The North Carolina Coastal Habitat Protection Plan steering committee plans to discuss the 2026 update for the interagency effort to protect state waters during a web conference at 10 a.m. Wednesday, May 27.

Meeting details, including the link to register, and a full agenda can be found on the plan’s webpage.

The North Carolina Department of Environmental Quality initiative focuses on “long-term enhancement of coastal fisheries through habitat protection and enhancement efforts.”

The plan was first adopted in 2004 by the state’s Marine Fisheries, Environmental Management, and Coastal Resources commissions and has been updated in the time since. The steering committee includes two commissioners from each of the commissions.

The N.C. Marine Fisheries Commission is seeking commercial and recreational fishermen, scientists and other interested parties to fill seats on fisheries advisory committees.

Members are appointed to these committees by the Marine Fisheries Commission chair for three-year terms. Several terms will expire in January, according to a release.

Committee advisers are expected to attend meetings at least once every two months and actively participate in a process that includes reviewing scientific documents and issuing papers to make recommendations on management strategies.

Qualified applicants must not have had a significant fisheries violation within the past three years.

The committees include the commission’s Northern and Southern regional advisory committees and the finfish, habitat and water quality, and shellfish/crustacean advisory committees. These committees are charged with, among other duties, reviewing draft fishery management plans and Coastal Habitat Protection Plans and may bring fisheries issues pertaining to their region or subject matter to the commission’s attention.

Committee members will be reimbursed for travel and other expenses related to their official duties if they complete the necessary paperwork.

Applicants may complete the online form. Printable applications are also available online or by calling 252-515-5500.

The deadline to submit an application is Oct. 24. Applications may be submitted through the online webform, by email to MFC@deq.nc.gov with the subject line: AC Application, or by mail to N.C. Division of Marine Fisheries, P.O. Box 769, Morehead City, NC 28557 made to Attention: MFC Office.

North Carolina Coastal Habitat Protection Plan steering committee members are to hear an update during a virtual meeting Friday, Jan. 12, on how the 2021 amendment to the plan is being implemented.

The public can listen to the meeting set for 10 a.m. to noon by computer or at a listening station in the North Carolina Department of North Carolina Environmental Quality’s Wilmington Regional Office. The full agenda, meeting materials and how to join the meeting are available online.

In addition to updates on how the amendment to the document often abbreviated as CHPP is being implemented, the committee will hear a report on a recent algal bloom workshop, and discuss impacts of the U.S. Supreme Court’s 2023 decision in the Sackett vs. the Environmental Protection Agency regarding the definition of the “waters of the United States, or those subject to federal regulation.”

The first Coastal Habitat Protection Plan was adopted in December 2004 by the North Carolina Marine Fisheries and the Environmental Management and Coastal Resources commissions. The document, which provides information and threats to habitats, ecological functions and importance to fish production, status and trends, is updated every five years. The 2016 document was amended in 2021 but serves as the background document for the amendment.

For more information, contact Jimmy.Johnson@deq.nc.gov with the Albemarle-Pamlico National Estuary Partnership or  Anne.Deaton@deq.nc.gov with the Division of Marine Fisheries. 

A map of underwater grasses in North Carolina sounds, an important tool in monitoring the coast’s environmental well-being, is newly updated.

The Albemarle-Pamlico National Estuary Partnership, or APNEP, worked with regional partners to create the updated map using data from 2020 that shows the amount and location of seagrasses, also called submerged aquatic vegetation, in the high-salinity areas of the Albemarle-Pamlico estuary.

“These mapping efforts are critical to understanding the locations and health of this important habitat within our sounds,” APNEP Director Dr. Bill Crowell said in a statement.

APNEP has been working for more than 30 years to identify, protect and restore resources in the Albemarle-Pamlico estuarine system, such as submerged aquatic vegetation.

Dr. Tim Ellis, APNEP’s quantitative ecologist, told Coastal Review that it’s important for the public to know about the health of submerged aquatic vegetation because it “is closely linked to many things people care about on the coast, including clean water, productive recreational and commercial fisheries, shoreline protection, and resiliency to major storms like hurricanes.” 

Analysis of previous mapping efforts in 2006-08 and 2012-14 show that submerged aquatic vegetation resources are declining. The 2020 data will help researchers confirm whether and where seagrasses are continuing to decline, according to APNEP.

The 2020 data are being compared to previous maps, Ellis explained. While it is too early in the analysis to share even preliminary findings for specific regions, in general, for many of the areas examined so far, seagrass continues to decline.

“We attribute some of this decline to poor water clarity that limits the sunlight these underwater plants need to grow, particularly in the more developed regions; however, two recent major storm events — hurricanes Florence and Dorian — also certainly impacted SAV,” he said.

APNEP’s submerged aquatic vegetation team used a combination of aerial flights and ground truthing via boat-based surveys in 2020 to map the Albemarle-Pamlico estuary.

Ellis is a staff lead for the team that has members with various areas of expertise in long-term monitoring and assessment. Primary partners include the state Department of Transportation and the Division of Marine Fisheries.

Monitoring, which includes mapping, and assessment, or data analysis, are core components of APNEP’s efforts to develop and implement a protection strategy for the region, Ellis said.

“In 2021, we released a metric report on changes in the extent of high-salinity SAV. We are in the process of updating that change-detection analysis to include the new 2020 mapping information. We anticipate being able to provide this information to the public later this year,” Ellis said.

Ellis said that mapping submerged aquatic vegetation takes a lot of time and resources, as well as cooperation from the weather.

“For this mapping effort, aerial imagery was first acquired in June 2019,” he said, “but these images were deemed insufficient to reliably map SAV due to low-water clarity resulting from wind and rain in the days preceding the flights.”

The region was mapped again in May and June 2020 and that aerial imagery was largely sufficient.

“Given the vast amount of coastline and estuarine waters covered, as well as limited trained staff, delineating all of the visible SAV takes months to complete. That said, APNEP and its partners were able to produce this updated map of SAV much more quickly than our prior two mapping efforts, and we expect to continue to increase our mapping efficiency going forward depending on available resources and staff capacity,” Ellis continued. “APNEP is fortunate to be able to lead a large group of dedicated partners committed to monitoring and protecting SAV.”

Collaborative monitoring and assessment with partner organizations will continue annually as part of APNEP’s new regional strategy, with findings to be reported to the public as they become available, officials said.

Ellis explained that the new regional monitoring strategy is an effort to coordinate actions led by APNEP with regional partners.

“As being part of the EPA’s National Estuary Program, APNEP is required to have a monitoring plan for the region, and we’ve chosen to begin by formalizing our long-term strategy for SAV monitoring,” Ellis said.

“Briefly, rather than trying to fly and map the entire APNEP region for SAV every five years or so, we are now flying and mapping one different subregion each year,” he said. “This approach was designed to not only improve our mapping efficiency, but also to allow us to take an even closer look at the resource in each subregion to better understand seasonal variability in extent, abundance and species composition.”

In addition to the 2020 mapping data being used to determine where submerged aquatic vegetation is declining, the data is to help guide the development of protection and restoration strategies.

“These mapping efforts are a key component of North Carolina’s Coastal Habitat Protection Plan implementation,” APNEP Coastal Habitats Coordinator Jimmy Johnson said in a statement. “Protecting SAV habitat will increase the resilience of our coastal ecosystems overall.”

The Coastal Habitat Protection Plan, or CHPP, is a long-term effort developed by the state Division of Environmental Quality to improve coastal fisheries through habitat protection and enhancement. The state Marine Fisheries, Environmental Management and Coastal Resources commissions adopted the plan in 2004.

Johnson was part of the team that developed an amendment to the plan approved in 2021 that recommends actions to protect and restore submerged aquatic vegetation through water quality improvements.

APNEP is currently hosted by the state Department of Environmental Quality under a cooperative agreement with the Environmental Protection Agency and works closely with Virginia. The program area is from the headwaters in the Virginia mountains and North Carolina Piedmont, through the coastal plain and out to the string of barrier islands bordering the sounds, according to the website.

The EPA and NCDEQ provided APNEP with funding for this 2020 map update project, with field and technical support from the Division of Marine Fisheries and other partners.

The North Carolina Department of Environmental Quality recapped what officials call “key actions” that took place over the last year that are “to protect the environment and health of all North Carolinians, and to address the impacts of climate change.”

Secretary Elizabeth S. Biser said in an announcement Thursday that NCDEQ is committed to protecting the resources and people of the state.

“We look forward to the opportunities in the year ahead to help communities replace aging infrastructure, improve air and water quality and build a more resilient North Carolina,” she said.

One action that took place in November was the approval of the 2021 Amendment to the North Carolina Coastal Habitat Protection Plan, a long-term effort to preserve coastal fisheries through habitat protection and enhancement.

The Coastal Resources Commission, Environmental Management Commission and Marine Fisheries Commission all unanimously approved the amendment, which includes recommended actions to improve the resilience of coastal habitats and communities, and protect the coastal economy that relies on clean water for tourism and fishing.

The amendment includes Appendix A, an early public comment submitted by an independent stakeholder workgroup led by the North Carolina Coastal Federation and The Pew Charitable Trusts, and Appendix C consisting of written public comments.

Also this year, the Division of Water Infrastructure released a draft Administration Plan for the $1.69 billion in federal funds appropriated in the state budget for drinking water, wastewater and stormwater infrastructure.

Division of Air Quality released the Phase 2 of the Volkswagen Mitigation Settlement funding plan, which details how the state will invest nearly $68 million in grants for vehicle replacements that reduce NOx and provide public health benefits.

Division of Marine Fisheries distributed more than $5.2 million in financial relief funded by the federal Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security, or CARES, Act to 197 eligible members of fishing industries who sustained income losses in the spring of 2020 due to COVID-19.

The Division of Coastal Management awarded in March $675,000 in grants to 25 communities for technical assistance in risk assessment and resilience planning work under the North Carolina Resilient Coastal Communities Program.

In November, the division received nearly $546,000 in grant funding from the National Fish and Wildlife Foundation’s Emergency Coastal Resilience Fund 2021 grant cycle. The award, in addition to $1.15 million appropriated in the state budget, will be used to support community resilience through the program.

DEQ expanded the actions required by Chemours to address GenX/ PFAS (per-and polyfluoroalkyl substances) contamination in the Cape Fear Region. DEQ took enforcement actions against Chemours with fines of nearly $500,000 for several violations and for exceeding the facility-wide GenX annual air emissions limit.

DEQ filed a complaint and motion for Injunctive Relief in Mecklenburg County Superior Court to force Colonial Pipeline to meet their obligations as the responsible party in the state’s largest gasoline spill. 

NCDEQ also shared the following 2021 grants and recognitions:

• The State Water Infrastructure Authority approved 142 drinking water and wastewater projects during February and July funding rounds. A total of nearly $436 million was awarded to help communities maintain and improve drinking water and wastewater infrastructure.
• The North Carolina Weatherization Assistance Program, which helps low-income residents save energy, reduce their utility bills and stay safe in their homes, disbursed more than $19 million in federal grants, allowing more than 1,250 homes to be weatherized and more than 800 HVAC units be repaired or replaced.
• With federal agencies, NCWAP and CARES Act grant funding, the State Energy Office awarded $211,400 to provide community solar resources for qualified low-income residents.
• The Division of Air Quality awarded $1.3 million in grants for projects to reduce air pollution from diesel-powered mobile sources.
• The Division of Coastal Management awarded more than $1.1 million to nine local governments to improve public access to coastal beaches and waters.
• The Division of Water Resources awarded $1.1 million from the federally funded 319 Grant program to six organizations to fund agricultural best management practices, stormwater retrofits, stream restoration, and educational and community mobilization activities.
• The Division of Environmental Assistance and Customer Services’ Recycling Program provided $492,937 in business development grants to 16 recycling companies.
• The Division of Waste Management awarded $500,000 to 64 county governments to support local electronics management programs, which provide residents with opportunities to recycle electronics like televisions and computer equipment, and awarded nearly $437,000 to 49 county governments to support scrap tire management programs.
• The Division of Mitigation Services completed 139 projects in 2021, representing $84.8 million invested with private and public firms, which restored, enhanced and protected 1.28 million linear feet of stream, nearly 7,120 acres of riparian wetlands, 1,092 acres of nonriparian wetlands, 16.6 acres of coastal marsh and 11.3 acres of riparian buffers. 
• The Division of Mitigation Services instituted 25 new projects, using private mitigation providers, to restore, enhance and protect 73,085 linear feet of stream, 139.5 acres of riparian wetlands, 13.1 acres of nonriparian buffer, and 59.2 acres of riparian buffers, 11,418 pounds nitrogen reduction and 643 pounds of phosphorus reduction. The contracts for the new projects totaled $32.3 million.
• The department’s Environmental Stewardship Initiative recognized a new steward, two new rising stewards and nine new members. The program currently has 200 member sites.
• In 2021, 22 educators completed the Office’s Environmental Education Certification Program while 121 individuals enrolled in the program.

The 2021 amendment to the Coastal Habitat Protection Plan has been approved, and the new official state recommendations to improve water quality and habitat can now be put into place.

In unanimous decisions, the Coastal Resources Commission voted Nov. 10, the Environmental Management Commission Thursday and the Marine Fisheries Commission Friday. All three commissions’ approval was required for the amendment to be adopted.

The 2021 amendment recommends five priorities: protecting submerged aquatic vegetation and wetlands, abiding by environmental rules, wastewater infrastructure solutions to improve water quality, and habitat mapping.

“We are very pleased that we received unanimous support for the document from all three commissions. I think that is a definite reflection on the amount of work that all involved put into the amendment,” Jimmy Johnson, coastal habitats coordinator with the Albemarle-Pamlico National Estuarine Partnership and Coastal Habitat Protection Plan Steering Committee member, told Coastal Review Friday following the Marine Fisheries Commission meeting.

The three commissions first approved the Coastal Habitat Protection Plan in 2004. It was developed to improve and restore coastal fisheries through habitat protection and enhancement. The plan is usually revised every five years to reflect changes in the status of habitat protection in the state. The CHPP Steering Committee opted to draft an amendment to the 2016 plan rather than rewrite the entire document to streamline the process. The amendment was made available for public comment earlier this year.

Now that the amendment is approved, the next step is a 30-day review by NCDEQ, followed by another monthlong review by the Joint Legislative Commission on Government Operations.

“If we receive no comments or requests for changes, the amendment will be deemed approved. The CHPP Team and CHPP Steering Committee will continue to meet in 2022 to keep track of implementation regarding the recommendations,” Johnson said.

Division of Marine Fisheries Habitat Program Manager Anne Deaton told Coastal Review that because the amendment includes recommended actions, “We can begin implementation immediately upon final approval and we are really looking forward to that.”

Johnson told the Marine Fisheries Commission Friday that most public comments received were supportive. Public comment received by email included petitions from Audubon North Carolina and the North Carolina Conservation network totaling 1,257 signatures. There were 33 letters supporting the plan and implementation and 17 letters in support of a public-private partnership. Other public comment focused on edits to recommendations and texts. Close to 20 environmental organizations also contributed input. Johnson said while there were some concerns, the organizations felt positively of the CHPP amendment.

Deaton told the commission that the CHPP steering committee met Oct. 27 after the Sept. 21-Oct. 21 public comment period closed. After reviewing input from organizations and stakeholders, the committee decided to modify four actions related to the Submerged Aquatic Vegetation Protection and Restoration Through Water Quality Improvement priority issue. The committee also made an additional recommendation to form a public/private partnership. All of these changes are in the draft of the amendment most recently presented to and approved by the three commissions.

The modifications include broadening protentional funding sources for SAV monitoring and management and adding the directive to form a workgroup that would increase best management practices to improve water quality within SAV waterbody regions. Two other recommended actions were updated with a few minor edits for clarification.

Regarding the additional recommendation added, Deaton reiterated Johnson’s earlier comments that there was a great deal of input from the advisory committees and public pushing for a public-private partnership, and the CHPP steering committee agreed.

The new recommendation reads, “By 2022, DEQ will support the formation of a public-private partnership that will engage a diverse group of stakeholders to assist in developing, implementing, and securing decision-maker support and funding for measures in this 2021 CHPP amendment that protect and restore water quality.”

Deaton said that the concept with this new recommendation was to broaden support, having more people involved will help accomplish more, it can broaden funding opportunities and more collaboration.

“By bringing in stakeholders from the beginning, we can discuss better any obstacles in making those accomplishments happen,” she said.

The amendment also includes Appendix A, early public comment submitted by an independent stakeholder workgroup led by the North Carolina Coastal Federation and The Pew Charitable Trusts, and Appendix C that consists of written public comments.

Todd Miller, executive director for the federation, told Coastal Review Friday that he was pleased the amendment was unanimously approved, adding that “now the work begins.”

Leda Cunningham, an officer with Pew’s Conserving Marine Life in the U.S. project, said in a statement, “Pew commends all who worked on the CHPP for maintaining momentum and focus while undertaking this ambitious task with a wide range of contributors.”

Since the approval of the 2016 Coastal Habitat Protection Plan, implementation has focused on restoring oyster reef habitat, encouraging the use of living shorelines, reducing sedimentation impacts in estuarine creeks and developing metrics on habitat trends and management effectiveness, according to the 2021 amendment. “Although new priority issues were selected for the 2021 CHPP Amendment, the 2016 issues remain a continuing priority.”

The 2016 plan is made up of two documents: the CHPP source document and the CHPP Summary, or the “CHPPlet.” The source document includes issue papers, which are summaries on addressing research areas, on priority issues from 2016 including restoring oyster reef habitat, encouraging use of living shorelines, reducing sedimentation impacts in estuarine creeks, and developing metrics on habitat trends and management effectiveness. The issue papers include specific recommended actions that replace the need for a separate implementation plan.

The protection plan team that worked on the 2021 amendment includes staff from the Division of Marine Fisheries, Division of Coastal Management, Division of Water Resources and Division of Energy, Minerals, and Land Resources. Albemarle-Pamlico National Estuarine Partnership, Wildlife Resource Commission, Division of Energy, Mineral and Land Resources, Division of Mitigation Services, and Soil and Water Conservation District have also participated.

The North Carolina Environmental Management Commission, when it meets Nov. 18, is expected to vote on the 2021 amendment to the Coastal Habitat Protection Plan.

The state put the plan in place in 2004 as a continuing effort to improve coastal fisheries through habitat protection and improvement efforts.

Commission committee meetings are set for Wednesday, and the full commission meets at 9 a.m. Thursday. Commissioners, staff, and scheduled speakers are expected to attend in person the meetings in the Archdale Building in Raleigh. There is limited public seating and face coverings are required. Information for the public to join the meeting by phone or online in on the commission website.

The Environmental Management Commission is one of three commissions required to vote on the amendment for adoption. The Coastal Resources Commission voted Wednesday to approve the amendment to the plan. The final required vote is that of the North Carolina Marine Fisheries Commission expected during its Nov. 17-19 meeting.

The 2021 amendment recommends five priorities: protecting submerged aquatic vegetation and wetlands, abiding by environmental rules, wastewater infrastructure solutions to improve water quality, and habitat mapping. The draft amendment also includes Appendix A, early public comment submitted by an independent stakeholder workgroup led by the North Carolina Coastal Federation and The Pew Charitable Trusts, and Appendix C with public comment written letters.

The agenda for the full commission Nov. 18 meeting is available on the website.Other items on the agenda include the following:

• Request to move forward with public notice and hearing on septage management amendments
• Request approval of hearing officer’s report, regulatory impact analysis,
  and adoption of rule amendments for underground storage tanks.
• Request approval of hearing officer’s report on proposed rule readoptions to water use registration and allocation rules.
• Request approval of hearing officer’s report on proposed rule amendments to Groundwater Quality Standards.

Committee meetings will be on Nov. 17 with the Water Allocation Committee meeting at 9:30 a.m., followed at 10:45 a.m. by the Groundwater & Waste Management Committee and at 11:45 a.m. by the National Pollution Discharge Elimination System, or NPDES, Committee. The Air Quality and Water Quality committees will not meet Nov. 17.

The Environmental Management Commission is responsible for adopting rules for the protection, preservation and enhancement of the state’s air, land and water resources. The commission oversees and adopts rules for several divisions of the Department of Environmental Quality, including the divisions of Air Quality; Energy, Mineral and Land Resources; Waste Management and Water Resources.

Related: Coastal Review’s Coastal Habitat Protection Plan coverage

The Coastal Resources Commission has approved the 2021 amendment to the Coastal Habitat Protection Plan.

The unanimous decision came Wednesday during the commission’s meeting in Atlantic Beach.

The commission’s vote to approve was the first of three needed to pass the amendment to the plan, which is an ongoing effort to improve coastal fisheries through habitat protection and improvement efforts.

Related: Resilience, natural approach basis of habitat plan tweaks

The second, the Environmental Management Commission, is scheduled to meet Nov. 17-18. The North Carolina Marine Fisheries Commission, the third and final, is expected to vote during its Nov. 17-19 meeting.

Related: Panel with stakes in clean water adds to coastal habitat plan

The 2021 plan amendment recommends protecting submerged aquatic vegetation and wetlands, abiding by environmental rules, wastewater infrastructure solutions to improve water quality, and habitat mapping. The draft amendment also includes Appendix A, early public comment submitted by an independent stakeholder workgroup led by the North Carolina Coastal Federation and The Pew Charitable Trusts.

The plan, approved in 2004 by the North Carolina Marine Fisheries, Environmental Management and Coastal Resources Commissions unanimously, is to be updated every five years.

Updated Nov. 9 Environmental Management Commission meeting date

North Carolina Coastal Resources Commission is scheduled to meet next week to consider approving the 2021 Coastal Habitat Protection Plan update.

The meeting is set to begin at 9 a.m. Wednesday, Nov. 10, at the DoubleTree by Hilton, 2717 W. Fort Macon Road, Atlantic Beach. A public comment period is scheduled for noon Nov. 10. Comments may be limited to 3 minutes per person at the chairwoman’s discretion.

The Coastal Resources Advisory Council meets at 3 p.m. Nov. 9, also at the Atlantic Beach hotel.

Full agendas and briefing materials can be found on the CRC website. Times indicated on the agenda for individual items are subject to change. Both meetings are open to the public.

The Coastal Habitat Protection Plan is the state’s long-term effort to improve coastal fisheries through habitat protection and enhancement efforts. The plan details habitats’ distribution and abundance, ecological functions and importance to fish production, status and trends, threats to the habitats, and includes recommendations to address threats, according to state Department of Environmental Quality. North Carolina Marine Fisheries, Environmental Management and Coastal Resources Commissions unanimously approved the document December 2004. The plan is to be updated every five years.

The 2021 draft plan amendment recommends addressing five priority issues: submerged aquatic vegetation protection and restoration through water quality improvements; wetlands protection and restoration through nature-based solutions; environmental rule compliance to protect coastal habitats; wastewater infrastructure solutions for water quality improvement; and coastal habitat mapping and monitoring to assess status and trends.

The draft amendment also includes Appendix A, early public comment submitted by an independent stakeholder workgroup led by the North Carolina Coastal Federation and The Pew Charitable Trusts.

The three commissions now must vote to approve the draft 2021 amendment. The Environmental Management Commission has a meeting scheduled Nov. 17-18 but the agenda had not been released at the time of this report. The North Carolina Marine Fisheries Commission is expected to vote during its Nov. 17-19 meeting.

To reduce the spread of COVID-19, all attendees should wear a mask and maintain social distance during the meeting.

The agenda for the commission meeting also includes the following:

• Consider a variance request from Kure Beach regarding a development line.
• Review of proposed beach management plan rules.
• Consider amendments to shoreline access policies, parking fees and clarifying language.
• Continued discussion of amendments to Land Use Plans – enforceable polices.
• Discussion of proposed amendments regarding floating structures associated with shellfish leases.
• Consideration of fiscal analyses regarding structural boat covers and general permit for beach bulldozing.

Updated Nov. 9 Environmental Management Commission meeting date

The North Carolina Marine Fisheries Commission, when it meets later this month, is expected to consider approving the draft Coastal Habitat Protection Plan 2021 Amendment.

The in-person meetings are set for Nov. 17-19 at the Islander Hotel & Resort, 102 Islander Drive, Emerald Isle, and begin at 6 p.m. Nov. 17, 9 a.m. Nov. 18 and 9 a.m. Nov. 19.

The Coastal Habitat Protection Plan is the state’s long-term plan to improve coastal fisheries through habitat protection and enhancement efforts. The plan details habitats’ distribution and abundance, ecological functions and importance to fish production, status and trends, threats to the habitats, and includes recommendations to address threats, according to state Department of Environmental Quality. North Carolina Marine Fisheries, Environmental Management, and Coastal Resources Commissions unanimously approved the document December 2004.

The 2021 draft plan amendment focuses on recommendations to address five priority issues: submerged aquatic vegetation protection and restoration through water quality improvements; wetlands protection and restoration through nature-based solutions; environmental rule compliance to protect coastal habitats; wastewater infrastructure solutions for water quality improvement; and coastal habitat mapping and monitoring to assess status and trends.

The draft amendment also includes Appendix A, early public comment submitted by an independent stakeholder workgroup led by the North Carolina Coastal Federation and The Pew Charitable Trusts.

Related: Panel with stakes in clean water adds to coastal habitat plan

This past summer, Coastal Resources Commission, Marine Fisheries Commission and the Environmental Management Commission voted to approve the draft and appendix for public review.

Now, the three commissions must vote to approve the draft 2021 amendment. Coastal Resources Commission will consider public comments and approval of the plan Nov. 9. The Environmental Management Commission has a meeting scheduled Nov. 17-18 but the agenda was not released at the time of this report.

In addition to the Coastal Habitat Protection Plan, agenda items include the following:

• Selecting preferred management options for the Shrimp Fishery Management Plan Amendment 2 and sending the draft plan for departmental review.
• Reviewing the draft Southern Flounder Fishery Management Plan Amendment 3 and sending it out for public comment and advisory committee review.
• Approving the goals and objectives of the draft N.C Fishery Management Plan for Interjurisdictional Fisheries Amendment 2.
• Final approval of amendments and re-adoption of a slate of rules under a mandatory periodic review schedule, including rules prohibiting the repacking of foreign crab meat in North Carolina.
• Discussion of additional labeling requirements for repacked foreign crab meat, including selection of preferred management option and approval of associated proposed language for rulemaking.
• Approving a slate of nominees for the North Carolina Obligatory Seat on the South Atlantic Fishery Management Council.

A full meeting agenda and briefing book materials are to be posted on the Marine Fisheries Commission Meeting webpage as they become available.

The commission is expected to hold public comment at 6 p.m. Nov. 17 and a 30-minute public comment period near the beginning of the meeting Nov. 18.

The commission said it will only hear from speakers attending the meeting in-person. To accommodate as many speakers as possible, the chairman will limit each speaker to 3 minutes Nov. 17 and Nov. 18.

Speaker registration will begin at noon Wednesday and can be accessed through a link on the Marine Fisheries Commission Meeting webpage. Register online to speak during the 30-minute session Nov. 18. Registration will end once 10 people have signed up to speak. Registration is not required for the Nov. 17 public comment period but is available until 10 a.m. Nov. 17. Doors open at 4:30 p.m. when the public may also register to speak. .

Those who wish to submit handouts to the commission during a public comment period should bring at least 12 copies to the meeting.

The public may submit written comments online through the Marine Fisheries Commission Meeting webpage or mail to: November 2021 Marine Fisheries Commission Meeting Comments, P.O Box 769, Morehead City, NC 28557.

Comments may be dropped off at the Division of Marine Fisheries’ Morehead City Headquarters Office at 3441 Arendell St., Morehead City.

Written comments must be posted online or received in the Division of Marine Fisheries Office by 4:30 p.m. Nov. 15. Public comment for this meeting will not be accepted through email.

In accordance with current guidance to help prevent the spread of COVID-19, the chairman asks that everyone attending the meeting wear a mask at all times, except when giving public comment to the commission.

Those who do not wish to speak at the meeting are encouraged to watch the meeting online. Links to the livestream are to be posted on the Marine Fisheries Commission Meeting webpage. After the meeting, an audio recording is expected to be posted online.

The North Carolina Coastal Habitat Protection Plan Steering Committee is set to meet at 1 p.m. Oct. 25 by web conference to review and discuss public comment received on the Draft North Carolina Coastal Habitat Protection Plan 2021 Amendment.

The protection plan focuses on coastal fisheries through habitat protection and enhancement efforts adopted in 2004 by the North Carolina Marine Fisheries, Environmental Management and Coastal Resources Commissions. The plan is revised every five years to reflect changes in the status of habitat protection.

The public may join the meeting online at https://ncdenrits.webex.com/ncdenrits/j.php?MTID=mc1ebe0bdf9f120364d0d89eea764e2ff. Meeting number is 2433 369 8429 and the password is UpE2TaqMv38. Join by phone by calling 415-655-0003.

For a full meeting agenda and other meeting materials visit the website.

The plan is currently being updated and is in the public comment period that began Sept. 21. Comments will be accepted until 5 p.m. Oct. 21 on the Protection Plan and Appendix A, which is early public comment submitted by the North Carolina Coastal Federation and The Pew Charitable Trusts.

Submit comments online, by email to publiccomments@ncdenr.gov with “CHPP Comments” in the subject line or mail to CHPP 2021 Amendment Comments, P.O Box 769, Morehead City, NC 28557.

Public can also sign up to speak at one of the remaining Marine Fisheries Commission advisory meetings. Shellfish and Crustacean Advisory Committee will meet at 6 p.m. Oct. 19 and Habitat and Water Quality Advisory Committee is scheduled to meet at 6 p.m. Oct. 20. Sign up by 5 p.m. the day before online to speak.

The Southern Regional Advisory Committee, Northern Regional Advisory Committee and Finfish Advisory Committee have already met.

For more information, contact Jimmy.Johnson@ncdenr.gov with the Albemarle-Pamlico National Estuary Partnership or  Anne.Deaton@ncdenr.gov with the Division of Marine Fisheries. 

Plan name, headline corrected

Despite a steady decline in the number of permits issued for human-related impacts to wetlands in North Carolina over the past 30 years, tens of thousands of wetlands in the state’s coastal plain have been destroyed by the changing climate and nonpermitted human activities.

That information is included in the newly updated, U.S. Environmental Protection Agency-approved North Carolina Wetland Program Plan, or WPP, 2021-2025, one encouraged by the federal agency to guide wetland-related work by states and tribes.

“The WPP is not a regulatory document, so it does not make any changes to rules regarding wetlands in the state,” Kristie Gianopulos said in an email response. “It is intended to be a guide for wetland-related projects and work by state agencies, in the areas of monitoring/assessment, regulation, voluntary restoration/protection, water quality standards, and outreach and education. The newly approved plan for 2021-2025 outlines objectives for the (North Carolina Department of Environmental Quality) in these areas.”

Gianopulos is a senior environmental specialist and wetlands ecologist with the department’s Division of Water Resources’ Water Sciences Section.

“This plan also serves as a communication tool, providing a unified vision and priorities for guiding wetland work in North Carolina, as well as establishing a network of partners and stakeholders in accomplishing that work,” she said.

The EPA’s stamp of approval of the plan ensures that the state, tribe or other grant applicant is eligible for program development grant funds from the federal agency.

The state Wetland Program Plan was initiated in 2012 through a group of stakeholders — an array of representatives from government offices, professional organizations, nonprofits, and universities — whose goal was to enhance the state wetland program.

The stakeholder group reconvened last year to update the original five-year plan with a focus on DEQ’s projected wetland work through 2025, said Amanda Mueller the Kenan Institute for Engineering, Technology and Science, or KIETS, climate leaders program manager and coastal resilience and sustainability initiative coordinator at North Carolina State University and author of the plan and subsequent update.

“The original N.C. WPP addressed the functions and services of wetlands and listed goals and activities needed to further understand and manage North Carolina’s wetlands,” Mueller stated in an email. “The original list of activities was extensive and provided guidance for anyone pursuing wetland projects in the state.”

Some of the projects conducted since the state Wetland Program Plan was first adopted in October 2015 include the following:

• Assessing state wetlands through the EPA’s 2016 National Wetland Conditions Assessment.
• Identifying and designating strategic habitat areas for marine and coastal fishery species in the Cape Fear River Basin.
• Assessing 16 long-term wetland monitoring sites; evaluating the accuracy of National Wetland Inventory maps, or NWI, for the state.
• Developing and testing wetland hydrology performance criteria for restoration sites.

North Carolina has 3.9 million acres and 16 types of wetlands, including basin, bog, bottomland hardwood forest, estuarine woody wetland, floodplain pool, hardwood flat, headwater forest, nonriverine swamp forest, nontidal freshwater marsh, pine flat, pine savanna, pocosins, riverine swamp forest, salt/brackish marsh, seep and tidal freshwater marsh.

Between Jan. 1, 1990, and Dec. 31, 2019, there were 12,386 permits issued with an impact to nearly 18,000 acres of wetlands.

Since 1990, most permitted impacts to wetlands have occurred in the state’s coastal plain partly because this part of the state has a majority of and the largest wetlands, according to the Wetland Program Plan.

Large permitted impacts in Beaufort, Carteret, Lenoir and Wilson counties were related to activities such as mining, aquafarming, industrial and commercial development, and reservoir creation.

Permit applicants in those instances were required to mitigate wetland impacts through a variety of ways, including preservation, restoration, creation, or in-lieu fees.

Wetland impacts from human activity that does not have to be permitted and impacts from climate change have resulted in the loss of nearly 135,000 acres of nontidal, freshwater wetlands in the coastal plain between 1996 and 2016, according to aerial imagery collected by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s Coastal Change Analysis Program.

The greatest loss has been forested wetlands.

According to that same data, there has been a loss of 144 acres of estuarine wetlands since 2006.

The loss of those wetlands was initially attributed to the conversion of wetlands to agriculture, uplands and development, “but are more recently due to conversions to unconsolidated shorelines (2006-2016) and open water (2011-2016), most likely caused by sea level rise, erosion from increasingly frequent and intense storms, and water quality degradation,” according to information provided by DEQ.

The updated Wetland Program Plan includes goals and future directives to monitor the impacts of human-induced and natural events on wetlands to evaluate trends in the number of wetlands and the quality of those wetlands.

The plan also focuses on voluntary restoration and protection of wetlands through state-provided project guidance, low-interest loans and grant funding for proposed projects.

The state Department of Environmental Quality is accepting public comment on the Draft Coastal Habitat Protection Plan 2021 Amendment.

Comments are being accepted until 5 p.m. Oct. 21.

The Coastal Habitat Protection Plan is a long-term strategy to improve coastal fisheries through habitat protection and enhancement efforts.

The plan, which must be approved by the Environmental Management Commission, Marine Fisheries Commission, and Coastal Resources Commission, is to provide information on habitat distribution and abundance, ecological functions and importance to fish production, status and trends, threats to the habitats, and includes recommendations to address those threats, according to NCDEQ.

The draft plan amendment focuses on recommendations to address five priority issues:

• Submerged aquatic vegetation protection and restoration through water quality improvements.
• Wetlands protection and restoration through nature-based solutions.
• Environmental rule compliance to protect coastal habitats.
• Wastewater infrastructure solutions for water quality improvement.
• Coastal habitat mapping and monitoring to assess status and trends.

Also under public review and comment is Appendix A, which includes the findings, conclusions and recommendations by an independent stakeholder workgroup steered by the North Carolina Coastal Federation and The Pew Charitable Trusts during development of the 2021 amendment to the CHPP.

Related: Panel with stakes in clean water adds to coastal habitat plan

The public may comment by 5 p.m. Oct. 21 on the draft amendment and appendix by submitting comments online through a survey; by mail to CHPP 2021 Amendment Comments, P.O. Box 769, Morehead City, N.C. 28557; or sign up to speak during an advisory meeting. Those who wish to speak at the meetings must register by 5 p.m. the day before the meeting. 

The committees will meet by web conference on the following dates:

• Southern Regional Advisory Committee 6 p.m. Oct. 12. Register to speak by 5 p.m. Oct. 11.
• Northern Regional Advisory Committee 6 p.m. Oct. 13. Register to speak by 5 p.m. Oct. 12.
• Finfish Advisory Committee 6 p.m. Oct. 14. Register to speak by 5 p.m. Oct. 13.
• Shellfish/Crustacean Advisory Committee 6 p.m. Oct. 19. Register to speak by 5 p.m. Oct. 18.
• Habitat & Water Quality Advisory Committee 6 p.m. Oct. 20. Register to speak by 5 p.m. Oct. 19.

Natural solutions, voluntary, incentivize — these are some of the ways suggested by a stakeholder workgroup to enhance and protect North Carolina’s coastal waters.

In all, 10 recommendations in Appendix A from the workgroup have been tacked on to the Coastal Habitat Protection Plan approved for public review by the three regulatory commissions with oversight on coastal issues.

“The goal was to identify and make recommendations on actionable nonregulatory strategies for improving and protecting water quality to safeguard fishery habitats,” said Leda Cunningham, The Pew Charitable Trusts officer.

The proposal of a workgroup was born out of the Jan. 21 meeting of the CHPP Steering Committee when committee chair Martin Posey raised the idea to form a group that would come up with recommendations with a focus on water quality-related issues that could quickly be accomplished, according to the minutes of that meeting.

Pew and the North Carolina Coastal Federation stepped up to the offer, assembling a group of nine stakeholders with expertise in farming, fishing, wetland and water quality mitigation practices, land development, local governments, environmental programs, laws and regulations, environmental engineering and management, and property management. The federation publishes Coastal Review.

“My input was not necessarily technical in nature, but my input to it was that I like the nature-based approach rather than the heavy-handed regulatory approach,” said Pine Knoll Shores Town Manager Brian Kramer, one of the nine stakeholders in the workgroup. “There’s solutions that aren’t necessarily simply regulatory-based. What that means to me is that there may be solutions that are presented right now in terms of infiltration or in terms of simple design changes that’s not necessarily anti-development, but pro-nature. If you can find a way to take advantage of what we already have to protect the water quality and such then those options should be explored.”

The Bogue Banks town in Carteret County recently completed an innovative stormwater project using recommendations from the Coastal Federation, using infiltration methods in more heavily flooded areas of town.

There’s also discussion among members of the town board about putting out public education initiatives on downspout management.

“What’s interesting to me is the degree to which everything ties together as far as impacts of man on nature,” Kramer said, adding that he both fishes and duck hunts. “When you lose (seagrass) you lose fish, you lose the things that grow and nurture, and that impacts wildlife.”

The workgroup’s meetings included North Carolina Department of Environmental Quality staff working on the CHPP, and three scientists whose expertise is in water quality and seagrass, Cunningham said.

The CHPP was first adopted in late 2004 by the state’s three regulatory commissions with oversight on coastal issues: the Environmental Management Commission, Coastal Resources Commission and Marine Fisheries Commission.

The goal of the plan is to protect, restore and conserve coastal habitats that sustain coastal fisheries. It identifies six coastal habitat types: wetlands, submerged aquatic vegetation, marshes, soft bottom, shell bottom and water column, which is the space between the water’s surface and the bottom.

The plan is reviewed every five years by environmental officials within DEQ, the divisions of which must work together to implement the recommendations set forth in the CHPP.

This year, the focus is on specific issues, identifying concerns related to those issues, researching ways to mitigate the impacts of those issues on coastal habitats, and using that research to implement rules and regulations to reduce those impacts.

The end result is an amendment to the CHPP that includes a series of issue papers addressing submerged aquatic vegetation, wetland protection and restoration through nature-based solutions, environmental rule compliance, wastewater infrastructure solutions for water quality improvement and coastal habitat mapping and monitoring.

“The group recognized that in several of the priority issue papers that were in the CHPP that water quality was kind of a cross-cutting theme so the idea was to provide tangible, measurable things that this group of stakeholders could not only identify as strategies, but could also help implement,” Cunningham said.

The workgroup’s recommendations are designed to help expand and engage public participation in implementing the CHPP, she said.

Those recommendations include the following:

• The CHPP Steering Committee and DEQ form a public-private partnership working with stakeholders to further refine and implement the strategy in 2022, as well as evaluate and refine the strategy as it’s used.
• Ask the state’s governor to issue an executive order directing state agencies to work with the steering committee, DEQ, business, industry, agriculture, federal agencies, nongovernment organizations, universities, North Carolina Water Resources Research Institute, North Carolina Sea Grant, and local governments to implement water quality actions that control and reduce nutrient, sediment, pathogen, and other pollutant loadings in coastal estuaries and, when possible, align those actions with statewide climate resiliency strategies.
• Expand financial incentives and technical assistance to encourage communities to voluntarily create and routinely update local watershed management plans.
• Focus and prioritize General Assembly-funded plans and stormwater retrofits to ensure the protection and restoration of coastal fish habitats.
• Support and promote financial incentives program encouraging public and private waterfront property owners to install living shorelines to mitigate shoreline erosion and naturally treat and reduce runoff.
• Promote the use of nature-based stormwater practices through state-funded construction in coastal counties and river basins that flow to coastal habitats.
• Create and implement a voluntary submerged aquatic vegetation protection and restoration plan for Bogue Sound.
• Encourage the state Department of Transportation and municipal transportation agencies to adopt nature-based stormwater strategies for the highways the build, design and maintain.
• Expand access to financial and technical cost-share assistance and incentives that help landowners, farmers, foresters, U.S. Department of Defense, and other property owners to protect coastal fishery habitats.
• Prioritize nutrient management as a coastal habitat protection strategy to protect and restore the health and productivity of coastal estuaries.

Cunningham and others praise the proposed CHPP amendment.

“What we do to help water quality has positive benefits and positive impacts on habitat as well,” Cunningham said. “Because severe weather, rising sea levels, and increased human use of resources, it really is more important than ever to pursue durable strategies that ensure their long-term health and sustainability. Not only does North Carolina have really special places on the coast, we have really incredible opportunities for people that want to protect and restore those places to work together and the CHPP is really the blueprint that pulls it all together.”

Next month is expected to kick off a series of meetings to accept public comment.

The meetings, which will be held by web conference, will be scheduled in conjunction with five Marine Fisheries Commission advisory committee meetings. The dates and times of those meetings, links to the web conference, as well as an online survey will be announced in a news release in the next couple of weeks, according to a N.C. Division of Marine Fisheries spokesperson.

Once public comment period ends for the draft CHPP amendment, the plan will go back to the three commissions in November for final approval. If approved, the CHPP will then go to the Joint Legislative Committee on Governmental Operations.

The amendment may be adopted by year’s end or early next year.

This is the fourth in a multipart special reporting series on coastal water quality. Read more.

An amendment to North Carolina’s Coastal Habitat Protection Plan is now approved for public review, and thrust into the forefront of proposed modifications to the long-standing document are ways to mitigate the impacts of climate change and unregulated sources of stormwater runoff to those habitats.

“This year we’re doing something a little differently in that we’re doing an amendment rather than a revision to the source document,” said Jimmy Johnson, coastal habitats coordinator with the Albemarle-Pamlico National Estuary Partnership. “We were comfortable with the source document as it was written in 2016. We wanted to specifically focus on some other issues that we felt needed to be made a priority and so we decided to do an amendment rather than revising the source document.”

The Coastal Habitat Protection Plan, often referred to as CHPP and pronounced “chip,” was born out of the 1997 Fisheries Reform Act, a comprehensive management plan for fish and shell species. The goal of the plan is to protect, restore and conserve coastal habitats that sustain coastal fisheries.

The Coastal Resources Commission voted Wednesday to approve public review of the amendment and a related appendix with input received during an early public comment period facilitated by the North Carolina Coastal Federation and The Pew Charitable Trusts with the Coastal Habitat Steering Committee’s approval.

Pew Charitable Trusts Officer Leda Cunningham said Pew encourages the public to support the plan during the comment period and learn how they can contribute to conservation efforts.

“North Carolina is a special place in terms of coastal habitat and the CHPP is a really solid plan that prioritizes collaboration for protecting and restoring that habitat,” she said. “It’s going to take many of us pulling together to achieve common goals of sustainability and resiliency.”

The CHPP officially began in 2005, shortly after it was first adopted in late 2004 by the state’s three regulatory commissions with oversight on coastal issues: Environmental Management Commission, Coastal Resources Commission and Marine Fisheries Commission.

The Marine Fisheries and Environmental Management commissions approved the amendment for public review during their respective meetings earlier this summer.

The plan is reviewed every five years by environmental officials within the North Carolina Department of Environmental Quality, or DEQ, the divisions of which must work together to implement the recommendations set forth in the CHPP. It identifies six coastal habitat types: wetlands, submerged aquatic vegetation, marshes, soft bottom, shell bottom and water column, which is the space between the water’s surface and the bottom.

Casey Knight, a coastal habitats biologist with the state Division of Marine Fisheries, explained how, this time around, officials are focusing on specific issues, identifying concerns related to those issues, researching ways to mitigate the impacts of those issues on coastal habitats, and using that research to implement rules and regulations to reduce those impacts.

The priority issues include the following:

1. Submerged aquatic vegetation, protection and restoration through water quality improvements.
2. Wetland protection and restoration through nature-based solutions. This one tackles the development of living shorelines over hardened structures and, as Johnson puts it, letting “nature be nature” by leaving natural wetlands undisturbed.
3. Environmental rule compliance to protect coastal habitats. This issue addresses the need for additional field representatives to routinely conduct compliance checks and issue notices of violations. “We just don’t have enough of those positions to do the work and so that is just trying to get the existing rules we have on the books enforced better and complies with better,” Knight said.
4. Wastewater infrastructure solutions for water quality improvement. Wastewater and stormwater underground collection systems are old and in need of repair throughout the state. But, the situation in the coastal region is exacerbated by the threat of sea level rise. “It’s fairly frequent that we read about spills and pipes rupturing and spilling wastewater into the estuaries and streams and creeks,” Johnson said. “It’s an expensive proposition and the problem in eastern North Carolina is so many of these smaller communities just don’t have the money to be able to retrofit or to repair their infrastructure and so we’re calling attention to that.”
5. Coastal habitat mapping and monitoring to assess status and trends. Mapping and monitoring the work currently being done to protect coastal habitats will help officials make more educated decisions on how to carry forth protection and restoration efforts. “Without the proper amount of monitoring and assessing of things that are already being done on the ground now we need to be able to know in which direction to move in the future and the only way to do that is map and monitor the work that’s being done now,” Johnson said. 

Issue papers have been created to address each of these priorities. And, though they’re specific issues, they’re all tied in two common denominators – water quality and climate change.

“One thing we did see with the source document is that it did not really cover climate change in the aspects of coastal resiliency in the manner that we speak of it today,” Knight said.

North Carolina Gov. Roy Cooper issued Executive Order 80, a commitment to tackle climate change and build the state’s green energy economy, in October 2018, two years after the CHPP’s was last updated.

The order led to DEQ’s creation of the North Carolina Climate Risk Assessment and Resilience Plan, a climate adaptation plan released in June 2020. Through the development of that plan, the North Carolina Institute for Climate Studies, a research institute of the University of North Carolina system, created the North Carolina Climate Science Report.

“We’ve taken a lot of that information, specifically coastal information, and created another chapter that will be part of this amendment called climate change and resiliency and that speaks to a lot of compounding issues that go along with sea level rise,” Knight said.

More frequent, heavier rain events associated with climate change and rising sea levels are exacerbating issues relating to water quality issues, with wide-ranging impacts across all coastal habitats.

During heavy rain events, rainwater gets sucked into underground wastewater pipes, overflowing systems. Heavy, frequent rainfall creates more unregulated stormwater runoff, which makes its way into coastal habitats. This runoff equates to higher levels of nitrogen in those habitats.

“We’ve done a decent job of dealing with point source pollution, but now we’ve realized that some of those gains are being outweighed by all of this nonpoint,” Knight said. “By creating and looking further into water quality standards for some of these nutrient indicators we will be able to definitively say the water quality standard here is not being met and what actions can we start taking to make sure that those standards are met.”

An overabundance of nitrogen in water causes eutrophication, a process where rapid algae growth depletes oxygen levels in the water.

Algae growth blocks the light submerged aquatic vegetation needs to survive and grow. SAV provides food and shelter for coastal fish.

“We also acknowledge that water quality improvements for SAV are going to be beneficial to most other habitats and the animals that use them,” Knight said. “Through that issue paper we are hopefully looking at developing additional water quality standards around some of these nutrient indicators or factors that could be actionable and see hopefully a difference within the next period of the CHPP review in the next five years.”

The wetlands issue paper includes ongoing research on how to help marshes keep up with the pace of sea level rise.

“If we can’t keep the marshes keeping up with sea level rise then we’ll lose the marshes altogether and that’s the last thing we need,” she said. “So, we need to plan for the migration of those marshes inland. We need to protect the areas that these marshes are potentially going to migrate to as sea level rises.”

One way to do this is potentially through a method called thin layer deposition.

Thin layer deposition takes material dredged from coastal waterways that is not suitable to be placed on an ocean shoreline and sprayed, in a thin layer, onto a marsh, giving the marsh “a little more meat at their roots,” Knight explained.

“As the tide comes in and washes over it should be bringing more sediment to them so they need that sediment to survive, which is a double-edged sword when we talk about sediment in other ways as far as water quality concerns,” she said. “We don’t like the ideas of sediment, but we’re talking about that nearshore kind of over wash during that tide change that they need just to kind of push that extra layer of sediment onto their bank just to make sure that they continue to rise as the sea level comes up and that tide pushes in farther. There’s a lot of permitting issues involved in that too that we’re going to hopefully work through. We need to be able to have the research that proves that it’s viable and feasible and then we can start moving toward some of the permitting barriers that we have there.”

Research is ongoing as to how much is the right amount to spray onto marshes.

The benefits of living shorelines and their adaptation to sea level rise as compared to hardened shoreline structures are continuing to be researched as well.

The discussion is now turning from whether they are a better shoreline protection alternative to bulkheads to how the state can incentivize property owners and companies to choose living shorelines over bulkheads.

“Leaving those big wetland buffers and creating things like living shorelines instead of bulkheads that have lawns right up to the edges of the waterway, that’s going to be key in helping kind of buffer those floodwaters both coming from hurricanes when they’re pushing water in, or these heavy rain events when they do occur,” Knight said.

The state is expected to take public comments on the proposed amendments in October.  

Coastal Resources Commissioner Larry Baldwin noted on Wednesday the months of work and stakeholder efforts to address particular water quality concerns that produced the amendment.

“I think we got it about as good as we can. I like it because it’s not heavy regulatory. It’s trying to coordinate many different groups and funding to be able to improve water quality, which I think is a good thing, Baldwin said.

Johnson said the hope is that an updated CHPP will be adopted by the end of this year or early 2022.

“We have tried to incorporate all of those main issues into what we’re trying to do,” he said. “We’ve pulled in a lot of information from other plans and the document that we have, it’s a pretty remarkable amendment that we have come up with. We just need to realize that we need to keep on the land the things that were intended to be on the land and not let them get into the water. That’s the best that we can possibly do and if it’s buffers or wetlands or whatever to make that happen then we need to do all we can to enforce that.”

This story has been updated to note final approval for public review.

The Coastal Resources Commission this week approved the Coastal Habitat Protection Plan amendment for public review.

The commission voted Wednesday to approve public review of the amendment and a related appendix with input received during an early public comment period facilitated by the North Carolina Coastal Federation and The Pew Charitable Trusts with the Coastal Habitat Steering Committee’s approval.

The plan has been guiding the state’s “long-term enhancement of coastal fisheries through habitat protection and enhancement efforts” since its approval in 2004 by the North Carolina Marine Fisheries, Environmental Management and Coastal Resources commissions, according to the state. It is to be revised every five years to reflect changes in the status of habitat protection.

The Marine Fisheries Commission approved the 2021 amendment for public review during its meeting Aug. 27 and the Environmental Management Commission voted similarly last week.

Patricia Smith, communications director for the divisions of Marine Fisheries and Coastal Management, told Coastal Review that the meetings to accept public comment would be held by web conference and scheduled in conjunction with five Marine Fisheries Commission advisory committee meetings that are tentatively planned for October.

Related: Resilience, natural approach basis of habitat plan tweaks

The public also may submit comments through an online survey. Meeting dates and times, and links to the web conference and an online survey are to be announced in the next couple of weeks, she added.

“After the public comment period, the draft CHPP amendment will go back to the three commissions at their November meetings for final approval,” she said.

Before the Environmental Management Commission’s vote, Jimmy Johnson, coastal habitats coordinator with the Albemarle-Pamlico National Estuarine Partnership, explained to commissioners that the 2016 Coastal Habitat Protection Plan source document had not changed and will continue to serve as the science document for the amendment.

The Coastal Habitat Protection resulted from the 1997 Fisheries Reform Act and concerns over declining fish stocks and the need to address habitat and water quality in order to improve those stocks.

Johnson said that in addition to healthy fisheries, there are a number of other benefits that go along with healthy fish habitats and water quality. The healthy habitats provide ecosystem services such as water filtration, erosion and flood control, and these services help to sustain the coastal tourism economy, the fishing industry and help to build coastal community resilience.

Anne Deaton, habitat program manager with the Division of Marine Fisheries, told the Environmental Management Commission that there’s an emphasis on water quality improvements in the amendment because of the effects of water quality on fish habitat and some concerning trends.

The recommended amendments focus on five priorities presented in the following issue papers: Subaquatic Vegetation, Protection and Restoration through Water Quality Improvement; Wetland Protection and Restoration through Nature-Based Solutions; Environmental Rule Compliance to Protect Coastal Habitats; Wastewater Infrastructure Solutions for Water Quality Improvement; and Coastal Habitat Mapping and Monitoring to Assess Status and Trends.

Deaton said the five issue papers may not seem related at first glance, but they are. If recommended actions in the environmental rule compliance and wetlands issue papers are put in place, then impacts to wetlands should be reduced, and possibly increase wetlands, which will lead to improved water quality, and, in turn, help the seagrass. In addition, the wastewater issue paper will help water quality as well benefit seagrass. The mapping and monitoring issue paper will help understand habitat trends and help target future actions as needed.

“So, the overall goal for these collective action is to have healthy habitats and more fish and at the same time increased coastal resilience,” she said, adding that it’s important to know that protecting and restoring coastal habitats is a solution “that we’ve been hearing more about that can reduce climate change impacts, and therefore, it increases coastal community resilience.”

In addition to the amendment, Appendix A will also go out for comment and review.

Deaton explained that the appendix includes early public comment from a stakeholder workgroup organized by the North Carolina Coastal Federation and The Pew Charitable Trusts with the approval of the Coastal Habitat Steering Committee.

“The purpose was to develop some crosscutting voluntary water quality recommendations that would be beneficial for coastal habitats and relevant to the issue papers in this amendment,” she said.

Their summary report was presented to the CHHP steering committee at the last meeting, and the steering committee then directed the team to include the report in the appendix, so that the public can see that and weigh in on those recommendations as well as those in Chapter 9 of that CHHP amendment.”

The CHPP Steering Committee is made up of members of the Marine Fisheries, Coastal Management and Environmental Management commissions. These commissioners review and approve the plan, recommendations and action for implementation.

The steering committee discussed convening a stakeholder workgroup during its January meeting. In April, state Department of Environmental Quality staff and steering committee members voted unanimously to encourage the two organizations to convene the workgroup, according to the appendix.

From May to July, the federation, Pew, steering committee members, DEQ staff, partners and others, collectively known as the North Carolina Coastal Habitat Coalition, worked to identify a set of voluntary water quality improvement actions that would support the plan’s goals, could be executed over the next five years and help minimize the need for regulatory action.

This is the second in a multipart special reporting series on coastal water quality. Read more.

Human and swine feces polluted eastern North Carolina waters sampled after Hurricane Florence’s historic flooding of the Coastal Plain.

In all, 48 sites in the Neuse, Cape Fear, Lumber and Waccamaw River watersheds were sampled as part of a study investigating microbial contamination in surface waters following the storm, which dumped up to 25-35 inches of rain in some areas of the eastern part of the state after making landfall in mid-September 2018.

In addition to human and swine feces contamination, the recently published study conducted by researchers at North Carolina State University also found a high prevalence of a little-known foodborne pathogen known as arcobacter, which has been classified as a serious threat to human health, in some of the water types sampled, including flood plains, channels and isolated waters.

“What was somewhat striking to us was that we did see both human and swine markers, but that there was an association that if a human marker was detected you were more likely to detect a swine marker as well than if you didn’t detect a human marker,” said Angela Harris, an assistant professor at N.C. State who led the study. “That just kind of highlighted to us that some of these sites were experiencing this double burden of contamination.”

The results of the study arguably underscore wastewater infrastructure issues in storm-prone areas that are anticipated to grow more vulnerable in a changing climate, one in which is expected to bring more frequent, large rainfall-producing storms.

The study notes that while the total discharges from swine lagoons during the hurricane are unknown, 29.1 million gallons was discharged from municipal wastewater facilities and more than 6,000 gallons from industrial facilities.

There are many ways in which human feces can get into the environment, Harris said.

“Things like leaky septic systems, leaky sewer pipes, these can all potentially introduce human fecal matter into the environment and when we think about flooding, a lot of our infrastructure, it’s really not designed to necessarily handle the type of flooding that we’re now experiencing. So, there is effort to think about how can we make our infrastructure more resilient to these types of events that will likely be more frequent due to our changing climate,” she said.

Wastewater infrastructure is a focus of one of the proposed revisions to the North Carolina Department of Environmental Quality’s Coastal Habitat Protection Plan, or CHPP, pronounced “chip.”

The plan, which is designed to protect and restore waters associated with coastal fish habitat, is reviewed every five years.

State environmental officials have included a proposed revision that calls attention to the fact that small, rural communities in eastern North Carolina generally do not have the funding to cover the high costs of retrofits and repairs to wastewater infrastructure systems.

The $1 trillion bipartisan infrastructure bill recently passed by the Senate and now awaiting approval from the House includes funding for climate resilience initiatives.

The bill is a step in the right direction, Harris said, but she thinks there are things that can be done better now in how we manage waste from humans and hogs.

It’s something she encourages her students to think about.

“We want students to realize that there is a lot of room for innovation in this space for infrastructure,” Harris said.

There’s also a need for more routine monitoring to help researchers understand how wastewater systems are impacted by different rainfall events and how various sources of contamination respond to rain events, she said.

For this study, researchers collected samples one to two weeks after Hurricane Florence and then one month after that.

The first round of samples showed similar contamination levels at some of the different types of waters included in the study.

“We did start to see some differences (in October) where the channel sites were more contaminated on average than the flood plain sites,” Harris said. “We don’t know for sure, but there are some hypotheses on why that might be the case. There might be some new fecal inputs during that time into the channels. Maybe because of the flooding some of the lagoons might have been quite full and so they might have been able to release some of that.”

Contamination levels could have been down in the flood plains, where water does not move at the pace it does in a channel, which may have allowed microbial contaminants to decay in sunlight.

Contamination levels remained the same in the channels between the first and second round of sampling.

Researchers went back out a year after the initial samples were collected to gather more samples, which are currently being analyzed.

Harris is working in several other sites in the eastern part of the state, including the Newport River near Beaufort, in an effort to get better measurements before another hurricane hits the area.

“Sometimes whenever you find contamination, I don’t want to just describe all the risks, I also want to be forward thinking and think about the solutions,” she said. “There’s room for innovation on how systems are managing waste, but there are a lot of designs and techniques that we do know of even now that can address some of these issues.”

Mahmoud Sharara, an N.C. State assistant professor, was part of the study. His expertise includes animal agriculture operations.

He said a lot of animal farm operators in eastern North Carolina recognize extreme weather events are becoming the norm. Those include operators who employ either wet-waste systems, such as hog lagoons, or dry-waste systems used by poultry farmers.

“Those get equally affected in different ways, but extreme weather events affect them both,” Sharara said.

Many large hog farm operations located in flood plains in eastern North Carolina have been bought out through various programs, he said, which has helped curtail the risks of hog lagoon spills during major rain events.

To avoid similar issues with the growing poultry industry, agriculture officials are working with poultry producers to ensure poultry houses are not being built in flood-prone areas and that chicken waste is not stored in places where it is likely to wash away.

“In this case having nutrients that are, say, poultry litter after cleaning a poultry house stacked outside without having a covering for even a week can release a significant amount of nutrients in runoff,” Sharara said. “Being aware that weather and planning around weather is very critical when we talk about these nutrients.”

To help with the economic challenges farmers face with costs associated with wastewater treatment, researchers have created a concept that takes a cluster of farms in an area and processes waste from those farms at a centrally located composting facility or solar drying complex. This would generate enough composted product to sell, ultimately helping to offset the costs to the farm operators.

Work is underway to implement other runoff mitigation control measures on farms, both animal and crop, including no-till systems to reduce soil erosion, adding buffers at the ends of fields, creating tidal drainage and treating drain waters, and covering hog lagoons to reduce nitrogen emissions.

Sharara said there is no one silver bullet in reducing the agriculture-generated nutrients that make into stormwater runoff.

“We’re trying to look for all the different mechanisms we can put together to capture the nutrients and export them en masse in a valued product,” he said. “Agriculture is one of the industries where the nutrients can move at large scale. Unlike point sources where there’s a discharge pipe where you know the nutrients are leaving a factory or facility, on a farm the boundary of the field can potentially be a source, the ground underneath can potentially be a source or an avenue for nutrients to migrate from. We know that nonpoint source is going to increase with increases in rainfall and with extreme weather events. Our challenge is getting greater now to make sure that there’s less likelihood of nutrients leaving ag systems to estuaries or water systems.”

This report has been updated to note the Environmental Management Commission’s action Sept. 9 and correct date for the Marine Fisheries Commission meeting.

This report was updated Sept. 3 to include details on stakeholder recommendations.

The North Carolina Environmental Management Commission voted Sept. 9 to approve the 2021 amendment to the Coastal Habitat Protection Plan for public comment and advisory committee review.

The North Carolina Marine Fisheries Commission voted Aug. 27 to approve the proposed update for review. The latest action marks two of the three required approvals needed before the public review period can begin for the Department of Environmental Quality plan and related stakeholder recommendations. The Coastal Resources Commission is expected to consider approval for public comment during its meeting Sept. 15.

The 2021 amendment contains several recommendations focused on achieving the plan’s goal, which is long-term enhancement of coastal fisheries through habitat protection and enhancement efforts.

Stakeholder recommendations also approved

The approval for public review also includes Appendix A, the findings, conclusions and recommendations of an independent stakeholder workgroup convened by the North Carolina Coastal Federation and The Pew Charitable Trusts.

Input for the stakeholder workgroup came from a broad array of expertise, including farming; fishing; wetland and water quality mitigation practices; land development; local governments; environmental programs, laws and regulations; environmental engineering and management; and property management. The group reached consensus and recommended an array of nonregulatory actions to improve water quality.

In December 2004, the North Carolina Marine Fisheries, Environmental Management, and Coastal Resources Commissions unanimously adopted the North Carolina Coastal Habitat Protection Plan, which is to be revised every five years to reflect changes in the status of habitat protection, according to NCDEQ.

Other commission business

The commission also Thursday opted not to immediately initiate modifications to small-mesh gill net rules but agreed to address gillnet issues as needed through the fishery management plan process.

The commission considered a suite of potential management options for the small-mesh gill net fishery that focused on reducing regulatory complexity, potential bycatch, and user conflict. The Division of Marine Fisheries developed the proposals at the direction of the commission.

Division Director Kathy Rawls assured the commission that the division already does and will continue to address gill net issues through the fishery management plan process, according to the release.

In other business, the commission voted to:

• Ask the division to develop an issue paper to assess needed changes the mutilated finfish rule (15A NCAC 03M .0101).
• Set the cap on the number of licenses in the Standard Commercial Fishing License Eligibility Pool for fiscal year 2021-2022 at 500.
• Approve the five-year Fishery Management Plan schedule for review and final approval by the secretary of the Department of Environmental Quality.
• Approve notice of text to begin the process of readoption, repeal, adoption, and amendment of a slate of rules under a mandatory periodic review schedule (G.S. 150B-21.3A).
• Re-elect Doug Cross as commission vice-chairman.

The North Carolina Environmental Management Commission is set to review next month the draft amendment to the Coastal Habitat Protection Plan, which is revised every five years to reflect changes in the status of habitat protection in the state.

Committee meetings begin at 9 a.m. Sept. 8 for the Air Quality Committee, Groundwater and Waste Management Committee and Water Quality Committee. The virtual, full commission meeting begins at 9 a.m. Sept. 9. The public is invited to attend the meeting online or by phone. Access the EMC meetings through the state Department of Environmental Quality website.

The commission when it meets remotely also will look at approving the 2021 Pasquotank River Basin Water Resources Plan and rule changes to address a permitting gap created by recent changes to Clean Water Act Federal Jurisdiction for wetlands in certain landscape positions.

The draft habitat plan 2021 amendment focuses on the following five priority issues:

• Submerged aquatic vegetation, or SAV, protection and restoration through water quality improvements.
• Wetland protection and restoration through nature-based solutions.
• Environmental rule compliance to protect coastal habitats.
• Wastewater infrastructure solutions for water quality improvement.
• Coastal habitat mapping and monitoring to assess status and trends.

The request is approval to take the draft plan out for public comment.

The North Carolina Marine Fisheries, Environmental Management and Coastal Resources Commissions unanimously adopted the North Carolina Coastal Habitat Protection Plan in December 2004 to protect coastal fisheries through habitat protection and enhancement efforts, according to NCDEQ.

The document provides information on the habitats’ distribution and abundance, ecological functions and importance to fish production, status and trends, threats to the habitats, and includes recommendations to address threats.

The North Carolina Coastal Habitat Coalition, an independent stakeholder workgroup headed up by the North Carolina Coastal Federation, which publishes Coastal Review, and The Pew Charitable Trusts submitted a document earlier this month to the North Carolina Coastal Habitat Protection Plan Steering Committee recommending actions the state and stakeholders should take to improve water quality in the next five years. The document is included in the agenda packet.

The Environmental Management Commission is responsible for adopting rules for the protection, preservation and enhancement of the state’s air, land and water resources. The commission oversees and adopts rules for several divisions of the Department of Environmental Quality, including the divisions of Air Quality; Energy, Mineral and Land Resources; Waste Management and Water Resources.

The North Carolina Marine Fisheries Commission will consider next week approving the draft Coastal Habitat Protection Plan 2021 Amendment for public comment and advisory committee review.

The two-day meeting is to begin at 6 p.m. Aug. 25 and 9 a.m. Aug. 26. The public may listen to the meeting by phone or listen and view presentations online.

A full meeting agenda, briefing book materials, and web conference links and call-in numbers are posted on the Marine Fisheries Commission Meetings webpage. An audio recording will be posted online after.

The meeting was originally scheduled as in-person but has been changed to a web conference meeting based on current guidance to minimize the spread of COVID-19.

“With the increasing spread of the Delta variant across North Carolina, and some that have received the vaccine still contracting it, there is a legitimate concern regarding public safety when participating in a large-scale meeting such as ours,” said Commission Chairman Rob Bizzell, in a statement. “With this in mind, we will have this upcoming meeting virtually.”

The discussion and votes on the Shrimp Fishery Management Plan Amendment 2 scheduled for this meeting is delayed until the November meeting.

“I feel that the discussion on the Shrimp FMP needs to be in person to completely and fairly provide an opportunity for the public to voice their thoughts and concerns,” Bizzell said. “Hopefully within the next three months, vaccination rates will improve and the spread of Covid will be controlled so we can safely meet in person.”

Other agenda items include the following:

• Adopting the five-year fishery management plan schedule.
• Establishing the annual cap on the number of commercial fishing licenses available through the Eligibility Pool.
• Approving notice of text to begin the re-adoption process of 109 rules and give final approval for the re-adoption of nine rules in 15A NCAC 03Q .0100 for the subject “General Regulations: Joint” under a mandatory periodic review schedule (G.S. 150B-21.3A).
• Discussing and a possibly voting on further development of options to modify small mesh gill net rules.
• Electing a vice chairman.
• Receiving a presentation on the division’s annual Stock Overview Report.
• Hearing an update on the development of the Southern Flounder Fishery Management Plan Amendment 3.

Those wishing to comment during the meeting will need to register by 5 p.m. Aug. 23. To accommodate as many speakers as possible and to facilitate the meeting, the chairman may limit the time each speaker may comment.  Those making comments will be asked to speak only once, either at the Aug. 25 or the Aug. 26 session, but not during both public comment periods.

Comments will be accepted until 5 p.m. on Aug. 23 through an online form.

Written comments also can be mailed to August 2021 Marine Fisheries Commission Meeting Comments, P.O Box 769, Morehead City, N.C. 28557. Comments must be received by the division by 5 p.m. on Aug. 23.

Public comment will not be accepted via email.

The North Carolina Coastal Habitat Protection Plan Steering Committee is scheduled to meet next month to review a draft amendment, including recommended actions.

The meeting is set for 1-4 p.m. Aug. 3 and will be held online by web conference.

Also on the meeting agenda, the North Carolina Coastal Federation and Pew Coastal Habitat Protection Plan Workgroup will give a report to the steering committee.

The public can join online at https://ncdenrits.webex.com/ncdenrits/j.php?MTID=m4966e838e55ab48954a4a6e92a9d1b5b. Use meeting number, or access code, 161 675 1697 and password: 1234. To join by phone, call 1-415-655-0003.

A coastwide habitat plan became needed in the 1990s when fish populations, habitat, and water quality concerns were becoming increasingly evident. Resource managers, fishermen, the public, and the legislature recognized that addressing habitat and water quality degradation was critical to improve and sustain fish stocks, as well as the coastal ecosystem, according to the draft.

For more information, contact Jimmy.Johnson@ncdenr.gov with the Albemarle-Pamlico National Estuary Partnership or Anne.Deaton@ncdenr.gov with the Division of Marine Fisheries.

The North Carolina Coastal Habitat Protection Plan Steering Committee will meet 9 a.m. Jan. 21 to review issue papers on wetland protection and restoration, reducing inflow and infiltration from wastewater infrastructure, and habitat monitoring.

The public can join online, by visiting Webex, use access code 178 194 5326 and password is q5JaSC32iuf.  Join by phone by calling 1-415-655-0003 US TOLL.

The three papers to be reviewed for the upcoming Coastal Habitat Protection Plan Amendment are on the following:

• Wetland Protection and Restoration with Focus on Nature-Based Methods.
• Reducing Inflow and Infiltration (I & I) from Wastewater Infrastructure to Improve Water Quality.
• Habitat Monitoring to Assess Status and Regulatory Effectiveness.

For a full meeting agenda and other meeting materials visit the website.

In December 2004, the state Marine Fisheries, Environmental Management, and Coastal Resources commissions unanimously adopted the North Carolina Coastal Habitat Protection Plan, which provides information on the habitats’ distribution and abundance, ecological functions and importance to fish production, status and trends, threats to the habitats, and includes recommendations to address threats, according to the website.

The Coastal Habitat Protection Plan is revised every five years to reflect changes in the status of habitat protection in North Carolina. The 2021 draft is currently under development.

For more information, contact Jimmy.Johnson@ncdenr.gov with the Albemarle-Pamlico National Estuary Partnership or Anne.Deaton@ncdenr.gov with the Division of Marine Fisheries.

The public can listen in at 9 a.m. Oct. 16 the Coastal Habitat Protection Plan Steering Committee webinar meeting.

Committee members are scheduled to review issue papers for the 2021 Coastal Habitat Protection Plan revision.

The committee will also hear presentations on the status of submerged aquatic vegetation in the state’s estuarine waters, threats and conservation needs for North Carolina salt marshes and nutrient management initiatives in North Carolina.

The public can join the meeting online or listen over the telephone. A link to join the webinar, as well as information on system requirements and testing, can be found online.

The North Carolina Marine Fisheries, Environmental Management and Coastal Resources Commissions adopted the North Carolina Coastal Habitat Protection Plan December 2004. The document provides information on the habitats’ distribution and abundance, ecological functions and importance to fish production, status and trends, threats to the habitats, and includes recommendations to address threats.

The Coastal Habitat Protection Plan is revised every five years to reflect changes in the status of habitat protection in North Carolina. The 2016 plan is currently being amended and the 2021 Coastal Habitat Protection Plan Amendment is under development.

Contact Jimmy Johnson at jimmy.johnson@ncdenr.gov with the Albemarle-Pamlico National Estuary Partnership or Anne Deaton anne.deaton@ncdenr.gov with the Division of Marine Fisheries.

Learn More

• Meeting agenda and materials

The Coastal Habitat Protection Plan Steering Committee will meet by webinar at 9 a.m. July 30 to cover several items, including completed issue papers on subaquatic vegetation and rule compliance to protect habitat and water quality.

The public may join the meeting by phone at 415-655-0003 or online here. Meeting number is 169 057 0762. Meeting password is 3yDpvjgew8.

A Pew Foundation representative will address the committee during the meeting regarding her thoughts and suggestions for promoting the Coastal Habitat Protection Plan and involving stakeholders in the process and the implementation of the plan.

Committee members will also discuss the 2021 Coastal Habitat Protection Plan Revision and hear a presentation on the water quality section in the North Carolina Blue Crab Fishery Management Plan.

For more information, contact Jimmy Johnson with the Albemarle-Pamlico National Estuary Partnership at jimmy.johnson@ncdenr.gov or Anne Deaton with the Division of Marine Fisheries at anne.deaton@ncdenr.gov.

The state Coastal Habitat Protection Plan, a result of the North Carolina’s Fisheries Reform Act passed by the General Assembly in 1997, addresses habitat and water quality efforts needed to protect, enhance and restore fish habitat in North Carolina. The committee, made up of two commissioners from Marine Fisheries, Coastal Management and Environmental Management commissions, reviews and approves the plan, recommendations and implementation actions.

A full meeting agenda is available online.

The Coastal Habitat Protection Plan Steering Committee’s next meeting will include a presentation on managing marine debris and measures Virginia growers are taking to increase their oyster population.

The committee’s webinar meeting is set for 9 a.m. May 11. The public can listen to the meeting online or by phone. A link to the webinar and information on system requirements and testing is available online.

In addition to the North Carolina Marine Debris Action Plan presentation, the agenda  includes a review of 2021 Coastal Habitat Protection daft sections updates, and an update on an issue paper concerning Submerged Aquatic Vegetation Protection through Improved Water Quality.

Jimmy Johnson, coastal habitats coordinator with the Albemarle-Pamlico National Estuary Partnership, told Coastal Review Online that during the meeting that Toler Nolley, founder and CEO of Oyster Co. of Virginia, or OCVA, Holdings LLC will share with the group what some people in Virginia are doing to enhance their oyster populations, new technologies being used by Virginia oyster growers as well as some new finance mechanisms that may be available in the future.

Trish Murphey, watershed manager for the Albemarle-Pamlico National Estuary Partnership, will present the brief overview of where the issue paper currently stands on SAV and water quality.

“This topic is one of the major focus topics of this Coastal Habitat Protection Plan Steering Committee and Trish will check in with the steering committee to let us know how much progress she has made,” he said.

The steering committee, which includes two commissioners from the Marine Fisheries, Coastal Management and Environmental Management commissions, reviews and approves the Coastal Habitat Protection Plan, recommendations and implementation actions, according to DEQ.

The initial plan was completed in 2005 and is reviewed and updated, as necessary, on a five-year cycle.

The North Carolina Coastal Habitat Protection Plan, the result of state’s Fisheries Reform Act, passed by the General Assembly in 1997, addresses habitat and water quality efforts needed to protect, enhance and restore fish habitat in North Carolina. The initial plan that was completed in 2005 is reviewed and updated, as necessary, on a five-year cycle.

The steering committee also meets regularly to discuss habitat and water quality issues and solutions as well as receive updates on Coastal Habitat Protection Plan progress. Members of the steering committee serve as liaisons to their full commissions.

The Albermarle-Pamlico National Estuarine Partnership, Wildlife Resource Commission, Division of Energy, Mineral and Land Resources, Division of Mitigation Services, and Soil and Water Conservation Districts have participated in the Coastal Habitat Protection Plan process.

First of two parts. Updated with map link, boundary clarification.

The Albemarle-Pamlico estuary is one of the largest and most productive estuaries on the Atlantic Coast, with the second largest submerged aquatic vegetation, or SAV, resource in the continental U.S., said Jud Kenworthy, a research biologist who is currently adjunct faculty in the University of North Carolina Wilmington’s department of biology and marine biology.

Researchers recently have begun tracking SAV trends on the state’s coast and stress that it’s best to maintain and preserve SAV, which are home to hundreds of thousands of fish and invertebrates, rather than try to replant and restore SAV once it’s gone. This two-part series will examine the effort and its role in monitoring the health of the coast.

As Albemarle-Pamlico National Estuary Partnership Director Bill Crowell said, “Understanding the status of our SAV habitats allows us to be better informed for the management of this resource and understand how our actions may affect its health,” which is why APNEP has coordinated and published two maps of submerged aquatic vegetation in the Albemarle-Pamlico region.

APNEP works with citizens and organizations to identify, protect, and restore the resources of the Albemarle-Pamlico estuarine system.

With funding from APNEP and field and technical support from the North Carolina Division of Marine Fisheries and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, or NOAA, Beaufort Laboratory, digital data of coastal SAV was mapped for imagery years 2012-2014. This is the second effort led by APNEP to map the distribution, abundance and change of SAV in North Carolina, according to APNEP.

The SAV Team published the first map, a baseline map, of SAV in 2011 using data from aerial flights taken between 2006 and 2008 along the North Carolina and southern Virginia estuarine coastlines. This included the coastal zone that lies within the APNEP regional boundary, which is from Bogue Inlet north to Back Bay, as well as Bogue Inlet south to Masonboro Inlet.

Because the aerial surveys were conducted infrequently due to funding and could only monitor changes in large areas that did not have diminished visibility due to turbid waters, APNEP in 2014 began coordinating a SAV Sentinel Network that combines boat-based sonar and video technology with in-water observations to track SAV in the sounds, according to APNEP. The 2012-2014 map provides an update to the higher salinity areas of the 2006-2008 SAV map in the regional boundary.

Visitors to the online resource can compare the SAV extent and density on the map by clicking the check boxes in the “Layers” block on the right side of the map to toggle the 2013-2014 or 2006-2008 map data on and off. More information about how the data was collected, as well as the map data itself, is available on the DEQ ArcGIS Online website, Crowell said.

Crowell explained that the Albemarle-Pamlico region has more than 136,000 acres of submerged aquatic vegetation – putting it in the top three states in the country for SAV abundance. This estuarine system also contains half of the juvenile fish habitat from Maine to Florida, making the status of its SAV an issue of regional and perhaps national importance.

“SAV plays a crucial functional role within our coastal ecosystems. One study stated that a single acre of grasses may support as many as 40,000 fish and 50 million small invertebrates,” he said. “Additionally, these grasses improve water quality by absorbing excess nutrients, generating oxygen, and reducing the sediment moving about in the water column. In some areas they help to protect shorelines from erosion, by decreasing wave energy.”

Kenworthy, who retired in 2011 from the NOAA Beaufort Lab after 33 years of federal service, focused during his research career on the ecology, habitat utilization, conservation and restoration of seagrass and SAV habitat. After retiring, he continued to work with APNEP as co-lead of the SAV monitoring and assessment team.

Kenworthy explained that submerged aquatic vascular plants are that have adapted to live almost exclusively underwater in both seawater, more commonly called seagrasses, and lower-salinity brackish and freshwater environments, more commonly referred to as SAV.

“This is why we find two personalities of SAV throughout coastal North Carolina, SAV and seagrass, but we often refer to them all as SAV,” he said. However, unlike their submerged counterparts, macroalgae, SAV have roots and rhizomes that anchor them in the substrate and a leaf canopy that slows currents and baffles wave energy.

“They function much like the grasses that live on your front lawn. SAV trap and stabilize the soil they grow on, as well as protect adjacent emergent shorelines,” Kenworthy said. The productivity and biomass of SAV store large amounts of carbon and other nutrients and, along with the sediment stabilizing capabilities, they serve to maintain and promote superior water quality, benefiting the entire estuary.

“Ecologically, SAV provide shelter and food to an incredibly diverse community of animals, from tiny invertebrates to large fish, crabs, turtles, marine mammals, shorebirds and waterfowl. Seagrasses provide many important services to humans directly and indirectly, but many seagrass meadows have been impacted by human activities,” he added.

Crowell explained that before APNEP started coordinating efforts to map and monitor the region’s submerged aquatic vegetation, there were no long-term SAV-monitoring programs in the state that could provide reliable information about how this resource has been changing over time.

In 2001, APNEP established the Albemarle-Pamlico SAV partnership with various state and federal agencies to collaborate, with the long-term goal of determining where the region’s underwater grasses are located and if their overall extent and density is changing over time, according to Crowell.

Additional partners from nongovernmental organizations and academic sectors joined to further the mission of the open-membership group. The effort was boosted with the development of Coastal Habitat Protection Plan, a document used by the state Department of Environmental Quality to guide habitat decisions as they relate to fisheries.

In 2004, APNEP created a memorandum of understanding to formalize partner interactions to move forward with the joint effort to address the identification, status and restoration of SAV habitat.

The memorandum was signed in 2006 by all participants, which includes nine state agencies, nine academic institutions, two nongovernmental organizations and four federal agencies, thus formally creating the “SAV Partnership.”

Crowell explained that the initial priority has been mapping the region’s SAV to determine if and where action needs to be taken.

“APNEP/SAV partnership released the first map in 2011 for images collected 2006-2008. Given the dynamic nature of the habitat, we are still trying to get a good understanding of its distribution and condition. We then want to document how things were and how its changing. Protecting the region’s SAV is far less expensive that it is to replant and restore SAV once it has disappeared,” he said.

Crowell said to protect estuarine water quality, “Avoiding overuse of fertilizers, pesticides and herbicides makes a difference in water quality far downstream. Boaters can avoid tearing up shallow grass beds with boat props, avoid bottom-disturbing fishing gear that rips up SAV, and utilize the N.C. Clean Marina Program. State and local government efforts to reduce nutrient and sediment pollution, as well as stormwater runoff, also go a long way towards creating the conditions SAV needs to flourish.”

The Clean Marina program is a nearly 20-year-old state effort to show that marina operators can help safeguard the environment by taking steps that go beyond regulatory requirements.

Crowell said that it should be noted that the SAV partnership was necessary to generate the funds and personnel necessary to start the mapping efforts.

“Today, we still rely on numerous partners to do this work. This spring, many volunteers provided daily water quality reading and weather reports to us so we could schedule the flights under the right conditions to capture the images,” he said.

In addition to aerial mapping, Cowell said there has been an effort over the past decade to develop protocols for coordinating data collection across the region.

“Since 2014, researchers from East Carolina University and other SAV Team members have monitored SAV in the low-salinity waters of the sounds via boat-based surveys that use underwater sonar, cameras, and square quadrats to collect SAV data at ‘sentinel sites’ over time,” he said. “In the long term, the goal is for the combination of semi decadal aerial surveys of the higher salinity waters near the barrier islands and more frequent boat-based surveys throughout the region to allow the SAV Team to obtain an ongoing assessment of how the state’s submerged aquatic vegetation is changing over time.”

Next: Canaries in the coal mine

WASHINGTON — The Coastal Habitat Protection Plan Steering Committee will meet at 1 p.m. Tuesday to review progress on priority fish habitat issues and discuss upcoming flights to identify submerged aquatic vegetation, the state Division of Environmental Quality announced Tuesday.

The meeting will be held in the state DEQ’s Washington regional office, 943 Washington Square Mall.

The steering committee, which includes two commissioners from the Marine Fisheries, Coastal Management and Environmental Management commissions, reviews and approves the Coastal Habitat Protection Plan, recommendations and implementation actions, according to DEQ.

The North Carolina Coastal Habitat Protection Plan, the result of state’s Fisheries Reform Act, passed by the General Assembly in 1997, addresses habitat and water quality efforts needed to protect, enhance and restore fish habitat in North Carolina. The initial plan that was completed in 2005 is reviewed and updated, as necessary, on a five-year cycle.

The steering committee also meets regularly to discuss habitat and water quality issues and solutions as well as receive updates on Coastal Habitat Protection Plan progress. Members of the steering committee serve as liaisons to their full commissions.

The Albermarle-Pamlico National Estuarine Partnership, Wildlife Resource Commission, Division of Energy, Mineral and Land Resources, Division of Mitigation Services, and Soil and Water Conservation Districts have participated in the Coastal Habitat Protection Plan process.

For more information, contact Jimmy Johnson, coastal habitats coordinator with the Albemarle-Pamlico National Estuary Partnership, at 252-948-3952 or Anne Deaton with the Division of Marine Fisheries’ Habitat and Enhancement Section at 910-796-7311.

Learn More

• Division of Marine Fisheries