups each year and meet all reporting requirements. After their first cleanup, each group will be acknowledged with signage at the entry point to their adopted area for the remainder of their commitment.

The seashore worked with North Carolina Beach Buggy Association, the first organization to adopt a Seashore beach, to develop the program. NCBBA provided valuable insight from their decades-long Operation Beach Respect program.

“The National Park Service would also like to thank all the individuals who have spent countless hours picking up litter along Seashore beaches,” the release states.

More information, including requirements, how to sign up and maps of adoptable areas are available at go.nps.gov/adoptabeach. Interested groups may also contact the Seashore at caha_adopt_a_beach@nps.gov to learn more about the program. Training and cleanup supplies will be provided to group leaders following signup.

Updated at 4:25 p.m. Tuesday.

Cape Hatteras National Seashore officials started their Tuesday morning cleaning up another fallen oceanfront house on National Park Service property — and they’re asking for the public’s help.

The unoccupied structure at 24131 Ocean Drive in Rodanthe likely collapsed around 2:30 a.m. Tuesday, officials said.

To protect visitors while the cleanup takes place, a milelong section of beach from Sea Haven Drive to South Shore Drive is temporarily closed.

This is the sixth house to collapse on seashore beaches in the past four years.

“Due to the direction that the debris is expected to drift, visitors are urged to avoid the beaches north of Sea Haven Drive into the southern portion of Pea Island National Wildlife Refuge. Dangerous debris may be present on the beach and in the water. Additional beach closures may be necessary as the debris spreads and cleanup efforts proceed,” Cape Hatteras National Seashore officials said.

The 1,501-square-foot, five-bedroom home with two and a half baths was built in 1970, according to real estate websites.

Officials are also asking the public to for help cleaning up the debris associated with the collapse.

The cleanup is scheduled to take place 8 to 11:30 a.m. Wednesday at the Rodanthe Pier, 24251 Atlantic Drive. Supplies will be provided.

Many of the pieces of wood that have washed up on the beach have exposed nails, so all volunteers are encouraged to wear thick-soled footwear. Those under 18 must be accompanied by a parent or legal guardian.

As of 4:11 p.m. Tuesday, 49 seashore employees, Chicamacomico Banks Fire and Rescue and a contractor hired by the property owner filled up 31 pickup trucks with debris and unloaded the debris at a nearby parking lot. The debris will be permanently disposed of in the coming days.

Varying amounts of beach debris extend from just south of the house collapse site to more than 2 miles to the north, within Pea Island National Wildlife Refuge.

HATTERAS ISLAND – The Army Corps of Engineers said Tuesday it had finished removing a pipe at the former Navy base here, but officials are still awaiting results from soil sampling to determine their next steps in the cleanup.

The Corps’ Savannah District announced that contractors at the Buxton Naval Facility Formerly Used Defense Sites property completed their work Friday after removing 70 to 80 feet of pipe and liquids it contained as well as those in surrounding soil.

Results from the soil sampling, once processed, are to be shared with the North Carolina Department of Environmental Quality for coordination on how to proceed.

The Corps said it was also performing an internal review of its investigations to date through the Environmental and Munitions Center of Expertise. 

“The Savannah District is committed to keeping the community informed about the status of our investigative work at the Buxton FUDS project,” said Col. Ron Sturgeon, the Corps’ Savannah District commander. “Once we receive the results and determine the next steps, we will provide an update through a news release and the project’s webpage.”

A Hatteras Island resident in September alerted Cape Hatteras National Seashore officials about strong diesel fumes and a sheen on the water near the old Navy base after Hurricane Idalia. Superintendent Dave Hallac reached out to the Savannah District to report organic material with a petroleum odor had washed up on the beach during this time.

The Corps sent teams in September, October, November, December and February to collect soil samples, perform borings, dig test pits, and take air samples, to identify the source. 

The Corps said that it had discovered a pipe in February after further beach erosion that it identified as a potential source. The Corps awarded a contract earlier this month to remove the pipe and sample the surrounding soil.

There’s a webpage for the former Buxton Naval Facility FUDS property at Buxton FUDS with access to a contact email for questions about the site, frequently asked questions, the September 2023-February 2024 Final Summary Report of Findings as well as facts related to the site and other Savannah District’s FUDS properties and projects.

BUXTON  — Two Army Corps of Engineers officials who oversee environmental pollution cleanup at a former Navy base at Cape Hatteras met Tuesday evening with area residents to address their frustration about intermittent petroleum odors and exposed infrastructure debris on the eroded beach near the site.

“Sometimes you see things there, and a day later they’re covered up,” Col. Ronald Sturgeon, the Corps’ Savannah District commander, told attendees at Dare County’s Fessenden Center. “It is certainly a complex site, a very unique situation down here.”   

As part of Sturgeon’s duties with the Corps, he is in charge of the Savannah District’s Formerly Used Defense Site, or FUDS, program in the Southeast that has previously removed storage tanks and 4,000 tons of petroleum-contaminated soil at the former submarine survey operation in Buxton, as well as groundwater remediation and continued monitoring. The Corps was designated in 1991 to take responsibility for environmental restoration of the site.

Although the area is part of the Cape Hatteras National Seashore — the landowner — the debris and apparent contamination are remnants of two military bases that operated from 1956 to 2010, first by the Navy and then the Coast Guard. Increasingly severe coastal erosion has unburied remains of base structures, including septic systems and pipes sticking out of dunes where there’s been escarpment.

Since a series of late summer storms, there have been periodic reports from the public of a strong diesel smell at Buxton Beach, as well as evidence of petroleum-contaminated soil, an oily sheen on the nearshore ocean waters, and expanding amounts of concrete, rebar and pipes exposed on the shoreline. In September, the National Park Service closed 0.3 miles of beach near the end of Old Lighthouse Road.

Sturgeon said a FUDS team has come to the site repeatedly since September. Most recently on Monday, May 13, when contractors removed a suspect pipe from the beach and collected samples from surrounding soil. Results were expected within 10 days.

If the sampling shows contamination, he said, additional funds will be requested.

Glenn Marks, chief of reimbursable programs and project management at the Corps’ Savannah District, said about 70 to 80 feet of pipe was removed as part of the $525,000 project.

When asked by an attendee about who “the onus falls on” to remove from the beach the chunks of foundation and other remains of the Navy base, Sturgeon said that the FUDS regulation does not provide the authority or funding.

“If there is not environmental hazards out there, how are we as a collective group going to take care of this?” he responded. “The U.S. Corps of Engineers has never received direct funding for that. The (Corps) would have a hand in that if funding was provided by the landowners.”

According to the National Park Service, its permit issued to the Navy in 1956 required that all structures, including foundations, be removed and that the 50-acre site would be cleaned up when the Navy ceased operations in 1982. In addition, its 1991 agreement with the Coast Guard, the agency said, obligated the Coast Guard to remove structures, restore the landscape, conduct a hazardous materials survey and take responsibility for any necessary mitigation and/or cleanup. Coast Guard Group Cape Hatteras was operating in Buxton from 1984 through 2010, when the base relocated to Fort Macon.

But as far as current cleanup obligations and responsibilities, details about who, what and when have become a bureaucratic muddle. There are also the complications created by the remove of decades and quickly changing conditions from rising sea levels and increased coastal erosion.  

The Coast Guard and the Corps, however, have worked closely with Cape Hatteras National Seashore officials to resolve the issues and determine appropriate funding and authorization options, said Superintendent David Hallac.

“We are looking forward to a complete remediation of this site,” he told the community members. “I am proud we have good partners.”

Even though all three parties are part of the federal government, each bumps up against the other’s rigid regulatory strictures, tight budgets and staff shortages, and legal fuzziness. The old Navy base, for instance, is no longer part of the Navy, but its cleanup is still managed under the Department of Defense, and it is now the Corps’ FUDS baby.

The Coast Guard, however, while military-adjacent, is part of the Department of Homeland Security, not the Defense Department. And the National Park Service is part of the U.S. Department of the Interior, a huge federal agency with management concerns centered on conservation of natural resources and recreational areas, such as Cape Hatteras National Seashore.

To complicate matters further, Hallac said some Coast Guard structures are actually on top of Navy building foundations.

“I think the most important thing is we’re not going to stop working till we get all this debris off the beach,” he said. “The take-home message is there’s a lot of debris under the sand and it all has to be removed.”

Related: Park Service urges public to avoid debris on Rodanthe beach

The Coast Guard had completed an environmental site assessment in 2008 and a soil assessment for the onsite wastewater facility in 2010, according to the National Park Service.

Although polychlorinated biphenyls, or PCBs, metals, pesticides and other contaminants above acceptable Environmental Protection Agency standards were found in the soil, remediation through the Comprehensive Environmental Response Compensation, and Liabilities Act, or CERCLA, process was not done at the two affected drain fields, according to the Park Service said.

In 2021, Hallac reached out to the Coast Guard, which restarted the survey work, taking numerous water and soil samples across 32 acres at the site, said Joseph Lambert, an environmental engineer with the Coast Guard’s Cleveland Engineering Unit, during a brief interview after the meeting. A report on the findings is currently being reviewed and is expected to be finalized this summer.

Coast Guard Sector North Carolina Capt. Timothy List, who also participated in Tuesday’s information session, said that the scope of contamination is not yet clearly defined, but that the Coast Guard intends to do its part, while also working with its partners, to clean up the site.

“We’re here to continue for the long haul,” he told attendees.

It remains unclear why the cleanup and removal work required under the Navy and Coast Guard permits was not completed.

Marks said that his understanding is that the Navy permit is expired, although he didn’t explain what effect that would have on the conditions that had been stipulated.

“I cannot speak for what the Navy signed up for or did not sign up for,” he said.

Julie Youngman, senior attorney with Southern Environmental Law Center, noted during the public comment portion of the meeting that any similar pollution or debris sullying a more prominent national park such as Yellowstone “wouldn’t be there a week.”

Referring to a provision in the Department of Defense manual, “Defense Environmental Restoration Program (DERP) Management,” Youngman asked the Corps’ representatives whether they had asked their bosses about trying to qualify the unique Cape Hatteras situation for special consideration.

According to the “Petition for Eligibility” on page 18 of the manual, “… in exceptional cases, a DoD Component may petition the … Environmental Management Directorate … for clarification or approval to consider a specific activity as an eligible environmental restoration activity.”

Responded Marks: “I’ll commit to looking into it and having me and the lawyers look into it and see if that holds water.”

In an April 30 letter from Kyle Lewis, an environmental attorney for the Corps’ Savannah District, answering an inquiry from Youngman and North Carolina Coastal Federation Executive Director Braxton Davis said that the Corps’ authority to remove the “remnant” and unsafe structures is limited to what existed at the time the Navy left the site. 

“The infrastructure that is currently being exposed by erosion was sound when transferred out of DoD control in 1982; therefore such structures are not eligible to be addressed under the FUDS Program,” Lewis wrote.

The state Department of Environmental Quality and Dare County Department of Health and Human Services also have been working with the agency partners to urge action on the cleanup and to keep the public informed.

Meanwhile, as residents reminded the officials, whether because of regulatory or funding constraints, the public beach in their community — a favorite spot to surf and swim and stroll at Cape Hatteras National Seashore — is still littered with ugly and dangerous chunks of concrete and rebar and stinks of diesel, and it’s all because of the infrastructure and contaminants that the Navy and the Coast Guard left behind.

One man named Michael who owns a vacation house near the closed beach lamented that his rental income is now “nonexistent.”

“So we can’t rent the house, we can’t sell the house, we can’t live in the house,” he said.

Trip Forman, co-founder of REAL Watersports in Waves on Hatteras Island, said during the public comment period that the negative message about the situation has become a blight on tourism.

“Something needs to be done to resolve this,” Forman said “There’s a lot of cancellations. There’s a lot of negative press. It’s spinning out of control.”

The Corps will establish a restoration advisory board, a public forum for sharing information with the community, for the Buxton site within a year, Marks, with the Corps, said. 

Dare County officials also promised to stay involved and keep the public informed about the situation.

“We’re committed to see this through,” said Dare County Board of Commissioners Chair Bob Woodard.

Visitors are urged to avoid the beach adjacent to Ocean Drive in Rodanthe because of exposed wires, pipes and septic systems, Cape Hatteras National Seashore officials said Thursday.

The officials are working with Dare County and the Cape Hatteras Electric Cooperative on the exposed hazards, according to the advisory.

Public Affairs Specialist Mike Barber told Coastal Review Thursday that while performing periodic monitoring of the shoreline in Rodanthe, rangers noted the eroded beachfront and a number of concerning hazards adjacent to Ocean Drive in Rodanthe.

The exposed septic systems, unknown wires and pipes, prompted officials to contact the county and electric cooperative, and to issue the advisory announced Thursday morning, Barber explained.

Beachgoers should use caution throughout the beaches in front of the village because hazards, such as building materials and parts of septic systems, may also be present in other areas of the beach in Rodanthe.

In anticipation of the coming busy season, when the Outer Banks experiences an influx of visitors, state transportation officials are planning to lower the speed limit along N.C. Highway 12 starting Wednesday in parts of Currituck and Dare counties.

In Rodanthe, Waves, Salvo, Avon, Corolla and Frisco, the speed limit will be lowered to 35 mph from the off-season speed limit of 45 mph, North Carolina Department of Transportation announced Monday.

Seasonal speed limit reductions also will be put in place for areas of Cape Hatteras National Seashore, such as the area near the Haulover Parking Lot south of Avon, as well.

“NCDOT has been reducing speed limits on these sections of N.C. 12 to improve safety during the area’s peak travel season,” officials said.

Off-season speed limits will return on Sept. 16.

For real-time travel information, visit DriveNC.gov or follow NCDOT on social media.

Cape Hatteras National Seashore officials are in the early stages of designing a horse-management plan for the herd under its care on Ocracoke Island.

A public meeting to gather input ahead of the plan’s development is scheduled for 1-2 p.m. Tuesday, May 21, at the Ocracoke Community Center, 999 Irvin Garrish Highway. If the ferry isn’t running due to inclement weather or road conditions, the meeting will be rescheduled.

“In light of sea level rise effects and in consideration of National Park Service management policies, the Seashore is preparing to develop a management plan for the Ocracoke horses and seeks assistance in identifying issues, concerns and opportunities,” park officials said.

For those unable to attend the May 21 engagement meeting, they can send their ideas to caha_public_affairs@nps.gov. The formal portion of the horse management planning will begin in the coming months and will include an official public comment period as part of the process, a seashore representative told Coastal Review.

Horses have been documented on Ocracoke since the first European settlers began inhabiting the barrier island in 1730s. The once free-roaming animals were corralled in 1959 to prevent over-grazing and to protect them from traffic after the highway was built in 1957. The herd has been cared for by the National Park Service since the early 1960s.

An information review was published in March that includes a brief history and analysis of horses in North America, on the East Coast, and those under the care of the Park Service, as well as a summary of laws, regulations and policies relevant to horses in the park.

Officials note on the website explaining the purpose of the information review that the last foal was born in 2018 and there are no plans to expand the herd, which is within the range of its historical size of nine to 20 horses.

The proposed management plan is to ensure the short- and long-term welfare of the existing herd, including goals for the size of the herd while taking into consideration management challenges and opportunities within the seashore on Ocracoke Island.

Once a range of ideas are received and refined through the preliminary public meeting, officials expect to move to the next phase to include formal public meetings associated with the environmental review process.

Updates are to be posted at http://go.nps.gov/ocracokeponies.

With sea turtle nesting season at Cape Hatteras National Seashore beginning this month, Outer Banks Forever, the official nonprofit partner of the national parks there, has begun its annual Adopt A Sea Turtle Nest program.

Supporters can symbolically adopt an active sea turtle nest on the national seashore. Nesting season is typically May through September. The supporter will receive an official adoption certificate and information about their specific nest when it hatches later this summer or fall.

“Our Adopt a Sea Turtle Nest program is a fun way for people to learn more about these special island visitors and the work our national park staff does every day to help protect them,” said Jessica Barnes, Director of Outer Banks Forever.

Launched in 2020 to support projects and programs that protect and enhance the seashore, the program has raised $73,313 in the time since.

“It’s also fun for us to send updates to each person who adopts a nest, particularly sharing the number of sea turtle hatchlings that make their way out of each nest. It’s a great way to feel connected to these amazing creatures while also supporting Cape Hatteras National Seashore,” Barnes added.

A tax-deductible donation of $100 or more will reserve a 2024 sea turtle nest. There are a limited number of nests each year and they are assigned on a first-come, first-served basis.

Organizers noted that no individual or group that participates in this program can claim ownership of a sea turtle nest, eggs or hatchlings. For the safety of the sea turtles and in alignment with National Park Service guidance, adopted nest locations will not be shared until after it has hatched.

BUXTON — The Army Corps of Engineers announced Monday that it is taking action related to intermittent evidence of petroleum odors and sheen at a Cape Hatteras National Seashore beach.

In a press release from the Savanah District Formerly Used Defense Site, or FUDS, program, the Corps said it will remove a pipe and sample surrounding soil to determine if it is the potential source of the petroleum.

After months of on-and-off reports from the public of strong diesel fuel odors and sheen present on the beach and in the ocean, the National Park Service told the FUDS office that a suspect pipe was observed on an eroded section of beach, the release said.

The Corps is working in partnership with the park service as part of an ongoing cleanup and investigation of pollutants related to former bases at the site that had been used by the U.S. Navy and the Coast Guard.

A contract to remove the pipe and test the soil is expected to be awarded by September, with work likely beginning by late 2024 or early 2025, the FUDS release said.

About a third of a mile of Buxton Beach has been closed for months because of the petroleum contamination concern and increasing amounts of debris exposed after a series of storms. Huge slabs of concrete, wires and other infrastructure remains now litter the national seashore where the old Navy base had once stood.

The FUDS program does not provide the authority or the funding under the Department of Defense law covering the debris removal, the Corps said. The program has previously removed petroleum pollutants from the former Navy site.

“All FUDS Program remediation efforts are authorized by Congress and are restricted to cleaning up properties formerly owned by, leased to, or otherwise possessed by the United States and transferred outside DoD control prior to Oct. 17, 1986,” according to the release.

“The FUDS Program may only address restoration activities which are determined to be the result of DoD activities,” the statement said. “However, the remnant infrastructures, exposed on the beach after storm erosion, are not eligible for removal under the FUDS Program, as those structures were not in an unsafe condition at the time the site was transferred out of DoD control.”

As part of the pipe removal contract, the Corps will establish a Restoration Advisory Board, which “serves as a forum for discussion and exchange of information between agencies and affected communities,” the statement said.

Also, a summary report that is currently under review will be posted to the Savannah District website when completed.

“The Army Corps of Engineers is committed to advancing remediation efforts authorized under the FUDS program to protect the health and well-being of communities and the environment,” the release said.

 Questions for the FUDS Program team members can be addressed to cesas-FUDS@usace.army.mil, with ‘Buxton FUDS’ in the subject line. To learn more about the project, visit Buxton FUDS.

Update 9:35 a.m. March 26:

A meeting is scheduled for 6 p.m. Wednesday in Buxton for the public to hear updates on the status of petroleum contamination and hazardous infrastructure remediation at Cape Hatteras National Seashore’s Buxton Beach Access, officials announced Monday evening.

Seashore Superintendent David Hallac will give a presentation during the meeting being held in in the Fessenden center in Buxton, and the National Park Service staff will be available to answer questions.

History about the access is at http://go.nps.gov/buxtonbeach and photos are available at Buxton Beach Access photo album.

Original post 5 p.m. March 25:

Cape Hatteras National Seashore, state and Dare County health officials issued a public health advisory Monday for the Buxton Beach Access because of petroleum-contaminated soils that recently have caused alarm.

Officials said the contaminated soils were likely exposed by beach erosion near the former site of Naval Facility Cape Hatteras and Coast Guard Group Cape Hatteras in Buxton, from the near 46285 Old Lighthouse Road to and including the first jetty.

Officials cited cases of varying mild to moderate headache, nausea and skin irritation affecting people who had participated in recreational water activities in the area.

Since Sept. 1, 2023, when the agencies and the Army Corps of Engineers issued a precautionary public health advisory, multiple soil samples have shown the presence of weathered light fuel oil, a small amount of lubricating oil, petroleum hydrocarbons, and nonpetroleum contamination.

Related: Diesel odor returns to Buxton beach; source still unknown

The beach in this area has remained closed since the issuance of the precautionary public health advisory, and on-site mitigation work has not started, officials said Monday.

Until the petroleum contaminated soils are mitigated and the area is declared safe, environmental and public health officials recommend avoiding swimming, wading or fishing in this area in Buxton until further notice. If skin comes in contact with contaminated sediment or water, thoroughly wash the affected area with soap and water.

In addition to the potential health risks related to petroleum contamination, there are a number of remnants of what is believed to be Navy and Coast Guard infrastructure, officials warned. These structures include concrete bunkers and building foundations that may pose hazards to swimmers, surfers and beachgoers.

Area residents who rely on a private drinking well should have the well water sampled to ensure it does not contain contaminants. If the well is a drinking water well, contact Dare County Department of Health and Human Services at 252-475-5088 to schedule sampling.

Those who notice plumes, sheens or fish kills in this area should call the Environmental Protection Agency National Response Center at 800-424-8802.

Clarification: Dare County officials noted in an email to Coastal Review that while the Coast Guard was the last owner of the site, “it was inherited from the U.S. Navy and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers is responsible for the FUDS declaration so there are several parties at play that we would like to appeal to without any one party being perceived as taking the blame.” That said, the resolution states that the Coast Guard is the designated federal on-scene coordinator in the coastal zone, with a duty to assess and mitigate the problem, “when a responsible party fails to do so.”

Citing threats to the environment and public safety, the Dare County Board of Commissioners unanimously approved a resolution Monday that requests that the Coast Guard take immediate action to restore the Buxton beach access to its “pre-military condition.”

Commissioner Danny Couch presented the resolution during the board’s regular meeting in Manteo. The resolution asks the Coast Guard, as the designated federal on-scene coordinator for the coastal zone in North Carolina, to take immediate action to rectify oil discharge into the Atlantic Ocean and adjacent shoreline and remove remaining infrastructure debris.

This situation is concerning, “not just from an environmental standpoint, but from a public safety standpoint as well,” Couch said.

The area at Cape Hatteras National Seashore’s Buxton beach access at the south end of Old Lighthouse Road served as a military base for both the Navy and Coast Guard from 1956 until 2010, according to the National Park Service website.

The Army Corps of Engineers approved in 1998 the Buxton Beach Access as a Formerly Used Defense Site and began responding to petroleum contamination there.

On Sept. 1, 2023, visitors reported that erosion from two storms “uncovered potentially hazardous infrastructure associated with the Navy and Coast Guard bases and visitors reported a strong smell of petroleum,” and reported these concerns to the Environmental Protection Agency’s National Spill Response Center.

“Due to decades-long military usage and apparently incomplete restoration of the area, samples taken from the Buxton Beach Access beach tested positive in early September 2023, for petroleum-contaminated soils (PCS). Additionally, due to coastal erosion, abandoned facilities, construction debris, and septic systems associated with historic Navy and Coast Guard activities have been observed along the beach adjacent to the Buxton Beach Access,” the website states.

Most recently on Feb. 9, park staff noticed “a very strong smell of petroleum products and multiple surfers reported that their wetsuits and hair smelled like fuel and noticed a sheen on the water near Buxton Beach Access,” according to the website. Reports were again submitted to the National Response Center.

“Why should we be concerned about the closing of this beach here? I’ll tell you why,” Couch told the board. “Because it’s not a good look for National Seashore” to have houses crumbling into the ocean in Rodanthe because of erosion “and then to have crime tape” cordoning off the debris on the beach ranked No. 4 in the U.S. by Dr. Beach.

Dr. Beach is an author and director of the Laboratory for Coastal Research at Florida International University who ranks beaches at drbeach.org.

The area in Buxton is also where where the county has committed to preserving N.C. Highway 12 infrastructure, Couch noted.

“I’m just curious if this exact scenario had washed up on the beaches of, I don’t know, Martha’s Vineyard or the Hamptons on Long Island. Would we still be begging pleading for someone to please remediate this dangerous and unhealthy situation?” Commissioner Bob Ross asked during the meeting.

Commissioner Bob Woodard noted during the meeting that he, the vice chair and the county manager were going to travel to Washington, D.C., and, “this will be one of our top subject matters when we meet with our legislators.”

BUXTON — Scaffolding soon will completely encircle the swirling black and white bands of the Cape Hatteras Lighthouse as contractors start construction of the first comprehensive project to restore the 1870 tower inside and out, top to bottom, including numerous historic features lost to time.

Replicas of the Victorian-style iron fence that once circled the tower’s base, and the majestic first-order Fresnel lens that once filled the lantern room at its top, will be crafted with historic accuracy to replace the long-gone originals.

“We do projects up and down the East Coast,” Christopher Dabek, vice president of North Brookfield, Massachusetts-based contractor Stone & Lime Masonry Restoration Services Inc. told a small group of media Feb. 14 during a groundbreaking ceremony. “But I think this is the most iconic.”

The $19.2 million contract includes new paint, replacement or repair of cast iron, mortar, granite, metal and concrete, as well as replacement of an estimated 40,000 bricks, about 15% of the 1.25 million bricks used to build the beacon.

“Everything here is going to be custom made, the cast iron, the bricks,” Dabek said, adding that parts of the granite foundation and marble tile floors also will be rehabilitated with materials close as possible to the original.

In addition to the structural repairs of the beacon, the walking paths and landscaping leading into and around the light station will be updated to improve connectivity for visitors and prevent degradation of the landscape.

“Within these new pathways, the contoured landscape will be filled with native vegetation to encourage visitors to stay on the paths and promote resiliency of the grounds,” subcontractor VHB Engineering NC states on its website.

The 36 lighthouse foundation stones, which had been left behind on the beach until 2015, have been removed from their repurposed amphitheater arrangement, created to honor the light keepers, that had been outside the entrance.

Currently, the design plan calls for the lightkeeper stones to be relocated inside the grounds and placed in an alternating pattern along the pathway, Cape Hatteras National Seashore Superintendent Dave Hallac told the media. The concrete path, he added, will be the color of sand to blend with the surrounding landscape, winding from the parking lot past the two light keeper buildings and around the lighthouse, with interpretive signage along the way.

“This is really going to facilitate that visit and that experience,” Hallac said.

Although the bookstore and portions of the grounds at the light station will remain open during the day, he said, the lighthouse will remain closed for the extent of the 18-month project.

“It’ll be worth it,” Hallac affirmed.

Looking up at the 4,830-ton tower, the tallest brick lighthouse in the nation, it’s hard to believe that 25 years earlier, different contractors were preparing to move the lighthouse, which began its roll 2,900 feet southwest on June 17, 1999, away from the encroaching surf threatening its foundation.

Pegged as “the move of the century,” the slow-motion relocation ended 23 days later, successfully landing the lighthouse at its current location.

 Simply put, the project, which had begun earlier that year with the less-involved relocation of the light station’s two keepers quarters buildings and other infrastructure, involved the tower being separated from and lifted off its foundation, placing it on rails, hooking it up to special sensors and moving it hydraulically, inch-by-inch along steel mats placed ahead on the pathway before installing it on the new foundation.

The project cost $12 million.

Contractor International Chimney Corp. of Buffalo, New York, assisted most prominently by subcontractor Expert House Movers of Maryland, were treated like celebrities by national and international media, and in turn charmed hordes of visitors who crowded behind temporary fences to watch the spectacle.

John Havel, who retired from the Environmental Protection Agency, now owns Havel Research Associates in Salvo and is a board member with Outer Banks Lighthouse Society, has been researching the Cape Hatteras Lighthouse as a volunteer for many years. For that reason, besides his respect for the “amazing monument” to America, Havel is pleased that the project restores four important “character defining features” of the extraordinary architecture of the 1870 lighthouse.

“This is the first restoration in 154 years that they’ve ever had, top to bottom,” he said in a recent phone interview. “I could go on and talk about many repair projects and smaller things they’ve had over the years but there’s never been anything this large.”

Restoration of the features that most people didn’t even know were gone adds immeasurable value to the historic integrity of the lighthouse, he believes. And they meaningly illustrate the architectural beauty and engineering skill of the era.

There were cast-iron pediments, ornamental Victorian elements, above the windows, which disappeared around 1964, Havel said. From about 1871 to 1920, there used to be the Victorian iron fence around the base, similar to the one that’s at the U.S. Treasury Building in Washington, D.C.

There used to be two sets of glass and wooden doors at different areas in the lighthouse that disappeared over the years, Havel said. And there used to be a 12-foot-tall, pineapple-shaped Fresnel lens, holding 1,000 seafoam-green glass prisms, sitting in the lantern room like a crown atop the Guardian of the Atlantic.

At least some of those character features were unearthed by Havel’s persistence in tracking down original documentation in government archives, and bringing his findings to the Park Service or the contractors.

Much to his delight, Havel said he also traced documents that determined that the checkerboard flooring, rather than made of linoleum or soapstone as described in at least one document, is instead made of Belgian black marble. The white tile is Carrera marble, which happens to be the same kind of marble from which Michelangelo carved the famous statue David.

“My slogan is that I have a secret weapon and this is very true and it is a secret weapon that nobody else has . . . . time,” he said. “I’ve been studying this lighthouse for 17 to 20 years. Nobody else has time to do that.”

Before the contractors start removing the interior and exterior paint — the method has not yet been nailed down, they said — the existing rotating airport light will be removed from the top, and a temporary beacon will be installed, leaving the sky dark in April and May, Hallac said.

The replica Fresnel lens is expected to be installed in the restored lighthouse in June to July 2025, again darkening the sky. Since the Hatteras light is still considered an aid to navigation, the Coast Guard will issue notices to mariners at the appropriate times to warn about the light being off.

Dan Spinella at Artworks Florida is doing the replica work. According to Havel, Spinella, who was unavailable for comment, has built and repaired more than 200 lenses for lighthouses and museums around the U.S.

Around 2009, he and another Fresnel lens expert, Jim Woodward, closely studied the remnants of the lighthouse’s original Fresnel lens, complete with 268 salvaged prisms, on loan by the Park Service for a display at the state Graveyard of the Atlantic Museum in Hatteras.

“He and Jim measured that, millimeter by millimeter,” Havel recalled, “and he built a perfect reproduction of that in his computer.”

Once the lighthouse reopens, with regular maintenance, it will be good for another century or so without needing another major project to save it.

“The restoration of the lighthouse and its grounds presents an excellent chance to educate future generations of visitors,” wrote Stephen Talley, Landscape Architect and Project Manager at VHB in its website article. “By improving the flow of pedestrians and increasing resiliency of the grounds and Lighthouse, this landmark will be able to withstand heavy visitation and frequent storms for another century.”

BUXTON — Surfers catching waves off a Hatteras Island beach last week had reported a sheen on the water, burning in their eyes and a noxious coating on their wetsuits. Numerous people noticed a powerful stench of diesel on the shoreline by the popular surfing spot in Cape Hatteras National Seashore.

Although a similar strong odor was evident after an October storm at the same beach in washed-up clumps of peat, the source of the pollutant is still a mystery.

“We cannot address contamination if we don’t know where the contamination is,” Carl Dokter, program manager of the Army Corps of Engineers Savannah District’s Formerly Used Defense Sites, or FUDS, told Coastal Review on Thursday. “And every attempt we’ve made to drill some holes and find it reveals no peat, no organic layers, no diesel — just clean samples.”

Back in the fall, Dokter said in an interview, that since there had been fuel spills at the nearby former Buxton Naval Base that FUDS has remediated, in addition to removing tanks and contaminated soil in the early 2000s, the office had agreed in recent months to remove any remaining petroleum contamination. But with the ever-changing conditions at the beach, and the intermittent recurrence of the diesel odor, its origin has so far evaded detection by the team’s instruments.

In fact, Dokter said, when his team had gone to Buxton to investigate, the only place that tested positive for petroleum was washed-up sediment on the beach.

“Then our geologists looked for the peat layer,” he recounted in the interview last week. “And they explained to me that the beach has eroded about 30 feet vertically and 150 feet horizontally over the decades. So the peat layer, which you can see at the base of the dunes, has long since eroded away.”

During a visit on Wednesday at the Buxton beach, Cape Hatteras National Seashore Superintendent Dave Hallac noted that the diesel odor was clearly most powerful in the vicinity of a slab of concrete debris exposed in the surf zone. Even with breezy conditions that day at the oceanfront, the smell was potent and offensive.

Pointing to a pipe protruding from a nearby eroded dune, Hallac said that the odor was also discernible from whatever had been in the pipe. He later added that results received on Friday from an independent laboratory indicate evidence of the fuel. The test, commissioned by the park, detected TPH (total petroleum hydrocarbons) and DRO (diesel range organics) above “state action” levels, Hallac said.

Soil samples the Coast Guard took in Buxton in September revealed weathered light fuel oil, a small amount of lubricating oil, petroleum hydrocarbons, and nonpetroleum contamination, according to a press release.

Looking back: Navy base’s wretched reminders not just petroleum in soils

Before the Cape Hatteras Lighthouse was relocated from the surf in 1999, the nation’s tallest brick tower had stood guard since 1870 from the same beach. From 1956 to 1982, just to the north, the Navy had operated a secret submarine surveillance base, which the Coast Guard acquired in 1986. When Group Cape Hatteras relocated in 2005 to Fort Macon in Carteret County, the Coast Guard was required to remove infrastructure on the base before returning the property to the National Park Service.

As has become more apparent as erosion increases and unpleasant surprises are unburied, lots of stuff was left behind: building debris, toxins from dumped pesticides, and contaminants from spilled and leaking fuel containers.

The Coast Guard was still in the process of responding to questions from Coastal Review about its current and past responsibilities and activities in Buxton, according to an email Thursday from Jonathan Lally, with Coast Guard 5th District public affairs.

Chunks of concrete with wires sticking through, various sizes of pipes and portions of concrete foundation from what was once the Driftwood Club, where sailors gathered to drink and socialize, and Building 19, the terminal “T” building where the listening cable was believed to be, now litter the beach. Just off the sand in the nearshore, surfers have to evade metal parts of several deteriorating jetties the Navy built that stick up in the water. And the Coast Guard and FUDS are still monitoring groundwater, conducting tests and/or working to remove contaminated soils related to operations at the bases.

“Every time there’s a storm, more stuff gets exposed,” said Russell Blackwood, a surfer and free diver who has lived by what is known locally as Lighthouse Beach for 50 years. “Then in a day or two or three after a storm, it covers it right back up.”

Blackwood also worked at the Navy base in the 1970s. He theorized in a recent interview that the military had redundant diesel tanks under the T building, and the fuel is pushed up during storms.

“It only comes out of the tanks when there’s ocean water over them,” he said. “You’d go there when there’s no swell, at low tide, and you’d barely smell it.”

But around Feb. 7, after heavy weather, in addition to the seawater-fuel mix looking “milky-gray” and the sheen on top of the water, he said, “you couldn’t even breathe.”

Despite beach nourishment projects in 2017 and 2022, Blackwood said, severe erosion in the last 18 months has undone much of it, especially by Lighthouse Beach.

“It’s gone,” he said. “There is no dune.”

According to the Corps’ December 2023 Buxton Naval Facility report and proposed soil survey map, seven above-ground storage tanks, 27 underground storage tanks, an oil change ramp, a pipeline between a building and a tank, and soil in several areas were removed in the 1990s and 2000s. In addition, groundwater had been sampled repeatedly and monitoring wells were installed.

The Corps’ FUDS offices are responsible for environmental liabilities at sites that were owned, operated or controlled by the U.S. Department of Defense before Oct. 17, 1986.

Dokter, with FUDS, said that his office is continuing to work with the National Park Service and the state Department of Environmental Quality on how to tackle the problem. A team went to the site last week, and a field report on the December work is due within weeks.

“We’re trying to look into every possible source for where this is coming from,” Dokter said. “But the dilemma I’m facing the most is, I can’t remove something I can’t find. And that’s where our big frustration lies right now.”

The Corps team is even considering whether the fuel is coming from prior spills offshore. If the problem continues, he added, “at that point, I have to sit down with my with my technical team and probably reach out to our center of expertise and discuss options.”

But Dokter said the pipe to which Hallac is referring is an unlikely source because it wouldn’t account for the volume of fuel that has been reported.

Hallac also said that the National Seashore is asking the Corps to follow through on the cleanup that was supposed to have been wrapped up years ago.

“And so the concern is that the project was not completed and we continue to request that the Army Corps of Engineers remove the building foundations consistent with the plans that were provided to us in 1985 and 1986,” he said.

Dokter, however, said his “hands are tied,” at least for now.

“Because our program and policy states that we address things that were a hazard at the time, hazards that arise after it was transferred out of Department of Defense control are not eligible for FUDS funding,” Dokter said. “And so each erosion creating that hazard over time, since it was transferred out of DOD control, I’m just legally not allowed to pay to fix that.”

Despite the challenges, Hallac said that he is confident that the situation will be addressed, preferably sooner rather than later.

No matter, as Blackwood sees it, the fuel will just keep coming back to remind everyone that nothing is being done.

“I guarantee you, next time we get a north swell, it’ll be back,” Blackwood said. “When the surf gets to 6 feet, that’s when they need to come here. They need to camp here.”

The area around Cape Hatteras Lighthouse will be an active construction site when the first phase of a $19.2 million project to restore and rehabilitate the historic structure begins later this month.

Visitors should expect the entire area to be under construction for a minimum of 18 months, National Park Service officials said Monday.

This phase of the project is to include rehabilitating the interior and restoring the exterior of the lighthouse, repairing and replacing deteriorated materials and finishes, and landscape improvements.

“After a lengthy and thoughtful planning process, we are excited to take this significant step towards preserving an iconic historic landmark,” National Parks of Eastern North Carolina Superintendent David Hallac said in a statement. “We thank our visitors for their patience and understanding as the Cape Hatteras Lighthouse and its surrounding landscape are restored and enhanced over the next couple of years.”

The fabrication and installation of a replica first-order Fresnel lens is part of the project. A temporary beacon will be installed on the exterior of the lighthouse, but there will be periods of time that the light is turned off due to construction.

In addition to the site having limited access for visitation and viewpoints during the project, access to the Cape Hatteras Light Station will vary and temporary closures will occur. The exterior of the lighthouse will be scaffolded for the duration of the project.

The primary construction entrance will be at the east of the current main entrance to the light station. A portion of the parking area will be closed for several months for the delivery of project materials and staging for construction. 

The Keepers of the Light Amphitheater stones will be stored during the construction and be placed in the lighthouse district when construction is complete to honor the keepers and educate the public about their role in caring for the lighthouse. 

The work is a combined effort of the National Park Service and Stone and Lime Historic Restoration Services, Inc. based in North Brookfield, Massachusetts

In coordination with the contractor, Cape Hatteras National Seashore will provide opportunities for visitors onsite to view construction activities, access the Museum of the Sea and learn about the restoration project as construction schedules allow.

During the multi-year project, the seashore will provide project updates on its project update webpage and social media accounts.

In anticipation of a powerful storm forecast for the North Carolina coast this week, certain National Park Service facilities on the Outer Banks are closing to the public.

The Ocracoke Campground closed at noon Monday. All other visitor facilities at Cape Hatteras National Seashore, Fort Raleigh National Historic Site and Wright Brothers National Memorial will close at noon Tuesday.

Facilities are to open at 10 a.m. Wednesday, depending on storm impacts. Closure updates are available on the park service’s website.

Officials warn travelers to avoid Tuesday evening into Wednesday the following vulnerable areas of N.C. Highway 12:

• A 2-mile stretch of highway south of off-road vehicle ramp 59 on Ocracoke Island.
• Between the villages of Hatteras and Frisco.
• Along the northern boundary of Buxton and along Ocean View Drive in Avon.
• Cape Hatteras National Seashore’s southern boundary with the Village of Salvo.
• several side streets in northern Rodanthe.
• Between the Pea Island Visitor Center and Basnight Bridge. 
• Between the Basnight Bridge and Whalebone Junction. 

Visitors to Rodanthe should avoid the beach between the north end of Rodanthe and South Shore Drive until conditions improve. Beach driving conditions are not expected to be favorable at off-road vehicle ramps.

Travelers can monitor road conditions at https://drivenc.gov. 

For weather-related updates, visit the National Weather Service’s Newport/Morehead City website. 

A groundbreaking for the $3.6 million project to raise and make repairs to the Double Keepers’ Quarters and other structures at Cape Hatteras National Seashore’s Ocracoke Light Station is scheduled for 2 p.m. Thursday, Dec. 7.

The 15-minute event, which caps off the year-long celebration of the Ocracoke Light Station’s 200th anniversary, will take place by the Double Keepers’ Quarters.

Hosted by the National Park Service, there will be brief remarks followed by the breaking of ground by representatives from the National Park Service, Hyde County, the State Historic Preservation Office and the contractor, Terra Site Constructors LLC.

The Double Keepers’ Quarters will be open for public viewing immediately after the groundbreaking event for one hour and the base of the Ocracoke Lighthouse for will be open from 11:45 a.m. to 2:45 p.m. 

During the 12-month project, the contractors are to raise the Double Keepers’ Quarters more than 4 feet to protect against storm surge, and the Store House, Carpenter’s Shop, Generator House and Privy by 2 feet on concrete masonry piers with concrete footers. 

The contractors also are to repair interior and exterior storm damage and repaint all structures, remediate all structures for mold, lead based paint and asbestos containing material, and install a pathway from the existing boardwalk to a custom lift to the Double Keepers’ Quarters. The pathway and custom lift will meet Architectural Barriers Act, or ABA, accessibility standards. 

Groundbreaking event attendees are encouraged to park at the nearby Ocracoke Township Tourism Development Authority parking lot due to limited parking at the Ocracoke Light Station.

RODANTHE — Two excavators, some thick steel cables and seven determined men did Wednesday afternoon what the Atlantic Ocean was aiming to do: destroy a once-handsome house sitting dangerously close to the swirling surf.

“When we got here this morning, the tide was past the front of the house,” Mike Dunn, owner of W.M. Dunn Construction of Powells Point, told a small group of media at the site, where workers on the beach behind him were preparing the house at 23292 East Beacon Drive for its imminent demise.

After the larger excavator gingerly began nipping at the stairs, its operator soon began pulling at the planking under the house, followed by its monster-like chomps of the upper decks.

Meanwhile, the smaller excavator was hooked up to a steel line that encircled the house. Most of the crew, who were wielding various sizes of saws, started cutting into the crossbeams under the house with the intent of weakening the structure, while Dunn kept a close eye.

The destruction of a house when done by careful professionals is a compelling sight and it went quickly. Once the house’s support structure was sufficiently compromised by the cuts, the signal was given to the smaller excavator operator to start pulling away from the ocean. After a tentative sway of resistance, the house fell flat on the ground. At that, the larger excavator started pounding at the exterior, exposing the structure’s guts. It would be crushed and splintered, and removed within hours, while National Park Service personnel stood by, ready to scoop up any stray debris on the beach.

In recent years, Dunn had been hired to remove scattered debris from some houses that had collapsed farther south on Rodanthe beaches. But he said it’s a lot easier — and rewarding — to demolish a house before it falls onto the beach.

“We enjoy it, because it’s a pretty high-profile project,” Dunn said.  

Four houses have fallen on the Cape Hatteras National Seashore since February 2022, and numerous others on the beach remain threatened.

In a pilot program that made it possible for the National Park Service to buy the two houses, about $700,000 had been provided by the Land and Water Conservation Fund, which uses no tax dollars and is instead funded by income from oil and gas leases.

The valuation of the houses was done by specialists at the U.S. Department of Interior, Cape Hatteras National Seashore Superintendent Dave Hallac told journalists. 

“The fair market value was determined by a government appraiser,” he said.

The 30-day contract to demolish the two houses cost about $72,000, including removal of septic tanks and the debris, Hallac said. That cost is not covered by the grant.

Dunn said that he expects to remove five or six truckloads of debris from each house after they’re demolished. He added that the second house will be done when the tide and weather conditions allow. Pilings and numerous septic tanks will also be removed.

Although some of the wood may have still been reuseable, Dunn said it wouldn’t be practical to try to save it when you’re racing against high tide.  

“You could salvage some of this if it wasn’t on the ocean, but this is a speed process,” he said.

Once the houses are gone, and the beaches are cleaned up, the land will be returned to public use, Hallac said. Installation of a bike rack is under consideration, he added, but there won’t be any parking provided.

Meanwhile, the park service is continuing to evaluate whether the pilot program can be scaled up to allow additional removals of houses on the national seashore.

Until now, it has been difficult for property owners to afford costs of relocating or demolishing their threatened homes on the beach. Some owners said they had no choice but to wait for the houses to collapse before they could collect from their flood insurance policy. Currently, government laws and regulations are limited in requiring owners to take proactive action.

But Hallac said that Dunn’s work showed the sense in taking a house down in a controlled manner before the ocean destroys it and scatters the debris for miles. 

“In this case,” Hallac said, “the collapse is on his terms.” 

Learn about the history and management of the Ocracoke horse herd at Cape Hatteras National Seashore beginning at 1 p.m. Wednesday, Nov. 29.

The presentation is to take place in the Ocracoke Community Center, 999 Irvin Garrish Highway.

Cape Hatteras National Seashore and its philanthropic partner, Outer Banks Forever, are hosting the presentation with Kent Redford, a conservation practitioner and scientist with Archipelago Consulting, and Elaine Leslie, retired chief of biological resources for the National Park Service.

The researchers will include information on the history, genetics, range conditions and management of horses, often referred to as ponies, on Ocracoke Island. Results of the research may be used to help inform future management of the Ocracoke horse herd.

Audience members will have the opportunity to discuss the history of horses on Ocracoke Island with Redford, Leslie and seashore staff following the presentation.

There is no charge to attend the event and reservations are not required.

Contact the national seashore at 252-473-2111 for more information.

BUXTON — Petroleum spilled and partially cleaned up at a long-abandoned U.S. Navy base at Cape Hatteras recently reemerged in clumps of peat soil after a storm. Last month, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers stepped up to take responsibility for the cleanup, even though its source is technically uncertain.

But the diesel smell and oily mudballs, now temporarily reburied, are only one of the wretched souvenirs left behind on the Cape Hatteras National Seashore beach by the Navy and later, the Coast Guard, including chunks of building debris, metal shards from deteriorated jetties and possibly other soil contaminants. 

“Looking at the historical evidence and knowing that the Navy had a release, we’ve decided that we are going to address any petroleum contamination that may still be present,” Carl Dokter, manager of the Corps’ Formerly Used Defense Sites, or FUDS, program based in Savannah, told Coastal Review.

The Corps responds to environmental liabilities at sites that were owned, operated or controlled by the U.S. Department of Defense before Oct. 17, 1986, he said. The Navy had operated a submarine surveillance operation in Buxton under a special-use permit from the National Park Service from 1956 to 1982. The Coast Guard acquired the site, near the original location of the Cape Hatteras Lighthouse, in 1986, operating as Group Cape Hatteras until the base relocated in 2005 to Fort Macon in Carteret County.

According to a 1999 Corps site assessment, the state Department of Natural and Environmental Resources had issued a notice of violation to the Buxton facility in 1997, citing at the time groundwater samples containing chemicals 1,2,3,4 trimethylbenzene and naphthalene.

After discovering that the petroleum storage tanks on the base had apparently leaked, Dokter said, the Corps in the early 2000s removed the tanks and a significant portion of contaminated soil.

The stink after the storm

Cape Hatteras National Seashore Superintendent Dave Hallac got a call Sept. 1, after Tropical Storm Idalia, from a Hatteras Island resident concerning a strong diesel smell coming from the old Navy base, as well as a sheen in the ocean waters.

When staff arrived at the site, they didn’t see any sheen on the water, but they did note a slight smell of diesel, Hallac told Coastal Review. After Hallac reported the problem, Coast Guard members from Sector North Carolina came to the site and took soil samples that showed contamination from petroleum. The park service then closed that section of beach, which remains closed.

Hallac said the odor had followed strong swells from the offshore storms that caused erosion and uncovered the polluted soil. But about two weeks later, the situation worsened, with surfers in the area reporting headaches and rashes. On Sept. 26, the Dare County Department of Health and Human Services and other agencies issued a public alert to avoid swimming, fishing or wading in the area. Big clumps of oily peat soil, also called mudballs, were scattered over the beach.

“It was obvious that the odors were coming from those soils,” Hallac said. “I mean, it was very strong.” 

The Coast Guard then made another visit and took more samples, finding “weathered light fuel oil, a small amount of lubricating oil, petroleum hydrocarbons, and non-petroleum contamination,” according to the county’s news release.

“Totally coincidentally,” Hallac added, the Army Corps happened to be at the site when the odor was strongest, doing the groundwater remediation it has been conducting here on and off for years. The Corps also took a soil sample, which confirmed petroleum contamination.

Dokter, with the Corps, said that the agency has been addressing residual contamination in groundwater since it removed the tanks years ago. The Savannah district has been working with the North Carolina Department of Environmental Quality to reduce the amount of methylnapthalene to acceptable levels.

“We have a series of injection wells and monitoring wells and we have been injecting a proprietary product … (that) binds with the petroleum and petroleum byproducts for neutralizing, but it doesn’t happen quickly,” he said. The last injection was done about 18 months ago, he added, and the Corps has continued sampling and monitoring on a quarterly basis. After the results are below regulatory levels, the site will be closed.

When the mudballs started washing up, it was clear that the petroleum contamination in the area was broader than previously understood. But Dokter said certainty as to its providence was close to impossible, especially since the oily peat clumps had already been reburied, and the beach has likely eroded 150 feet or more in recent years.

“We briefly considered trying to do what we call fingerprinting to establish, is it older petroleum or is it ’90s or later-type petroleum?” he said. “And there’s a marker that can tell you the difference. The problem is saltwater complicates everything, and the results are likely to be inconclusive if we even managed to get a sample of the (peat) product.”

Coordinated effort to determine corrective actions

The Savannah district announced Oct. 23 its intention to coordinate efforts with NCDEQ to determine corrective actions.

“While tremendous progress in technologies and techniques addressing environmental contamination have been made throughout the years, currently, there isn’t a fail-proof method that will provide a 100 percent certainty all environmental concerns are discovered and can be completely addressed,” the statement said. “The Corps does everything it can to ensure when its work is complete, human health and the environment are protected.”

Meanwhile, according to Hallac, the Coast Guard is in the process of implementing a Phase II environmental assessment of potential contaminants at the site. 

The Coast Guard has not responded to multiple phone calls and emails from Coastal Review seeking information. 

According to an online report, the Coast Guard was scheduled to start a $500,000 Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation and Liability Act, or CERCLA, investigation at the old U.S. Coast Guard Group Cape Hatteras site around June 15. “The contractor shall provide professional architectural and engineering services to perform continued CERCLA investigation in order to determine the extent of groundwater and soil contamination,” the posting said. “The contractor shall provide recommendations for additional remediation where applicable at the USCG Group Cape Hatteras (decommissioned) in Buxton, NC.”

In a Coastal Review report published July 1, 2013, a Coast Guard environmental engineer said that preliminary testing at the Buxton site detected evidence of chemicals that include benzanthracene, benzopyrene, chlordane, dieldrin, and endrin, as well as traces of heavy metals arsenic, chromium and mercury.

At the time, the Coast Guard was seeking $200,000 for remediation costs. No further information about the proposed cleanup has been provided.

Visible remnants

Far more visible remnants of the military’s former presence at Cape Hatteras’ oceanfront have become an increasingly obnoxious eyesore and hazard to beachgoers and surfers, including sharp shards from three concrete and steel groins the Navy installed in 1970 to stem beach erosion.

Although there had been previous discussion about repairing or removing the structures, which locals call jetties, no agency claimed responsibility, and they were left to further deteriorate after the Cape Hatteras Lighthouse was moved from the beach in 1999.

“There’s stuff that’s sticking out of the sand now,” said Carol Busbey, an owner of Natural Art Surf Shop in Buxton.

The “first jetty,” a favorite surf spot at Lighthouse Beach, has fallen apart to the extent that Busbey now has a piece of it standing in her shop’s parking lot.

“We’re actually going to sink it into the ground,” she said. “People have been cut by it. I wish they would do something about it. The surf break isn’t there anyway.”

Busbey blames the jetties’ demise and accompanying changes in the sandbar for ruining surfing at the spot. “It changed it completely,” she said. “It used to be such a great surf break. But the beach’s reputation keeps surfers coming anyway to catch what they can. Unfortunately, sometimes the jetties can be dangerous.

“The third jetty — the north jetty — it’s got horrible spikes sticking up,” she said. “At high tide you can’t see those pieces sticking up.”

In addition to litter on the beach from the oil-soaked peat clumps, which probably originated from the salt marsh, there are also chunks of debris from the old bases being exposed by erosion, much of it since September.

“There is a historic wastewater tank that is essentially on the beach — the foundation of it — that has been exposed,” Hallac said. “The building upon which the listening cables that we believe the Navy used, the foundation of that building, pipes leading into that building, chunks of concrete — and I mean very large chunks of concrete — all of that is now exposed, septic drain field pipes, PVC pipes.

“It’s to the point where it’s not safe,” he said. “There’s too much concrete, rebar, metal pipes along the beach section here that’s it’s really not safe to walk up and down the beach.”

Hallac has been discussing his concerns with both the Coast Guard and the Corps. He said he will likely reach out to the Navy soon. But, he said, the Corps is not optimistic that it could help with the problem.

As it is, the Corps has plenty of concerns with Buxton on its plate. After its risk assessment on the petroleum in the peat is completed, Dokter said the Corps will consult with NCDEQ about how to move forward, since it’s yet to be determined whether it’s even possible to remove a layer of contaminated peat soil.

“We haven’t really established a feasible way to do that,” he said. “Essentially, to remove a subsurface layer involves some level of dewatering. It’s not impossible to dewater a beach, but the costs would be astronomical.

“This is a challenge,” Dokter added. “We’ve included some of our chemists, geologists and environmental engineers, what we call our center of expertise within the Corps, because it’s a little more challenging of a problem than my typical project sites.”

Cape Hatteras National Seashore officials estimate that 25,000 sea turtle hatchlings made their way to sea this summer from the more than 370 nests tracked along the park’s beaches.

Outer Banks Forever, the seashore’s official nonprofit partner, shared this and more Friday about the nest and sea turtle statistics park rangers collected during the 2023 nesting season.

The nonprofit was established in 2019 and supports the Cape Hatteras National Seashore, Fort Raleigh National Historic Site and Wright Brothers National Memorial.

Of all the sea turtle nests in the state, 19% were found at Cape Hatteras National Seashore.

Park staff tracked 378 sea turtle nests this year. Of those, 86% were loggerheads, 50 green sea turtles, three Kemp’s ridleys and one leatherback nest. Total eggs counted were 39,085, the average eggs per nest were 119, and average incubation time was 56 days.

Outer Banks Forever supporters adopted 283 nests this year through the nonprofit’s Adopt A Sea Turtle Nest program, raising $28,987 to help fun projects and programs at Cape Hatteras.

“Sea turtles are some of our favorite visitors here in the Outer Banks,” Outer Banks Forever Director Jessica Barnes said in a statement. “We’re so grateful to our national park staff who help protect the sea turtles, their nests and the habitat they need to thrive. Each donor who adopts a nest on the Seashore helps us invest in protecting and enhancing this amazing place.”

RODANTHE — Early in the last virtual meeting of the Threatened Oceanfront Structures Interagency Task Force Oct. 12, Cape Hatteras National Seashore Superintendent David Hallac provided details about a pilot program in which the agency recently used nonprofit conservation trust funds to purchase two endangered oceanfront houses in Rodanthe.

The plan sounded like it could be the kind of solution the task force had long been seeking: The owners agreed to the deal, and the National Park Service is keeping tons of debris from another inevitable house collapse from scattering into the Atlantic and for miles on the public trust seashore and nearby private property.

But comments on an Oct. 16 article in the Washington Post illustrate why the task force was assembled in the first place: to remedy government paralysis and address overlapping rights and inadequate regulations to protect public resources that affect private property, a contentious and complicated consequence of climate change involving money, power and unequal misfortune. 

Since an oceanfront house in Rodanthe fell Feb. 9, 2022, three others nearby have collapsed onto the national seashore, where numerous structures still standing on 2 miles of eroded shoreline are also threatened. 

“They knew the risks, now pay the piper,” commenter “cat whisker” wrote in response to the article. “Declare eminent domain and pull those houses down, no buyouts. Why should tax payers subsidize greed and stupidity?”

Others expressed similar sentiments.

“Your insurance is subsidized by the insurance of others, who do not live in high-risk areas,” “doggone 1” wrote. “Many of us who put a lot of thought into buying our homes resent those who obviously did not, and who now expect a bail-out of some sort.”

While Rodanthe is hardly the only beachfront community in the U.S., it is an early — and dramatic — illustration of the impacts of climate change on coastlines as sea levels continue to rise.

Much of the response and planning for climate impacts is being done on a local and state level, while integrating with federal programs and funding. Rodanthe is unusual in that it’s a blend of local, state, federal and private interests in one concentrated area that affects many thousands of visitors to a national park with vital natural resources and popular attractions.

Although Rodanthe has one of the highest erosion rates on the Outer Banks, the beach in front of the problem houses had been relatively wide and stable until recent years, when the beach erosion rate accelerated over a short span of time. Soon, it became evident that no level of government was equipped with the clear authorities or incentives to get people to remove their threatened houses before the ocean took them.

In two previous meetings held since March, the task force has discussed issues with federal flood insurance, private insurance, septic systems and grant programs, among others. The focus of the most recent workshop was on government’s role, its potential actions and limitations and its effects on private property protections and rights. 

“We collectively found that few if any federal funding programs were available for property owners voluntarily or local governments to address erosion-threatened structures, through removal of the structure or relocation of the structures, especially where those structures were second homes or investment properties,” North Carolina Division of Coastal Management Director Braxton Davis told the task force.

The authority of the National Park Service “is very limited,” said Trish Cortelyou-Hamilton, an attorney with the U.S. Department of the Interior.

The ambulatory boundaries between mean low and mean high water are difficult to nail down precisely, making them difficult to enforce, she said.

“So there’s no rules or federal statutes related to requiring these folks to relocate,” Corelyou-Hamilton said.

And some houses were originally built much farther back from the beach, Hallac added. 

“But for those 2 miles of Rodanthe, there’s this collision of private properties and our seashore boundary,” he said.

Corelyou-Hamilton said that litigation by conservative law groups like the Pacific Legal Foundation represent plaintiffs suing over regulatory takings under the Fifth Amendment at little to no cost to the homeowner. Often the goal is to further national case law, making potential resolutions or settlements more difficult. 

To Corelyou-Hamilton’s point, Nags Head’s town manager Andy Garman said that the town has the authority to condemn an oceanfront structure and require repairs that make it safe. But the dilemma the town has faced is when the owners do the required repair, “many” have let the house sit on the beach.

“And we’ve had some for more than 15 years on the beach that are essentially uninhabitable the entire time,” he said.

Part of the reason the town’s hands are tied is because of a lawsuit that the town lost over its attempt to have an owner remove their house from the beach.

Even if there was additional authority, Garman said he would expect lawsuits to test it, meaning additional litigation over takings claims.

“So a lot of the burden has been put on local government to deal with these issues,” he said. “And having some sort of coordinated statewide approach — I know that’s the purpose of this group — would be much appreciated from our perspective.”

Other states have been grappling with houses collapsing on the beach, including in California where they fall off cliffs undermined by erosion. Some states have stricter measures in place than North Carolina when it comes to owner responsibilities for cleanup.

For instance, Hawaii, which experienced similar house collapses around the same time as Rodanthe, just passed new statutes that address debris removal and other concerns, North Carolina Coastal Federation Coastal Advocate Alyson Flynn told the task force. The Coastal Federation publishes Coastal Review.

In addition to setting up penalties, she said, the new laws also grant authority for the state to tap the private property value to cover costs of removal of illegal objects on public land, and provide drones to view the subject area. 

Overall, the panel agreed that more innovation, collaboration and cooperation will be needed going forward.

“Local governments been given a lot of authority, but it’s basically been very piecemeal,” said Webb Fuller, a former Nags Head official and a member of the state Coastal Resources Advisory Committee. “And when local governments requested the state to come in and help us on stuff, the state has always been very reluctant to do that.”

Hallac said that the working group will provide a report summarizing the ideas, challenges and recommendations by year’s end.

Whatever the recommendations, private property and public resources, they will not be a one-size-fits-all solution, he said. Nor is there a bad guy to blame when a house collapses in the surf. 

“Whether or not you end up in the ocean within a week, a month or five years, it’s just going to happen on beaches where there is a long-term trend of erosion — it’s going to happen,” he said. “And so to me, that has to be some level of threshold in government’s work, hopefully collaboratively with owners to find a solution.”

National Park Service officials have given the go-ahead for planned repairs and improvements to the Cape Hatteras Lighthouse.

South Atlantic-Gulf Regional Director Mark Foust signed Monday a Finding of No Significant Impact, or FONSI, for the Cape Hatteras Lighthouse repair and landscape improvement project environmental assessment at Cape Hatteras National Seashore, the service announced Tuesday.

The project is to rehabilitate the interior and restore the exterior of the Cape Hatteras Lighthouse, repair or replace deteriorated materials and finishes, and selectively reverse nonsympathetic, or modern, treatments added after 1920.

The project also includes mitigating impacts to the Cape Hatteras Light Station landscape resulting from high visitation levels and providing a more immersive experience.

“Our team will now proceed expeditiously with finalizing design documents, awarding a contract and beginning work in 2023,” said David Hallac, superintendent of National Parks of Eastern North Carolina, in a statement.

The environmental assessment evaluated the impacts of repairing the Cape Hatteras Lighthouse and implementing landscape improvements at the Cape Hatteras Light Station.

The National Park Service selected and approved Alternative C: Circulation Enhanced and Lens Replicated, of three alternatives.

Other planned work include installing new railing and balustrade using a noncorrosive metal on lantern balcony and replacing the existing light with a replica of the original first-order Fresnel lens.

For visitors, the plan calls for improving pedestrian circulation, wayfinding, interpretation and the visitor experience at the Cape Hatteras Light Station, and adding educational panels in key locations throughout the landscape to convey the history of changes to the buildings and landscape that occurred during and after the period of restoration.

To view the recently signed documents and read a full list of approved actions, visit the Park Service website.

This post has been updated.

As a low-pressure strengthens off the North Carolina coast, Cape Hatteras National Seashore officials expect major to moderate oceanside flooding, ocean overwash on some beaches and roads, soundside flooding, gusty winds and dangerous rip currents Monday morning through Wednesday.

A coastal flood warning is in place. The National Weather Service forecast 2 to 4 feet of oceanside inundation and 2 to 3 feet of soundside inundation for some areas. Ocean overwash is expected around high tides through Wednesday. For up-to-date weather information, visit the National Weather Service’s Newport/Morehead City website.

Sections of N.C. 12, especially near the north ends of Hatteras and Ocracoke islands, may be difficult for travelers around high tides through Wednesday. Monitor road conditions at https://drivenc.gov or the state Department of Transportation’s N.C. 12 Facebook and Twitter.

National seashore officials are advising visitors not to enter the water because of due to dangerous surf conditions. Large breaking waves of 8 to 12 feet are expected in the surf zone from Monday morning through Wednesday. Sign up for beach-related weather and ocean condition alerts by texting OBXBeachConditions to 77295. Learn how to stay safe at the beach at www.lovethebeachrespecttheocean.com.

The 2-mile stretch of beach between the north end of Rodanthe and South Shore Drive should be completely avoided through Wednesday because there are several vulnerable houses that may be damaged by rough surf and strong winds, officials continued.

Ferry services to and from Ocracoke Island may be suspended. Call 252-996-6000 or 6001 for current information or visit the ferry division’s Twitter or Facebook.

Many off-road vehicle routes may become impassable, especially east-facing beach routes. Visit https://go.nps.gov/beachaccess for beach access updates.

Campgrounds are open but camping conditions are not expected to be favorable over the next few days, officials said. Visitors with reservations have been notified of the inclement weather.

If closures of facilities or suspensions of services become necessary, they will be announced via the seashore’s social media accounts and text alert system.

Reprinted from Island Free Press

With a total of 373 turtle nests recorded along the Cape Hatteras National Seashore as of the end of August, 2022 is a banner year for the sea turtle nesting season, with the second-highest number of nests reported since data collection began.

Sea turtle nests laid by loggerheads, green turtles, and leatherbacks have been monitored at the seashore since the 1970s. The Outer Banks serves as seasonal breeding grounds for endangered sea turtles, and the seashore has had several record-breaking years in the past decade when it comes to the annual number of recorded sea turtle nests.

In 2015, a nesting record of 289 nests was set, followed by a new record in 2016, when 325 sea turtle nests were recorded along the national seashore’s beaches.

In 2019, there were a total of 473 sea turtle nests recorded at the seashore, which blew the previous record of 325 out of the water.

2020 and 2021 were solid years for sea turtles as well, with a total of 228 nests recorded along the seashore beaches in 2020, and a total of 315 nests recorded in 2021.

However, with 373 nests reported to date, this has been one of the busiest seasons by far, second only to 2019.

The first sea turtle nest of the season was found on Ocracoke Island on May 20, and while the nesting season is winding down, nest hatchings are occurring on a regular basis, and visitors are advised to be aware of this activity throughout Hatteras and Ocracoke Islands.

Hatchlings are very sensitive to light as they emerge from their nests, and can become disoriented towards any light that mimics the moon or stars over the ocean. As such, visitors staying in oceanfront accommodations that are close to an established sea turtle nest are encouraged to turn off their outdoor lights and close their blinds or drapes after dark, so that the sea turtles don’t mistake a stray porch light for the ocean waters.

People on the beach after dark should also refrain from using flashlights or cellphones near sea turtle nests, as bright, artificial light can also send mixed signals to the newly emerged sea turtle hatchlings.

Beachgoers should also remove beach equipment, such as lounge chairs, umbrellas, tents, and other items from the beach when they leave. If left on the beach, these items can prevent nesting attempts, and can also be roadblocks for hatchlings who are trying to make a mad dash to the ocean.

Other tips to help protect sea turtles and hatchlings during the nesting season, per the N.C. Wildlife Resources Commission, include the following:

• Fill in all holes in the sand at the end of the day.
• Pick up all your trash when you leave.
• If fishing, properly dispose of any fishing line. Improperly discarded fishing line is often deadly to turtles, birds and other marine animals.
• Use your natural vision and moonlight when walking the beach at night.

Visitors who notice any sea turtle nesting activity are advised to call the Cape Hatteras National Seashore to report the sighting at 252-216-6892.

In the meantime, visitors can keep tabs on nesting activity at shorelines all around the world at http://www.seaturtle.org.

This story is provided courtesy of the Island Free Press, a digital newspaper covering Hatteras and Ocracoke islands. Coastal Review is partnering with the Free Press to provide readers with more environmental and lifestyle stories of interest along our coast. 

National Park Service officials are asking for input on two proposed projects at Cape Hatteras National Seashore.

The projects are to rehabilitate the interior and restore the exterior of the lighthouse, and to develop plans for a multi-use path in the Cape Hatteras Lighthouse District.

A public meeting to discuss both projects is scheduled for 5:30-6:30 p.m. Thursday, June 2, at the Fessenden Center Annex in Buxton.

During the meeting, Superintendent David Hallac will give a presentation followed by time to offer feedback and ask questions.

The public comment period ends June 22 on both projects. Comments may be submitted electronically, the preferred method, or mailed to Superintendent, 1401 National Park Drive, Manteo, NC 27954.

Project 1: Lighthouse rehabilitation

The National Park Service proposes rehabilitating the interior and restore the exterior of the Cape Hatteras Lighthouse and its character-defining features, to repair or replace deteriorated materials and finishes, and to selectively reverse unsympathetic treatments added to the lighthouse and its oil house after 1920, officials said Tuesday.

The purpose is to offer a more immersive experience of the Cape Hatteras Light Station by defining walking paths and considering ways to improve the resiliency of the light station and grounds suited to a coastal environment that is subject to heavy visitation.

Three alternatives and a summary of potential impacts are Cape Hatteras Lighthouse Repair and Landscape Improvements environmental assessment and newsletter.

Project 2: Multi-use path

Park officials are working on plans for a multi-use path along Lighthouse Road in the Cape Hatteras Lighthouse District.

The new pathway would offer users a resilient, safe and accessible nonmotorized route between Buxton and popular visitor use areas such as the Cape Hatteras Lighthouse, museum and lifeguard beach. The pathway would also be enhanced with wayfinding, educational information and benches.

Three pathway ideas are detailed in the Construct Multi-Use Pathway along Lighthouse Road public scoping newsletter.

The Cape Hatteras National Seashore and the Outer Banks Kampgrounds of America Resort in Rodanthe are partnering together on a series of beach cleanups.

The cleanups begin Wednesday and are to continue each Wednesday until April 27. Volunteers can pick up supplies between 10 a.m. and noon at 25099 N.C. 12 in Rodanthe.

Coordinators encourage volunteers to wear thick-soled footwear and bring leather gloves, hats, water, snacks and sunscreen. Those younger than 18 must be accompanied by a parent or guardian.

“We are grateful to the KOA in Rodanthe for their efforts to host these volunteer beach cleanup events and help to steward the beaches at America’s first national seashore,” National Parks of Eastern North Carolina Superintendent David Hallac said in a statement.

Those who plan to collect litter the beach outside the hours of the organized beach cleanup events should place garbage bags and debris above the high tide line to ensure the items don’t get washed back into the ocean.

For additional information on volunteer opportunities at the national seashore, visit www.volunteer.gov or call 252-475-9042.

A $295,000 project to remove an abandoned vessel from the beach south of Cape Hatteras National Seashore’s Oregon Inlet Campground is expected to begin Monday.

Cape Dredging Inc. from Buxton will remove the vessel. The project is expected to take about 30 days.

The former scallop boat, previously named the Ocean Pursuit and Cameron Scott, ran aground in early March 2020 and became abandoned after the National Park Service made unsuccessful attempts to have the owner claim and remove the vessel.

“The National Park Service is continuing our attempts to recover costs associated with the removal of the derelict vessel from its registered owner,” David Hallac, superintendent of National Parks of Eastern North Carolina, said in a release. “This process has taken longer than expected, so Cape Hatteras National Seashore determined it was necessary to use a combination of fund sources to remove the vessel before it potentially becomes more expensive to remove later and to minimize impacts to the natural environment.”

Park Service officials said that during the project, areas around the vessel will be marked as a construction zone and all unauthorized persons should stay clear. Other than the small construction zone and minor traffic delays due to the transport of vessel pieces, there is not expected to be impacts to recreational beach access.

Cape Dredging Inc. will perform the following tasks to remove the vessel:

• Remove existing sand that has accumulated around the vessel.
• Remove deck structures.
• Remove all sand and water from compartments under deck surface.
• Cut vessel into smaller, manageable pieces and transport these pieces onto a tractor trailer for removal to appropriate disposal or recycling site.
• Restore the natural shape and slope to match surrounding beach.

Drop-in volunteer beach cleanups are planned for 7:30-11 a.m. Saturday, Sept. 18, at Coquina Beach Access and Ocracoke Beach Access, both part of Cape Hatteras National Seashore. 

Staff with seashore, host of the cleanups, will meet volunteers near the restroom facilities at each location. Those under 18 must be accompanied by a parent or legal guardian. All volunteers are encouraged to bring leather gloves, water, snacks and sunscreen and wear appropriate clothing, such as hats and closed-toed shoes.

Also that morning, the North Carolina Beach Buggy Association members will be stationed at off-road vehicle ramps where visitors can grab a trash bags for collecting litter. Participants in the association’s cleanup are asked to deposit trash bags at ramp entrances for collection when leaving the beach. For more information on NCBBA’s beach cleanup, contact Tom Brueckner at tom.brueckner@ncbba.org.

To learn more about volunteer opportunities at the seashore, Fort Raleigh National Historic Site and Wright Brothers National Memorial, visit www.volunteer.gov or call 252-475-9042.

The Oregon Inlet Kayak Launch at the south end of the Oregon Inlet Marina on Bodie Island officially open Monday to the public following a ribbon-cutting ceremony.

The nonprofit arm of the three Outer Banks national parks, Outer Banks Forever, helped fund what officials called the first designated kayak launch at Cape Hatteras National Seashore. TowneBank, Ocean Atlantic Rentals and Bass Pro Shops also supported the project.

The ribbon-cutting ceremony Monday morning included comments from David Hallac, superintendent of the National Parks of Eastern North Carolina; Trip Forman, co-founder of REAL Watersports and president of the Outer Banks Forever Board of Directors; and Jessica Barnes Green, director of Outer Banks Forever.  

“Our park staff and the community had the vision for this kayak launch in 2016 during the Centennial of the National Park Service and we are thankful that our nonprofit partner, Outer Banks Forever, could help us make this project a reality.” Hallac said.

Though there are several informal sites at Cape Hatteras National Seashore to launch nonmotorized watercraft, this is the first maintained, mobility friendly kayak launch promoted by the National Park Service in the Outer Banks, according to the nonprofit organization.

Improvements to the kayak launch site include a new loading zone, additional handicap and kayak trailer parking spaces, mobility friendly access mat, clean up of rubble and debris, and new educational signage.

“This kayak launch will encourage locals and visitors to explore the coastal environment and provide a safe way for nonmotorized water sport enthusiasts to experience the beautiful Pamlico Sound,” Green said.

Visitors and local businesses are already taking advantage of the improvements at the kayak launch, according to the organization.

“The new rubber launch mat and loading zone make my daily fly-fishing guide trips much simpler and efficient. I am also grateful for the extra-long parking spaces for my trailer. The improvements have brought organization and ease for myself and other local and visiting kayakers,” said Harry Meraklis with OBX on the Fly in a statement.

In addition to Cape Hatteras National Seashore, Outer Banks Forever supports Fort Raleigh National Historic Site and Wright Brothers National Memorial.

Adopt a sea turtle nest and help support projects and programs through Outer Banks Forever, the area nonprofit partner for Outer Banks national parks that works to protect and enhance Cape Hatteras National Seashore. 

“The Adopt a Sea Turtle Nest program not only helps our national park, but it’s also really fun for us to send out the updates to each person who adopts – particularly the number of baby sea turtles that hatch out of each nest. It’s a great way to feel connected to these amazing animals while also supporting Cape Hatteras National Seashore,” Jessica Barnes Green, director of Outer Banks Forever, said in a statement.

Supporters can symbolically adopt an active sea turtle nest on the seashore for a minimum donation of $100 at www.obxforever.org/adoptanest or by mail to Outer Banks Forever, P.O. Box 1635, Kill Devil Hills, N.C. 27948, with “Adopt a Sea Turtle Nest” in the memo field. Adopters will be assigned an active sea turtle nest and receive an adoption certificate by mail along with initial information about the nest, general location and turtle species. 

Officials said that since sea turtles are just starting to arrive this month, it may take two to three weeks to be assigned a nest. There are a limited number of nests each year and they are assigned on a first-come, first-served basis.

When the nest hatches this summer or fall, adopters are to receive a personalized update with information about the nest, including where it was located and the number of hatchlings that made their way out of the nest. 

If the adopted nest is lost to a weather event or damaged by some other means, Outer Banks Forever says it will assign adopters a new nest.

To learn more about the sea turtles that visit the coast each year, Outer Banks Forever’s recent Coffee with a Ranger video features sea turtle insights from Meaghan Johnson, chief of resource management and science, for the National Parks of Eastern North Carolina. 

MANTEO — Help is needed to identify the perpetrator of an alleged kidnapping May 12 within Cape Hatteras National Seashore at the Coquina Beach Access, across N.C. 12 from Bodie Island Light Station.

Cape Hatteras National Seashore law enforcement rangers, special agents with the National Park Service’s Investigative Services Branch, and Dare County Sheriff’s Office are asking the public to come forward with any information regarding the ongoing investigation.

The National Park Service provided the following details on the case:

• An adult female seashore visitor reports being kidnapped from the Coquina Beach Access restrooms by an adult white male around 6:45 p.m. Wednesday, May 12. The restrooms are across N.C. 12 from the Bodie Island Light Station.
• The female alleges that she was physically forced by the male to drive her vehicle, a silver 2017 Ford Escape, until reaching the Little Kinnakeet Beach Access parking lot, across N.C. 12 from the Little Kinnakeet Life-Saving Station.
• Once at the Little Kinnakeet Beach Access parking lot, the female reports that she escaped west from the ocean-side beach and fled on foot south along N.C. 12 until she was picked up by a passing motorist.
• Seashore law enforcement rangers responded and began investigating jointly with the Dare County Sheriff’s Office at around 8:45 p.m.
• The female did not require transport to the hospital.
• The alleged kidnapper was described as 6 feet tall with light colored hair, scruffy chin hair and possibly a thin mustache. He most likely fled the scene by foot along N.C. 12 or the beach the evening of May 12.

Anyone with information that could help identify the individual responsible for committing this alleged crime are asked to contact the Investigative Services Branch by calling or texting its tip line at 888-653-0009, submitting an anonymous tip at www.nps.gov/isb or by emailing nps_isb@nps.gov. Anonymous tips may also be submitted to the Dare County Community CrimeLine at www.darecommunitycrimeline.org/tips.

The National Park Service has selected a plan that provides a streamlined framework for Cape Hatteras National Seashore to manage over the next 20 years activities such as including beach nourishment, dune rebuilding, habitat restoration and emergency breach fill, with conditions.

National Park Service South Atlantic-Gulf Regional Director Stan Austin and U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service Southeast Regional Director Leopoldo Miranda-Castro signed Wednesday a record of decision for a sediment management framework environmental impact statement at Cape Hatteras National Seashore.

The National Park Service’s selected alternative B. Under this alternative, the park service could permit other agencies and municipalities to conduct, with conditions, sediment management in the form of oceanside and soundside beach nourishment, filling island breaches, and dune restoration, according to documents. This alternative would also recognize that park service and others may independently or in partnership restore beach habitats or periodically protect specific facilities or resources through sediment placement in areas that have been affected by erosion. 

A sediment management framework helps park partners who want to nourish beaches in the face of increased storm events and projected sea level rise. The framework is to include when, where, and how sediment management actions may be permitted at the seashore.

A special use permit application and approval process detailing how the seashore will review, issue and manage special use permits for larger-scale sediment management activities was developed as part of the framework as well.

Sediment management activities will usually not be permitted along the 13 noncontiguous miles of beach set aside for monitoring where beach width and lack of vulnerable infrastructure indicate a low potential for requests to manage sediment.

David Hallac, superintendent for National Parks of Eastern North Carolina thanked U.S. Army Corps of Engineers Wilmington District Regulatory and Planning divisions, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service Pea Island National Wildlife Refuge and Raleigh Ecological Services Field Office, the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, the North Carolina Department of Transportation Ferry and Highway divisions, the North Carolina Wildlife Resources Commission, Dare County and Hyde County.

“Their assistance in developing this plan will allow our partners to protect important community infrastructure while avoiding and minimizing impacts to the resources of Cape Hatteras National Seashore. We also appreciate the time that many individuals and organizations took to review the plan and provide helpful comments and recommendations,” he said in a statement.

The record of decision explains the decision, describes the selected alternative and documents public and agency involvement in the decision-making process. The issuance of the record of decision is the final step in the National Environmental Policy Act process.

To view all  documents, visit parkplanning.nps.gov/CAHAsediment.

The Cape Hatteras National Seashore recently opened a new beach access parking area on the oceanside of N.C. 12, between the villages of Avon and Salvo.

The parking area is in between Off-Road Vehicle Ramps 27 and 30, and provides access to the adjacent oceanside beach.

The site is an unpaved parking lot that is able to accommodate roughly 15 vehicles, and it connects with a sandy and cleared path to the shoreline.

The new parking lot is the 16th parking area available for public use within the Cape Hatters National Seashore on Hatteras Island.

For a complete list of parking areas and ORV ramps, including current beach conditions, see visit the park service website.

Update 8:45 a.m. Friday:

A U.S. Navy Explosive Ordnance Disposal unit from Norfolk, Virginia, confirmed that the object found on a Cape Hatteras National Seashore beach  is a live military ordnance, the National Park Service said late Thursday.

The U.S. Navy EOD unit has placed the unexploded ordnance, a 100-pound aerial bomb from the World War II era, deep inside the beach near the Cape Hatteras Lighthouse Beach Access parking area. At around 9 a.m. Friday, the unit will detonate the ordnance in place.

No damage to nearby structures is expected but Buxton residents and visitors may hear the detonation.

Dare County planned to send out a mass phone notification warning to all nearby residents and visitors at 8:30 a.m. Friday.

Original Post:

The National Park Service has put in place a half-mile safety perimeter around a potential unexploded ordnance discovered Thursday morning on the beach near the Cape Hatteras Lighthouse beach access parking area in Buxton.

A U.S. Navy Explosive Ordnance Disposal, or EOD, unit from Norfolk, Virginia, is expected to arrive around 3:30 p.m. Thursday to remove the device, according to the National Park Service.

Cape Hatteras National Seashore over the next two months will undergo four storm-related repair projects including boat docks on Ocracoke, parking lot repair in Buxton, dune restoration and road repair.

Achuti LLC based in Raleigh will begin Oct. 13 a project to install 15 new utility pedestals and utility lines at the Seashore’s Silver Lake boat slips on Ocracoke Island. Electrical systems inside the pedestals were damaged by saltwater flooding due to Hurricane Dorian. The boat docks should reopen in early January.

The old lighthouse beach parking lot, the former site of the Cape Hatteras Lighthouse in Buxton, has been damaged from many severe weather and ocean overwash events. Achuti LLC. will begin Nov. 2 the project to repair and repave the parking lot.

The old lighthouse beach parking lot will be closed during the project but visitors will continue to have access to parking in the nearby Cape Hatteras Lighthouse beach access parking lot, located just south, or the Buxton beach access parking lot which can be accessed by driving down Old Lighthouse Road in Buxton. The project is expected to be completed by the end of November.

A project to restore a large section of dune at the east end of Cape Hatteras Pier Drive is scheduled to begin Oct. 19. DOT Construction, Inc. in Morehead City expects to finish hauling sand, shaping the dune, and planting American beach grass on the dune by early December 2020.

The area was previously a parking lot that has been severely damaged by storms over the last several years. Given the lot’s proximity to the ocean, it is not sustainable to implement repairs. Therefore, the pavement has been removed and the dune will be rebuilt in the gap formed by the historic parking area. Over the next year, the Seashore will replace the lost parking capacity by enlarging the parking area at the Frisco Beach access, located about 0.3 miles to the south.

Residents and visitors will continue to have access down Cape Hatteras Pier Drive during construction.

Achuti LLC, the same contractor selected to complete the Ocracoke boat slip pedestal replacement and Old Lighthouse Beach parking lot repair projects, is scheduled to begin repairing and repaving Cape Hatteras Pier Drive shortly after the completion of the dune restoration project. The Seashore-owned road was damaged during Hurricane Florence and subsequent severe weather events.

As a result of increased late summer tourism to the Outer Banks, Cape Hatteras National Seashore will continue stationing lifeguards through the end of September at three lifegard beaches.

This year’s lifeguard season, originally scheduled from Memorial Day weekend through Labor Day has been extended to Sept. 30 at Coquina Beach Access on Bodie Island, Frisco Beach Access  on Hatteras Island and Ocracoke Beach Access on Ocracoke Island. Lifeguards are on duty 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. seven days a week.

“Lifeguard beaches are the safest places to swim along the Seashore,” David Hallac, Superintendent, National Parks of Eastern North Carolina, said in a statement. “We are pleased to provide an extended lifeguard season at three of the Seashore’s most-visited beaches.”

The Cape Hatteras Lighthouse Beach in Buxton will continue life-guarding services through Sept. 7.

Whether swimming at a lifeguard beach or entering the Atlantic Ocean elsewhere along the seashore, it is important for visitors to check the daily rip current forecast at www.weather.gov/beach/mx or sign up for ocean safety text messages by texting ‘Join OBXBeachConditions’ to 30890. Text ‘STOP’ to 30890 to stop receiving messages.