Oceanographer Dr. Reide Corbett is pausing this week during his transition from East Carolina University’s Outer Banks campus to the main campus in Greenville to give a talk on how the state’s coast is changing and why those changes matter for low-lying communities like Down East Carteret County.

Corbett, who is leaving his leadership roles on East Carolina University’s Outer Banks campus to act as interim dean of the Thomas Harriot College of Arts & Sciences, is scheduled to speak at 2 p.m. Wednesday at Core Sound Waterfowl Museum and Heritage Center on Harkers Island, one of the 13 unincorporated communities making up Down East.

Core Sound Executive Director Karen Willis Amspacher said that his talk is “an important conversation for all of us who live with a rapidly changing coastline.”

The talk is part of the organization’s five-part Water/Ways speaker series, an extension of the Smithsonian’s traveling “Water/Ways” exhibit on display until Aug. 9.

Related: Two speaker series to look at relationships of people, place

A coastal oceanographer and geochemist whose work focuses on coastal change, Corbett has most recently served as dean of East Carolina University’s Integrated Coastal Programs and executive director of the Coastal Studies Institute on the ECU Outer Banks Campus in Wanchese.

“Barrier islands, sounds, inlets, wetlands, and shorelines have always been dynamic, but rising sea level, storms, erosion, flooding, and expanding development are changing the risks we face and the choices available to us,” Corbett said in an email. “The talk will focus on the science behind coastal change, what we are seeing along the North Carolina coast, and the tradeoffs involved in how communities respond. The goal is not to offer a single solution, but to help frame the decisions ahead with a clearer understanding of the processes, risks, and long-term consequences.”

Corbett announced his departure in the Outer Banks campus spring 2026 newsletter and the Outer Banks Voice confirmed his plan in mid-June.

Dr. Mike Muglia will serve as interim director at Coastal Studies Institute while plans are formed to search for the next permanent executive director, expected to be in late summer or early fall, a CSI representative told Coastal Review.  

Muglia’s research focuses on Gulf Stream variability and its effect on the complex confluence of different water masses that occur off of the state’s coast. He leads the Coastal Studies Institute’s Gulf Stream resource assessment for the Renewable Ocean Energy Program, and has managed field research project design across disciplines in the marine environment of the Outer Banks, according to CSI.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Natural Function of Barrier Islands: Limits to Growth, Development

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Developing a New Coastal System Ethic

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

First of two parts.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Coastal geologist Stanley R. Riggs is scheduled to be at the Core Sound Waterfowl Museum and Heritage Center this weekend to officially launch his three volume, 10-book North Carolina Land of Water series that explores the state’s coast.

He will be at the Harkers Island museum at 3 p.m. Sunday for a discussion and to sign copies of the first book in the series, “Cape Lookout National Seashore: Paradigm for a Coastal System Ethic,” which was released in October. A reception is to follow. Copies of the book will be available for purchase at the event.

Riggs has spent more than six decades “studying North Carolina’s barrier islands, documenting how they shift and evolve as living systems shaped by wind, waves and storms,” organizers said.

Related: Coastal geologist Stan Riggs sets out on 10-book project

He joined East Carolina University in 1967, where he taught for more than three decades before becoming a distinguished research professor. He has served on the North Carolina Coastal Resources Commission’s science panel and Legislative Commission on Global Climate Change, and was recognized in 2022 with the North Carolina Award, the state’s highest civilian honor.

“Riggs’ latest book establishes the geologic and climatic framework needed for understanding and learning to live with our changing coast,” according to R.A. Fountain, the book’s publisher. “He demonstrates that Cape Lookout is a model for how our barrier islands should be treated–compared especially to its northern neighbor, Cape Hatteras–while also engaging his readers with a fascinating social and cultural history of an island that’s now become America’s grandest national seashore.”

The books are geared toward a general audience and use “research, history and hundreds of photographs, illustrations and maps to show how wind, waves and storms reshape the coast and how North Carolinians can adapt,” the publisher continued.

Core Sound’s Executive Director Karen Amspacher said the museum is “honored to be the ‘official celebration’ of this amazing body of work and Stan Riggs’ life commitment to Eastern North Carolina. Here in the Hook of Cape Lookout this story is ours and we welcome Stan back to give to this community his research, but also his love for this place, its people and its beauty. Welcome home Stan.”

To have a copy signed before it is shipped, purchase the book online through the museum. The book is also available through the publisher rafountain.com, and all proceeds of book sales will go to various nonprofits throughout the region as part of the author and his wife’s commitment to give back to coastal conservation, preservation and education.

BOILING SPRING LAKES – For the most part, work had wrapped on Pine Lake Dam here back in mid-June.

The light at the end of a tunnel of headaches caused since the closure of one of this city’s main traffic arteries, portions of which run atop Pine Lake and North Lake dams, was shining brighter and brighter.

With the dams complete, reconstruction could begin on sections of East Boiling Spring Road that have since the summer of 2023 been closed while crews rebuild and restore the dam system crippled by rainfall during Hurricane Florence nearly seven years ago.

But a swift burst of rain that drenched this little Brunswick County city on June 14 revealed that something was not right about the nearly finished Pine Lake Dam. It did not seem to be functioning properly.

That was the message one of the city’s commissioners relayed in a phone call to town staff that day. Rainwater, the commissioner reported, wasn’t stacking up behind the dam.

“In other words, there wasn’t a lake there,” City Manager Gordon Hargrove said. “It was a significant rainfall and it should have held some water. It did not hold water. It was running right through the dam.”

An investigation found that Pine Lake Dam, the design for which was vetted in multiple reviews by both federal and state agencies, is at an elevation of about 5 feet too low.

More than a month has passed since the city informed its residents of the revelation, one that has drawn a firestorm of criticism and finger pointing in a matter that might very well end up getting hashed out in court.

No timeline in sight

Today, large bright-white and blaze-orange barricades block off a roughly 750-foot stretch of neatly packed dirt and coarse sand imitating a road over top of Pine Lake Dam.

Pine Lake Dam is part of a system of five earthen dams initially built here in the mid-1960s.

Throughout the years, the dams withstood the brute force from powerful coastal storms that have swept through the region.

But the unprecedented rain Hurricane Florence dumped in September 2018 over the area – up to more than 30 inches in some parts of coastal North Carolina – proved too much.

Rainwater filled the 275-acre Boiling Spring Lake to the brink, overtopping Sanford Dam. The breach, paired with substantial embankment erosion, led to the dam’s catastrophic failure.

The breach caused a domino-like effect of failures at all four of the smaller upstream dams in the city, and then the lakes that made up Boiling Spring Lakes were no more.

During the years since, the city secured about $56 million in funding from the Federal Emergency Management Agency, through Department of Defense grants, and Brunswick County to repair and restore the dams it owns and operates: North Lake, Pine Lake, Sanford, and Upper Lake dams. A fifth dam, Middle Lake Dam, is privately owned.

That funding has been spent, in part, on hiring firms to undertake the task of designing and building dams that meet today’s safety codes.

Work to restore Sanford Dam was progressing nicely, Hargrove said, when another coastal storm, one often referred to in these parts as the “unnamed storm,” caught Brunswick County and southern portions of New Hanover County by surprise last September.

Potential Tropical Cyclone No. Eight pummeled Boiling Spring Lakes with more than 20 inches of rain within a short period of time. Rain waters swept away Sanford Dam’s bypass channel, destroying the work that had been completed thus far and forcing construction crews to essentially start from scratch.

“Weather forecast was for 3 inches,” Hargrove said. “We got 22. It flooded out the detour route and so people were stranded in particular pockets in that side of town with no way of getting out.”

The city experienced a similar scenario last May with residents becoming trapped in patches of the community as a wildfire spread through the area and jumped N.C. Highway 87.

East Boiling Spring Road is a primary entry and exit point as a hurricane evacuation route through the city.

“So, yes, there’s a lot of angst involved with getting this road open,” Hargrove said. “I mean, we have looked at every possible alternative short of building a bridge, but by the time we finish a bridge, this project will be done.”

When that might happen remains an unanswered question.

“The setback with Pine Lake Dam, I can’t even give you a timeline of how long it’s going to keep that road closed. It took 12 months to get our permits last time” from the N.C. Department of Environmental Quality’s Dam Safety Program, Hargrove said.

Days after Hargrove met for an interview with Coastal Review in city hall, he returned to the commissioners’ chamber for the board’s Aug. 5 meeting, where he provided an update on the dams.

Work continues at Sanford Dam. Had it not been for the potential tropical cyclone last September, that dam would be finished, he said. Upper Lake Dam is complete.

The section of East Boiling Spring Road atop the newly reconstructed North Lake Dam will hopefully be finished in the next two to three weeks, Hargrove told commissioners.

There was still no word as to when construction to fix Pine Lake Dam might begin.

Hargrove explained that Sequoia Services, LLC, the Greensboro-based construction company hired by the city to rebuild the dams, agreed to build a temporary road atop the dam.

But the city would be responsible for any damages to the site should any occur if the temporary road, one that would cost an additional $175,000, were to be built. Pine Lake Dam is valued at $3.5 million.

Commissioners voted against the proposal, saying it was a liability too steep.

Who’s responsible?

Hargrove didn’t mince words when he sat down for an interview with Coastal Review on a late July morning.

“There’s going to be some things I’ll talk about and then there’s, for liability reasons and that sort of thing, I’m not going to comment on them because this is obviously an issue that could grow larger over time,” he said.

The defunct Pine Lake Dam is not the construction contractor’s fault, Hargrove said. The contractor built the dam to the design the company was given.

“I’m not willing to say where the problem exists and how that problem came about. It’s the city’s position that this is a third-party responsibility,” Hargrove said.

The city hired consulting firms Ashville-based McGill Associates and Greensboro-based Schnabel Engineering to design the project.

Those designs were vetted through a series of agencies, including the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, FEMA and N.C. Dam Safety.

“As it goes up through the line, they’re really not getting into the hydraulics and analysis,” Hargrove said. “They’re just looking to make sure that the math works. So, the primary responsibility for the design of that dam is McGill and Schnabel.”

During the city commissioners meeting July 8, McGill Vice President Michael Hanson said that, unlike the other dams, there were no sufficient surveys or as-built records for Pine Lake Dam.

“We relied on information that was provided by the city, which was the best available information that was the original design plans,” Hanson said at the meeting, according to a WECT-TV report. “We relied on that information and moved forward. That was reviewed and approved by city staff. That was reviewed and approved by Dam Safety.”

This was Hanson’s first update to commissioners in a public setting since June 27 when the city announced in a social media post that Pine Lake Dam was defective.

The public’s response to that update was biting. There were one-word retorts including “Figures” and “Unbelievable” to accusations of “backdoor deals” and at least one call for city tax refunds to residents.

One commenter correctly pointed out, “THE HOOVER DAM WAS BUILT IN 5 YEARS, Y’ALL! In the 1930’s.”

The engineering marvel that spans the Nevada-Arizona border was, in fact, built from 1931-36, but not without disaster. The official number of people who died at the dam site during that time from causes ranging to drowning, blasting, rock slides, falls from the canyon walls, and heavy equipment and truck accidents, is 96, according to the U.S. Department of Interior’s Bureau of Reclamation.

City officials understand the mounting anger and frustration from Boiling Spring Lakes residents.

Hargrove wants them to know that commissioners have and continue to be “very proactive” and have tried to make sure the dam reconstruction cost doesn’t fall on the city’s taxpayers.

Earlier this year, commissioners approved an 8-cent tax hike, revenues of which will cover the costs of the city’s new stormwater department.

“This board does focus and look at the future and how we can improve it,” Hargrove said. “It just takes time. We’re catching up to 30 or 40 years of inactivity, but this board, my administration, are working hard to put that into play.”

The acclaimed coastal scientist Orrin Pilkey, who died at the age of 90 on Sunday, had more stories than an old wet dog.

A few years back, we were sitting around the kitchen table in the retirement community in Durham, North Carolina, where he lived in later years. It was a comfortable apartment, messy with books and papers and walls filled with Orrin’s impressive collection of Indian arrowheads. Importantly, it was close to Orrin’s beloved Duke University, where he taught coastal science for a half-century and still had a coveted parking space in the faculty lot.

Orrin was telling me how he grew up in Richland, Washington, near the Hanford Reservation Reactor.

“We used to play in the puddles after it rained,” he said. “It drove my mother crazy. When the whistle went off, she would rush to the door and call us kids inside because they were about to release a radioactive cloud. We liked to say the dogs in Richland all glowed at night. It was great fun growing up there.”

In a 2019 book, “The Geography of Risk, Epic Storms, Rising Seas, And The Cost of America’s Coasts,” I described Orrin this way: “Pilkey is a short, square hobbit of a man, with an unruly gray beard and a disarming sense of humor. Depending on your point of view, he is either a prophet or the antichrist of the coast.”

I worried a little that Orrin might be offended, but when an acquaintance brought up the description, he roared and said, no, he loved it. It was exactly right.

Orrin was maybe 5 feet, 4 inches tall, and had an impressive belly. He swore to me that he used to run marathons and had broken three hours at the Boston Marathon. I was a decent enough runner back in the day and had struggled to break three hours, which is considered the standard separating real runners from hobby runners.

Like many of his stories, it verged on the unbelievable. But Orrin was like that, always surprising, a prolific and important writer of books on North Carolina and other coasts, a provocative critic, a generous, dedicated teacher, and as Rob Young, one of Orrin’s former students and the head of a coastal science program at Western Carolina University, wrote in a LinkedIn post, “He was funny as hell.”

You had to work hard to not like Orrin. Over a quarter-century, I watched developers and engineers scream invective at him for challenging the way they stacked fragile beaches and sand dunes with ever-larger investment properties. But I also reveled in how Orrin could disarm even his most hostile critics with an impish grin and a joke.

Once, back in the winter of 1998, I was showing Orrin around some of the new development in Corolla, on the northern Outer Banks. We had just finished emptying our over-caffeinated bladders behind some wax myrtle, when one of the developers roared onto the gravel lot in his Caddy and began screaming at us for violating private property. This lasted roughly a minute when suddenly he stopped, stared at Orrin, and exclaimed, “Hey, I know you. You’re that Pilkey guy.” Orrin smiled and marched over to the car. By the time it was done, the developer had Orrin’s email and was his next best friend.

Some of the engineers at the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers bitterly criticized Orrin’s science and complained that he was training a cadre of young “Pilkeyites,” who would ruin the coast. By ruin, I think they meant put a halt to the development and the Corps’ costly beach replenishment projects, in which they pump millions of cubic yards of sand onto eroding beaches to save the property lining the shoreline. Pilkey correctly pointed out that those projects were mere Band-Aids, lasting a few years before the next storm came along and washed the sand out to sea. “It’s madness,” he told me many times. “Absolute madness.”  

A Florida engineer complained that Pilkey “got all of the students who got 1600 on their SATs,” and then indoctrinated them in his ways. I loved that. They just didn’t know what to do with Pilkey.

“My approach to coastal science and management is very different from his,” Young wrote. “But, my approach to life is not. My dad died when I was 21. Orrin was the closest thing to a father I had for the last 40 years. He gave me my current position. I owe him so much.”

Orrin got his Bachelor of Science in geology at Washington State University and his master’s in Montana and figured he would become an expert on mountains and shale. During summers, he worked as a smoke jumper and manned a fire tower deep in the forest. Instead of staying out West, he picked up his PhD in coastal science at Florida State and became an expert in sedimentology.

He lived for a time on Sapelo Island, off the coast of Georgia, where he attended church in a ramshackle chapel with the Gullah Geechee. “Hey, I really like the singing, Pal,” he told me. He called everyone pal. Later, he researched the abyssal plain, a gaping mud hole in the ocean so deep sunlight does not reach the sea floor.

In the mid-1960s, Duke took a chance and hired Orrin to start a marine geology program. “It was a big leap,” he said. “They were taking a big chance.”

Over the years, he helped to train thousands of students now scattered across the land. Early on, he was approached by Paul Godfrey, a marine biologist working for the National Park Service on Cape Lookout, and asked to sign a petition protesting a reckless development along the coast. “I was new and didn’t sign,” he told me, with a frown. “It was a big mistake, one of the biggest mistakes I ever made.”

In time, he would become one of the loudest critics of what we were doing to our coasts, penning scores of opinion articles and essays, often appearing on radio and television. Duke was his local podium, but he traveled the nation and the world, spreading the gospel of Pilkey, which might be summed up this way: Preserve as much as possible of what we have left at the coast, stop hardening eroding shorelines with groins and sea walls and, above all, allow the barrier islands to keep moving, the way Mother Nature always meant.

Orrin wasn’t impressed with many of the incremental policies being implemented to protect the coast. He believed they were too little, too late. In time, he became a national advocate for retreating from the coast as the seas rose and storms became larger and more destructive. His position felt impractical to some coastal geologists, who knew that developers, politicians and property owners would fight efforts to remove them. Far too much money was at stake.

When I asked him if he was becoming out of step, he shrugged and told me “I’ve always been out of step.” And then he laughed.

Not much has changed in Sledge Forest in the more than 20 years since its distinctive features were captured on the pages of a document created to offer guidance for its future use.

That, said geologist Roger Shew, is the beauty of it.

The forest that rises from the banks of the Northeast Cape Fear River and sprawls thousands of acres across northern New Hanover County is still an important part of the river floodplain, one of the largest landscape corridors in the southeastern part of the state.

Towering up from the forest bed are cypress and loblolly pine trees, some of the oldest in southeastern North Carolina, that are hundreds of years old, a “rare old-growth occurrence,” according to a biological survey published in May 2003 by the Natural Heritage Program of North Carolina, which identified the forest as a significant natural area.

The forest’s attributes have in recent weeks been thrust front and center in a rumble that tipped off when a Charlotte-based developer submitted to the county’s planning department preliminary plans to build thousands of homes on about a quarter of the more than 4,000-acre, privately owned site.

Because the land being eyed for the proposed development of more than 4,000 single-family houses, a golf course, trails and a horse farm does not have to be rezoned, the project gets pushed straight through to the county’s technical review process, effectively omitting the opportunity for public comment.

That’s simply unacceptable to Castle Hayne resident and local activist Kayne Darrell.

“It’s a by-right property so they can go in and start clear-cutting any time they want,” Darrell told Coastal Review in a recent telephone interview. “We’re hoping they don’t yet. It’s unconscionable to me that we have no opportunity to get our questions answered or have any input on what’s happening because it’s going to impact so many of us in so many negative ways.”

Attempts to reach the developer, Copper Builders, LLC, were unsuccessful. An engineer listed on the development plan application did not return a call for comment.

The homes of Hilton Bluffs, the name of the proposed development, would be built on about 1,000 acres of uplands that adjoin about 3,000 acres of protected wetlands, those that have a continuous surface connection to the U.S. Supreme Court-defined “waters of the United States” – in this case, Prince George Creek, which connects to the Northeast Cape Fear River.

Sledge Forest is one of the largest tracts along a more than 35-mile stretch of the floodplain corridor running from Holly Shelter Creek, at the north, south to Smith Creek.

Shew, senior lecturer in the University of North Carolina Wilmington’s Ocean Sciences and Environmental Sciences department and a conservationist, said in an email response to Coastal Review that the forest is dominated by hydric soils that are “periodically inundated during high-tide flooding events and storm events.”

Such floods are forecast to only increase with sea level rise, the latest projections of which are a minimum of one foot by 2050.

“High-tide flooding is common along the river and has the potential to inundate much of the site,” Shew said. “And, in the future … most of the area will be inundated fully or partially with river waters. Putting golf courses, horse barns and cabins or single-family homes in this area are ill-advised.”

The roads that will connect those neighborhood amenities will have to be built over wetlands, which will, in turn, block water movement, Shew said.

“And of course, whatever (fertilizer, herbicides, etc.) is put on these areas will runoff into the surrounding wetlands and river,” he wrote.

“The best and most logical use of this land is for it to be left as a natural area that supports wildlife, rich plant communities, corridor connectivity, reduces floodwaters, and maintains all of the ecosystem services of these wetland communities for the benefit of our community in a way too fast-growing area in northern (New Hanover County),” he said. “We need to have a comprehensive plan that maintains large natural areas and this and parts of Island Creek are sights that would be best and be opportune investments for the county for its future.”

Most of the old-growth trees are largely within the project building footprint, Darrell said. A 2003 natural area inventory dated cypress to be more than 350 years old and estimated to be as much as 500 years old, and dated loblollies to be more than 300 years old.

Area residents are also concerned about what is projected to be a significant increase in traffic on rural roads in the area – more than 30,000 additional vehicles per day.

Inactive hazardous site abuts tract

Opponents of the proposed development say they’re also troubled by the fact that the development is being proposed on land that is adjacent to a state-designated inactive hazardous site.

According to information provided by the North Carolina Division of Waste Management, contamination at the site off Castle Hayne Road resulted from drums of calcium fluoride and lubricants being stored in unlined trenches during the 1960s and 1970s.

That contamination spreads across two parcels, one of which is owned by General Electric.

Contamination in groundwater in the northwest corner of GE’s roughly 100-acre tract includes uranium, vinyl chloride and fluoride.

Those contaminants spill over onto a neighboring 1,500-plus-acre parcel owned by Nuclear Fuel Holding Co. Inc., a GE affiliate, according to Securities and Exchange Commission documents.

There are also contaminants in groundwater around the main plant on GE’s property. Those contaminants include tetrachlorethylene (PCE), trichloroethylene (TCE), cis- 1,2-dichloroethene, 1,1-dichloroethane, vinyl chloride, benzene, and naphthalene contaminate, according to the state.

Contamination at the main plant area is contained on-site, but is also close to the northern central property line, said Katherine Lucas, public information officer for the Division of Waste Management, in an email responding to Coastal Review’s questions.

“A portion of the (northwest) Area Contamination has migrated to the adjacent property in the deep groundwater aquifer,” she said in the email.

The site was added to the North Carolina Department of Environmental Quality’s Inactive Hazardous Sites Branch inventory in 1988.

The department’s Division of Water Resources conducted regulatory oversight of all remedial activities at the site until 2008, when site management was transferred to the branch as part of a reorganization between the waste management and water resources divisions.

The site was added to the branch’s Site Priority list in 2008.

“The area of the contamination has not been calculated,” Lucas said. “Ground water contamination is being remediated with a series of hydraulic control wells and pump and treatment of contaminated groundwater.”

More than 3,500 people have signed an online petition to save Sledge Forest.

Darrell, who helped organize Save Sledge Forest, said the ultimate goal is to get the land in conservation.

“That’s where it belongs,” she said. “We’re not giving up. It’s too special a place.”

This historical profile is presented as part of Coastal Review’s 2024 yearlong examination of 50 years of the North Carolina Coastal Area Management Act, including the science that helped to inform and the advocacy and leadership that resulted in passage of the landmark 1974 legislation, as well as the coastal environmental challenges yet ahead.

Robert Dolan and Paul Godfrey didn’t meet the way scientists often do, at a conference or sharing a drink after a long, technical talk. Instead, they met on a wind-blown beach near Cape Lookout, part of the long, winding bands of sand we know as the Outer Banks. It was 1971.

Godfrey, a quiet but creative botanist, and his wife Melinda, a pathbreaking marine biologist, had been digging cores along transects in the sand and mud for a research project trying to determine the history of the remote, 28,000-acre Cape Lookout National Seashore. Each layer of sand, peat and mud was like a chapter in a book, they recalled, secrets revealed here, surprises there, building to an unexpected ending.

Dolan, a coastal geologist who specialized in sedimentology, was also digging cores, near Cape Hatteras. He had arrived there almost on a lark in 1959 searching for a topic for his doctoral dissertation. “Why not study the Outer Banks?” one of his professors at Louisiana State University suggested. At the time, little was known about the chain of islands’ geology; some scientists even theorized the Outer Banks must be anchored to a coral reef, which prevented the islands from washing away. Ever confident and always up for an adventure, Dolan packed the family wagon, collected his wife and young daughter, and off they went. A decade later, he was still studying the islands and publishing seminal papers when it was suggested he meet Paul Godfrey and his wife, who were doing similarly impressive work a couple of hours away by boat on the undeveloped Core Banks.

Dolan and Godfrey knew one another from their work and contacts in the National Park Service, which manages the seashores. But they had never spoken, let alone met. Paul and Melinda took Dolan and several park service officials to see their cores, which Melinda had cleverly engineered with PVC piping.

Paul Godfrey, now 83, and living on a nature preserve in Western Massachusetts, recently recalled: “I think Bob was really intrigued. All of the species we identified as being adapted to the coast, he picked up on that right away. He saw we were coming to similar conclusions. The islands weren’t fixed in place like people thought. Nor were they washing away. They were fine, healthy, moving and adapting, the same way humans do.”

“The islands weren’t fixed in place like people thought. Nor were they washing away. They were fine, healthy, moving and adapting, the same way humans do.”

— Paul Godfrey

After their meeting, Dolan and Godfrey began to work together on various projects while they consulted for the park service and held down jobs as young professors at the University of Virginia and the University of Massachusetts, respectively.

Their collaborations would forever change the way coastal scientists looked at barrier islands and prompt the National Park Service to reverse its decades-old policy of trying to hold the islands in place by constructing artificial sand dunes, engineering the beach, bulldozing sand around after storms, even fertilizing the grass and shrubs by plane.

It all sounds so simple today — allow water, wind and storms to naturally sculpt the islands — but it was a revolutionary idea in the early 1970s, even heretical. Many villagers had grown accustomed to the park service protecting them and keeping open N.C. Highway 12, the only route on and off the islands. Even today, decades later, the politics are challenging, with the park service expected to provide a buffer between the ocean and the ever-larger and more expensive vacation homes that line the eroding shoreline and fuel the Banks’ billion-dollar tourism economy.

~

They made an unlikely pair. Robert Dolan grew up in Southern California and was an avid surfer and self-described beach bum at a time when surfing was considered novel and daring in the Golden State. Following a stint in the Navy, he earned undergraduate and master’s degrees in the Earth sciences at Oregon State University. He then headed south, to Baton Rouge, to work on his doctorate in coastal geology at Louisiana State University. Various profiles of Dolan, including one in John Alexander’s 1992 book, “Ribbon of Sand,” described him as confident, exuberant, passionate and adventurous.

Paul Godfrey grew up on a small farm in central Connecticut where he developed an abiding respect for nature. Melinda: around water on Cape Cod, where she learned how to handle boats and measure her own confidence in a world dominated by men. The future couple met in graduate school at Duke University, where Paul was pursuing a PhD, Melinda a master’s. One day, Melinda walked into a call on soil composition affectionately called “Dirt.”

“It was all men,” Paul recalled. “Melinda walked in and all these men were saying, ‘What is she doing here?’” They became lab partners and later Paul followed Melinda to Beaufort, where she worked as an assistant in the school’s renowned marine lab. “It was how I got interested in the coast. Melinda taught me. She was pretty, too,” he laughed.

After arriving on the Outer Banks, Dolan settled his wife and young daughter in a Nags Head cottage about 200 yards from the Atlantic Ocean. In the early morning of March 7, 1962, Dolan awoke to find the ocean rushing under their cottage. Another cottage, seaward of his own, had broken loose and was crashing toward them.

“In record time, I packed my personal belongings and research gear into a four-wheel-drive vehicle and headed for high ground,” he wrote 25 years later in an editorial for the Journal of Coastal Research.     

Dolan had wanted to study the effects of powerful storms on barrier islands. Here was his chance. After delivering his wife and daughter to higher ground, he returned to take measure of the damage. The Ash Wednesday Storm, a three-day nor’easter featuring five high tides, each one higher than the last, was one of the strongest storms to ever strike the Outer Banks. It flooded or flattened scores of homes, crumpled a pier where Dolan had recently installed a tidal gage, and washed away a 30-foot aluminum tower he had built to take photos of the beach.

But the storm also answered some of his research questions. For example, it showed that the massive artificial dunes that Works Progress Administration and Civilian Conservation Corps workers had constructed during the Great Depression to “stabilize” the islands were no match for the storm surge and waves. It also demonstrated how the storm washed large fans of sand across the road to the middle of the island, elevating it, a form of coastal adaptation now known as overwash. As long as man didn’t interfere, barrier islands would heal themselves even after epochal storms, Dolan concluded, shifting sand inland, slowly rebuilding foredunes, widening the marsh along the tidal inlets and sounds.

Dolan had also used a machine to dig 140 cores to study sand samples and test the theory that the islands were anchored to coral reefs. He dug and dug. But all he found was sand, layer after layer, one older than the last — a clear indication that the islands weren’t fixed in place, but were moving. Always moving.

Paul and Melinda Godfrey arrived at similar conclusions near Cape Lookout. Melinda had ingeniously found a way to use PVC piping to take deep samples of sand and mud. She and Paul then pored over each layer, studying the shells, clams and plants for hints that helped to date the formation of the island. The wider and deeper they dug, the more surprises they found: snails near the beach that only could have come from the marsh; shells near the marsh that only could have come from the beach. It was their eureka moment, “powerfully proving,” Godfrey said, “that the islands were moving, slowly rolling over themselves as they inched their way toward land.”       

~

Dolan had begun writing up his findings in research papers for the National Park Service while becoming increasingly vocal about the threats that rampant development posed to Cape Hatteras National Seashore. In 1972, he was joined by Paul Godfrey in a paper questioning the park service’s decades-old practice of spending millions of dollars on dune-building and beach-engineering after storms. The service’s practices gave “the false impression of safety and stability offered by the [artificial] barrier dunes,” they wrote. “As the system is stabilized, man builds roads and utilities that establish a `line-of-development’ which soon becomes a ‘line-of-defense.’”

As you might imagine, the criticism made for some tense moments between the researchers and the park service. “But to their credit, they came around,” said Godfrey. In 1973, Director Ronald H. Walker announced that the park service would no longer try to hold the line against the forces of nature. “There is just no way the National Park Service can continue to fight nature,” he told reporters. “We’ve spent all of this money; tried various ways to control the situation, but none of them has worked.”

“There is just no way the National Park Service can continue to fight nature. We’ve spent all of this money; tried various ways to control the situation, but none of them has worked.”

— Ronald H. Walker, Director, National Park Service, in 1973

The policy shift was the direct result of the work of Dolan, who died in 2016, and Paul and Melinda Godfrey showing that the Outer Banks were “dynamic natural landscapes” that will adapt and repair themselves after storms, losing sand in some places but gaining it in others as part of the natural evolutionary process of barrier islands.

Despite their warnings, developers and governments continued to add thousands of vacation houses and investment properties along the shifting shorelines – scores of which quickly were threatened by rising seas and storms. In the last few decades alone, county, state and federal taxpayers have spent tens of millions of dollars renourishing beaches, building and rebuilding artificial dunes, and constructing multimillion-dollar bridges to bypass storm-damaged roads.

In 2021, the park service adopted a revised sand management policy to help speed up the permitting process, allowing state workers to repair dunes and scrape sand off of N.C. 12 and other applicants to seek sand management permits within national seashore boundaries. But even that may not be enough to satisfy property owners and politicians.

Recently, U.S. Rep. Greg Murphy, a Republican representing North Carolina’s 3rd District, drafted language directing Cape Hatteras National Seashore Superintendent Dave Hallac “to identify potential long-term, cost-effective sediment management activities to minimize the impacts of beach erosion.”

The spending bill provision and ever-evolving policy could place the National Park Service back in the beach-building business.

Footnote: Dolan and the Godfreys continued to study the Outer Banks for decades, bringing hundreds of eager students to dig cores, study the ecology and geology, and experience the unfiltered beauty of the Banks.

To say Pungo Lake is off the beaten path would be a generous understatement.

Situated in the northeastern part of North Carolina that all major roads avoid and even Google doesn’t update, any attempt to travel there brings the possibility for adventure or the potential for mishap.

“Make sure you’re gassed up (with) at least half a tank of fuel, because you’re a long ways away from gas stations,” advised Wendy Stanton, refuge manager for Pocosin Lakes National Wildlife Refuge, in which Pungo Lake is situated.

Access from the south or west puts travelers on N.C. Highway 45, N.C. 99 or both, since the roads run together for a stretch. Coming from the north or east, the most direct routes involve a variety of tiny roads and then what should be a straight shot on several miles of unpaved, single-car-width peat lanes. But these often end up being closed, either to protect wildlife or to protect the roadways’ accessibility for refuge maintenance vehicles. Google Maps does not reflect these closures, and cell phone service is spotty to nonexistent on the refuge.

When they’re open, in ideal conditions, “driving on them is basically driving on a dry crust of peat,” Stanton said. But traffic breaks down the peat’s structural integrity, as does rainfall, turning the roadways into “mucky slurry” that is unsafe for motorists.

“Last winter, we had to close all our refuge roads because they were in such bad shape,” she said.

Peat is a very fine, organic soil formed from fallen leaves and branches that remain on the ground in an anaerobic (without oxygen) environment, she explained. “When it’s dry, it’s almost the same consistency as corn starch.”

Scientists think the refuge landscape, pockmarked by lakes now, was once contiguous peatlands that wildfires burned down in places, forming lakes as rainfall accumulated there, Stanton said.

“We think Pungo Lake was formed by a groundfire …When those peat soils ignite, they can just burn and smolder for a long period of time.”

Nearby, Phelps Lake, as well as New Lake and Lake Mattamuskeet, each are thought to have formed in that same way. Those lakes, and Pungo Lake, too, are all on North Carolina’s large Albemarle-Pamlico Peninsula.

Pungo Lake is a “blackwater lake” with very little to no sunlight penetration, due to the “tannins from the peat and the vegetation, and particulates from the peat soil,” Stanton said. That means there is no submerged aquatic vegetation growing in it, and the lake — with holes up to 6 feet deep in places — looks deeper everywhere than it is, she explained. Swimming, boating and fishing on the lake are always prohibited because “the focus of Pungo Lake is inviolate sanctuary” for wildlife.

The nearly 2,800-square-acre lake is the centerpiece of the refuge’s 12,000-acre Pungo Unit, which was first established as a national wildlife refuge in the 1960s. The rest of the land that now constitutes Pocosin Lakes National Wildlife Refuge was added in the 1990s; so currently, the refuge spans over 100,000 acres in Washington, Hyde and Tyrrell counties, according to the refuge website.

A refuge map shows its piecemeal sections spread over the large geographical area.

The refuge’s easternmost swath is by the western bank of the Alligator River, while small areas just south of Columbia include the refuge office. The Pungo Unit is almost the westernmost reach; just one small section of refuge lies even further to the west.

Southeast of Pungo Lake, a larger body of water mostly included in the refuge, New Lake, has been so named since at least 1998, when Stanton began working for the refuge as a biologist. It’s still mislabeled as Alligator Lake on Google Maps.

The refuge owns about 85%, or 4,500 acres, of that roughly 4,900-acre-lake, she said, with the remainder privately owned.

North of Pungo Lake, the refuge includes about 4 miles of shoreline around Lake Phelps’ perimeter, so refuge staff works closely on projects with Pettigrew State Park, which includes Lake Phelps, Stanton said.

While all three lakes are rainwater lakes, their waters are each strikingly different colors because of the soil types beneath them. Lake Phelps appears clear to blue-hued, Pungo Lake is blackwater and New Lake appears brown due to its mixture of peat and mineral soils, she said.

Even not being the farthermost reaches of the refuge, traveling just from the refuge office to the Pungo Unit takes 50 minutes, Stanton said. The only facilities on the refuge, apart from the volunteer-staffed visitor center, are two porta-potties. She encourages visitors to bring water and to be mindful of the weather.

Most of the year, Pungo Lake and the surrounding refuge are quiet, almost seeming otherworldly. No rush of passing traffic or other human-related noises exists to overrun the occasional birds’ calls or the steady thrum of insects.

Early one July morning, the contents of three overturned trash cans were spread across both lanes of Shore Drive, which is included in the refuge and runs just south of Lake Phelps. There had been no overnight storm or significant wind. Turning onto Allen Road, which leads to Pungo Lake (about 6 miles to the south), a plausible explanation appears: A big black bear lumbers off the peat roadway into the bushes.

The Albemarle-Pamlico Peninsula has the largest recorded black bears and the highest black bear population densities in the world, according to the nonprofit North Carolina Wildlife Federation.

Many people visit the refuge specifically to see black bears, according to Stanton.

Plymouth, the most populated town on the Albemarle-Pamlico Peninsula and about half an hour’s drive northwest of the Pungo Unit, hosts an annual black bear festival in June to celebrate its famous residents.

A 2003 black bear population estimate based on collected hair samples found 3.5 black bears per square mile, meaning between 300 and 400 bears lived on the refuge, Stanton said.

The bears of Pocosin Lakes National Wildlife Refuge were found to have the highest genetic diversity in their population out of three regional refuges, meaning “that population is more adaptable to change,” she said. The next-highest genetic diversity was found at the Alligator River National Wildlife Refuge, located to the northeast, also on the Albemarle-Pamlico Peninsula, and which is connected to Pocosin Lakes by a “wildlife corridor.”

The lowest genetic diversity was found in the black bear population of the Great Dismal Swamp Natural Wildlife Refuge in Virginia, which “makes sense because of all the development going on around it,” she said.

Two decades later, a new black bear population study is in the works for northeastern North Carolina. “Genetic technology has expanded in the last 20 years,” Stanton said. “I’m excited to see that study.”

Other year-round refuge residents are also numerous, including whitetail deer, beavers, muskrats, nutria, otters, marsh birds, wood ducks, hawks, owls, bobcats, foxes, red wolves, turtles, frogs, toads, salamanders, snakes, alligators and more.

“I consider it ‘the Yellowstone of the East,’ too, with the diversity of species,” Stanton said of the refuge, borrowing phrasing from one of her friends.

The only sound first thing on a July morning is the aggressive bumping of huge horseflies into the parked car’s windshield. The roadway is closed immediately ahead. A beaver scuttles across the road into a ditch, quickly disappearing from sight.

About a quarter-mile west of the chained-off Allen Road, turning from Shore Drive onto F2 Road, a longer stretch is drivable before a metal gate comes into view, closed and locked, with posted signs announcing the road’s closure to vehicles. Turning around reveals curious wild turkeys, one creeping out first to check the surroundings and apparently giving its nod of approval to another, who then ventures out. The turkeys run down the road together.

Rabbits and quail are well-camouflaged among refuge flora, which includes wildflowers, grasses and ferns. Honeysuckle and wild grapevines dangle from trees and bushes overhead. A combination of high humidity and the smoke from Canadian wildfires obscures everything more than a short distance away in haze.

Each year from about November through January, the refuge gets naturally louder as more than 100,000 migrating swans, geese, ducks and other birds convene annually to rest and recharge before continuing south. For over 20 migratory species — including ducks, tundra swans and snow geese — the refuge is more than a stopover: It’s their winter retreat, according to the refuge website.

With “very minimal human disturbance” and proximity to fresh water and waterfowl impoundments — designed to grow native plants for the birds’ consumption — Pungo Lake provides an ideal sanctuary for migratory waterfowl, Stanton said. In the winter, “amazing flyouts” take place around sunrise when the birds leave to go forage, and then again at sunset as they return to the lake at night.

Over 30,000 people annually visit Pocosin Lakes National Wildlife Refuge, which is about a 5,000-person annual increase since before the COVID-19 pandemic.

But Stanton maintains even the 30,000 reflects “a real underestimate.” She said there is sometimes bumper-to-bumper traffic in the winter when people flock to see the waterfowl, which settle on all area lakes.

Landowners’ objectives before the refuge was established were different, Stanton noted.

While nearby areas boast rich soil and productive farmland, peat is a “nutrient and mineral poor soil” that people unsuccessfully tried to farm in the past, she said. Much of northeastern North Carolina’s pocosin land — “pocosin” is a Native American word for “swamp on a hill” — was ditched and drained, with numerous canals dug by hand by enslaved people, such as those around Lake Phelps and Lake Mattamuskeet.

Stanton thinks the area near Pungo Lake was ditched and drained with “old, heavy equipment” more recently, closer to the 1960s, to access a valuable commodity — white cedar wood. For a time, she said the land was also mined for the alternative fuel source, ethanol.

“Now we recognize the value of healthy pocosin land,” Stanton said. Pocosin is also called “Southeast shrub bog” and provides “tremendous carbon storage…(and) excellent wildlife habitat.”

The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service manages the refuge with main goals of providing quality wildlife habitat, reducing the risk of catastrophic wildfire and preserving the “tremendous water quality benefit,” she said.

Wet peat ensures a higher water quality for the surrounding area as it reduces both catastrophic fire and flood risks, she explained. Over the years as the refuge has received funding, it has installed water control infrastructure designed to rewet the peat.

“We have now restored over 37,000 acres of pocosin habitat,” she noted, and the goal is to add more water control infrastructure to keep water in the peat in an additional 7,000 to 8,000 acres.

This is one of the largest hydrology restoration projects in the country, according to www.fws.gov.

“Just over the years as we received funding, we piecemealed that infrastructure in to start rewetting the peat,” she said.

The refuge drafted a water management plan, which it put out for public review in 2020, and Stanton said that plan is still being finalized.

The refuge’s visitor center, the Walter B. Jones Sr. Center for the Sounds, is located at 205 South Ludington Drive in Columbia. Free, public programs take place there regularly, as well as at the Red Wolf Center, located a mile south of Columbia on N.C. Highway 94.

For more information about either the visitor center or the red wolf programs, call 252-796-3004 or visit the refuge website at www.fws.gov/refuge/pocosin-lakes. For updates on road closures, call 252-796-3004, extension 225.

Marine geologist Dr. Stan Riggs was recently among six chosen to receive the North Carolina Award, the state’s highest civilian honor. Gov. Roy Cooper presented the awards Nov. 15 during a ceremony at the North Carolina Museum of Art. Dr. Riggs told Coastal Review that the award truly recognizes all the groups, scientists and others who have worked over the last half century to understand, protect and manage the state’s dynamic natural coastal resources. He has provided his award acceptance speech, which follows, as a guest commentary.

— The editor.

North Carolina’s Land of Water represents our past, present, and future. It is a world-class mixing basin and transition zone where upland river valleys and coastal plain peninsulas meet the ocean. It is a high-energy intersection of land, water, and air where sunny day calms quickly shift to high-energy stages of dynamic change.

In our unending rush to conquer the ocean’s barrier islands we tend to overlook the inner coastal world of estuaries, wetlands, and lowlands that require one to slow down and become acquainted with the more introspective and contemplative components of our natural coastal system. This land of water with its vast natural resources and extreme dynamics has dictated the cultural history of our great state of NC; this is the unwritten chapter in most of our history books!

There will always be a shoreline and coastal system wherever an ocean intersects a land mass; it just won’t be in the same place as they move in response to changing climatic and geologic conditions! Unfortunately, historical economic development practices in our coastal system have largely ignored the dynamics of natural change. Centuries of ditching, draining, and clearing wetlands and the more recent development of urban cities on mobile barrier sand piles have created unintended consequences resulting in massive economic losses by ongoing climate change. Within this watery world there are certain limits to growth and development where water is both a critical resource and a harsh dictator!

Related: Stan Riggs to receive 2022 North Carolina Award

The earth’s dynamics have challenged the engineering prowess of many great minds over the past four centuries. Now in the 21^st century with rising sea level and exploding coastal populations, North Carolina finds itself in the throes of a perfect conflict — an escalating battle between natural storm dynamics that drive coastal change and the economic drive to stabilize and develop the land and water resources. This is an untenable path that is severely wounding the golden goose of profits and morphing it into the gray goose of silence. When living within this dynamic intersection of land, water, and air, where change is a critical constant, society must adopt a more humble approach and learn to live with the changing system dynamics!

I have dedicated my entire 58-year career to understanding the complexities, processes, and evolutionary history of our Earth’s resource systems and translating that knowledge to the citizens and leadership of our great State of the Longleaf Pine. I did not earn this award alone; I always worked with great teams of students, colleagues, and public who care about living gently with the dynamics of change in our rivers, estuaries, barrier islands, and vast coastal ocean. This coastal world of land and sea is our only home; its natural resources and dynamics drove our cultural history and will dictate our future.

Finally, I am totally honored and humbled by this lifetime award for supporting an incredibly stimulating and educational career’s worth of work. Thanks to my precious and always supportive family, East Carolina University for providing exciting opportunities and challenges, the many amazing cohorts and team members, the support and partnerships with numerous state and federal agencies and nonprofit organizations, and to our dedicated state leaders and educators.

Thank you for this honor.

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

MOREHEAD CITY – Stan Riggs seems to be on a mission these days. His goal is ambitious: To save our beautiful coast – its inlets and marshes and barrier islands – and in the process to save our coastal economy. To do that, though, he has to persuade us to change our ways.

Dr. Stanley Riggs

The East Carolina University professor and researcher has been, for more than 30 years now, the N.C. coast’s preeminent marine geologist. He’s poked more holes in its landmasses and sediments than probably any man alive – “Some people accuse us of causing sea-level rise with all our holes,” Riggs says. He’s walked, driven or boated along every inch of the coast from Calabash to Currituck – well, almost. He knows every creek and stream, spit and swamp, beach and dune.

“I know this system,” Riggs says. “It’s part of my world, of who I am. And I don’t want to see it screwed up. I care about these beautiful natural resources and I care about the people.”

So Riggs takes to the road preaching a message of change. One night could find him in Wilmington. The next, in New Bern or Raleigh or Manteo. Monday night, Riggs was at Carteret Community College for a local environmental group’s annual meeting.

“I have probably taken this picture over and over again in the last 10 years,” he told members of Carteret County Crossroads as a photo of a row of beach houses loomed large on the screen. The surf rolled beneath the houses. Stairways have collapsed; the tops of septic tanks, looking much like concrete caskets, poked from the eroded dunes.

“Is this good for tourism?” Riggs asked.

Most in the crowd agreed it was not.

Neither are the crumbled, jumbled pieces of asphalt; the flooded roadways; the army of bulldozers plugging gaps in sand dunes; the rocked shorelines; and the sandbags that armor expensive beachfront houses. All were the subjects of more photos.

“We haven’t been very good stewards,” Riggs said.

Mixed among the photographs were maps and charts that chronicle a million years of the coast’s geologic history. Islands have come and gone, and inlets have opened and closed. The ocean was once much higher than it is now and much lower.

Stan Riggs says the future of the N.C. coast could be one of seawalls or natural beauty.

“There will always be a shoreline, but it will always move,” Riggs noted. “It has always moved. Change is the only constant.”

In a perfect world, tourists wanting to buy their piece of beachfront paradise would heed the message. As would highway planners intent on building bridges over moving inlets or roadways over shifting sands. But in world we live, the houses and roads and bridges are built, followed by expensive and usually futile – thus the photos of crumbled highways and collapsing buildings – attempts to control the sea.

That has been the modern history of human development along our coastline, Riggs noted. It was never really sustainable, he said, and is even less so in era of accelerating sea-level rise.

The oceans have always risen when the temperature has warmed – Riggs has a chart to prove it. Water expands as it warms and melting glaciers release their volume into the oceans. The seas have been rising since the last Ice Age 18,000 years ago, and the rate of rise will increase this century as the climate warms dramatically. The scientific consensus is about a three-foot rise by the end of the century. It all depends on how much and how quickly the ice caps on Greenland and Antarctica melt.

Guys like Riggs who poke holes everywhere know where the ocean was the last time the ice caps melted. It’s no mystery, not a matter of conjecture. It’s happened before and would happen again. “If we were to melt the rest of the ice in Greenland and Antarctica, the shoreline would move up to the Fall Line along our rivers,” he said. “That’s I-95, folks.”

Given that possibility, it makes even less sense to build our permanent structures so close to shore, Riggs said. The cost of protecting them will become astronomical and the coast’s natural resources and the beauty we derive from them will be destroyed in the rush to build walls and jetties and revetments, he notes, as will the coast’s tourist economy.

“What we have here in coastal North Carolina is unique in the world,” Riggs said. “If we are going to preserve what we have into the future, we have to change the way we do things.”

Instead of fighting the inevitable, we need to accept it, Riggs suggested. Once over that mental hurdle, we then need to start planning to adapt to a watery future, he said. In real terms, that means, for instance, that we could continue to maintain a roadway along the Outer Banks but understand that it will disappear into ocean, along with large chunks of the islands themselves.

Small ferries and water taxis leaving from a series of terminals at small rural villages, such Stumpy Point, Bayboro and Engelhard, could provide transportation to the islands. Once there, visitors could rent electric cars or bicycles to get around. They could hire charters to go on cruises to photograph dolphins and sharks and migrating whales. They could board helicopter for aerial tours. They could camp, fish, or go birding. They could step lightly.

“We don’t need to compete with Myrtle Beach and Florida,” Riggs said. “They don’t have what we have. Let’s use it.”

The vision, which is explored in depth in Riggs’ most-recent book, The Battle for North Carolina’s Coast, will seem preposterous to some, fanciful to others. The alternative – continuing as we have in the past – is unthinkable to Riggs.

“I may not see it happen,” he said, “but the tide has turned. I’ve given this talk everywhere and no one hoots or calls me names. People want to know what’s going on. They are starting to get it.”