While state lawmakers consider two bills that would eliminate the state’s longstanding ban on hardened structures along the ocean shoreline, a report providing details about the effects and effectiveness of coastal erosion-control structures is expected to be presented this week during the regular meeting of the North Carolina Coastal Resources Commission.

The commission, which meets at 10 a.m. Thursday at the DoubleTree in New Bern, had assigned to its science advisory panel in February the task of creating the document that is intended as a guide for coastal managers and policymakers to address increasingly destructive erosion along the state’s 320 miles of coastline — dramatically illustrated in recent years by more than 30 houses on the Outer Banks falling into the ocean.

Two measures in the North Carolina General Assembly, Senate Bill 1008 and Senate Bill 1009, had not advanced as of the time this story was published, with some legislators expressing caution about taking action prematurely.

“I guess I’m a little concerned about putting the provisions of these two bills in place before that study comes out,” said Sen. Julie Mayfield, D-Buncombe, Wednesday during a meeting of the Senate Committee on Agriculture, Energy, and Environment. “My instinct is, ‘Let’s just see what happens there, see what they say, see what that leads us to do that’s different than what’s here.’”

Impacts of climate change on long-term erosion rates are also a factor to consider, said Wake County Democrat Sen. Lisa Grafstein, noting that the topic may be covered in the CRC Science Panel report.

Sen. Bob Brinson, R-Beaufort and also representing Craven and Lenoir counties, told the committee while introducing the bills that while coastal communities suffer direct economic and personal losses from severe erosion, the general public is also affected. Alluding to safety concerns from fallen house debris spreading along public lands and waters, he said that there are also losses to the local tax base and tourism revenue as well as to visitor access to the seashore.

The two bills are different sides of the same coin, that is, the stated goal of allowing the option to build hardened structures that are now banned, if deemed appropriate.

The primary sponsor of the bills is Sen. Bobby Hanig, a Currituck County Republican who also represents Dare County in Senate District 1, which includes the Outer Banks’ beaches in both counties. Hanig did not respond to messages left on his cellphone seeking comment.

Senate Bill 1008 would establish a pilot program that authorizes construction of shoreline-stabilization projects at locations where oceanfront houses are at imminent risk of collapse. A limited number of projects would be evaluated and recommended by the North Carolina Collaboratory, which the General Assembly authorized in 2016 to apply scientific scrutiny to projects in the state that may serve the public good.

Senate Bill 1009 would eliminate the prohibition of temporary or permanent erosion-control structures and create regulations to ensure the structures “will not result in significant adverse impacts to private property or to the public recreational beach.”  In addition, the bill would require funding the Collaboratory to update the state’s 1,000-plus-page Beach and Inlet Management Plan, which was last fully updated in 2016.

Brinson told committee members that whatever pilot projects are approved would include strict limitations and monitoring requirements and would not be funded by the state. Still, in defending the need to eliminate the ban to allow the erosion-control structures, he cited the hundreds of millions of taxpayers’ dollars spent in maintaining and repairing N.C. Highway 12 on Hatteras and Ocracoke islands. But Brinson was referring to areas where virtually none of the typical hardened structures would work for long — if at all. Even if seawalls or other structures were affordable at those locations, the intensity of the coastal conditions would either soon undermine or pummel the structures, or create worse situations at the site or downstream.

Sandbags, which are considered temporary structures under coastal law, have been widely used for decades on the Outer Banks and coastwide. In a sign of the increasingly difficult challenges created by rising seas, shifting channels, and steeply and rapidly eroding beaches, today’s larger and tougher sandbags also often fail to hold back destructive surging surf for long. Protective coastal management measures have been evolving toward more nature-based solutions such as living shorelines, as well as combined measures, such as beach nourishment and one or more of various types of structures, according to an April 2025 study, “Challenges and lessons learned from global coastal erosion protection strategies,” published in the journal iScience.

And while erosion-control structures may buy time, coastal scientists warn that consequences are not always quickly evident. For instance, in one of the few success stories Brinson noted among the handful of existing hardened structures on the North Carolina coast, the terminal groin at Oregon Inlet also has had a significant, albeit slower moving, negative impact.

While providing the intended protection of the Bonner Bridge, now the Marc Basnight Bridge, and the tie-in to N.C. Highway 12, the groin has also caused a hazardous shoal to grow into the navigational channel, which is at risk of becoming much narrower and deeper as it is pushed closer to the groin. That could present a huge issue to Dare County and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, which share responsibility and costs of maintaining channels in the inlet, the only sound-to-sea passage between Virginia and Hatteras.

North Carolina’s ban on hardened structures first went into effect in 1985, when the Coastal Resources Commission put rules in place restricting their use to very few instances, such as protection of historic structures. After a court ruling upheld the ban, it was put into law in 2003.

In a recent social media post, Rob Young, the director of the Program for the Study of Developed Shorelines at Western Carolina University, wrote that the both political parties in the General Assembly voted in favor of the law because they recognized the harm the structures had done in other states, as well as in North Carolina.

“It was, and still is, good science and good policy,” Young wrote. “Seawalls destroy beaches and increase erosion on neighbors’ properties. Seawalls on individual parcels create a nightmare for coastal managers.”

But Young pointed to the provision in Senate Bill 1009 that would “ensure” no adverse impacts to public and private property, creating “an impossible standard to meet,” he noted.

“The bill would open the door to a coastal management free-for-all,” he wrote.

Dr. Reide Corbett, executive director of the Coastal Studies Institute on the East Carolina University Outer Banks Campus in Wanchese, is the featured lecturer this month at the institute’s “Science on the Sound” lecture series.

The public is encouraged to attend Corbett’s lecture, “Holding the Line? Coastal Change and Barrier-Island Dynamics on the Outer Banks.” The program is set for 6 p.m. May 28 at the institute and there’s no charge to attend.

From collapsing oceanfront homes to repeated beach nourishment projects, coastal change is becoming increasingly visible across the Outer Banks. But what do these changes reveal about how barrier islands function — and how different management approaches interact with these naturally dynamic systems?

Corbett will discuss the science behind erosion, storms, overwash, sediment transport, and sea level rise, while exploring how shoreline management strategies influence beaches, infrastructure, and long-term resilience.

“Rather than focusing on simple solutions, the discussion will examine the tradeoffs, time horizons, and challenges associated with managing development on a constantly changing coast,” organizers said in their announcement.

Whether you work in coastal science, policy, planning, or simply care deeply about the Outer Banks, this presentation offers an opportunity to better understand the processes shaping one of the most dynamic shorelines on the East Coast.

The program will also be livestreamed on YouTube.

Corbett is a coastal oceanographer and geochemist whose work focuses on coastal change, sediment dynamics, shoreline processes, and the geomorphic evolution of barrier island systems.

Born and reared on the North Carolina coast, he earned his bachelor’s in chemistry and his master’s and doctorate in chemical oceanography from Florida State University before beginning his academic career at Tulane University in New Orleans. He later returned to North Carolina to join ECU, where he serves as dean of Integrated Coastal Programs, executive director of the Coastal Studies Institute, and professor in the Department of Coastal Studies.

Corbett’s research examines the dynamic interface between land and sea, from estuaries and continental shelves to barrier islands and polar coastlines. His work has taken him from North Carolina and Puerto Rico to New Zealand and Antarctica, with a particular focus on how storms, sea level rise, sediment movement, human activity, and long-term geologic processes shape coastal environments. Through the lens of North Carolina’s coast, he helps communities better understand shoreline change, barrier island evolution, and the choices needed to adapt to a changing coastal future, organizers said.

During the North Carolina Coastal Resources Commission’s meeting Feb. 25-26, members are expected to take action on proposed changes to rules for septic tanks seaward of the vegetation line, permit fee increases, using sandbags to protect public roads, and a general permit to replace existing bridges and culverts.

The public may attend the meeting that is taking place at the Dunes Club in Atlantic Beach, or view the meeting while it is livestreamed on DEQ’s YouTube channel.

The Coastal Resources Advisory Council, which provides the commission with local government perspectives and advice, will meet in person first at 10 a.m. Wednesday, Feb. 25. The 10-member group is expected to discuss potential inlet hazard area rule amendment options, a summary of sediment criteria rules, and research equipment general permit updates.

The full commission meeting is to set for 1 p.m. Feb. 25 and resume at 9 a.m. Feb. 26. An in-person public comment period is scheduled for 9:05 a.m. Feb. 26.

The full meeting agenda and briefing materials can be found on the CRC website. The order of individual agenda items are subject to change.

Agenda items for the commission’s first day include a variance from Figure 8 Island homeowners on a sandbag extension, and a discussion on oceanfront hardened structures with the science panel.

Public hearings are to follow on noncompetitive use of public beach and coastal waterfront access grant funds, Topsail Island acquisition closing costs, and readoption of rule language for local government land use plans.

When the meeting reconvenes Feb. 26, the commission is to discuss septic tanks, inlet hazard area policy, and oceanfront and inlet erosion rates and setback factors, in addition to the action items they are expected to consider.

The Coastal Resources Commission establishes policies for the N.C. Coastal Management Program and adopts rules for both the Coastal Area Management Act and the N.C. Dredge and Fill Act. The commission designates areas of environmental concern, adopts rules and policies for coastal development within those areas and certifies local land use plans.

The North Carolina Coastal Federation, publisher of Coastal Review, is launching a leadership and professional development program focused on coastal issues.

The cohort-based Coastal Leadership Institute is designed for individuals who play leadership roles in coastal North Carolina communities, as well as leaders from across the state whose work influences the coast.

The institute is designed as a six-month program with two full-day sessions per month beginning in March. The cohort size is limited to about 20–25 participants. Registration is now open for the inaugural class.

“The Coastal Federation has established a strong reputation as a convener of people and organizations interested in protecting and restoring the coast,” said Coastal Federation Executive Director Braxton Davis, “so the launch of this new Institute is a natural fit for us and will be important to advancing our mission.”

Through facilitated discussions, expert-led sessions, and site-based learning, participants will gain a deeper understanding of the forces shaping coastal communities, examined through economic, environmental, natural, and cultural history lenses, while building strong professional relationships that support effective leadership in complex coastal settings, institute organizers said.

“Coastal issues rarely have simple solutions,” said Coastal Federation Chief Community Engagement Officer Amanda Lyle. “By bringing together leaders from different communities and sectors, the Institute creates space for shared learning and helps build the capacity for informed decision-making.”

The tuition of $1,000 per participant covers program materials, meals, transportation for site visits, lodging, and alumni programming access. Scholarships are available.

The six sessions will convene in March, April, May, September, October, and November, with a summer break.

An orientation is set for March 9-10 in Beaufort. This session will also explore how the cultural, historical, and ecological context of coastal North Carolina factor into the region’s identity, challenges, and leadership needs.

Subsequent sessions will cover coastal and marine sciences, growth and economic development, coastal policy and management issues, and natural resource conservation and restoration. This year, sessions will primarily take place in Carteret County and the Wilmington area.

The program is intended to become an annual offering that brings together emerging and established leaders from a wide range of professional backgrounds, including business, local and regional government, military, education, nonprofit, and industry.

The Institute is geared to create a space for thoughtful dialogue, practical learning, and a trusted peer network that continues well beyond the program.

 “We really couldn’t do this without our partners and supporters – the many individuals and organizations who have committed to sharing their expertise, insights, resources and time with the participants and to helping create new professional connections for the betterment of our coast,” Davis added.

The inaugural Coastal Leadership Institute cohort is partially subsidized through the support of the Duke Energy Foundation, the Carlyle Adams Foundation, and the RBC Foundation.

More details and the application are online.

Coastal oceanographer Dr. Reide Corbett will speak later this week on how the Outer Banks are changing during the first OBX Green Drinks of the year.

He is to give his talk, “Science, Shorelines, and Tradeoffs: Understanding What’s Happening Along the Outer Banks Coast,” at 6 p.m. Thursday at Waverider’s in Nags Head. The program is offered at no charge, food and drinks are available for purchase.

Corbett is the executive director of the Coastal Studies Institute and dean of Integrated Coastal Programs, both at East Carolina University Outer Banks campus in Wanchese, and professor in the Department of Coastal Studies at East Carolina University.

Corbett will explain what the science is showing about shoreline change, coastal dynamics, and the tradeoffs that come with decisions about managing and protecting the coast.

OBX Green Drinks is a monthly speaker series held October through March at Waverider’s in Nags Head. Organized by the North Carolina Coastal Federation, which publishes Coastal Review, the program brings together the Outer Banks community for an evening of networking, presentations on local environmental topics, and enjoying good food and drink.

The N.C. Department of Environmental Quality’s Division of Coastal Management has announced guidance to property owners, organizations and towns that plan to accept natural Christmas trees this year for use in dune restoration.

Locally donated, undecorated natural Christmas trees may be used as a substitute for traditional sand fencing, a barrier, usually made of wood or synthetic materials, placed on beaches or dunes to trap blowing sand.

Donated trees should be placed in a manner that meets the state’s rules for sand fencing, with the exception that Christmas trees may be placed no closer to the ocean, sound, river or shoreline than the base of the closest dune to the waterline.

Christmas trees should not block public access to the beach, recreational use of the beach, emergency vehicle access or be placed on private property without permission. Trees should be placed at an angle no less than 45 degrees to the shoreline, and trees should be spaced apart at a minimum of 7 feet.

If sand fencing is present, a 7-foot separation between trees and the fence sections must also be maintained. Rows should be single-tree width. Unvegetated beach berms, or recently created “starter dunes,” are not considered natural dunes. Trees should not be placed at the seaward base of these berms, starter dunes or on the open beach.

The division notes that if the proposed layout of trees along the beachfront does not meet Coastal Area Management Act criteria, applicants should submit a CAMA Minor Permit application for review. For more information, contact the local CAMA permitting authority or appropriate Division of Coastal Management district office prior to tree placement.

To ensure compliance with recycling programs in your neighborhood, we suggest contacting the appropriate local government office for information regarding recycling natural Christmas trees.

Coastal Review will not publish Jan. 1 in observance of New Year’s Day.

CARY — In an update to our earlier report on the North Carolina Press Association’s recognition of Coastal Review’s editorial excellence, last week the North Carolina Bar Association presented a special award to Assistant Editor Jennifer Allen for her reporting on legal matters.

The award was presented along with other awards during the press organization’s annual convention held Thursday and Friday at the Cary Embassy Suites.

Allen received the Media and the Law Award of Excellence for her story, “Coastal commission lawyer: CAMA a 50-year ‘balancing act,’” published Dec. 16, 2024.

According to the contest rules, judges were to look for “insightful coverage of law-related topics that foster greater public understanding of the legal system and the role of lawyers in today’s society.”

Allen’s report detailed the history and implementation of the state’s 50-year-old Coastal Area Management Act, better known simply as CAMA.

“This award is what we’re all about: helping the public understand North Carolina’s complex coastal management laws and policy and the rationale behind their creation,” said Coastal Review Editor Mark Hibbs in reaction to the award.

Allen joined Coastal Review in 2017. She was previously the Coastal Living editor with the Carteret County News-Times.

This was the press association’s 152nd annual convention, and members were honored for excellence in news, photojournalism and advertising. The awards were for work published between April 1, 2024, and March 31, 2025. Coastal Review’s work was judged in the online-only category.

The Nebraska Press Association judged the contest this year.

A full list of contest winners is available online.

Launched in 2012, Coastal Review is published daily, Monday-Friday, by the North Carolina Coastal Federation, a 501(c)(3) nonprofit group dedicated to protecting and preserving the North Carolina coast. Coastal Review provides objective reporting, information and commentary on issues, policy and notable figures and history with a specific focus on the environment and people of the state’s 20 coastal counties.

OAK ISLAND – When Gigi Donovan looks at the dune fronting a row of largely undeveloped oceanfront lots across the street from her home, she sees a false sense of security.

“We’ve seen this dune go away three times in 12 years,” she said.

The sandy mound that separates the public beach from private lots along a stretch of East Beach Drive wasn’t here just a few years ago. It has been built up and planted with dune-stabilizing sea oats through the town of Oak Island’s efforts to restore its oceanfront shore. 

Now there is enough of it to render at least one of the thin slices of long-vacant beachfront lots suitable for building.

That has Donovan and several of her neighbors worried.

Amber and Dean Russell live a few doors down from the Donovans. When the Russells bought their bungalow in 2022, they went ahead and purchased the beachfront lot directly across the street.

“We bought that just to keep our view,” Amber Russell said. “It’s not safe to build on.”

That’s a sentiment a group of homeowners and residents who live in the area of SE 58^th Street and East Beach Drive have expressed to town officials in the days and months since they received notice that a developer had applied for a Coastal Area Management Act, or CAMA, permit to build a house on one of the oceanfront lots.

They’ve made countless telephone calls and sent emails to North Carolina Division of Coastal Management and U.S. Army Corps of Engineers staff.

They’ve posted handmade signs that read “SAVE OUR BEACHFRONT — No Building on Narrow, At-risk Lots!” along their block of East Beach Drive.

They started an online petition that, as of June 13, had more than 600 signatures.

They’ve dug in their heels and pushed back, calling “for the return to responsible, sustainable environmental development on fragile oceanfront properties” in a plea to Oak Island’s mayor.

But even they acknowledge this fight is an uphill battle, one that is likely to rage on as low-lying coastal areas deal with the effects of sea level rise, more frequent, intense coastal storms and shoreline erosion.

Regulatory flexibility

Last month, a CAMA minor permit was issued for 5515 East Beach Drive. Proposed building plans on the 0.17-acre lot include a 2,856 square-foot house.

Town officials in an email responding to questions said they do not have on file when a home last stood on that lot. Aerial satellite images from Brunswick County show that this particular block of East Beach Drive had more homes along the oceanfront in 1989 than today.

The homes captured by satellite imagery in 1989 were gone in 2003, destroyed by nature or demolition.

Today, houses stand on only two of the oceanfront lots along this block of East Beach Drive.

Oak Island officials said the town does not have an overarching designation determining whether a lot is buildable based on oceanfront construction setbacks.

“For building on an oceanfront lot, the developer would submit information to show compliance with CAMA regulations and receive a permit if they meet said requirements,” an official said in an email.

Back in 2023, the North Carolina Coastal Resources Commission rubber-stamped Oak Island’s beach management plan, which gives beachfront builders more regulatory flexibility regarding how far back they must build from the sea.

The year before, the commission repealed regulations that allowed coastal communities to use the less restrictive setback measurement line for oceanfront construction, instead requiring builders to measure back from what is referred to as the preproject vegetation line.

The preproject vegetation line is the first line of stable, natural vegetation that is on an oceanfront before a large-scale beach nourishment project begins, one where more than 300,000 cubic yards of sand is placed on the beach.

But coastal communities that create and follow beach management plans approved by the commission may measure setbacks from the vegetation line rather than the preproject line as long as they meet the obligations detailed in their plans. Setbacks are 60 feet from the measurement line.

Coastal Resources Commission approved beach management plans for five coastal towns: Carolina Beach, Kure Beach and Wrightsville Beach in New Hanover County, and Oak Island and Ocean Isle Beach in Brunswick County. Once approved, plans must be reauthorized every five years.

Oak Island’s authorized plan calls for placing a total estimated 16.2 million cubic yards of sand on the beach over the next three decades. Under the plan, the beach will be nourished every six years.

Oak Island’s most recent sand nourishment projects were carried out in 2021 and 2022.

A nourishment project originally planned for winter 2024-25 was postponed after the town was informed contractor bids for the project “had far exceeded the amounts expected or budgeted,” according to the town’s website.

The project is again out for bids, and town officials anticipate a contract will be awarded and work will begin later this year.

Risky building

“They’re looking to the renourishment as the permanent solution,” Donovan said.

Dr. Gavin Smith, a North Carolina State University professor who researches hazard mitigation, disaster recovery and climate change adaptation, is not a big fan of beach nourishment.

“I think that overrelying on beach nourishment as a way to protect coastal development is fraught with problems,” he said in a telephone interview earlier this month. “It’s extremely expensive. It can take several seasons or it can take one bad storm and it’s gone.”

Smith pointed out that coastal zones, in particular barrier island, are highly dynamic and subject to significant change.

“Thinking about the construction of a house in a highly dynamic area, I think we need to be really careful,” he said. “Builders and homebuyers need to think about the life of that structure. The conditions that that site might face in 40 or 50 years is worthy of consideration. Individuals need to think about and actually ask a question: While you might be able to legally build in a given place, should you build there? I think that’s something that we all need to perhaps be more aware of.”

It’s time governments at all levels, local, state and federal, “do better,” he said.

“How can we recognize or applaud local governments that have the political will to adopt more stringent standards than the minimums? That’s what many governments adhere to is the minimum standards” Smith said. “Our codes are inadequate in the state, yet that’s what we adhere to in many cases. The National Flood Insurance Program should be viewed as a minimum, not the maximum. In an era of climate change we’re moving toward this idea of nonstationary, which we don’t know what the future holds. So, therefore our codes and standards ought to be that much more rigorous to account for the uncertainty. But instead, we’re relying on old data. We’re relying on old codes and that’s a significant problem.”

Sitting at the kitchen table in her home on a late May afternoon, Donovan mulled the many concerns she, her husband Mark, and their neighbors have raised to government officials.

They worry about whether more lights from new construction will hinder sea turtles from nesting on the shore. They worry about how stormwater runoff from new rooftops, driveways and other impervious surfaces may exacerbate flooding on their second-row lots.

They worry what one unwelcome coastal storm, be it a hurricane of any category or a potential tropical cyclone that packs a punch like the unnamed storm that pummeled Brunswick County last year, might do to the dune and any homes standing on the small land plots just behind it.

“We don’t know. That’s the thing. We don’t know what’s going to happen,” Gigi Donovan said.

In a statement to the town’s mayor last month, the Donovans and their neighbors wrote: “While we cannot control the weather, we can mitigate the damage it causes by responsibly managing the development of oceanfront properties.”

Oceanfront lot development “should be based on comprehensive land-use plans that take into consideration beach erosion, turtle nesting habitat, climate change, protection of private and town property, and preserving the legacy of (Oak Island) as a quaint, family-focused beach community.”

They are appealing to Coastal Resources Commission Chair Renee Cahoon, who determines whether or not property owners can make their case in a hearing before the full commission.

“We are very motivated and stubborn,” Gigi Donovan said in a text message. “If we allow them to plow ahead, steam-rolling any local opposition, our entire island beachfront will be irreparably destroyed.”

Debbie Swick has been waging a single-handed campaign describing how dangerous a balloon is after it has been released.

“I promise you, with every fiber of my being, helium balloons do not go to heaven,” she said and suggested alternatives.

“Blow bubbles, plant a tree, scatter wildflower seeds,” the Southern Shores resident continued.

“There’s so many other things that you can do besides releasing balloons,” adding, “I would not tell people not to celebrate. I would not tell people not to mourn those that have passed on.”

For over a year, Swick has been, in her words, “a one-woman crusader.”

She describes herself as a “devout Christian” who believes “this is God’s planet, and we’re just visitors here, and let’s leave it a little better than we found it.”

Something happened to her one morning over a year ago when “God spoke to me that morning when I watched this balloon release on TV.”

Since then, she has been indefatigable, writing letters to every county manager and board in the state, innumerable municipalities, visiting counties and towns to talk about the dangers of balloons. And learning some things along the way.

She describes the impact on marine animals and wildlife, including the 2023 death of a juvenile Gervais’ beaked whale beached on Emerald Isle. The whale starved to death after a plastic balloon became trapped in its digestive tract.

“I tell everybody, speak to our commercial fishermen, ask anybody that goes out in the ocean and ask them how many balloons they encounter. It’s staggering,” Swick said.

Yet after speaking to Camden County commissioners, a new danger emerged, telling Coastal Review that a commissioner, “was saying how a farmer was complaining that he wrapped (a balloon) around his combine and broke this very expensive piece of equipment.”

And now, after months of lobbying, letter writing, cajoling and presentations, it may be that her efforts will be rewarded.

North Carolina Senate Bill 20, “An Act to Prohibit Certain Mass Balloon Releases,” filed Jan. 29, 2025, currently is in the senate’s rules and operations committee.

The bill’s primary sponsor, Bobby Hanig, R-Currituck, told Coastal Review that there is “unanimous support on both sides of the aisle, both chambers, manufacturers, retailers, associations, everyone has come out in support of it.”

Hanig explained early this month that the bill would likely to stay in committee as the senate worked on their version of the budget, which was introduced April 17.

“We’ve been dealing with the budget process, so I’m hoping that over the next couple of weeks, things will start getting pulled out of Rules and start moving to committees,” Hanig said.

Cosponsored by Sen. Gale Adcock, D-Wake, and Woodson Bradley, D-Mecklenburg, the bill does appear to have the bipartisan support Hanig touted.

Adcock, Hanig said, “was a senator I worked with on several piece of legislation. We served together in the House. We have a great relationship. And Woodson Bradley, she’s new this year, she said she wanted to be on (the bill).”

Underscoring the support for the bill, Adcock wrote in an email that “I heard from a dozen or so of (her district’s) constituents after the bill was filed, and after I had signed on to the bill.”

The bill is short, less than 250 words, and straightforward in its language.

“The General Assembly finds that the release into the atmosphere of balloons inflated with lighter-than-air gases poses a harm to the scenic beauty of the State and a danger and nuisance to wildlife and marine animals,” the bill reads.

The bill includes fines for releasing balloons, and the fines can be substantial at $250 per balloon.

For Swick, that’s important. Her hope is that people will look at that and realize, “I’m not even going to chance it, because at $250 per balloon,” she said. “Four balloons is $1,000. I don’t have that kind of money to part with.”

As she continues to work to bring awareness to the issue, Swick said she has found a wide spectrum of interests supporting her efforts, including the Surfrider Foundation, and the North Carolina Coastal Federation, which publishes Coastal Review.

“We have the CRC, which is the Coalition for Responsible celebrations, who works directly with Dollar Tree and Party City,” she said.

Even the balloon industry “has taken on a responsible attitude about balloons. They understand their negative impact on the environment, so they’re joining with groups like me to educate and say, ‘Listen, enjoy your balloons, but dispose of them responsibly.’”

That the legislation is enjoying bipartisan support is, to Swick, part of the backing she has seen as she has worked on the issue.

“We waste so much time fighting each other,” she said. “This is one of those things where it shouldn’t be, ‘your side, my side.’ This is for the good of all people and all things living,” she said.

Leaders from Holly Ridge, Surf City, North Topsail Beach, Topsail Beach, a state transportation official and a legislative representative have been invited to speak during the Greater Topsail Community Update set to take place in May.

The Greater Topsail Area Chamber of Commerce & Tourism meeting is scheduled for 8 a.m. Tuesday, May 13, at the Holly Ridge Community Center, 404 Sound Road.

A breakfast buffet will be served while speakers share firsthand updates on upcoming initiatives, including capital improvement projects and other key developments.

“This informative gathering is an excellent opportunity for residents, business owners, and stakeholders to stay informed and engaged with the progress of our local communities,” organizers said.

Cost is $20 per person. Register online or at topsailchamber.org.

NEW BERN — The state commission that establishes rules and policy for coastal development is expected to, during its February meeting, consider its next step in the permanent rulemaking process to redesignate Jockey’s Ridge as an area of environmental concern.

The North Carolina Coastal Resources Commission is scheduled to begin its regular meeting at 3 p.m. Wednesday, Feb. 26, and resume its unfinished business at 9 a.m. Thursday, Feb. 27, in the DoubleTree New Bern Riverfront, 100 Middle St.

The public can attend the meeting in person or watch online. The in-person public comment period is at noon Feb. 27.

The Coastal Resources Advisory Council is scheduled to meet first at 1 p.m. Feb. 26, also at the DoubleTree.

The full agenda and related documents are on the Division of Coastal Management website. The division, which acts as staff to the commission, is under the North Carolina Department of Environmental Quality.

Jockey’s Ridge rules

Jockey’s Ridge in Nags Head was established as a state park in 1975 to protect the distinctive dune system from development. The Coastal Resources Commission in 1984 designated Jockey’s Ridge as a “Unique Geologic Feature Area of Environmental Concern” and has since had laws in place to manage activities in and around the park boundaries.

During the periodic rules review process in fall 2023, the Rules Review Commission, in an effort to defang coastal development rules based on now-court-refuted interpretation of state law, removed from the state administrative code the designation of Jockey’s Ridge as an area of environmental concern.

Related: Judge restores state’s erased coastal development rules

The Coastal Resources Commission then adopted emergency and temporary rules to reestablish Jockey’s Ridge as an area of environmental concern and use standards that went into effect Jan. 3, 2024. The emergency rules expired May 13, 2024, when the Rules Review Commission objected to the temporary rule.

The Coastal Resources Commission moved forward with permanent rulemaking on April 25, 2024, and adopted the rules Nov. 14, 2024. The Rules Review Commission objected Dec. 19, 2024, citing a failure to comply with the public noticing rules.

According to the division, staff have taken the necessary steps to rectify the objection and recommend the commission approve scheduling a public hearing as part of the permanent rulemaking process.

“The proposed permanent rule designates Jockey’s Ridge as an AEC with use standards which are nearly identical to the original 1984 standards,” with minor changes proposed for clarity, according to the division.

Public hearing on straw bales

A public hearing is scheduled for 4:30 p.m. Feb. 26, on proposed rule language and notice of text for the “Installation and Maintenance of Wheat Straw Bales for Sand Fencing.”

The proposed new rule is “to provide greater flexibility to local governments, large oceanfront homeowners associations, and government agencies in allowing the use of wheat straw bales for dune protection in addition to sand fencing,” according to the division.

Other items

Members are expected to take up variance requests Feb. 26 for properties in Carolina Beach, North Topsail Beach and at The Shoals Club on Bald Head Island.

A closed session is scheduled for Feb. 27 on an objection by the Rules Review Commission.

Staff are to present requests to move forward with amendments to two different rules for ocean hazard areas of environmental concern, and consider approving the periodic review schedule for the Coastal Area Management Act land use planning public comment and final report.

A petition for rulemaking to add to the definition of estuarine waters “All the waters’ described herein includes man-made ditches” is to be presented as well. Division staff do not support the request, according to the documents.

Information items include presentations on the history of the commission’s ocean hazard setback program, a review of the major permitting process, and an update on litigation.

The North Carolina Department of Transportation can begin work on a temporary solution to protect a stretch of N.C. Highway 12 in Rodanthe that frequently experiences overwash, coastal flooding and erosion — but NCDOT officials are looking for a more permanent fix.

Earlier this week, the Coastal Resources Commission unanimously approved NCDOT’s variance request to repair 1,300 feet of primary sand dune and install 1,100 feet of sandbags on the oceanside right-of-way near the visitor center for the Pea Island National Wildlife Refuge. A variance, once granted, allows coastal development that would otherwise be prohibited by commission rules.

“We hope to start the project sometime in mid-January, and it will take roughly one week to complete,” NCDOT Communications Officer Tim Hass told Coastal Review Tuesday. He said that during the project, which should cost about $400,000, there will be temporary single-lane closures in the area on N.C. Highway 12.

After a storm last month forced transportation officials to close N.C. 12 near the refuge’s visitor center, NCDOT submitted to Division of Coastal Management staff on Nov. 24 a request to modify the existing Coastal Area Management Act permit issued in 1999 that allows for maintenance work along the Outer Banks highway.

The division is under the North Carolina Department of Environmental Quality and acts as staff to the commission. Division staff make permit decisions based on commission rules.

Division staff on Dec. 4 issued a modification to NCDOT’s existing CAMA major permit but “conditioned out those aspects of the proposed sandbag structure which did not meet the Commission’s Rules, including the size and color of the sandbags, the size of the sandbag structure, and the impacts to existing dunes,” documents state.

If the division denies a permit request because the proposed project is outside of development rules, the petitioner can request a variance from the commission to allow the work, which is what NCDOT did, leading to the special-called meeting held Monday morning by web conference.

NCDEQ Assistant General Counsel Christy Goebel explained that NCDOT owns and maintains the public right-of-way easement through Pea Island National Wildlife Refuge on Hatteras Island in Dare County.

“As we know, N.C. 12 provides the only roadway connection between the mainland and Hatteras Island. Beach erosion, dune loss and risk to Highway 12 have been particularly severe near the refuge visitor center,” she said.

The area has been identified as a “hot spot” since at least 2002 and is characterized by low topography and low elevations. The 2020 average annual erosion rate at the visitor center hot spot is 7.5 feet per a year, and the total width of the island there is between 3,500 and 5,800 feet, though much of that area is the refuge ponds. The space between the ocean and refuge ponds that N.C. 12 passes through is as narrow as 245 feet.

“Because of storm and tidal events, and the geomorphology of this area, the hot spot is susceptible to shoreline erosion, overwash, coastal flooding, the loss of beach and dunes, and sand cover. These circumstances can undermine the integrity of the road, making travel by the general public unsafe and forcing DOT to close the road,” Goebel said.

The Nov. 15-17 storm that severely damaged the primary dune along N.C. 12 by the refuge’s visitor center prompted NCDOT’s move to put in the temporary sandbag structure.

Goebel said that ocean overwash removed around 1,000 linear feet of dune, exposing the highway’s pavement edge to the high surf. Roadway flooding and pavement drop-off produced hazardous traffic conditions, and NCDOT temporarily closed the road to all traffic. NCDOT temporarily rebuilt the primary dune as maintenance work after the storm, under the existing CAMA permit.

Goebel said that NCDOT proposed using temporary sandbags for the project that would be white, trapezoid-shaped, woven polypropylene, an alternative to the traditional tan sandbags. Plans call for the sandbags to be placed in two adjoining rows parallel to the seashore.

The row closest to the ocean would be 6 feet high with an 8-foot base, and the row closest to land would be 4-foot high with a 6-foot base. The rows will be adjacent to each other and have a combined base of 14 feet. Both rows will be placed 2 feet below the roadway and 10 feet away from the pavement.

NCDOT plans to bring in sand to fill the sandbags and cover the sandbags after they are installed with a 6-foot-high and 20-foot-wide dune. “Sand would not be dredged from the swash zone on the beach, and there would be no wetland impacts,” Goebel said.

About 950 square feet of the protective dune will extend below the normal high-water line, as well.

Existing rules require the sandbags be tan, between 3 and 5 feet wide and 7 to 15 feet long when measured flat, with a base width no wider than 20 feet and total height no more than 6 feet. Rules also dictate that no primary dunes can be removed or located, and no part of the dune should be placed below normal high water line.

This type of sandbag has been granted variances twice before. The commission allowed for this type of sandbag to be used at the north end of Ocracoke Island, but that project didn’t come to fruition because of funding, and again in February 2022, for the north end of Rodanthe, she said.

Goebel said that division staff agrees with NCDOT “that construction of the sandbag structure and the dune and the use of the alternative bags will secure public safety and welfare, and it will preserve substantial justice as it will allow the petitioner to protect 12 in the short and midterm with alternative sandbags, while continuing to work towards a long-term solution for transportation along Hatteras Island.”

Special Deputy Attorney General Colin Justice reiterated to the commission that NCDOT officials believe there are benefits to using the alternative sandbags.

Justice, who represents NCDOT and works for the North Carolina Department of Justice, said officials believe these sandbags will be more durable. Installation will happen faster than traditional sandbags and cause less of an impact because of the way the bags are filled from the top. No hydraulic pump across the beach to fill traditional sandbags is necessary.

“We think that applying the rule strictly would prevent NCDOT from being able to do this repair as effectively, as quickly and for minimizing impacts the setback requirements,” he said.

The Division of Coastal Management’s NCDOT Project Coordinator Stephen Lane said Monday that NCDOT is looking at long-term solutions for the hot spot, and has obtained funds to study “long-term comprehensive solutions to try to keep Highway 12 open for the future,” he said.

Lane is referring to the $1.8 million grant announced earlier this year to study the 11-mile stretch of N.C. 12 between Oregon Inlet and Rodanthe on Pea Island. “The project will identify future construction projects, streamline environmental reviews, include public engagement and establish detailed, long-term plans for keeping the roadway passable during and following major storm events,” officials said in the at the time.

NCDOT Division 1 Engineer Win Bridgers states in the permit modification request dated Nov. 24 that the sandbag project is a temporary solution for maintaining N.C. 12 on the Pea Island refuge.

“NCDOT has recently been awarded a PROTECT Planning Grant from (Federal Highway Administration) to conduct a Planning and Environmental Linkages (PEL) study that includes comprehensive resiliency planning, alternatives development and evaluation, and robust public engagement for NC 12 on Pea Island,” Bridgers wrote. “Also known as Solving Access for NC 12 in Dare County (SAND), this project will establish a solid foundation for future project development and construction, with the goal of streamlining subsequent environmental review, accelerating project delivery, and securing the long-term resiliency of NC 12.”

He said that NCDOT anticipations the SAND project will determine short-term and long-term solutions for maintaining N.C. 12 on Pea Island National Wildlife Refuge.

“When those solutions are implemented, NCDOT would remove the temporary sandbags when no longer needed to protect the roadway of NC 12. With the stronger material and design, the Permashield bags can be more effectively removed when they are no longer needed. NCDOT anticipates quicker and more complete removal of Permashield sandbags as opposed to the challenging removal of traditional sandbags,” Bridgers said.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Another major aspect of CAMA is permitting and enforcement.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

This report has been updated.

The North Carolina Coastal Resources Commission will hold a special meeting at 10 a.m. Monday by web conference to hear a variance request from the N.C. Department of Transportation.

According to the agenda posted at the commission’s website, the request involves sandbags at Pea Island in Dare County. The request materials were not yet posted as of Friday morning. A variance, when granted, allows development that is otherwise prohibited by commission rules.

The Department of Environmental Quality announced Thursday that the meeting will be limited to that lone agenda item.

The public may join by computer or phone. Visit the commission website to see agenda materials, once available, and information on how to access the meeting.

Officials noted that times indicated on the agenda are subject to change.

Log on to the webinar using webinar number, or access code, 2427 740 8580, and password: crcspec1224, or 27277321 when dialing from a phone.

Those interested may also join by phone at 1-415-655-0003, using webinar number (access code): 2427 740 8580.

Also, a listening station will be set up at the Division of Coastal Management headquarters office at 400 Commerce Ave., Morehead City.

The commission sets the rules and policies carried out by the Division of Coastal Management under the state Coastal Area Management Act, the Dredge and Fill Law and the federal Coastal Zone Management Act of 1972 in the 20 coastal counties.

Thorough research needs to be done on how wheat straw bales might affect oceanfront habitat before the state allows them to be used as an alternative to sand fencing, a state wildlife official said.

The North Carolina Wildlife Resources Commission has repeatedly stated its concerns in recent years about straw bales being used as a tool to protect and build up oceanfront dunes, Maria Dunn said in a recent meeting of the state Coastal Resources Commission.

Dunn, who is with Wildlife Resources Commission’s Habitat Conservation Program, said that the agency understands the desire to try and maintain shorelines, but pointed out what she said are “significant differences” between traditional sand fencing and bales.

“We have not objected to traditional use of sand-fencing material as long as installation was done in a manner to effectively collect wind-blown sand and not impede or block areas of the shore for public use and wildlife habitat,” Dunn said at the coastal commission’s Nov. 13 meeting. “Appropriate installation includes the location along the appropriate area of the beach profile, orientation and alignment of fencing, distance between fencing, and length of fencing down the beach profile.”

The proposed rule change the coastal commission approved in April establishes specific guidelines for where and how bales may be placed on a beachfront.

But the potential impacts to shoreline habitat and the animals, including endangered species and plants, that rely on that sandy habitat, remain grossly understudied, Dunn said.

“It was asked if research was available on how bales impact wildlife resources on habitats on ocean shorelines,” she said. “But since they are not permitted on any other Atlantic shoreline’s state shore there is no research or data available to share with you.”

The rule amendment was introduced as a way to help save permittees from waiting for sand fencing to become available during times when it is in high demand.

But unlike traditional sand fencing, straw bales could potentially introduce invasive and nonnative ocean shoreline plant species to shores, influence sand temperatures and, when initially installed, take up 48 times the area that traditional sand fencing uses, Dunn said.

Under the proposed rule amendment, bales cannot be placed in sections more than 10 feet long, 2 feet wide and 3 feet high and ties or binding must be removed from the bales. A permittee must repair or remove damaged, nonfunctioning, or bales sections or stakes moved from the alignment in which they were authorized.

Only local governments, state and federal agencies and large, oceanfront homeowners associations would be permitted to use bales.

A state Division of Coastal Management official told the Coastal Resources Commission in August that the division does not expect a significant uptick in the use of straw bales because they tend to cost more than traditional sand fencing, would need to be replaced more frequently than fencing, and the verdict is still out on how efficiently bales trap sand.

Ocean Isle Beach became the first in the state to test straw bales on a portion of its ocean shore in 2023.

Ocean Isle Beach Mayor Debbie Smith told Coastal Review in late August that the bales worked well, were cheaper than sand fencing and easily accessible during a time when the town could not get sand fencing because of high demand.

Dunn said that the town’s pilot program was monitored by little more than photographic documentation and some surface temperature readings.

There was no designed, controlled experiment comparing different bale installments to traditional sand fencing to see which application best collected windblown said, she said.

“We would recommend that such an experiment is designed with input from state and federal agencies to determine the best type of sand management tools to collect sand for dune structure while minimizing impacts to wildlife resources,” Dunn said.

Smith said in a telephone interview Tuesday afternoon that she never saw a Wildlife Resources Commission representative visit the island to check sand temperatures at turtle nests or conduct other monitoring.

“On any decision we have to make we can always say ‘what if,’” Smith said. “She has no evidence of some of those what-ifs. I don’t think anybody wants to do any environmental damage.”

The town is working on a dune project that will begin sometime this winter. Since the proposed rule amendments have not been made formative, the town has opted to use traditional sand fencing “to move our project along and get it permitted,” Smith said.

Sand temperatures play a significant role in determining the sex of sea turtles in a nest. Dunn said that a half-degree variation can change how many males or females are within a nest and possibly whether a nest remains viable.

Temperatures were not taken at sea turtle nest cavity depths in Ocean Isle Beach, she said.

“We don’t want to artificially create more females,” said Deb Allen, Ocean Isle Beach Sea Turtle Protection Organization coordinator. “We need a balance of males to females.”

Allen pointed to studies that show when nests incubate at higher temperatures it can affect the physical and cognitive abilities of hatchlings, slowing them in their ability to make it from the shore to the ocean.

“We want them to come out of that nest and we want them to crawl to that ocean as fast as possible,” she said.

The coastal commission in August unanimously approved the fiscal impact analysis of the proposed rule. The fiscal analysis measures how a rule may affect a government’s revenue and expenditures to help prepare for or prevent budget shortfalls.

The North Carolina Department of Environmental Quality, or DEQ, and Office of State Budget and Management also approved the fiscal analysis.

A public hearing on the proposed amended rule was held Oct. 30 in Morehead City. The public comment period on the rule ends December 2.

The division has not yet received comments from the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, according to its public information officer, Christy Simmons.

The wildlife service did not respond to a request for comment in time for publication.

Division officials anticipate that the amended rule will become effective April 1, 2025.

North Carolina Division of Coastal Management officials are in the process of determining priority areas and strategies for the 2026-2030 cycle of the Section 309 Assessment and Strategy, and are asking for public input.

The assessment and strategy is a process to evaluate and enhance the effectiveness of a coastal management program using guidelines outlined in Section 309 of the Coastal Zone Management Act, and allows for additional funding from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

The division is asking the public to complete its Section 309 Survey available online until Nov. 22.

The division works to protect, conserve and manage the state’s coastal resources through an integrated program of planning, permitting, education and research.

Every five years, coastal programs, like the division, carry out the self-assessments to identify priority issues and enhancement opportunities within nine topic areas, and assess the effectiveness of existing management efforts to address identified issues.

The nine topic areas are wetlands, coastal hazards, public access, marine debris, cumulative and secondary impacts, special area management planning, ocean resources, energy and government facility siting, and aquaculture.

“Stakeholder feedback is an important part of this process and we are looking for your input,” division officials said. “Your input is a key component of this assessment, and we appreciate your time in providing your responses.”

Division officials said they plan to welcome public comments on the draft assessment and strategy document, once it is complete.

Update 2 p.m. Friday: The Coastal Resources Commission special meeting scheduled for Monday to review comments and consider the adoption of temporary rules has been canceled. The meeting will not be rescheduled.

Original post:

The commission that directs coastal development is to meet next week to review comments and consider adopting temporary rules that would allow local governments to put in place measurement lines for dune building.

The Coastal Resources Commission will hold the special, virtual meeting at 10 a.m. Monday. Anyone can join the meeting online or listen by phone. There will be a listening station at the N.C. Division of Coastal Management headquarters office at 400 Commerce Ave., Morehead City.

At the August commission meeting, members approved the temporary amendments authorizing the establishment of measurement lines, provided the local government has been granted a permit to construct a terminal groin, and works with the Division of Coastal Management.

The measurement line would represent the existing location of the first line of stable and natural vegetation that is covered by the dune building and beach planting project, according to the division.

The full agenda and briefing materials are to be available on the commission website at least 48 hours before the meeting. Times indicated on the agenda are subject to change.

The Division of Coastal Management is under the North Carolina Department of Environmental Quality. The division carries out the state’s Coastal Area Management Act, or CAMA, the Dredge and Fill Law and the federal Coastal Zone Management Act of 1972 in the 20 coastal counties, applying the rules and policies set by the Coastal Resources Commission.

A set of coastal development rules temporarily placed back in the state code will be up for public comment and possibly reinstated as permanent by year’s end.

The Coastal Resources Commission, during a special meeting Tuesday, unanimously approved a rule that sets permit fees for minor and major development applications, approved the fiscal impact analyses on that and several other rules the commission adopted as temporary earlier this year, and re-designated Jockey’s Ridge State Park as an area of environmental concern.

The fiscal impact analysis measures how rules may affect a government’s revenue and expenditures to help prepare for or prevent budget shortfalls.

The North Carolina Department of Environmental Quality and Office of State Budget and Management have determined that reinstating the rules will not substantially impact the economy and have little to no impact on state or local governments.

Commissioners postponed a vote this week to amend a rule that would allow beach towns to use wheat straw bales as an alternative to traditional sand fencing, which is used to protect oceanfront dunes.

The state Division of Coastal Management’s fiscal analysis on the amendment to that rule is currently under review by the state budget and management office. Coastal management officials determined in their analysis that the amendment will have little to no fiscal impact.

The commission in March adopted more than a dozen rules state coastal management officials argue are crucial to day-to-day operations as temporary as a means to get them back into the state Administrative Code for one year or until they are reinstated as permanent rules.

In all, 30 of the coastal commission’s longstanding rules were removed from the code last October after they were objected to by the Rules Review Commission, a decision that prompted an ongoing lawsuit the coastal commission and DEQ filed against the Rules Review Commission and the state codifier or rules.

State Division of Coastal Management officials have been working with the rules commission to tweak wording in the remaining 14 rules that the Coastal Resources Commission did not temporarily adopt earlier this year.

One of the temporary rules that has garnered much attention centers on keeping Jockey’s Ridge an area of environmental concern, a designation that protects it from uncontrolled development and mandates that any sand that spills over from the massive dune onto neighboring properties must be returned.

The popular state park in Nags Head first received the designation in 1984.

“Let’s hope that this rule will go through without a whole lot of conflict,” CRC Chair Renee Cahoon said shortly before the commission went into closed session.

The commission took no further action following the closed session.

The rules will go to public hearing between Sept. 18 and Nov. 4, Division of Coastal Management Public Information Officer Christy Simmons said in an email.

The rules will go before the coastal commission at its November meeting for possible adoption and returned to the rules commission. That meeting is scheduled Nov. 13-14 at Ocean Isle Beach Town Hall.

Division of Coastal Management officials anticipate the rules will be reentered into the code as permanent effective Jan. 1, 2024.

The Coastal Resources Commission’s next scheduled regular meeting is set for Aug. 27-28 in Beaufort at the Beaufort Hotel, 2440 Lennoxville Road.

The North Carolina Department of Environmental Quality’s Division of Coastal Management announced Thursday that it is awarding 20 grants totaling more than $6.21 million to 19 town and county governments.

The grants are for Phases 3 and 4 of the four-phase Resilient Coastal Communities Program, which was created to provide a community-driven process for setting coastal resilience goals, assessing existing and needed local capacity, and identifying and prioritizing projects to enhance community resilience to coastal hazards.

The primary objective of the program’s Phase 3 is to provide funding to assist communities with the engineering and design of prioritized projects identified in their RCCP Resilience Strategy or other existing plans that meet the program’s Phases 1 and 2 planning criteria. The division also said that some communities will receive money to develop or amend ordinances to enhance their resilience to coastal hazards.

“Funding the valuable resilience work of these communities allows them move their projects from concept to completion, building a stronger future by protecting residents and the coastal economy,” Secretary Elizabeth S. Biser said in a statement.

A total of $4.31 million is to be available to complete 15 projects in Phase 3. Most of these engineering and design projects incorporate natural and nature-based elements, such as wetland restoration and living shoreline design, the division said.

Specific projects include living shoreline construction to reduce erosion along public shorelines, updating development ordinances to align with resilience strategies, and comprehensive stormwater action plans with detailed drainage studies and easement acquisitions.

Dare County is to receive $234,000 for its Salvo Flood Mitigation Project, and the following 14 municipalities will receive engineering and design money for the completion of their Phase 3 projects:

• Ahoskie: $500,000 for stormwater action plan, upgrade the stormwater system.
• Aulander: $173,250 for permeable pavement and green stormwater infrastructure implementation projects.
• Beaufort: $100,000 for development ordinance resilience updates.
• Belhaven: $500,000 for stormwater action plan and easement acquisition plan, upgrade the stormwater system.
• Burgaw: $55,000 for rain garden installation and educational demonstration.
• Creswell: $500,000 to reduce flooding impacts in the First-Fourth street area.
• Elizabeth City: $140,000 for resilient stormwater ordinance project.
• Holly Ridge: $143,000 for multi-use greenway connection feasibility study.
• Nags Head: $500,000 to design living shorelines to restore and protect coastal community infrastructure in the Roanoke Sound.
• Ocean Isle Beach: $170,000 for living shoreline feasibility study and demonstration project.
• Plymouth: $500,000 for Stormwater Action Plan upgrade stormwater system.
• Vandemere: $57,800 for Vandemere Waterfront Park living shoreline.
• Washington: $500,000 for living shoreline and levee at the wastewater treatment plant.
• Washington Park: $237,300 for living shoreline at public shoreline areas.

Phase 4 money will go to implement shovel-ready projects to enhance coastal resilience previously awarded funding for Phases 1-3.

A total of $1.9 million is to be available to complete five projects in Phase 4 featuring a range of nature-based solutions, infrastructure improvements, and community-focused strategies to manage stormwater and mitigate flooding.

Specific projects include the construction of bioswales to store and filter stormwater runoff and ocean overwash, creating low-impact development demonstration sites with educational components for the public, stabilizing road shoulders with environmentally friendly materials that promote natural vegetative growth, and improving flood-prone roadways with permeable pavers and bioretention basins.

The following will receive implementation funds for the completion of Phase 4:

• Aurora: $1.1 million for wetland restoration and berm improvements at wastewater treatment plant.
• Beaufort County: $194,166 for low impact development demonstration site at Beaufort County Community College.
• Dare County: $160,000 for Hatteras Village bioswales.
• Duck: $144,000 for Teresa Court stormwater management improvements.
• Surf City: $331,535 for roadside infiltration resilience project.

Community applications were reviewed based on project alignment with the community resilience strategy and priority ranking; project outcomes including environmental, social, and economic impacts; the project’s ability to reduce the vulnerability of a critical asset or population; the project’s inclusion of nature-based or hybrid components; and the project’s ability to achieve the community’s vision and goals.

The program receives funding from a combination of state and federal sources.

For more information about the Resilient Coastal Communities Program, go to the division’s program website.

It’s not uncommon for Dr. Jim Herstine to hear his name enthusiastically called out when he’s out and about in Wilmington.

Admittedly, he doesn’t always immediately recognize the smiling face greeting him in a parking lot or grocery store. By his estimates he taught some 300 students in a class that he and a couple of colleagues came up with to offer at the University of North Carolina Wilmington in the mid-1990s.

But his former students who took the North Carolina coastal issues and experience class, now more than 20 years strong and counting, remember the course that took them from the classroom on a trip through the Outer Banks.

“It was my favorite class to teach,” said Herstine, who earned the title professor emeritus when he retired in the summer of 2018. “The whole purpose of the class was to get the students out of the classroom and into real-life situations.”

He’s “tickled to death” the course continues to leave an impression on students willing to brave the seven-night, eight-day field portion of the class that entails camping, kayaking and covering miles and miles of coastal areas to learn about and experience the Outer Banks and the issues communities within the region are facing, be it climate change, tourism-related impacts or development.

Today, UNCW students may take this unique course during the university’s first summer session, which ran from May 20 through June 18 and was, this year, opened to undergraduate students by Dr. Jennifer Biddle, an associate professor of public and internal affairs who inherited the course from Herstine.

Biddle explained in a telephone interview earlier this month that the ultimate goal of the field course is to bridge the gap between science and policy by exploring an area filled with beautiful beaches, “but they have a lot of serious threats that they are being faced with.”

“The idea is we really are trying to help (students) understand the variety of perspectives on these coastal issues,” Biddle said.

Think of it as a guide to get students to appreciate and empower them in how they can help affecting change where they live.

Students learn about how different organizations are coping with threats facing these coastal communities, why it’s important to protect those areas and how they, in their future professions, can work with various organizations and groups in helping coastal communities deal with these issues.

It’s an ultimate field trip that takes the students through an immersive experience from the Virginia border to Carteret County, stopping along the way to kayak along freshwater rivers and coastal sounds and meet with an array of professionals, from federal and local government officials to coastal environmentalists to ferry captains.

They camp primarily in state parks and on national seashores, more often than not washing off the day’s grime in cold showers at primitive campgrounds.

But what they lack in modern-day comforts, they gain from the sound of a chorus of frogs at night, marveling at a stingray swimming gracefully near their kayaks and good conversation about the day’s highlights over a communal dinner, Biddle said.

“You have the whole tourism economy meets sea level rise,” she said. “Or, even in Hyde County, the loss of economic opportunities meets sea level rise. And, one of the prevailing things in the Down East area is sense of loss.”

That includes a loss of community, loss of lifestyle and livelihoods and loss the community has experienced as members of families who have been here for generations move away, she said.

This year’s class of 15 students, including five undergraduate students and 10 graduate students, represented an array of studies: oceanography, political science, public administration, environmental sciences, biology, public policy and the university’s Master of Coastal and Ocean Policy degree program.

“I definitely came back tired. I definitely came back dirty, but it was a fantastic opportunity because I came back with so many different perspectives,” said UNCW Assistant Director of Transfer Admissions and graduate student Trey Ricks. “I think one of the things that I walked away with that has been most impactful is that you have to work with the environment and people to make any kind of change.”

Fulbright Scholar and UNCW graduate student Elisapeti Veikoso saw some parallels between the issues Outer Banks communities are facing and those of her native Tonga.

“I have to say that this course was an eye-opener for me in how developed countries try to deal with coastal issues and the big issues that we’re facing nowadays – climate change, sea level risk and frequent tropical cyclones, I think you call them hurricanes,” she said. “I got the same feeling that we have at home. We’re not alone in dealing with climate issues. As an islander, that is our story as well. This class is really an eye-opener.”

That’s what the professors – current and past – aim to provide through the course.

“It took a lot of people to put the whole class together,” Herstine said. “Do I think that the class itself is a legacy for the university? Yes, I definitely do.”

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

BEAUFORT – The state’s Rachel Carson Reserve protects more than its herd of around 30 wild horses.

The dedicated nature preserve’s five uninhabited barrier islands, totaling 2,315 acres, protect historic downtown Beaufort from the ravages of ocean winds and tides.

“You can see just how vulnerable the town of Beaufort can be during storms coming through that Beaufort Inlet,” Central Sites Manager Paula Gillikin said early Friday afternoon from the boardwalk on Carrot Island, one of the five islands making up the site.

Gillikin was speaking to North Carolina Department of Environmental Quality leadership, local, state and federal elected officials, fiscal research and governor’s office budget staff, partners, residents and volunteers, as part of a “Discover the N.C. Coastal Reserve Tour.”

The gathering of about 20 had met earlier that morning at Beaufort Hotel to tour the Rachel Carson Reserve. It was the third stop on a multi-year campaign launched in June 2023 when the Currituck Banks Reserve reopened after repairs. The second stop was at Bird Island Reserve in December 2023.

NCDEQ Chief Deputy Secretary Tim Watkins explained before the tour how 50 years ago, “North Carolina enacted the Coastal Area Management Act, or CAMA, as we all know it.”

“Passing CAMA in 1974 was a bold and important step that was intended to balance economic development and protection of coastal resources through coordination and planning under the umbrella of state and local partnership,” Watkins said. “CAMA was also intended to reflect the will of coastal residents in finding this balance.”

He noted how CAMA was amended in the 1980s to establish the state Coastal Reserve Program, which “provides public access to coastal areas, essential habitat, fisheries and wildlife, and a cleaner healthier environment for all. The reserve sites also strengthen our communities by developing a sense of place and creating opportunities to reconnect and recharge with our natural world.”

Coastal Reserve Program Manager Rebecca Ellin said that the reserve program protects more than 44,000 acres of coastal and estuarine habitats across the 10 sites.

These sites provide essential habitat for wildlife, educational opportunities for students, teachers and the public, living laboratories for scientists to inform the management of the state’s coasts and estuaries, public enjoyment for citizens and visitors and protection of local communities from storms and erosion, Ellin said.

“The reserve program in North Carolina started nearly 40 years ago with the designation of the North Carolina National Estuarine Research Reserve. This happened in 1985 via a state-federal partnership between the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration National Estuarine Research Reserve System and the Division of Coastal Management,” she said.

The designation of the North Carolina National Estuarine Research Reserve provided an inspirational model for the state of North Carolina to protect additional habitat areas, Ellin continued.

“In 1989, the General Assembly amended the Coastal Area Management Act to do just that and formally established the North Carolina Coastal Reserve, which includes the North Carolina National Estuarine Research Reserve.”

There were a handful of past and current elected officials on hand, including Rett Newton, who was raised in Beaufort and is a former town mayor. He said that protecting the Rachel Carson Reserve is “personal for us. It is personal. It may not be personal for Raleigh, Durham, Chapel Hill, or Washington, D.C., but I assure you it is very personal for us.”

Beaufort Mayor Sharon Harker, who is in her second term, added that the reserve has a lot of talents, and the town is working with the state programs to protect the island for future generations. “It’s a classroom, it’s a laboratory, it provides us information so that we can inform policies to be better and proactive caretakers of the island, but the reserve is a gem. It’s part of our character, it’s part of our history.”

Sen. Norm Sanderson, R-Pamlico, who also represents Carteret County, told attendees that the reserve is worth fighting for and worth protecting, “not only for its beauty, but its protection” as a barrier island.  “It’s up to us to save it for the next generation.”

Rep. Pricey Harrison, D-Guilford, was on the coast for the tour, as well. A resident of Greensboro, Harrison said she spends her weekends patrolling the shoreline of the Rachel Carson Reserve and has for 34 years.

She extended her gratitude to those who have made the reserve “such a special place” adding, “I love this place. I’m going to do what I can save it.”

Rep. Celeste C. Cairns, R-Carteret and Craven counties, spoke briefly, stating she is “so proud of this district. It’s impossible to express how much I love it here.”

Gillikin, who grew up in Beaufort and is currently a town commissioner, has been with the reserve program since 2007, and oversees both the Rachel Carson Reserve and Permuda Island Reserve near Topsail Island.

Gillikin said she feels “privileged to coordinate the stewardship of this site and to work with all the passionate community members and commercial users and teachers and advisory committee members. It really is all about people.”

She echoed Newton in that the site is very personal to her, because five generations back, her family owned a lot of the land, and “I never thought that I would come back to Beaufort and be a steward of the land.” She left Beaufort to attend the University of North Carolina Wilmington.

“Their blood, sweat and tears are out there. And mine are too,” she said, clarifying “no big injuries, just some nicks and cuts.”

After the tour, Ellin expressed her gratitude for those who joined, “to celebrate the Rachel Carson Reserve, share their perspectives, and take in its beauty and the diverse roles the reserve plays for ecosystems and people alike.”

About the Carrot Island Living Shoreline Project

Part of the event included a quick peek by boat of the Carrot Island Living Shoreline Project, currently under construction.

A representative of consulting firm Moffatt & Nichol, which is a contractor on the living shoreline project here, told Coastal Review Monday that work began April 12. A joint project between Carteret County and the North Carolina Coastal Reserve, the work includes around 1,475 linear feet of living shoreline, extending along the east side of Carrot Island, which is adjacent to Taylor’s Creek. 

The design features two sills. There is a sill of wave-attenuation units, called ExoForms and manufactured by Natrx, a nature-based resilience and restoration company in Raleigh, and a sill with oyster habitat units called Oyster Catchers, which are manufactured by Sandbar Oyster Co. in Beaufort.

The footprint for the ExoForms is around 11,250 square feet, with a length of 1,250 feet, and the footprint for the oyster habitat sill is about 6,960 square feet, and about 1,270 linear feet.

The sills run parallel to one another with a gap of 10 feet in between. Both are 100-foot segments with 10-foot gaps between the segments to allow water and wildlife to move through.

Plans include planting marsh grass, both Spartina alterniflora and Spartina patens, to support stabilization of the shoreline and enhance the ecological value of the project, according to the company.

“The length of shoreline to be protected was chosen to provide maximum benefit to the Carrot Island shoreline based upon available funding from the National Fish and Wildlife Foundation, the North Carolina Land and Water Fund, and the North Carolina Department of Environmental Quality,” according to the company.

Gilikin said monitoring the project’s performance over time and sharing successes and lessons learned could inform future living shoreline design and estuarine shoreline management in coastal North Carolina.

About the reserve program

The North Carolina Coastal Reserve and National Estuarine Research Reserve program initiative began in 1982 with funding from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s National Estuarine Research Reserve System.

Three sites were dedicated in 1985 to be part of the North Carolina National Estuarine Research Reserve: Rachel Carson, Currituck Banks and the Zeke Island reserves. The fourth national site, Masonboro Inlet Reserve, was designated in 1991.

The state initiated the parallel program in 1987. This move, according to NCDEQ, was to protect other coastal areas that could not be incorporated into the national program. The state acquired Permuda Island near topsail Island that year and Buxton Woods in the southern Outer Banks in 1988.

In 1989 CAMA formally established the North Carolina Coastal Reserve Program. In the following years, the state program grew to include Kitty Hawk Woods Reserve in 1992, Bald Head Woods Reserve in 1993, Emily and Richardson Preyer Buckridge Reserve in Tyrrell County in 1999, and Bird Island Reserve, the southernmost site, in 2002.

Updated 10:30 a.m. Wednesday: The Senate Agriculture, Energy and Environment Committee adopted the amendment during its meeting Wednesday morning in Raleigh.

Original post 11:45 a.m. Tuesday:

Sen. Bobby Hanig, R-Currituck, has proposed language that would direct the Coastal Resources Commission to implement its longstanding rule protecting Jockey’s Ridge until the commission can adopt a permanent rule that again defines the massive dune as an area of environmental concern.

Hanig said Tuesday during the Senate Agriculture, Energy and Environment Committee meeting in the Legislative Building in Raleigh that he would formally introduce the proposed committee substitute for House Bill 426 for committee consideration Wednesday.

The proposed language is in response to an ongoing dispute between the Coastal Resources Commission and the state Rules Review Commission, which last year rejected 30 longtime coastal rules, including protections for Jockey’s Ridge in place since 1977.

The CRC is responsible for adopting coastal management rules. The RRC is charged with reviewing and approving rules adopted by state agencies.

“Currently there’s a lawsuit between the CRC and RRC regarding several emergency declarations that were put in place and Jockey’s Ridge is caught in the middle of it,” Hanig said Tuesday during the committee discussion. “Currently Jockey’s Ridge is not protected from any type of construction or anything like that. So, we got to make sure we take care of Jockey’s Ridge.”

Hanig’s measure would direct the Coastal Resources Commission to implement its previously adopted rule establishing minimum use standards for development in the Jockey’s Ridge area environmental concern until the CRC adopts permanent rules.

The language would also require Department of Administration to hold a public hearing before granting an easement on state property for disposal of spoil materials dredged from navigable waters or dumping rights of spoil materials in the county where the proposed easement is located and consult with the Joint Legislative Commission on Governmental Operations, effective Aug. 1.

It would also “clarify” language regarding surfaces excluded from consideration as “built-upon area” for purposes of state or local stormwater programs. It would also add artificial turf installed over pervious surface to the list of surfaces that are not considered built-upon area.

The panel of scientists that advises the North Carolina Coastal Resources Commission will continue its review of inlet hazard areas boundaries during a web conference on Wednesday.

The 2 p.m. meeting will be the latest round of efforts by the CRC Science Panel to update decades-old inlet hazard area, or IHA, maps.

IHAs are shorelines especially vulnerable to erosion and flooding where inlets can shift suddenly and dramatically. Erosion rates are more similar and evenly parallel along a straight shoreline. That’s not the case at inlet shores, which curve around.

After initially forming in the late 1990s, the Science Panel identified a need to update the state’s IHAs. Since then, the Science Panel has discussed how to best predict inlet erosion and accretion rates at IHAs and recommended updated boundaries.

Updates were proposed in 2010, but discussions on those were sidelined by a state-implemented terminal groin study and a study of oceanfront erosion rates.

The CRC in 2015 unanimously approved rule amendments and redrawn boundaries for IHAs, but Division of Coastal Management officials later withdrew those citing the need for additional review on rules pertaining to size and location of buildings allowed within inlet areas.

Ten of North Carolina’s 19 active inlets are developed, including Tubbs, Shallotte and Lockwood Folly in Brunswick County; Carolina Beach, Masonboro, Mason and Rich in New Hanover County; New Topsail and New River in Pender County; and Bogue Inlet in Carteret County.

The public may listen to the meeting by computer or phone.

Join webinar # 2422 033 0197 via Webex | Password: science2024 (72436232 from phones)

Join by phone: 1-415-655-0003 | Access code: 2422 033 0197

A listening station will be established at DCM headquarters at 400 Commerce Ave. in Morehead City.

Interested parties may submit comments by email to DCMcomments@deq.nc.gov. List “Science Panel” in the subject line.

The division carries out the state’s Coastal Area Management Act, the Dredge and Fill Law and the federal Coastal Zone Management Act of 1972 in the 20 coastal counties, using rules and policies enacted by the Coastal Resources Commission. The division also serves as staff to the commission.

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

When first considered 50 years ago, the Coastal Area Management Act (CAMA) was the most controversial environmental legislation considered in the state. It was then and remains the state’s only attempt to forge a state-local government partnership for regional resource management. Many observers in 1974 thought that if not repealed, this new law would collapse from the weight of its overly ambitious design.

Yet CAMA is still with us. This article reviews how the law came to be, how it has worked, and the challenges it faces moving forward.

Adoption

Gov. Bob Scott first proposed a state coastal program in 1969. Given the complexity of developing a “comprehensive and enforceable plan” for the coastal zone, in 1971 a 25-member Blue Ribbon Committee with diverse interests was created to develop legislation. It took the committee two years to develop a draft bill that served as the framework for CAMA.

In early 1973, the administration of newly elected Republican Gov. Jim Holshouser supported moving forward with the bill. It was introduced by the Democratic chairs of the House and Senate committees that would consider the bill, Rep. Willis Whichard of Durham and Sen. Bill Staton of Lee County. Coastal local governments quickly expressed reservations about the state taking over traditional local powers relative to land use management. So, the sponsors decided to conduct a series of hearings in the coastal area between the 1973 and 1974 legislative sessions to further refine the legislation.

After these hearings and much deliberation, the bill was revised to that strengthened the role of local government and move most policy decisions to a Coastal Resources Commission (CRC) composed of citizens with a broad range of differing interests and expertise (rather than with the Department of Environment and Natural Resources Secretary as originally proposed). A Coastal Resources Advisory Committee with strong local representation was added to bolster local involvement. The bill still faced strong opposition from some in the development community, from private property rights advocates, and some coastal local governments. Most coastal legislators remained in opposition. But with strong bipartisan support from Gov. Holshouser and Lt. Gov. Jim Hunt (who at that time was the presiding officer in the Senate), and after several legislative near-death experiences, the bill was enacted on April 11, 1974.

This four-year effort to develop CAMA modelled what has been a defining feature of coastal management in North Carolina – proceeding cautiously but ambitiously and only after a great deal of discussion and consensus building amongst affected interests.

Judicial and Legislative Challenges

The threat of judicial invalidation was a serious immediate concern. The three principal legal challenges were that application of the law to coastal counties rather than making it a statewide program rendered it a “local law” prohibited by the state constitution, that the broad authority granted to the CRC constituted an unlawful delegation of legislative discretion, and that the development regulations would be an unconstitutional taking of private property. In 1978 the North Carolina Supreme Court upheld the law on the local act and unlawful delegation claims and held the takings claim was premature.

There have since been nearly 30 state appellate court decisions regarding CAMA. Most have dealt with the process for making individual permit appeals to the courts, the details of specific enforcement orders, and the occasional interpretation of development standards and variance rules as applied to individual applications. No cases have found that CAMA rules unconstitutionally constrain private property rights, notably upholding decisions to deny permits for fill for a road in wetlands and for construction of shoreline erosion control structures.

The threat of legislative repeal of the law did not materialize. That is not to say there has not been ongoing legislative opposition. In the early 1980s a prominent coastal legislator threatened to “gut CAMA like a fish on the wharf in Wanchese” and unsuccessfully sought to eliminate most of its budget. While the General Assembly has continually tweaked and refined the law, most of the legislative changes strengthened or refined the details of the law rather than weakening it. Budgetary support has waxed and waned over the years, but as part of broader trends affecting all environmental programs.

Program Accomplishments

CAMA has successfully met most of its lofty goals.

Land use planning. When CAMA was enacted only a small handful of coastal cities or counties had land use plans and local development regulations. That was not surprising given the rural and small-town nature of much of the coastal region. So, building local institutional planning capacity was an early focus of CAMA. By 1993 all 20 coastal counties and 67 municipalities (including 59 cities with populations under 5,000) had adopted plans and had them approved by the CRC.

The state’s planning guidelines have evolved over time to promote local attention to key policy areas, including addressing storm hazards and rebuilding, beach access, coastal water quality, and more resilient and sustainable development patterns. Greater flexibility has been granted to local governments to tailor planning to their particular circumstances. While the quality of individual local plans still varies a good deal, the level of citizen and local government engagement in addressing future land use and development has moved from nearly nonexistent to robust. This would have happened for only a few local governments without the CAMA planning mandate and the substantial state and federal funding provided to prepare and implement local plans.

Development standards. The second early focus of the program was developing a permit program for critical coastal environmental areas. In 1977 the CRC designated coastal waters and wetlands and about 3% of the coastal land area as its permit jurisdiction. While the areas have been tweaked and modestly expanded several times since, the scope of CAMA permit jurisdiction has been accepted and noncontroversial. Initiatives to consolidate and streamline permit processing have been adopted over the years, including exemptions for minor development and expedited general permits for routine work.

The standards for development have prevented unwise and harmful development while not deterring beneficial and desirable development. The wholesale filling and excavation of coastal marshes taking place in the 1950s and 1960s was halted. Piers, bulkheads, and marinas are built without destroying critical fisheries habitats or interfering with public use of coastal waters. “Living shorelines” and other innovations for dealing with estuarine shoreline erosion are being encouraged. Redevelopment of urban waterfronts and enhancement of the state’s ports proceeds in a responsible fashion.

The standards adopted for development in ocean hazard areas are one of the more significant program accomplishments. Oceanfront setbacks have prevented construction of new structures that would shortly be in danger of falling into the ocean. When these setbacks were enacted in 1979, it was estimated there were nearly 800 existing oceanfront lots that could not meet the new setback requirements. The doubled setback later adopted for large structures further reduces future losses, particularly when major storms strike the coast. CAMA standards prohibit the construction of oceanfront bulkheads that would eventually destroy the public beach. These measures, which would not exist without CAMA, have been critical in preserving the attractive ocean beaches that are a beloved state treasure and essential to the tourism industry.

Beach and water access. The General Assembly significantly improved CAMA by adding an ocean beach access program in 1981 and extending it to estuarine shorelines and waters in 1983. These laws declared, and the courts subsequently confirmed, that the public has a right to free use of ocean beaches and public trust waters. These programs provided the walkways, dune crossovers, piers, parking, and restrooms needed for people to get to and use these public resources. Since an initial $1 million beach access appropriation in 1981, the state has provided over $50 million in grants to support nearly 500 access projects. This extensive access program has been a rousing success.

Preservation of natural areas. As with beach access, CAMA did not originally include a program for preservation of natural areas that were not already under public ownership. That was rectified when the state secured approval for a four-site National Estuarine Research Reserve in 1982. Additional sites were added in the mid-1980s as state protected areas. The General Assembly formalized this initiative with the adoption of legislation establishing a state coastal reserve program in 1989. There are now 10 coastal reserve sites containing over 44,000 acres, assuring the long-term preservation of important natural areas for research, education, and public enjoyment.

Challenges

Coastal management is never “solved.” The appropriate balance between competing legitimate public interests in development and conservation is always in flux. New issues and challenges emerge. Old conflicts and controversies are resurrected. Interest groups on all sides continually jockey for some new advantage.

Two additional factors will make resolution of ongoing coastal issues more challenging in the coming decades.

The state’s population, which was under 5.5 million when CAMA was enacted, is now over 10.5 million and is expected to top 14 million by 2050. While coastal population growth in the 1960s created the need for CAMA, the coming decades will see even greater growth. Six of our oceanfront counties are projected to have population increases of over 25% by 2050. Accommodating this growth will put significant pressures on natural resources and public infrastructure. Many of our beach towns are nearly built out at the current low-density levels desired by residents and visitors alike. Securing affordable housing and maintaining the traditional character and charm of coastal communities will be difficult. At the same time, six of our coastal counties are facing population losses of over 10% by 2050, which poses different but no less significant challenges for these more rural coastal areas.

There has been an understandable pressure on the state program since the mid-1980s to focus its efforts and attention on improving the permitting program that it directly manages. However, as those who crafted CAMA clearly understood, the permitting program alone will be inadequate to meet this coming growth challenge. Renewed funding and attention to the collaborative state-local land use planning built into CAMA will be necessary.

The second factor that will increasingly challenge CAMA success is the accelerating impacts of climate change in general and sea level rise particularly. Accommodating new development and protecting natural resources will be more difficult given more frequent and widespread flooding and storms, increasing habitat loss, threats to transportation and utilities infrastructure, and the near-certain eventual need to address major post-storm recovery and rebuilding. While meaningful attention is now being given to adaptation and resilience issues, going well beyond “business as usual” will be essential to deal with these longer-term impacts. The integrated use of regulation, planning, acquisition, and public education that is built into CAMA provides the opportunity to do this.

Keys to Continued Success

Legislative support and funding have always been and will continue to be fragile. Those disappointed by policies adopted by the CRC seek to persuade the legislature to intervene, a perennial practice that will no doubt continue. Building continuing and constructive legislative engagement is necessary for program success.

The question of who makes the key program policy decisions was one of the most hotly debated issues 50 years ago and continues today with debate on how the CRC should be composed and who should appoint its members. How that is resolved is critical as the program will thrive only with quality appointments. The CRC members’ expertise, judgment, dedication, and leadership are indispensable elements for program success.

Broad public engagement and education, which was absolutely essential to creation of the program and its early success, is all the more difficult with the loss of local newspapers, fractured electronic media, and increasingly rigid partisan and ideological polarization. Building a shared understanding of the impacts of and threats to coastal development is necessary to build the consensus needed to address coming challenges.

The guiding principle for those crafting CAMA and responsible for its early successes was an abiding dedication to long-term protection of the coast for the beneficial use and enjoyment of all its residents and visitors. In the early 1980s, then-CRC Chair Parker Chesson would often remind the CRC, CRAC, staff, and public at the end of long and sometimes fractious discussion, “We’ve heard from everybody and now it’s time to decide what is in the best long-term public interest.”

Adherence to that admonition, along with a lot of hard work by a lot of good people, will be necessary if we want to have a 100-year celebration of the enactment of CAMA.

Ocean Isle Marina is now officially a state-certified Clean Marina.

The North Carolina Department of Environmental Quality’s Division of Coastal Management earlier this month certified the Brunswick County marina as the state’s latest North Carolina Clean Marina, a designation given to marinas that exceed minimum regulatory requirements.

The division said the Clean Marina program illustrates how marina operators can help safeguard the environment by using best management and operation techniques that exceed environmental requirements. To earn the certification, the marina’s owners control boat maintenance and prepare spill-prevention plans to protect water quality. Marina operators also incorporate safety and emergency planning for their facilities.

“The partnership with marinas in the Clean Marina Program is critical in implementing environmental best management practices to protect, maintain and improve water quality in North Carolina,” Division of Coastal Management Director Tancred Miller said in a statement released Tuesday.

Clean Marina is a voluntary program in which participating marina operators must complete an evaluation form about their use of specific best management practices to protect water quality. If a marina meets Division of Coastal Management criteria, it will be designated as a Clean Marina. Such marinas are eligible to fly the Clean Marina flag and use the logo in their advertising. The flags signal to boaters that a marina cares about the cleanliness of area waterways, officials said.

Clean Marina is a nationwide program developed by the National Marine Environmental Education Foundation, a nonprofit organization that works to clean up waterways for better recreational boating. The foundation encourages states to adopt Clean Marina principles to fit their own needs.

The North Carolina program is a partnership between the Division of Coastal Management, the Albemarle-Pamlico National Estuary Partnership, North Carolina Sea Grant, the U.S. Power Squadron, and the U.S. Coast Guard Auxiliary.

Learn more

• Apply for Clean Marina status.
• Clean Marina webmap.

Reprinted from the Carteret County News-Times

ATLANTIC BEACH — The Atlantic Beach Town Council, during its monthly meeting in the town hall, voted Monday to further protect the natural and nourished oceanfront dune system, which protects property from hurricanes and other storms and provides natural habitat for wildlife.

The amendment prohibits crossing of dunes outside “an established walkway or defined path.”

Specifically, the amendment states that:

“It shall be unlawful for any person to traverse or travel upon any frontal dune at any location other than a designated walkway structure or established sand pathway. Examples of unlawful activities include playing on, climbing on, and allowing pets to traverse upon the frontal dunes, the removal of frontal dune vegetation, and other activities that reduce the stability of the frontal dune system and potentially decrease its storm protection, wildlife habitat, and aesthetic values.”

Exemptions are made in the ordinance for regulatory, contract, and research activities conducted by government officials, and storage of small sailboats out of the public trust beach area and the tidal zone, provided permission is granted by the oceanfront property owner.

GIS agreement

Also during the meeting, the council authorized Town Manager John O’Daniel to execute an interlocal agreement with Carteret County to provide and share geographic information system, or GIS, data to the county.

O’Daniel said the agreement calls for the town to pay the Carteret County GIS Department $60 per hour to set up and provide the service.

The council had discussed the idea during its 2022 planning retreat, and the county recently made the offer to work out an agreement to partner with the town in the administration and setup of GIS data.

“The partnership will further the goal of streamlining technology as discussed in the retreat,” O’Daniel said.

Under the agreement, the county will administer GIS data for the town. The county, through its GIS Department, will direct personnel to perform this function on behalf of the town.

The agreement is for one year but will be renewed annually if either party does not submit in writing to the other party its intent to terminate the agreement. In the event of either party’s desire to terminate the agreement, a 30-day notice must be given from one party to the other.

Atlantic Beach staff, by way of the agreement, will have access/license to use software under the county enterprise license.

This story is provided courtesy of the Carteret County News-Times, a twice-weekly newspaper published in Morehead City. Coastal Review partners with the News-Times to provide our readers with news of the North Carolina coast.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

— Paul Godfrey

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

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

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

~

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

~

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

ATLANTIC BEACH – Numerous oceanfront property owners here are banding together in a developing legal dispute over who owns the dry sand beach in front of their houses.

An attorney representing the owners said last week that he hopes the state attorney general will intervene to protect the public’s rights.

The dispute arose last month after a Cape Carteret resident, who also has an apparently dormant real estate business website for a firm in Wilson, notified the beachfront property owners and others that he now owns the dunes and that their continued access to the beach amounts to trespassing.

James Anthony Bunn in April registered quitclaim deeds with the county for more than a dozen parcels in Atlantic Beach south, or oceanward, of beach houses and condominiums to the east and west of the boardwalk at the former amusement circle. Bunn’s mailing address is 102 Hunting Bay Drive, Cape Carteret, according to county records. Last year, he also registered deeds on parcels in Down East Carteret County. 

All show sales prices of zero dollars or minimal exchanges, such as $10 in consideration, with no county revenue stamps paid. Attorneys who prepared the deeds noted that no title work was requested or performed. 

Unlike warranty deeds, quitclaim deeds in North Carolina carry no guarantee of title.

Some of the individual oceanfront parcels that Bunn claims to own front multiple beach houses — one as many as five separately owned homesites.

Attorney Rob Wheatly of Beaufort is representing some of the Atlantic Beach property owners whom Bunn had notified of his claim of ownership.

“First, he started by sending out a statement. I don’t know if he sent it to everybody, I know that a couple of people showed me what they had. He wanted them to sign some agreement with him, sort of like a lease where they would be able to continue to go on about the property. He was not going to interfere with their use if they in fact signed that paper. The people we talked to, we told them not to sign it for various legal reasons,” Wheatly told Coastal Review Friday.

Wheatly said that because nobody would sign the agreement, Bunn had since been “stepping it up” to the point where he had posted “no trespassing” signs and was telling people who were accessing the beach that they were trespassing.

Oceanfront property owners told Coastal Review that Bunn was wearing a gun on his hip during their interactions with him. Some described cordial conversations, but others said Bunn acted in an intimidating or threatening manner, allegedly calling one homeowner a “chickenshit,” and that his going armed on the public beach,in the presence of families with children, was out of line.

Coastal Review has obtained two police incident/investigation reports dated April 18 and April 27 involving “verbal disputes” between Bunn and other individuals. Some information in the police reports was redacted.

Bunn, when reached for comment, said his intention in claiming ownership was for his “quiet, personal enjoyment.” He said he had tried unsuccessfully to work with the oceanfront property owners. Bunn then said he didn’t want to answer Coastal Review’s questions and hung up. He then called back shortly after and agreed to answer questions but only by email.

In his email response to Coastal Review’s questions, Bunn said he was, “in the process of evaluating my land for a suitable location to develop a non profit low impact site to provide a covered structure with bathroom facilities, running water electricity and private parking to be used by physically or mentally impa(i)red individuals who could not otherwise peacefully enjoy a day at the beach.”

Bunn did not respond to further questions, including whether he had formed a nonprofit or partnered with an existing organization to provide such services. He also did not respond to questions regarding any discussions he might have had with town officials or staff with the state Division of Coastal Management regarding his development plans.

Atlantic Beach Mayor Trace Cooper told Coastal Review last week that the strip of dunes was once part of a tract known as the Musgrave property, but that land had completely eroded away decades ago.

“I don’t think they are lots anymore. These kinds of ocean parcels have been on the tax maps for a while, but my belief, based on what I remember as a kid in the ’70s and what I’ve heard from everybody, is that those areas eroded away before we began our beach nourishment program. The first beach nourishment was in 1979, and there’s a state statute on point that says oceanfront, basically beaches, if it is created through a publicly funded beach nourishment project, that sand is property of the state, and all the public trust rights that would apply to other parts of the beach would apply to that,” Cooper said.

According to state law, the title to land in or immediately along the Atlantic Ocean raised above the mean high-water mark by publicly financed beach nourishment projects “shall remain open to the free use and enjoyment of the people of the State, consistent with the public trust rights in ocean beaches, which rights are a part of the common heritage of the people of the State.”

Wheatly agreed that the ocean had decades ago washed away the beach, he said up to a seawall that had been placed there sometime in the mid-1950s. The beach has since been nourished several times with sand from the shipping channel in Beaufort Inlet. 

Wheatly said that’s referred to as “avulsion,” where, in this case, there’s a sudden throwing up of spoil next to the ocean or a river, “and by statute that becomes property of the state of North Carolina,” he said.

“The big issue is going to be where these dunes have now been created through the years, or the neighbors putting sand fences or these sorts of things,” Wheatly said. “And of course, the neighbors have been walking across the area down to the water all these many years, and they would have what is referred to as a prescriptive easement to go from their property down to the beach, and that requires a 20-year use. So, if it’s not the state of North Carolina’s public trust lands, then these people certainly would have a prescriptive easement to go to and from their properties the way they’ve been going all those many years.”

Cooper said no town-owned properties are involved in the dispute, only privately owned homes and condos.

“My guess is that he’s trying to be big enough of a problem that these homeowners may just want to pay him off,” Cooper said. “The town is trying to do what we can, but it’s essentially a private property dispute. We are not allowed to spend public money for private benefit, so we couldn’t be the lead plaintiff in this, even if we wanted to be. We probably don’t have standing, but we’re standing by to do anything we can to help these homeowners put this issue to rest.”

Wheatly said that in his discussions with Atlantic Beach town attorney Derek Taylor, the dispute amounted to a beach access issue for the town. 

“I would assume the people that live on the second, third, fourth rows walk through these areas and paths and on all roads going down to the beach. But it can be a real mess, and especially for these renters when they rent their houses, and the guests come there and, all of a sudden, they’re walking down to the ocean and see a sign saying ‘no trespassing.’ It could be a real detriment to everybody,” Wheatly said.

Wheatly said he had spoken about the dispute with the Division of Coastal Management, who had recently put him in touch with the State Property Office.

“We really don’t know where we’re going in this yet, but I assume that eventually, maybe the attorney general will come in and protect the public. If not, then there will probably have to be private litigation,” Wheatly said.

Through a newly launched online system, individuals, organizations and the press can request public records from the North Carolina Department of Environmental Quality.

The new online form on the DEQ website is an effort by the state agency to improve efficiency, tracking and fulfillment of requests by staff, officials said.

The form provides a single place for requesting public records from any division or regional office, including documents, emails, and Phase 1 reports.

Many of the agency’s public records have been available online, including permits, compliance documents and environmental documents. DEQ’s ArcGIS resources, like the Community Mapping System, include links to permits and associated documents for most regulated facilities.

For a complete list of the department’s online public records and ArcGIS resources, visit the agency’s Online Public Records page.

RODANTHE — It’s been more than a year since the first oceanfront house, standing on an eroded beach within Cape Hatteras National Seashore, collapsed into the ocean in the early morning on Feb. 9.

Two more nearby houses fell in May. Each time, tons of construction debris — jagged, sharp, toxic, ugly — were carried for miles by wind and surf into the sea and along the beach.

Although the privately owned houses in Rodanthe, a small Hatteras Island village, were left by erosion teetering on the public beach, local, state and federal officials have been stymied by gaps in laws and a lack of funding options to prevent other houses from being swallowed by the Atlantic.

Special Report: Houses on the Edge

“I don’t believe that anyone really wants to see structures end up all the way out on the public beach, including the property owners,” Braxton Davis, director of the North Carolina Division of Coastal Management, told 46 attendees during a virtual workshop held Monday to share information and discuss solutions on threatened oceanfront houses, some of which obstruct the surf zone with their damaged decks and exposed septic tanks.

“They’re creating some impacts to aquatic species and shorebirds and their habitats, and they’re interfering with public use of the beach,” Davis said. “And unfortunately, in some cases, really no action is taken or available until after a house collapses and results in significant marine debris and additional impacts and costs.”

Hosted by Cape Hatteras National Seashore, and the division, which is part of the state Department of Environmental Quality, six members of the interagency work group, including co-chairs Davis and Hallac, addressed the topic “Property Acquisition and Financial Assistance.”

In the first of the four workshops planned for the year, other participants were Bill Holman, North Carolina director of The Conservation Fund; Bobby Outten, Dare County manager and attorney; Gavin Smith, professor at North Carolina State University’s Department of Landscape, Architecture and Environmental Planning; Tancred Miller, sections chief for the division’s policy and planning; and Heidi Stiller, South regional director for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration Office for Coastal Management.

The group was established in August 2022 to determine, along with partners and stakeholders, policies and programs to “establish a proactive, holistic, predictable, and coordinated approach to erosion-threatened structures and to ensure that appropriate regulatory, legal, insurance, and financial mechanisms exist,” according to a division press release. The meeting Monday was its first open to the public and press.

But Dave Hallac, superintendent of the Cape Hatteras National Seashore, cautioned that the task force’s initial discussion is part of a process to determine what questions to ask and where to direct them, rather than resolve every issue.

“We need better answers and we need to develop better programs,” he said.

In his opening remarks, Davis noted that the coastal benefits of North Carolina’s “fairly conservative” oceanfront construction setbacks, as well as numerous beach nourishment projects, have been offset by constraints such as septic rules and private-versus-public property rights that can limit options to address impacts of beach erosion.

“And while sometimes you’ll have permitting conflicts, and legal disputes that linger for those properties while they’re out on the beach,” he continued, “they are, over the time period where that’s happening, posing significant risks to public health and safety.”

The following four questions were posed by the co-chairs:

• What programs are currently available to acquire, relocate or “deconstruct” threatened ocean structures?
• What is involved for beach communities that are considering a buyout, relocation or removal program?
• What options, if any, may be available through nonprofit organizations?
• What may be “out of the box” options worth investigating or pursuing?

As Hallac had forewarned, there weren’t many clear answers to be had.

For instance, Holman named a few programs that are in place, including the Resilient Communities Program and the Public Beach and Coastal Waterfront Access Program, but as they’re currently set up, neither would fund relocation or removal of threatened oceanfront structures.

Still, they could potentially be expanded or amended to allow those structures to be eligible, he said. And over the next four years, he added, there is potential for project funding from the $1 trillion 2021 Bipartisan Infrastructure Law.

Although climate change has finally gotten the attention of policymakers, government programs haven’t provided for more proactive measures such as relocation, retreat or removal. And assistance for owners of second homes or investment properties is anathema in proposals that involve public dollars.

Stiller with NOAA said that, in general, help for getting out of harm’s way is less available than help for repairs after the fact.

“I think the bottom line is there just isn’t a lot of funding out there for this,” she said. “And particularly, there isn’t funding for this in the predisaster context.”

But Stiller encouraged the panel to look at innovative programs that have been implemented or proposed in other states that incentivize property owners to work with local governments on solutions for their threatened properties that may buy them time or offer reasonable alternatives.

Buyouts are a concern not just to homeowners who are looking at losing their home, but also to municipalities that are facing loss of their tax base, Smith said.

One solution his department at N.C. State studied was looking at suitable land within the town’s extraterritorial jurisdiction that would maintain access to the municipal infrastructure while finding suitable locations to build replacement housing. But he conceded that there are unique challenges for barrier islands such as the Outer Banks.

“We’re looking at developing a series of managed-retreat options but also protect and accommodate strategies for coastal communities, both oceanfront and soundside,” he said, adding that he hopes to elaborate on them in a later discussion.

Holman said that nonprofits typically are not set up to support moving or buying private properties.

“It’s more challenging with these structures because it’s much harder to get both public and private support for buyouts,” he said.

Outten said that Rodanthe, which has a high rate of beach erosion, presents a quandary because its population is relatively small, but costs to fix the threats are relatively high. The county is currently seeking an estimate from a coastal engineering firm on costs for a beach nourishment project that would widen the shoreline in front of the threatened houses.

“You start talking about managed retreat, we do not have a mainland to retreat to,” he said. “And we’re essentially almost built out on the Outer Banks, and so retreat basically means abandonment for us.”

Meanwhile, as engineers and coastal managers work on long-term solutions, Outten suggested that it would make sense for national flood insurance policies administered by the Federal Emergency Management Agency to pay before a threatened house falls, rather than forcing homeowners to wait for collapse.

“If FEMA is going to pay for that, if that is something that is insurable and is a recoverable claim, then where it’s inevitable, as it is in Rodanthe, do a buyout ahead of the disaster to avoid all the problems that would come with it,” he said. “Let’s pay them out now and let’s get rid of them.”

Another improvement in government response, Stiller said, would be to require that people who buy property in vulnerable areas to buy an insurance policy that pays for removal and cleanup. Also, she said, paying for buyouts could provide the benefit of freeing up land to do nature-based solutions such as dune restoration.

Much of government is structured to protect roads and public infrastructure, Stiller said, citing a 2019 research paper, “Roads to Nowhere in Four States: State and Local Governments in the Atlantic Southeast Facing Sea-Level Rise.” But that posture overlooks current challenges, suggesting, she said, that “we need some new legal structures for this because we haven’t had to deal with these things before.”

Davis said that the next meeting planned for May will focus on legal and insurance issues.

At that, Miller said that private sector input will also be needed “to define where the answers are,” to address vulnerable beachfront houses on the eroding shoreline, considering that the risks and benefits of actions — or inactions — will be shared.

“But the clock is ticking,” he said. “… the impacts are being felt by all of us, whether they are before they collapse, and then after they collapse, certainly.”

Comments may be submitted by email to DCMcomments@ncdenr.gov. The subject line should reference “threatened oceanfront structures.”

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

— The editor.

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

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

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

Related: Stan Riggs to receive 2022 North Carolina Award

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

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

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

Thank you for this honor.

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

First in a series.

RODANTHE — Nothing good can be said about septic tanks leaking their foul contents onto a public beach. It sounds even worse that it’s within a national seashore on the Outer Banks renowned for its beautiful, clean beaches.

That unfortunate reality illustrates the challenge adapting to rising seas under outmoded policies and a bureaucracy paralyzed by competing interests.

“We have observed septic seeping out as recently as Saturday,” Dave Hallac, superintendent of Cape Hatteras National Seashore, said Thursday.

In the wake of several houses this year falling into the sea, Hallac said that about two-dozen houses in Rodanthe remain exposed to the ocean, where much of beachfront has lost the protective dune.

The national seashore’s physical scientist Michael Flynn said that the National Park Service was notified Oct. 29 about a strong odor of sewage on Ocean Drive in Rodanthe, where a number of houses, some with exposed and damaged septic tanks, are standing on the beach just yards from the swirling Atlantic. Earlier this year, three large houses on the same road collapsed into the ocean, littering miles of shoreline.

When Flynn inspected the area Sunday, he found that the whole drain field for one septic tank was washed out, he said, and another appeared to have an unsealed pipe that led to its drain field.

“It was two hours before low tide,” Flynn said. “You could see the high tide line. (The surf) was probably washing over the pipe.”

Rodanthe, one of seven village communities on Hatteras Island, has one of the highest rates of beach erosion on the Outer Banks. At Mirlo Beach, at the north end of Rodanthe, the average annual erosion rate has been as high as 14 feet.

According to Flynn, between 1998 and 2022, the average annual rate of erosion on Ocean Drive has ranged from 9 to 12 feet. In Buxton, another highly eroding shoreline that was recently renourished, he said that the erosion rate over that same period averaged about 6.8 feet a year.

The issue was reported to the Dare County Planning Department and the county Department of Environmental Health, which administers septic permits for the state.

According to information provided in an email Thursday from the county health department, a total of 24 septic systems had been compromised by storm damage at 15 different oceanfront properties this year. Nine septic repair permits were issued for Rodanthe properties, and remaining property owners may not have applied for a permit, or are waiting for new surveys to be completed.

“Several properties had repair systems installed and then subsequently washed out again,” according to the email. “In a few instances, the repair system was installed and washed out before the dwelling was ever reoccupied and as such would not contain any sewage.”

Property owners are required by state law to have a septic contractor remove and dispose of unusable old tanks. The county health department said it was not aware of any abandoned tanks, but if the system is on park service land, the federal agency would issue the removal order.

If a property owner does not comply, the first enforcement action would be issuing a Notice of Violation, followed by an Intent to Suspend, and finally an Immediate Suspension of Operation. But typically, the real estate property manager is notified, and the property is taken out of the rental program until repairs are made. If a compromised property is occupied, the occupants must be immediately relocated. Currently, there are no legal actions pending against any property owner, the health department said.

“In any case, the real estate company and property owner are instructed to have the remaining contents of the septic tank pumped out by a pumping and hauling service immediately,” according to the email.

Dare County Planning Director Noah Gilliam said that between February and July, notices were sent to more than 20 oceanfront property owners in Rodanthe and three in Buxton about various threats to their property, ranging from fallen decks to undermined foundations to damaged wastewater systems to risk of collapse.

Gilliam said that the county works with property owners to find solutions on a “case-by-case approach” to each damaged property.

“We’re still encouraging people to seek out an alternative method,” he said, including relocation, which can easily cost more than $100,000.

So far, three Rodanthe property owners have moved their houses away from the ocean, either farther back on their lot, or to another lot, and two more are in the process of obtaining permits.

Also, a private community was recently granted its request by the state to have Seagull Road declared officially abandoned, freeing up 45 feet of land under the road to relocate 12 houses. 

On-site septic systems in North Carolina are regulated by the North Carolina Department of Health and Humans Services under rules adopted by the Commission for Public Health, according to the department’s website. The commission’s septic rules are administered by local health departments, under the supervision of the On-Site Water Protection Branch within the Division of Public Health. If more than 50% of a septic system is damaged, under the rules it is no longer eligible for repair without a permit. There are also rules regulating setback and distance the system must be located from the house.

The state Division of Coastal Management is in the process of reevaluating and rewriting septic system rules, noted Ana Zivanovic-Nenadovic, assistant director of policy for the nonprofit North Carolina Coastal Federation, which publishes Coastal Review. One place to start, she said, would be for the state to follow the Department of Health rule already in place that bars septic tanks in areas subject to frequent flooding unless they’re watertight enough to withstand a 10-year flood.

“They do not remain operable during a 10-year storm because they’re ripped apart and leak sewage,” she said.

But as Zivanovic-Nenadovic said, the issue with big houses collapsing on eroded beaches goes beyond broken septic tanks littering shorelines. The Coastal Federation is working with the National Park Service, the state and other partners to find solutions that protect the public trust beach, the overall environment, private property rights and public access to the resources.

Operating under the same rules, regulations and policies is clearly not sustainable, she said. What can be done so at-risk houses sitting in surf zones are considered uninhabitable? What are realistic rules to locate septic systems on shorelines? How can homeowners be forced to clean up their houses that fall into the ocean, and what should be considered proper cleanup?

“This is a complex interplay of things that can be done on multiple levels,” Zivanovic-Nenadovic said.

Meanwhile, if someone wants to buy an oceanfront house today in Rodanthe, they’ll have plenty to choose from on Zillow and other online real estate sites. Including on Ocean Drive. 

DJ Gerken, currently Southern Environmental Law Center’s director of programs, will begin his new role as president and executive director Oct. 3.

The board of the Southern Environmental Law Center, a nonprofit, nonpartisan environmental legal advocacy organization, announced Gerken’s appointment to the position Wednesday.

Gerken will take over the role from Executive Director Jeff Gleason, who is retiring after a 30-year career with the organization. 

“In my eighteen years at SELC, I’ve been inspired by my colleagues and clients, mentored by the most effective environmental advocates in the nation, and had the privilege of protecting the places and people across this region I love,” Gerken said in a statement.

“I am honored by the opportunity to lead this extraordinary organization as it tackles our country’s greatest environmental challenges. This is the moment to build a better climate future and ensure a healthier environment for all, and SELC is the organization to lead the way for the South and the nation,” he continued. “I look forward to working with my exceptional colleagues and our partner organizations, and supporters to keep the promise of SELC.” 

Gerken began his career at the law center in 2004 in western North Carolina. In 2011, he became managing attorney for the law center’s Asheville office, and served as interim managing attorney for its Nashville office from 2017-19. Gerken was appointed program director in 2019.

Gerken led key lawsuits that contributed to the cancellation of the Atlantic Coast Pipeline, and was a lead litigator in the nearly decade-long coal ash campaign in North Carolina, which resulted in the commitment to clean up all coal ash in the state, as well as setting a precedent for other states in the South and beyond, according to the law center.

Previously, Gerken was an associate attorney for three years at Shea & Gardner, and he clerked for the Honorable H. Emory Widener Jr. in the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals in 2000-01.  

“I’m one of the many staff members at SELC fortunate enough to learn from and be inspired by DJ over the years, so I’m thrilled about what this means for our work,” said Managing Attorney Patrick Hunter, who leads the Asheville office and has worked closely with Gerken since joining SELC in 2012. “It is exciting for us all to have someone with DJ’s skills, heart, and foresight leading SELC at this moment.”

His appointment follows a six-month search by a board committee assisted by BoardWalk Consulting, a national search firm specializing in CEO recruitment for nonprofits and foundations.

“On behalf of SELC’s Board of Trustees, I am thrilled to welcome DJ Gerken as our new leader,” said Laura Gates, Chair of SELC’s Board of Trustees. “All of us are inspired by DJ’s passion, commitment, and talent, and our region has already benefited from his work. There is no one better positioned to lead SELC now. The organization is the strongest it has ever been, thanks to Jeff Gleason’s extraordinary leadership these past three and a half years. DJ is the person to meet the challenges and seize the opportunities of the next era.”   

Gerken and his family will return to Charlottesville, Virginia, where the law center is based and where he attended the University of Virginia School of Law. He also has a master’s in urban and environmental planning from University of Virginia School of Architecture. 

After a slow-moving, late-night session that stretched from 10 a.m. Thursday to 3 a.m. Friday, the North Carolina General Assembly adjourned with plans to come back in early September.

The legislative marathon included lengthy deliberations over bills that challenged Gov. Roy Cooper’s coronavirus response, last-minute fixes and several pieces of legislation in the works since last year’s contentious budget fight.

Among them are rescue funds for dozens of failing public water systems, state matches for federally funded coastal projects, requirements for hurricane-related flooding and resiliency planning, and steps for dealing with abandoned and derelict vessels.

As work wrapped up, the legislature avoided a last-minute fight over this year’s version in the series of large, multi-provision regulatory bills.

House appropriations co-chair Rep. Chuck McGrady, R-Henderson, who is leaving the legislature after five terms, said items flagged by Cooper were pulled from the bill. As a result, the Regulatory Reform Act of 2020, passed unanimously.

The bill allows the Division of Coastal Management to begin accepting electronic payments and gives the Department of Environmental Quality broader authority to establish emergency procedures for solid waste handling during a hurricane or other disasters.

State matching funds for federal coastal projects that are usually included in the comprehensive budget bill were added to another last-day omnibus. They include Morehead City and Wilmington harbor work and coastal storm mitigation projects for Kure Beach, Wrightsville Beach, Carolina Beach, Ocean Isle, Bogue Banks and Surf City, along with shoreline protection for North Topsail Beach.

That legislation, House Bill 1087, also includes a new initiative on flood storage capacity that would create basinwide inventories of areas than can temporarily hold water to reduce the impacts of severe flooding.

Budget delayed until fall

Not among the items completed was budget legislation, that’s the usual mission of the second year of the biennial, the so-called short session.

The legislature did pass some budget bills aimed at shoring up the Department of Transportation, which has put some construction projects on hold due to lack of funds, as well as targeted funding and policy changes for Department of Health and Human Services and the Department of Public Instruction. But a larger budget bill is likely on hold until the legislature returns on Sept. 3.

Throughout the nine-week session, the senate’s main budget negotiator, Sen. Harry Brown, R-Onslow, cautioned against developing a spending plan until rules on federal coronavirus relief are clearer and legislators have a better idea of revenue.

Brown, who is stepping down after eight terms, gave his farewell speech to the Senate a little after 2 a.m. Friday, imploring his colleagues to lift up the state’s poor counties. “There are two North Carolinas,” he reminded them.

The state followed the federal government in delaying its tax filing deadline to July 15, after the start of a new fiscal year. Since no budget was passed, for parts of the government not specifically funded in the short session, an automatic continuation budget law kicks in, funding departments and agencies at previous year levels.

Although work has been completed for now and an adjournment resolution passed, the General Assembly will spend the next week holding skeleton sessions in the event leaders want to call members back for a veto-override vote.

Cooper has said he would veto the legislature’s bills to reopen various businesses because they would “tie the hands” of public health officials.

Among the final round of bills, several sought to rewrite the use of emergency powers by the governor, including legislation requiring the governor to get approval of the Council of State.

RALEIGH – Disaster aid legislation is stalled in the North Carolina General Assembly as House and Senate negotiators work through differences in competing versions of the bill.

Among the top difference is the House’s inclusion of resiliency funding and a handful of significant policy shifts, initiatives Senate leaders say should wait until next year.

The Senate’s bill is aimed mainly at replenishing state matching funds for federal recovery programs.

Spending in the two bills differs considerably, with the House plan at $280,518,719 and the Senate’s at $130,812,336.

Also up in the air is how much the state will put into disaster aid for Ocracoke Island and mainland communities now that the state has been denied federal aid for individual assistance, a key source of housing repair and rehabilitation funds. Federal officials turned down the state’s request last month, saying it did not meet damage thresholds.

The state did receive approval for federal public assistance that will help cover debris removal and infrastructure repair costs.

The House bill includes flexibility to use some of the state disaster funds to help repair homes and businesses damaged during Hurricane Dorian in September, as well as $1.7 million for Ocracoke school repairs and elevation and $1.8 million for a pump station and flood-control infrastructure at Lake Mattamuskeet, items not included in the Senate legislation.

Both the House and Senate versions include a $30 million appropriation to the North Carolina Department of Transportation.

In explaining the House bill to the chamber’s Appropriations Committee, co-sponsor Rep. Chuck McGrady, R-Henderson, said the bill represents a shift in approach, moving the state from a storm-by-storm response to one that recognizes that major storms are bound to occur with far more frequency.

“This bill is in some ways a pivot from what we’ve done in the past because for the first time you’re seeing a large portion of the bill deals with resiliency or mitigation,” McGrady said. “When Hurricane Matthew hit us, we put in disaster relief to deal with the specific things that occurred. Then Florence hit us, then Michael hit us.”

The bill would add positions at the Office of Recovery and Resiliency, which was created earlier this year, to facilitate the flow of federal assistance and would accelerate resiliency planning throughout the state, including a targeted program through the Department of Environmental Quality’s Division of Coastal Management for the state’s 20 coastal counties.

McGrady said the bill also makes it easier for state agencies and local governments to shift unspent funds from one storm to needs related to another.

As the House moved its plan, the Senate took a different approach, advancing a bill that included the needed matching funds and little else.

Sen. Brent Jackson, R-Sampson, said he and his colleagues wanted more time to work through parts of the bill that go beyond immediate needs for matching grants. Jackson said he preferred to wait until the legislature returns in mid-January to take up other portions of the bill.

“We wanted to stick with just the federal match,” he said in an interview last week. “I think we’ll revisit it all at that point in time and we’ll have a better handle on what actually went on with Dorian that we don’t have now, as far as the damage.”

Both chambers appointed conferees to work out a final version of the bill.

House appointees are McGrady, the House chair, Reps. John Bell, R-Wayne, Donny Lambeth, R- Forsyth, Billy Richardson, D-Cumberland, and Jimmy Dixon, R-Duplin. Senate appointees are Jackson, the Senate chair, Sens. Harry Brown, R-Onslow, Kathy Harrington, R- Gaston, Danny Britt, R-Columbus, and Ralph Hise, R-Madison.

In an interview with Coastal Review Online, Rep. Bobby Hanig, R-Currituck, said he was disappointed a deal couldn’t be struck on the additional aid, especially Hyde County’s needs for Ocracoke and the mainland.

Hanig said that until the final version of the legislation is worked out, it’s difficult to assess what it will mean for the heavily damaged areas in his district. He’s willing to wait to discuss the resiliency portions of the bill, but not state aid to the hurricane victims.

“I’m focused on the immediate recovery needs,” he said.   “Resilience is something we have to look for down the road, but we have immediate needs that need to be met. We can’t make people wait for that.”

Ocracoke faces a long recovery regardless, he said, given the difficulties of getting needed materials to the island and getting debris off it.

“The logistics are the most severe you could imagine to get things done there,” Hanig said. “You have construction workers on a ferry five hours a day just going to or from work because there’s no place for them to stay.”

The next steps for the bill are unclear, but the deadlines for sections of it are not. State matching funds are estimated to start running out before the end of the month and the legislators would need to pass at least that portion of the bill when they return to Raleigh on Nov. 13 to avoid a disruption of federal funds.

Any funding beyond that will be up to the conference committee.

Bell, the House majority leader, expressed confidence last week that some of the House priorities would make it into the final version of the bill.

Bell was part of a House negotiating team that insisted that conference reports, including the disaster legislation, be eligible for consideration when the legislature returns.

Whether the final product includes both the additional Dorian assistance and the resiliency efforts is still a question, however.

During a hearing last week, Bell told his colleagues that putting the funds into resilience was a step in the right direction in improving the state’s follow-through on storm response.

“We do a really good job before the storm, during the storm and immediately after the storm,” Bell said. “We have been, as has been mentioned, lacking on the long-term recovery side.”

Bell, who led a recent select House committee that looked into hitches in disaster aid, said he’s convinced the state is now moving in the right direction on long-term recovery and resiliency. The need for it is clear he told colleagues.

“Hopefully we’ll get a couple years of relief and no storms,” he said. “But we’ll probably get another storm and we need to be prepared.”

Bridget Munger, a spokesperson for the Office of Recovery and Resiliency, said the new office and the Department of Emergency Management are committed to getting help for hurricane survivors.

“Due to the impacts of four storms over the past three years, many communities have substantial unmet needs that must be addressed. We will continue our efforts to work with the legislature to meet those needs as quickly as possible,” she said.

Crunching the numbers

Here’s a breakdown of the two bills:

Senate Version of House Bill 200, The 2019 Storm Recovery Act

Totals $130,812,336 in spending, appropriates the following:

• $70,812,336 to the Hurricane Florence Disaster Recovery Fund to provide state match for Florence-related federal disaster assistance programs.
• $11,197,013 for state match for Hurricane Matthew-related federal disaster assistance programs.
• $4,176,245 for state match for Hurricane Matthew-related federal disaster assistance programs.
• $16,300,000 for state match for Hurricane Dorian-related federal disaster assistance programs.
• $30 million to the Department of Transportation for current and future Hurricane Dorian activities such as debris removal, highway and infrastructure repair.

Policy Provisions include the following:

• State universities and other nonstate entities that receive funds are required to seek private donations to help cover losses.
• No state funds are allowed for construction of new residences within the 100-year floodplain.
• $30 million nondisaster-related appropriation to the state Rural Health Care Stabilization Contingent Fund.

House Version — H1023, Storm Recovery Act of 2019

Totals $280,518,719 in spending, appropriates the following:

• $70,812,336 to the Hurricane Florence Disaster Recovery Fund to provide state match for Florence federal disaster assistance programs.
• $11,197,013 for state match for Hurricane Matthew-related federal disaster assistance programs.
• $4,176,245 for state match for Hurricane Matthew-related federal disaster assistance programs.
• $17,800,000 for state match for Hurricane Dorian-related federal disaster assistance programs and similar state assistance that may supplement federal assistance or cover housing repairs and rehabilitation for those who do not qualify for federal assistance.
• $5 million to replenish the state’s Emergency Response and Disaster Relief Fund for future storms.
• $40 million to the state Office of Recovery and Resiliency to cover a $20 million bridge loan program for distressed local governments impacted by hurricanes Matthew, Michael, Florence or Dorian; $10 million in grants to local governments for Dorian disaster recovery; and $10 million for assistance and staff support to help local governments and regional agencies to develop resilience implementation.
• $17,600,000 to the Department of Environmental Quality for the state match for additional federal funds for the state’s Clean Water State Revolving Fund and the Drinking Water State Revolving Fund.
• $1.3 million to DEQ for four temporary positions and funding for coastal resiliency planning for all 20 coastal counties.
• $50,000 to DEQ for repair, restoration and recovery at the state’s Coastal Reserve sites damaged during Dorian.
• $30,000 to the Wildlife Resources Commission for repair and restoration to boating access areas in Carteret and Currituck counties.
• $30 million to the Department of Transportation for current and future Hurricane Dorian-related activities such as debris removal, highway and infrastructure repair.
• $2 million to DOT for living shoreline projects near key transportation infrastructure.
• $2 million to DOT to expand the state’s flood inundation mapping alert network, or FINMAN.
• $2 million to DOT for flood risk assessment along highway major transportation routes.
• $5 million to the Division of Emergency Management for expansion of flood mitigation studies
• $4.8 million to DEM for water and breach level monitoring systems for 1,510 high- and intermediate-risk dams.
• $32.3 million to DEM for LiDAR topography updates, aimed in at improving flood and landslide mapping.
• $5.2 million for repairs to storm damage at Elizabeth City State University.
• $1.7 for a direct grant to Hyde County for repairs at the Ocracoke School.
• $15 million for Golden LEAF grants for infrastructure repair.
• $1.8 million to Hyde County for a pump station and watershed restoration infrastructure for Lake Mattamuskeet.
• $753,125 for funding of the 2-1-1 program and new positions to administer federal grants for the Department of Public Safety.
• $5 million to the Department of Agriculture for the state’s swine buyout program to cover buyouts of high-priority operations in the 100-year floodplain.
• $5 million for stream debris removal.

Policy Provisions include the following:

• Adds flexibility in reporting for local governments to allow them to combine costs and projects and reallocate funds from individual storms.
• Allows local governments to use prequalified contractors during emergencies and disaster recovery.
• Implements a legislative review panel’s recommendations for new state systems, responsibilities and oversight for disaster recovery under the Office of Recovery & Resiliency.
• Appropriates $2 million for the extension of a pilot program that assists low income households in obtaining flood insurance.
• Appropriates $1 million to the Wildlife Resources Commission and authorizes the WRC to remove and dispose of abandoned and derelict vessels.

At some point in the recovery phase of nearly every major storm in North Carolina, there’s a shift from a flood response to a housing crisis.

In the short term, there is emergency funding for temporary housing as flooded-out homes and businesses are gutted and, if possible, made livable again. The Federal Emergency Management Agency provides funds for hotels and short-term rentals, but despite talk of resilience, in the long run there is little in place to break the cycle of residents returning to areas that are proven vulnerable to flooding time and again.

Grady McCallie, policy director at the North Carolina Conservation Network, said that as environmental organizations craft their proposals for policy changes and what to fund, there’s a recognition that there needs to be a comprehensive vision for dealing with increased flooding and more severe storms in the state’s coastal plain.

“The idea is, ‘how do we get stuff out of the floodplain that shouldn’t be in floodplain?’ And then, ‘how do we manage the floodplain in the future?’” McCallie said. Housing, he said, is a key part of that.

“Just getting people back into their homes is not a long-term solution. If all we do is get everybody back to the same place they were before Florence struck that wouldn’t be enough, because some other one is going to come along.”

Moving people out of the floodplain is going to take a long-term effort, he said, starting with making sure they have somewhere to go that’s affordable. “You can’t just buy people out with nowhere to go.”

In the coming months, as policy makers look at a recovery effort that will in all likelihood overlap with those started two years ago after Hurricane Matthew, moving more people out of the floodplain will be an overarching goal. It’s much of what resilience boils down to in eastern North Carolina.

Moving homes and businesses has proven to be a difficult, expensive process, however, and as recent evidence of little progress on long-term housing in response to Hurricane Matthew shows, it’s also a painfully slow process.

University of North Carolina Chapel Hill researchers Todd BenDor and David Salvesen, who recently published a report on buyouts that looked at strategies and tracked what happened to properties in eight North Carolina communities, said the impact of Hurricane Florence as the state is still recovering from Hurricane Matthew is evidence of the need for a long-term strategy for buyouts and housing for eastern North Carolina.

The report, funded by a grant from the North Carolina Policy Collaboratory and released in August, found a number of flaws in the way buyouts are done, first that they’re almost always reactive and not a part of an overall strategy.

“I don’t want to give the impression I’m against buyouts, I think they are an important part of mitigation, but the way they’re currently designed isn’t working for municipalities or for homeowners,” said Salvesen, a research associate with the Institute for the Environment who specializes in land use and assistance to communities. “Often these are done in haste after a disaster when there is little time and few options and that doesn’t work. Municipalities get stuck with this checkerboard pattern of buyouts because they can’t get everybody to participate.”

People don’t want to move for a variety of reasons, he said, such as longtime family ties to properties, wanting to stay near friends and most often, not being able to afford a move.

“Unless those issues are addressed you’re not going to get all the homeowners to participate,” Salvesen said. “What that means is a local government saddled with this scattershot of vacant lots they have to take care of.”

For many towns, maintaining what the study terms a “checkerboard” of holdouts and bought-out lots has added to maintenance budgets as well as preventing the area being converted to public use or returned to its natural state.

“You have to find out a way to string them together, so you can do something to them,” he said. “You can’t create a baseball field if there’s a house sitting on second base.”

BenDor, a professor with University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill’s Department of City and Regional Planning, said the checkerboard result is the opposite of what’s needed.

“It’s the worst of all worlds,” he said. “You still have to maintain the areas when they become public property and you can’t get rid of most of the infrastructure. Part of the fiscal benefits and the environmental benefit is when you remove houses, in theory, you remove the infrastructure.”

The checkerboard problem, he said, means governments still must maintain water and sewer lines and fix roads for just a few residences. “That’s untenable for a lot of lower-income communities,” he said.

In addition, to maintain the properties most communities mow the lots, he said. That’s also the wrong strategy for the environment.

“A city has political pressure to just go in and mow it, which is exactly what we don’t want to be doing in floodplains from an environmental perspective.”

By restoring an area to its natural state, usually a forest, BenDor said, a city can increase its capacity to deal with floodwaters, a move that increases surrounding land values.

Salvesen and BenDor said the sequence for buyouts has to change. Although there are some funds for pre-disaster mitigation, the biggest funding for buyouts comes after a disaster through hazard mitigation and community block grant funding.

That’s the wrong time to do a buyout, Salvesen said.

“Don’t do it after the flood happens, that’s too late,” he said. Everyone is stressed out. It’s a tragic event. You have to do it in advance, but that’s really hard to do because the big chunk of federal money comes after the flood happens. That has to change.”

To make buyouts work, BenDor said, state and local governments need to see them not as a reaction to a disaster but part of a long-term resiliency effort that includes having affordable housing options out of the areas prone to flooding.

“Understanding where people go matters a lot,” he said. “For instance, there’s a lot of evidence that folks that take buyouts actually move into other high-hazard areas. The point of buyouts is to get people out of these flooding situations but if they move directly back into a bad situation that’s a huge problem.”

After Hurricane Fran, a state buyout program augmented incentives for people to relocated outside of the floodplain, he said. It also added encouraged people to stay in their communities.

“Buyouts are not intended to get people to leave the community, they’re to get them out of high hazard situations,” BenDor said.

Defining those areas is another big hurdle for planners.

“Reviewing the floodplain maps every five years is not going to cut it anymore,” BenDor said. “It’s got to be something we have a much better handle on and it’s really worth having a conversation how we can do that.”

In the months ahead, there’ll be a major effort to move people out of harm’s way, he said, “except harm’s way is changing.”

Salvesen said having two major storms close to each other may be changing some attitudes and perhaps the willingness of people to consider buyouts. “There should be enough evidence now from these two major floods that certain parts of the state are more vulnerable than others. We can identify those areas and begin to target buyouts strategically to the places where you get the biggest bang for the buck.”

It’s a situation like what happened after the sequence of Hurricane Fran and Hurricane Floyd, in 1996 and 1999, respectively.

“There were some buyouts after Fran, but not everyone was convinced. They said, ‘Well that’s a once-in-a-lifetime storm, that’s never going to happen again,’” Salvesen said. “And then Floyd happened a few years later, and all of the sudden people were lining up to get buyouts.”

Reading accounts of the recent storm, especially stories of people who also took a hit in Matthew, Salvesen said something similar could happen.

“One of the things that helps convince people to participate in a buyout is a subsequent flood, but we shouldn’t have to wait for that,” he said.

GREENVILLE – A 90-day appeal or protest period began this week in some coastal counties for proposed new National Flood Insurance Program rate maps, which officials say provide greater accuracy for determining premiums despite no consideration given to the effects of sea-level rise.

The appeal period for preliminary floodplain mapping in Carteret, Pamlico and Dare counties began Wednesday and ends Nov. 13. For Onslow, Hyde, Jones, Craven, Tyrrell and Beaufort counties the period began Thursday and ends Nov. 14.

The appeal period is a time set aside for community officials and property owners to formally object to information shown on the preliminary Flood Insurance Rate Map, or FIRM. The FIRM panels depict new or revised base flood elevations, or the level to which floodwater is anticipated to rise, according to North Carolina Floodplain Mapping Program website.

Preliminary maps for the nine coastal counties were released June 30, 2016. The maps were based on a new coastal flood study that includes updates to the 1 percent annual chance storm surge values, as well as the expected erosion analysis and studies of overland wave effects these rare storms produce.

Brunswick, New Hanover and Pender counties preliminary flood hazard data were released Aug. 29, 2014, with the 90-day appeal period that began October 2015 and ended in January 2016. The effective date is anticipated to be later this year. Preliminary maps for Camden, Chowan, Currituck, Pasquotank and Perquimans counties were issued November 2015 with the 90-day appeal period having begun in July 2016. Those maps are to take effect next spring.

North Carolina partnered with the Federal Emergency Management Agency, or FEMA, to produce the updated FIRMs so that property owners could better understand their flood risk. Depending on the risk to a building, flood insurance may be required as a condition of obtaining a federally secured loan. Other times, purchasing flood insurance is considered a wise investment in preventing the financial devastation flooding brings, the website continued.

John Dorman is director of the North Carolina Floodplain Mapping Program, which began in 2000 after Hurricane Floyd took place in 1999. Dorman gave an update on the current status of the state’s coastal floodplain mapping during a July meeting of the Coastal Resources Commission in Greenville.

“As you know, flooding is probably the greatest hazard that we have in the state of North Carolina,” Dorman said.

Dorman said that every three and a half years his office determines which flood studies, whether for riverine or coastal areas across the state, need to be updated.

“There are about 40,000 stream miles that are looked at every three and a half years,” he added. They have collected information and used technology to collect the first-floor elevation of each of the 5.2 million buildings in the state in the 100-year flood zone. The 100-year flood is a flood event that has a 1 percent probability of occurring in any given year.

“We can subtract the difference of the first floor from the water level of the storm and tell you how much the damage will be on that building,” he said. “Based on damage curves, we calculate the financial cost to replace or repair that building.”

He said this was a significant benefit during hurricane Matthew. “Even before the end of the storm, we were able to tell FEMA what the financial cost was going to be for North Carolina.”

Dorman continued that FEMA utilizes the maps that his office maintains and updates. FEMA, along with flood determination companies and the insurance community, decides which buildings are required to buy federal insurance, based on federal requirements, adding that typically any federally backed mortgage requires insurance if it’s in the 100-year flood zone.

“Since we started the program, we’ve collected LiDAR (Light Detection and Ranging) topography across the state. We believe this has allowed mapping to be much greater accuracy,” he said.

“Now specifically on coastal,” Dorman said, “Back in 2006, we started looking at coastal models and studies that were out there. We felt at that time we need to update the coast. … We utilize all of FEMA’s coastal requirements and standards in doing these studies. We also utilize private sector licensed professionals, engineers and surveyors.”

He added that much of all the modeling undergoes significant review and evaluation and the most up-to-date coastal hydrodynamic process and methodology based FEMA’s latest models are used.

“The current maps that were out there prior to the work we’ve done were based on 1981,” he explained. “The concern of ours was that the data was significantly outdated, the topography was very coarse; our desire and what we felt like was our duty was to update the coastal areas.”

Dorman noted that the question about climate change had come up a number of times.

“Nothing of what we’ve done with base-flood elevations has anything to do with climate change or sea-level rise,” he said. “That has not been built into this, in fact, it should be noted that FEMA is prohibited at this point in time from actually incorporating climate change or sea-level rise.”

Dorman said the entire coastline should be restudied, and FEMA agreed. They provided funding to update the whole coastline, which was done so there were no breaks in the work, overlaps or duplication.

“So why did we do an update?” he asked. “The last study was based on 1981 and significant changes have occurred since then,” he reiterated. “We’ve had significant storms … and the last model that was used was not being maintained or accepted by FEMA. We could not update the coastal study with updated storm surge based on that existing model.”

Additionally, the model used from 1981 did not include wave setup, or the increase in water level cause by the onshore movement of water from breaking waves.

“So, it may bring in surf, but it did not look at the increased elevation of the water based on the inability for it to run off,” Dorman said.

The study also updated topography and bathymetry data, or the measurement of depth of water in oceans, seas or lakes.

So, where are we now? Dorman asked. After the 90-day appeal period is over, it’s believed that all the maps will be adopted and all the issues will be managed.

“By spring of 2018 those counties will be effective for insurance rating purposes. Those maps can be used right now by the community for properties with higher elevations,” he said.

Community Development Planner Randy Mundt also addressed the CRC. With the program since 2006, he has been responsible for working with communities to determine where they have needs for updates and, if updates are necessary, working through the process from start to finish.

Mundt said the big picture is that though we always hear of the 100-year flood map, he feels it’s a misnomer.

“I don’t like having to use it, but for people to quickly understand that it means it’s not something that happens on a regular basis. Technically it’s the 1 percent annual chance flood, which is a significant, extreme event,” he explained. “A better way to look at where you’ll see the 1 percent annual chance would be where you experience, in this case, we’re looking at modeling.”

Mundt added, “If you can remember one thing, the 1 percent annual chance storm is an exceeding rare significant event that we may not in our lifetime experience.”

Learn More

• View a slide show on the mapping updates

Despite what some experts view as significant problems in some coastal areas, the program director of the North Carolina Floodplain Mapping office believes the proposed new flood insurance rate maps are good, but will get better before final adoption next year.

John Dorman said he knows of the issues raised in recent weeks by coastal engineer Spencer Rogers, co-vice chair of the state Coastal Resources Advisory Council, and Rudi Rudolph, advisory council chairman and Carteret County shore protection office manager. Dorman appreciates them pointing out areas that in recent storms have flooded far worse than the maps appear to indicate they should.

“We have talked to Spencer and Rudi … but we feel like the maps are generally very accurate,” Dorman said. “We did about three years of studies on storm surge … and we’ve checked and re-checked and re-checked our models.

“We know there are some areas that flooded along the coast (in Hurricane Matthew in early October) more than the maps might indicate. But again, generally, we think the maps are good. And we are talking to and listening to those who raise these issues.”

Rogers and Rudolph spoke during Carteret County Beach Commission’s meeting last month, and have recommended that the state put together an ad hoc group to review and try to solve what they view as potential conflicts between state rules and the most recent flood maps, which were produced by the state and the Federal Emergency Management Agency. They pitched the idea earlier this fall to the council, which advises the state Coastal Resources Commission, and will pitch it again to the full commission during its meeting Nov. 30-Dec. 2 at the Hilton Doubletree in Atlantic Beach.

Their PowerPoint presentation shows clear contrasts between where some flood elevations would be set in the new maps, and where some flood levels have been in storms in recent years. Specifically, it shows numerous instances in which buildings that have flooded in recent storms – some severely damaged or destroyed – have been rezoned in the proposed new maps from the highest hazard areas, along the oceanfront or soundfront, to a non-flood zone, or at least into lower-risk zones. In other instances, Rogers told the beach commission, flood risks appear to have been overstated.

That, he said, sets up some potential conflicts with setback requirements under the state’s Coastal Area Management Act, and possibly some conflicts with state building codes, which govern what kinds of things can be built in flood zones and whether buildings must be elevated or not in those locations. For example, some properties that would be moved from the VE (wave zone) could, under the new zone they are in, be allowed to have buildings that are not elevated, or could have basements.

But the state has to use the maps once they’re adopted, and the local communities and insurance providers do, too.

To examine those kinds of issues, Rudolph and Rogers would like to see the state get members of the commission and its advisory council, the state Building Code Council and representatives of the North Carolina Floodplain Mapping Program, together to talk.

The rate maps show the flood risks in various areas of communities in the United States and designate high-risk areas (areas with a 1 percent or higher annual risk of a flood, known as a 100-year flood) and moderate to low-risk areas (areas with a less-than 1 percent annual risk of a flood).

On rate maps, areas of moderate to low risk are zoned B, C or X. Higher-risk areas are in zones that begin with either the letter A or V. Areas of undetermined risk are zoned D.

In high-risk areas, flood insurance is mandatory for federally backed loans. In moderate to low-risk areas, flood insurance is recommended, but optional.

Rogers and Rudolph point to structures in locations such as Hatteras and Wrightsville Beach that Rogers said don’t meet the “smell test” for accuracy. They also show examples in Carteret County, including one in Emerald Isle, but said most of the major problems appear to be in Wrightsville Beach and in Hatteras.

In years past, FEMA did all the work on the maps for the state, but that has changed in recent years. After Hurricane Floyd exposed major problems with the maps in 1987, he said, efforts to improve the maps began, but proceeded very slowly, only one county per year.

More than half of the maps at the time were older than 10 years, and three-quarters were at least five years old. But most counties didn’t have the money or staff to do their maps on their own.

Then in 2000, as a result of prodding by then-Gov. Jim Hunt, 22 federal and local community entities joined North Carolina and FEMA in an agreement to work together to update and maintain accurate, up-to-date flood hazard data for the state, and North Carolina created the Flood Plain Mapping Program.

Eventually, the state took over the program lead, with FEMA’s OK, and most feel it’s done a much better job, in part because it depends more on locals who know the areas better, but also because the technology used is much better.

Scientific models created over the past few years, incorporating storm surge and other data from more than 20 named storms since the early 1980, helped hone the maps.

While models are fine, Rogers said, it’s also important that real-world judgment augment those models. “But what we are getting is “modeled maps, for better or worse.”

Dorman, on the other hand, remains confident that the maps his office has and is producing are better than the feds did on their own, but is open to help.

“If anyone has better models or data, we’re certainly interested in seeing it,” he said. “We’re willing to sit down and listen to anyone.”

The state will take comments next year on the draft maps, which, so far, are expected to go into effect sometime in 2018. There is an appeal process, but appeals, if they happen, aren’t likely to come from people who have been moved out of flood zones or moved to lower hazard zones. Rather, they’ll come from areas – often on the sound sides of coastal counties – where the new maps place some homes and businesses in higher-hazard zones.

While no one has formally appealed yet, there have been major concerns expressed by residents and government officials in towns, including Jacksonville and Morehead City.

In Jacksonville, more than 800 additional structures in the downtown region would be placed in various flood zones, and many that were already in flood zones would have be elevated, some as much as 10 feet, largely because of the storm surge modeling.

In Morehead City, nearly 900 buildings would be added to the A zone, while there would be a slight decrease in buildings in the V zone.

In both towns, the changes would affect where new homes and businesses could be built, and how, and some people who had no flood insurance before would face thousands in annual premium costs.

Dorman said his office is making special efforts to meet with officials in such places and try to resolve differences and come up with the best maps possible; they’ve already had meetings to get input from residents and officials.

“Our goal is to use the best data available to produce the best, most accurate models possible,” he said. “If we get better data, we can make adjustments. We want everyone to be as satisfied as possible with the maps that are eventually approved.”

Dorman said he realizes that farther inland, in Kinston and other towns, Matthew caused torrential rains that triggered devastating flooding of areas that the maps indicate shouldn’t flood in 100-year storms.

But, he added, there’s really no way to map for a rainstorm that is generally considered once in a lifetime, if 12 to 18 inches of rain, and in some cases more, fell in less than two days.

“We’re pretty confident in that inland mapping, too,” he said. “We have studied 30,000 stream miles. But there were areas in seven or eight counties that experienced close to a 1,000-year rainfall event over a 24-hour period.” Again, though, he said his office is willing to listen.

But, Dorman said, most folks appear to be relatively happy with the proposed maps. Coastwide, more than 10,000 structures were either moved out of flood zones or placed in zones considered less hazardous, changes that would result in lower insurance premiums. For example, in Emerald Isle, in Carteret County, the number of buildings in the VE zone – the highest danger zone for flooding – will decrease from 1,135 to 441 if the new maps are approved as is. Some were moved out of the flood hazard zones entirely.

In the latter case – buildings moved out of flood zones – Dorman said the state is not saying there is no flood risk at all, and many factors affect where flooding will occur. Strength of a storm comes into play, but so does the storm’s angle of approach and the duration of the event.

“So many structures are still at some risk,” no matter what the maps indicate, Dorman said. “We saw that with Matthew in some cases in some areas. But in those instances, it was greater than a 500-year event (a 500-year storm event occurs, on average, once in 500 years, or has a 0.2 percent probability of occurring or being exceeded in any given year).

Dorman said the office still encourages those who might be near hazardous flood zones to buy insurance, as premiums for them would be much lower than those who are in hazard zones.

Rogers noted that all of those “events” – 100-year storms, 200-year storms, 400-year storms – merely reflect probabilities and averages and can, and do, occur more frequently, particularly if you consider effects in specific local areas.

In addition, he said, the category of a hurricane – 1 is weakest, 5 is strongest – doesn’t always correlate to storm surge. Some weaker storms generate higher surge than stronger storms.

Still, he agreed the state’s mapping efforts are much more accurate than the previous ones undertaken by FEMA, and said he doesn’t expect the ad hoc group conversation he and Rudolph are encouraging to add regulations.

Back in the 1980s, “we made some significant improvements in the building code” as a result of such efforts, he said. If the new maps are not adjusted to take care of the problems he and Rudolph noted, the idea is to find ways to better apply existing regulations to the new maps.

Rudolph said he understands that it would be very difficult for the state to make big changes; the mapmakers would have to run more models with different storms, and it would be very time consuming and expensive, to change the results of years of work. And, like Rogers, he praised the improvements the state has made, compared to the old FEMA maps.

On the other the hand, Rudolph noted that planners in some of the coastal counties, including Dare, have indicated they are concerned about the large number of structures moved out of the hazard zones.

The bottom line, though, Rudolph said, is that he and Rogers hope that with the Coastal Resources Commission’s blessings, talks among the various offices involved can “make the best of the situation.”

Learn More

• North Carolina Floodplain Mapping Program

WILMINGTON — The chairman and one co-vice chairman of the 20-member panel that advises the state Coastal Resources Commission has called for creation of an ad-hoc group to review and try to solve what they view as potential conflicts between state rules and the most recent flood insurance rate maps produced by the state and the Federal Emergency Management Agency.

Coastal Resources Advisory Council Chairman Rudi Rudolph, head of the Shore Protection Office in Carteret County, and council co-vice chairman Spencer Rogers, a coastal engineer with North Carolina Sea Grant and UNC-Wilmington, pitched the idea during PowerPoint presentations at the council’s most recent meeting in September in Wilmington. They hope to pitch the idea to the Coastal Resources Commission when it meets again, Nov. 30-Dec. 1 at the Hilton Doubletree in Atlantic Beach.

The slideshows show contrasts between where some flood elevations would be set in the new maps, and where some flood levels have actually been in storms of recent years.

Part of the problem, according to Rogers, is with the maps themselves, which are in draft form, but which, based on historical data and incidents, seem to have overstated flooding risks in some areas and understated those risks in others. That, he said, sets up some potential conflicts with setback requirements under the state’s Coastal Area Management Act, and possibly some conflicts with state building codes, which govern what kinds of things can be built in flood zones and whether buildings must be elevated or not in those locations. For example, some properties that would be moved from the VE (wave zone) could, under the new zone they are in, be allowed to have buildings that are not elevated, or could have basements.

“There’s no clear pattern,” Rogers said, and in some cases the decisions seem to defy logic.

But the state has to use the maps once they’re adopted, and the local communities and insurance providers do, too.

“It might be that we need to look at changing some things,” Rudolph said.

To examine those kinds of issues, Rudolph and Rogers would like to see the state get members of the commission and its advisory council, the state Building Code Council and representatives of the North Carolina Floodplain Mapping Program together to talk.

Rogers said he thinks that if that can happen, most of the issues can be resolved fairly quickly and easily.

The rate maps show the flood risks in various areas of communities in the United States and designate high-risk areas, or areas with a 1 percent or higher annual risk of a flood, known as a 100-year-flood, and moderate- to low-risk areas, or areas with a less-than 1 percent annual risk of a flood.

On rate maps, areas of moderate to low risk are zoned B, C or X. Higher-risk areas are in zones that begin with either the letter A or V. Areas of undetermined risk are zoned D.

In high-risk areas, flood insurance is mandatory, though rating options may be available to create savings. In moderate- to low-risk areas, flood insurance is recommended, but optional.

Back when the maps were first released for review in early summer, officials in several local governments contacted by CRO said they were surprised by some of the areas removed from the highest-hazard flood zones, particularly along the oceanfront, and either placed in lower-hazard zones or not placed in any hazard zone.

“They’re just maps, and people need to realize that lines on paper don’t mean there won’t be floods,” said Donna Creef, director of the planning department in Dare County.

In Dare County, the proposed rate maps would remove thousands of properties from flood zones altogether and move many others to lower-danger zones.

“Mother Nature doesn’t necessarily do what maps and lines say she will do,” Creef said.

In other areas, such as Emerald Isle in Carteret County, the changes might have something to do with beach-nourishment efforts and dune stabilization projects, but also the fact that there simply hadn’t been many hurricanes in recent years.

In Emerald Isle, the number of buildings in the VE zone – the highest danger zone for flooding – will decrease from 1,135 to 441 if the new maps are approved without change. Some were moved out of the flood hazard zones entirely.

In New Hanover County, planning director Ken Vafier did an analysis this past summer and concluded that, “the maps are changing to less restrictive zones on many properties around the county. Of course, this is not the case for every single property.”

Beaufort County doesn’t have an oceanfront, but it does have a long shoreline along what in recent years has come to be called the state’s “inner banks.” Beaufort County planning director Seth Laughlin sounded a lot like Creef.

“What we saw was very much unexpected,” Laughlin said of the new maps.

The unincorporated parts of the county, he said, saw likely improvements in flood insurance rates for 4,000 to 5,000 properties, and relatively few that would see negative changes.

Like Creef, Laughlin said he’s grateful that many property owners will likely see insurance rate cuts and might be able to do different things with their property, but he wonders about the complacency the maps might induce.

In years past, FEMA did all the work on the maps for the state, but that has changed in recent years. After Hurricane Floyd exposed some major problems with the maps in 1987, Rogers said, efforts to improve the maps began, but proceeded very slowly, only one county per year. More than half of the maps at the time were more than 10 years old, and three-quarters were at least five years old. But most counties didn’t have the money or staff to do their maps on their own.

As a result, in 2000, 22 federal and local community entities joined North Carolina and FEMA in an agreement to work together to update and maintain accurate, up-to-date flood hazard data for the state, and North Carolina created the Flood Plain Mapping Program.

Eventually, the state took over the program lead, with FEMA’s OK, and many feel it’s done a much better job, in part because it depends more on local folks who know the areas better, but also because the technology used is much better.

Scientific models created over the past few years, incorporating storm surge and other data from more than 20 named storms since the early 1980s, helped hone the maps.

Rogers said he isn’t contending that the state didn’t do a good job once it took over the lead role; in fact, he said the state improved the process and generally improved the maps. But that doesn’t mean the maps are perfect, or that they mesh perfectly with existing state rules and codes. And consistency is important because the maps are used by local government officials to make decisions on permits.

Rogers said he isn’t too worried about the potential “apathy” or “complacency” mentioned by folks including Creef and Laughlin, especially along the oceanfront areas of barrier islands. Structures there might end up removed from the VE zone under the new maps.  He said most who build there realize that no matter what the maps indicate, there is risk, and it can be quite significant. But, he added, removing inconsistencies among the maps, the state’s building code and CAMA rules is important.

Rudolph said he believes it would be valuable to get people from all of the agencies involved together, and hopes he and Rogers will be on the commission’s agenda in November to make much the same presentation they made to the advisory council.

“I don’t want to say the maps are wrong,” he said. “I think it needs to be a cooperative effort to resolve some of the issues we see in terms of conflicts.”

Rogers said there is a precedent for the type of cooperative discussion he and Rudolph would like to see take place. Back in the 1980s, “we made some significant improvements in the building code” as a result of such efforts, he said.

“I think what Rudi and I are talking about is not something that would create additional regulations,” he said. “What we’re talking about, really, is doing a better job of applying the regulations we have now under the new maps.”

Note: Rudolph said on Monday he and Rogers plan to present the slideshows again during a meeting of the Carteret County Beach Commission at 2 p.m. Oct. 24 at the Pine Knoll Shores town hall. — The Editor.

Learn More

• North Carolina Floodplain Mapping Program

Many coastal property owners should save money if newly proposed federal flood insurance maps are adopted, but some officials fear that the maps’ changes might lead to complacency.

“They’re just maps, and people need to realize that lines on paper don’t mean there won’t be floods,” said Donna Creef, director of the planning department in Dare County, where the proposed maps would remove thousands of properties from flood zones altogether and move many others from to lower-danger zones.  “Mother Nature doesn’t necessarily do what maps and lines say she will do.”

Dare has the largest number of rental units and second homes on the ocean and sounds in the state. Changes in the proposed maps, Creef said, would positively affect the insurance rates and or required elevations and flood-proofing of close to 16,000 buildings.

“Obviously, that’s a very good thing for a lot of people, homeowners and business owners,” she said.

The proposed maps move the 100-year flood zone along the oceanfront significantly landward, Creef said. That will result in lower flood-insurance premiums or remove any requirement for that type of protection. “But we are a little concerned that some people who get moved out of a flood zone altogether might think they no longer need flood insurance,” Creef said. “That might be the case, but there’s always a margin for error with maps, and again, storms don’t always do what the maps indicate they will do.”

The proposed maps also lower the base flood elevation, in some areas by almost half. That could allow property owners to enclose and convert to living space areas underneath houses that are on stilts.

The concern, Creef said, is that people might do those kinds of things, or simply not renew flood insurance policies when they expire, then be surprised.

The Federal Emergency Management Agency requires that each state produce the maps about every 10 years. According to Creef and others, one reason for the changes appears to be that the state was more involved in the mapping process this time, and state officials might well have more intimate knowledge of areas that have been flood-prone.

In other areas, such as Emerald Isle in Carteret County, the changes might have something to do with beach nourishment efforts and dune stabilization projects, but also the fact that there simply haven’t been many hurricanes in recent years.

In Emerald Isle, the number of buildings in the VE zone – the highest danger zone for flooding – will decrease from 1,135 to 441 if the new maps are approved as drawn.

“For the vast majority of properties, there would be no change,” town manager Frank Rush said, but in some cases, properties have been completely removed from a VE zone and are no longer in a flood zone, while in other cases the property has been changed from a VE zone to an AE zone, which is generally less restrictive than VE.

An analysis by Josh Edmondson, the town’s planning director, shows that 99 would be added to a flood zone as a result of the new maps. As a result, the town doesn’t plan to appeal, but would help those individual property owners who choose to do so.

In high-risk areas, flood insurance is mandatory, though rating options may be available to create savings. In moderate to low-risk areas, flood insurance is recommended, but optional.

The story is different, however, in scattered pockets in Carteret County, where there are new V zones in the eastern end of the county in Smyrna, Marshallberg, North River and Straits, and more properties in flood zones in parts of Morehead City and Beaufort.

Farther south in the much more urbanized New Hanover County, planning director Ken Vafier did an analysis and concluded that the proposed maps will include more property in less flood-prone zones.

The VE zones along the Intracoastal Waterway are narrower than they are in the current maps, with more las in the less restrictive A zone, Vafier explained. Base flood elevations are also slightly reduced, he said.

“Again, this is a general trend and there are certainly some sites being proposed to change to a more restrictive zone,” Vafier explained. “Whether changes are detrimental or beneficial to a property owner will depend on each specific site, as well as the property owner’s perspective.”

Steve Stone, deputy county manager for Brunswick County, said that in general, the new maps are favorable for those concerned about flood insurance and flood insurance rates. Stone said some property in the county appear to have been removed from flood zones entirely, but the larger shift is from zones that indicate serious risks to those that predict less damage.

There are a few properties, he said, particularly along inland streams, that are placed in higher-level flood zones but “the overall, net result, I’d say, is positive for Brunswick County property owners.”

While some of the municipalities have engaged in some beach nourishment activities since the last maps came out, he doubts that impacted the maps, Most likely, it’s just more accurate mapping.

Up to the north, between roughly midway between Carteret and Dare, Beaufort County doesn’t have an oceanfront, but has a long shoreline along the Pamlico River. County planning director Seth Laughlin sounded a lot like Creef in Dare County.

“What we saw was very much unexpected,” he said of the new maps.

The unincorporated parts of the county, he said, saw improvements for 4,000 to 5,000 properties, and relatively few that would see negative changes.

Like Creef, he said he’s grateful that many property owners will likely see insurance rate cuts and might be able to do different things with their property, but he wonders about the complacency the maps might induce.

People might not renew their flood-insurance policies, he said, and could be surprised when storms don’t conform to the lines drawn on the maps. “We’re happy for people who would benefit, because flood insurance is expensive, and that cost can be a real deterrent to people who want to develop properties than contribute to the tax base, too,” Laughlin said. “But I’d be hesitant to tell people not to buy flood insurance.”

At least one coastal North Carolina county official involved in flooding issues, said some in the field were so surprised they wonder about the motives. “Is it an attempt to get the federal government off the hook for damage?” said the official, who didn’t want to be named. “The thought is, if people don’t have to buy policies, and don’t, then they have damage, the federal program doesn’t have to pay.”

But Rudi Rudolph, who as shore protection manager for Carteret County is responsible for monitoring flood insurance changes, said he believes the changes, particularly along the oceanfront are logical and based on good data, especially because the state got involved and has more and better information about specific areas along North Carolina’s coast.

He said there is some danger, however, because some hurricanes that aren’t expected to be massive 100-year storms when they hit can still surprise people, either because of direction or duration, and cause flooding one might not expect from the maps.

But Rudolph doesn’t expect widespread abandonment of flood insurance policies in areas where the new maps might indicate that possibility. Mortgage companies, he said, are not likely to let too many folks put their loans at risk.

“It’s their money that is at risk, too,” he said. “Even if you’re not in a flood zone according to the map, they can require you to have flood insurance.”

To Learn More

• N.C. Flood Mapping Program
• FEMA flood data for North Carolina
• National Flood Insurance Reform Act of 1994
• Flood insurance basics
• Flood insurance fact for coastal landowners
• Note: For the proposed flood maps check the website of the county you’re interested in.

The following is a summary of bills passed by the N.C. General Assembly this year that affect conservation and natural resources on the coast. The summary was prepared by Amalia Manolagas, Jack Lyman and Kelly Anderson, research fellows at the N.C. Coastal Resources Law, Planning and Policy Center. It appeared in the fall edition of Legal Tides, the center’s newsletter. This is the last of two parts.

Beaches

Senate Bill 151 allows local governments to remove condemned houses from the beach. Photo: Andrew Morang, Urban Decay

Coastal Policy Reform Act of 2013, S151: This act amends marine fisheries laws and the laws governing the construction of terminal groins and clarifies that cities may enforce ordinances within the state’s public trust areas.

To build a terminal groin, an applicant must now show only that “structures or infrastructure are threatened by erosion.” An applicant is no longer required to demonstrate that the threat is “imminent” or that “nonstructural approaches to erosion control, including relocation of the threatened structures, are “impractical.” The act also compels that the monitoring and mitigation requirements of the mandated management plan for the inlet and the estuarine and ocean shorelines immediately adjacent to and under the influence of the inlet “be reasonable and not impose requirements whose costs outweigh the benefits.” Thus, the inlet management plan is not required to address sea-level rise. Neither is the financial assurances compelled to fund “restoration of public, private, or public trust property if the groin has an adverse impact on the environment or property.” Lastly, local municipalities are granted more flexibility to provide financial assurances. Currently, the N.C. Coastal Resources Commission may issue no more than a total of four permits for terminal groin construction.

The Coastal Policy Reform Act also requires changes regarding municipal protection of public trust areas. Cities now have the authority, based on ordinances, to regulate ocean beachfront in the state’s public trust area.

The act also, in effect, reverses the holding in Town of Nags Head v. Cherry Inc. In this case, the town sought to abate a nuisance, where storms and erosion resulted in beachfront houses being without power, water or sewer. The act strikes down the N.C. Court of Appeals ruling, which held that only the State has the authority to act to protect public trust interests. Primary sponsor: Sen. Rabon.

Amend Carteret Co. Occupancy Tax, H553: This act limits Carteret County’s authority to levy an additional 1 percent room occupancy and tourism development tax. The county may levy the additional 1 percent tax only when it levies a tax pursuant to G.S. 105-164.4(a)(3) (tax imposed on retailers). However, the room occupancy and tourism development tax does not apply to accommodations provided by nonprofit charitable, educational or religious organizations when furnished in furtherance of their nonprofit purpose. The act also modifies the distribution of the proceeds of the tax so that the funds are equally split between tourism promotion and beach nourishment on Bogue Banks. Primary sponsor: Rep. McElraft.

Development

Building Codes: Local Consistency/Exempt Cable, H120: This act requires approval from the N.C. Building Code Council before a local government may require building inspections in addition to those required by the building code; specifies the frequency and effective dates of code updates; and exempts cable television equipment installation from building code requirements. Primary sponsors: Sens. Hager, W. Brawley, Cotham and Arp.

Protect/Promote Locally Sourced Building Materials, H628: This act: requires net savings in association with major facility construction and renovation projects and protects use of N.C. products (N.C.-grown timber) in major facility construction and renovations projects under the sustainable energy-efficient buildings program. Primary sponsors: Reps.  Presnell  and Catlin.

Dredging

The legislature passed several bills dealing with dredging canals and inlets.

Holden Beach/Canal Dredging District Fee, H229: This act authorizes Holden Beach and Ocean Isle Beach to accumulate money in a capital reserve fund for canal dredging and maintenance for 10 years. Primary sponsor: Rep. Iler.

Sunset Beach/Canal Dredging/Maintenance Fee, S268: This act allows Sunset Beach to impose a canal dredging and maintenance fee. Primary sponsor: Sen. Rabon.

Ensure Safe Navigation Channels, H707: This act directs the N.C Department of Environment and Natural Resources (DENR) to pursue various strategies to ensure that the state’s shallow draft navigation channels are safe and navigable by entering into agreements with the Army Corps of Engineers and aiding local governments receive Corps and Coastal Area Management Act permits for channel dredging and beach disposal of dredged materials. Additionally, this act creates the Oregon Inlet Land Acquisition Task Force to study and report to the N.C. General Assembly by May 1 on the state’s options for obtaining the federal government’s interest in the Oregon Inlet and the lands surrounding the inlet. Primary sponsors: Reps. Millis, McElraft, Warren and Tine.

Regulations/Permitting

Regulatory Reform Act of 2013, H74:The goals of this act are to improve and streamline the regulatory process in order to stimulate job creation, to eliminate unnecessary regulation, to make various other statutory changes and to amend certain environmental and natural resources laws. For example, this act amends the definition of “built-upon” area for stormwater programs to exclude some surfaces, including wooden slatted decks. It also provides for local governments to enter into development agreements for brownfields properties of less than 25 acres. The act also: requires applicants for proposed sanitary landfills to hire third parties to review permit applications and study the associated environmental impacts; adjusts buffer requirements;  lowers cleaning frequency of leachate collection systems; and modifies some hauling requirements from “leak-proof” to “leak-resistant” equipment. Finally, it lists mandatory factors that DENR must consider in calculating penalties for solid waste violations. Primary sponsors: Reps. Murry, Moffitt, Samuelson and Bryan.

Transfer Environmental Permits, H279: This act authorizes DENR (or a local government with the proper permitting authority) to transfer certain environmental permits associated with property development when the original property owner is unwilling or unable to agree to the permit transfer. Transferrable permits include stormwater permits, erosion control plans, permits for sewer systems, sewer system extensions, disposal systems or land application of waste. Primary sponsors: Reps. Millis, Hager, McElraft and Moffitt.

Environmental Permitting Reform, H480: The goals of this act are to provide regulatory certainty for North Carolina by requiring the development of minimum design criteria for stormwater permits to guide DENR in permit issuance and to reform the permitting process to allow fast-track permitting for applications certified by a qualified professional to be in compliance with the minimum design criteria. The act also directs DENR to develop “Minimum Design Criteria” by Sept. 1, 2014, by consulting “a technical working group that consists of industry experts, engineers, environmental consultants, relevant faculty from the University of North Carolina and other interested stakeholders.” The EMC is instructed to adopt implementation rules for the stormwater fast-track permitting system by July 1, 2016. Primary sponsors: Reps. Millis, Moffitt, Catlin and Hardister

State Government

Appropriations Act of 2013, S402: This act makes budget appropriations for current operations of state departments, institutions and agencies, and for other purposes. It also requires the N.C. Division of Marine Fisheries to involve North Carolina’s commercial fishing industry in the “development of a plan to determine a source of funding necessary to support the Marine Fisheries At-Sea Observer Program,” an important program related to commercial fishers’ ability to maintain compliance with the federal Endangered Species Act. The act also creates a new division within DENR, the Division of Water Infrastructure, consolidating the water infrastructure roles previously carried out by the Division of Water Quality and the Division of Water Resources. It also eliminates the State Water Infrastructure Commission and creates a new Water Infrastructure Authority. This new body will be tasked with making grants for local water infrastructure projects and producing a master plan for the water infrastructure needs of the state. Primary sponsors: Sens. Brunstetter, Brown and Hunt.

Water

House Bill 296 requires that hunters buy a stamp before hunting for black bears. Photo: USFWS

Authority to Remove Abandoned Vessels, H294: This act allows certain Brunswick and Dare counties to remove abandoned vessels from navigable waters. Primary sponsor: Rep. Tine.

Amend Interbasin Transfer Law, S341: This act authorizes an expedited process to modify interbasin transfer certificates and to issue interbasin transfer certificates in the central coastal plain capacity use area and the coastal area counties. Primary sponsor: Sen. Rabon.

Wildlife

Ocean Isle Beach/Sea Turtle Sanctuary, S229: This act authorizes the Ocean Isle Beach to create a sea turtle sanctuary and to exchange a parcel of real property for services. Primary sponsor: Sen. Rabon.

Omnibus Wildlife Resources Commission Act, H296: This act: adjusts the fees charged for certain hunting and fishing licenses issued by the N.C. Wildlife Resources Commission (WRC) and repeals county hunting, fishing and trapping licenses and noncommercial special device licenses; establishes a black bear management stamp that must be procured before taking bear within the state and amends the law restricting the taking of black bear with bait; adjusts the age for discounted special licenses from age 65 to age 70; provides that effective Jan. 1, 2015, those hunting and fishing license fees in effect shall remain at the existing levels until the WRC establishes new fees through rule making, and authorizes the WRC to establish license fees through rule making beginning in 2015; replaces the current 6 percent wildlife service agent commission fee with a $2 transaction fee; provides that no more than 25 percent of the WRC’s authorized operating budget shall be kept in reserve; and provides an annual target for utilization of the annual expendable interest of the Wildlife Endowment Fund. Primary sponsors: Reps.. Bell, Moffitt, S. Martin and Wray.

After being buffeted for years with criticism for encouraging irresponsible development along coastlines, the National Flood Insurance Program has begun phasing out subsidies on policies for high-risk properties.

But some coastal residents in North Carolina are worried that steep increases in premiums will force them to lose their valuable oceanfront investment, or make it impossible for them to sell their older home, even if it had never been flooded.

The Biggert-Waters Flood Insurance Reform Act, enacted in July, will eliminate subsidies in increments over four years for commercial properties, second homes and for those with repetitive losses that are at or below base flood level.

In a provision that some find particularly painful, the new law will also eliminate grandfathered rates based on flood maps in effect at the time the house was built.

The Outer Banks after Hurricane Sandy. Photo: Andy Coburn

That means an older property that predated 1975, or adoption of the community’s Flood Insurance Rate Map – known in insurance vernacular as pre-FIRM – will no longer have its rate based on the old map, resulting in potentially enormous increases in premiums.

Although it will likely be a small percentage affected by the most draconian aspects of the law, the actual impact on property owners up and down the coast is still a big unknown.

“It is one of the most complex and messed up issues I have ever been associated with,” said Spencer Rogers, a coastal scientist with North Carolina Sea Grant.

Spencer Rogers

Rogers, who specializes in coastal hazards, said that while the law provides exemptions and discounts that will at times result in lower insurance bills, it also could cost some property owners more in insurance premiums than the value of their house. He wrote a paper that explained the changes in the program.

“It’s been recognized sooner or later that those subsidized rates had to end,” he said. “Maybe it’s time, maybe it’s not . . . It will jack up the rate on a business or a second home, but if you’re living in it, you’re exempted from the worst of it.”

A property is categorized as a repetitive loss if two or more claims of at least $1,000 have been filed within a 10-year period; a severe repetitive loss property would have four or more claims of more than $5,000, or two or three claims that together exceed the value of the property.

According to the state Insurance Commissioner’s website, North Carolina has 81,000 flood insurance policies in effect covering more than $10 billion in property.

Partly because of the enormity of claims made after Hurricane Katrina in 2005, the NFIP is in debt more than $17 billion -and that does not include the $9 billion borrowed to cover Hurricane Sandy claims.

Tom Thompson, chairman of NC-20, a group that represents the real estate and construction industries in the state’s 20 coastal counties, warns that except for the repeat claims, the increases in Biggert-Waters are unfair and excessive, and could “sink the coast. “

“It was conceived in complete ignorance,” he said about the law. “FEMA mismanaged the program and paid for losses for properties that weren’t even part of the program.”

“We’re a donor state,” he said. “The program worked. Why do our insurance rates have to go up some 2,000 percent?

“People cannot afford it. They’re going to lose their home.”

Thompson cited one man with a 34-year-old, never-flooded retirement house in North Topsail Beach whose quoted rate went from $3,300 a year currently to $59,000 under the new law. With a higher deductible and no content coverage, the rate would be lowered to about $29,000 a year.

In a letter to Thompson, responding to his appeal for help, U.S. Rep. Mike McIntyre, D-NC, said that some homeowners could have their rates jacked up 40 to 50 times their current rate, that is, a 4,000 to 5,000 percent increase.

“Folks from all across Eastern North Carolina have expressed to me their very serious concerns about the impact that increased flood rates would have on homes, communities, and the local economy,” McIntyre wrote. “We are going to do all we can to derail this increase.”

McIntyre said he has co-sponsored legislation to delay the law.

But Fletcher Willey, who had sat on a state panel dealing with flood insurance issues for ten years and has handled flood insurance for clients through some 30 hurricanes, said that most people won’t be facing the astronomical spikes in their insurance bills that they fear.

“Eighty-one percent of the properties are going to be just fine,” said Willey, owner of The Willey Agency in Nags Head.

Willey said that if properties are adequately elevated they won’t see large increases. And unless the older homes are sold or damaged substantially, pre-FIRM residences -that is, those built prior to 1975 or before the community’s Flood Insurance Rate Maps were drawn -will have gradual increases rather than huge jumps.

Many properties will benefit by getting an elevation certificate, he added.

“So,” he said, “the sky is not falling.”

According to information provided by the North Carolina Floodplain Mapping Program at the state Department of Public Safety, notice of a 25 percent rate increase was sent in January to about 305,000 second-home owners of pre-FIRM properties. Of them, about 4, 700 are in North Carolina. Rates are expected to increase an average of 150 percent.

Primary residences must be lived in at least 80 percent of the time.

The next wave of notices were sent in October to owners of about 90,000 commercial properties – 2,143 of them in North Carolina – and to about 11,000 properties – 707 of them in North Carolina – that have suffered repeated flood loss.

By late 2014, rates will no longer be grandfathered according to what the flood rating, relative to map zone and building elevation, had been when the structure was built. Those premiums will be phased in with 20 percent increases over five years, starting with the effective date of the FIRM that identifies the increased risk, until the rate reflects the actuarial rate based on newly updated flood maps. Premiums for the 515,000 properties affected statewide could increase 200 percent, according to the state. And pre-FIRM rates will be discontinued on new flood policies, potentially causing enormous leaps in premiums for new owners and making it much more difficult to sell such property.

Rogers said the ending of older rates, which is just starting to be implemented, is likely to cause “loud screams” because the rate will change instantly to the actuarial rate – the risk based on the new maps.

Nightmare scenarios can result when even a post-FIRM property that did all the right flood mitigation measures has to update to the new flood maps and finds itself in a higher risk zone. For example, one property Rogers cited that was below base flood levels near the ocean would go from an annual rate of $19,000 a year to $53,000 a year.

But other situations, he said, may be able to qualify for various discounts –some significant -by elevating, moving or altering the house. Just getting an elevation certificate, he said, can reduce premiums and avoid future increases.

“There are lots and lots of variables on the rating structure,” he said. “It is very difficult to compare apples and apples in insurance rates.”

Last of two parts

NORTH TOPSAIL BEACH – The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service estimates that that the Coastal Barrier Resources Act, or CBRA, has saved taxpayers at least $1 billion since it was passed in 1982.

That’s money that wasn’t spent to subsidize flood insurance and development practices on storm-prone barrier islands covered by the law.

If North Topsail Beach is successful in its fight to remove itself from the law’s restrictions, federal money will be spent for the first time for beach re-nourishment and to subsidize development on the island.

Dave Salvesen

Dave Owens

David Salvesen, deputy director of the Center for Sustainable Community Design’s Institute for the Environment at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, is skeptical of the town’s request to be removed from CBRA.

“If people want to build in a risky area, fine,” he said. “CBRA didn’t say you couldn’t develop. CBRA said taxpayers aren’t going to subsidize it. That’s what North Topsail Beach is asking taxpayers to do. People who buy property along the coast know it’s a big risk. I don’t see why it should be taken out of a CBRA zone just because development has occurred.”

In the early 2000s, Salvesen researched a handful of CBRA units in Alabama, Florida, South Carolina and North Carolina, including North Topsail Beach.

“All around theses areas was intense development pressure,” Salvesen said. “CBRA areas tend to develop after everything else around them is developed. When there’s hardly any land left on the beach, developers turn their eyes to other areas. If the land values are high enough and the markets are strong enough they’re going to build. Developers are creative people and when they see a demand they find ways to meet that demand.”

Builders Roger Page and Marlow Bostic are considered North Topsail Beach’s original developers and were known for taking big risks to profit from people’s desire to live at the beach.

Page, an Winston-Salem oil distributer, signed an agreement in 1987 with the state to move about four miles of Secondary Road 1586, now known as New River Inlet Drive, away from the ocean.

The deal was that he would pay to move the road and the state would give him the abandoned roadbed, thus opening up miles of oceanfront property. The move allowed him enough beach frontage to develop Villa Capriani, a condominium complex of private, one- to three-bedroom units overlooking the Atlantic.

Page only moved 2.7 miles of the road, which extended from N.C. 210 to the northern edge of Villa Capriani. He said relocating the remaining 1.3 miles would bankrupt him.

The state eventually agreed to move the remainder of the road and sued Page to recoup the cost.

Once one of the most penalized developers in North Carolina, Bostic earned a reputation among state environmental officials and lawmakers as a shrewd businessman who thumbed his nose at coastal development rules.

The N.C. General Assembly in 1989 enacted a new law allowing agencies to consider the past performance of developers before granting or denying permits. Lawmakers in Raleigh referred to it as the “Bostic law.”

To Bostic, fines associated with breaking those rules were just a cost of doing business, state officials would later say.

David Owens, a public law and government professor at UNC-Chapel Hill’s School of Government, worked for the state Division of Coastal Management from 1978 to 1988.

“Some of the earliest CAMA violations came from [North Topsail Beach],” he said. “There were a number of violations there in the early 80s. They were pushing the edges of the rules to do things that were more risky. They knew the risks they were taking when they were doing it, but they thought the land could be sold.”

Developers moved what is now New River Inlet Drive in order to gain access to miles of beachfront property in North Topsail Beach. The Villa Capriani is one of the results.

Some of the state fines were fairly modest at the time. In the late ‘80s, for example, the maximum fine for breaking the state’s Coastal Area Management Act was $2,500. But there were larger fines, Owens said, some upwards of $10,000.

“Just looking at the amount of the fines doesn’t tell the whole story,” he said.

Developers were forced to go back and mitigate the damage they caused by breaking state rules.

Dave Godschalk, planning professor emeritus in the Department of City and Regional Planning at UNC-Chapel Hill also studied CBRA, said that the law makes a lot sense, “but is liable to be overridden if the local governments don’t go along with what the federal government has designated.”

“You’ve got a developer who managed to get sewer and water,” he said. “You had a county that didn’t stand behind the CBRA legislation. They just kind of plowed ahead in spite of clear warning. By all rights, they should have said you can build a house here, but you’re not going to get federal flood insurance. Responsible government should have done that. The people who bought in there had no way of knowing about CBRA without deep research. They thought they were acting in good faith.”

In an effort to educate land and homebuyers along the coast in the early 1980s, the N.C. Coastal Resources Commission endorsed a rule that would require realtors to disclose information such as the long-term erosion rate and flood insurance status on a piece of property.

“The real estate industry adamantly opposed it,” Owens said. “They did not want those disclosures required. We could not get it introduced much less adopted. There is some real interest in not providing all that information.”

Hurricanes in the late 1990s illustrated why much of the narrow, flat portion of northern Topsail Island was added to the CBRA zone in the first place. First, there was Hurricane Bertha in July 1996, followed two months later by Hurricane Fran, a category 3 storm that rivaled the fabled Hurricane Hazel of a quarter century earlier. Storm surge during Fran exceeded 10 feet along most of North Topsail’s beaches. Almost 90 percent of its houses were destroyed or significantly damaged. Numerous small inlets cut through N.C. 210.

Damage was so extensive, in fact, that some geologists said North Topsail was the most hazardous place on the East Coast. There was even talk after Fran of not allowing the town to rebuild.

With its 10-foot storm surge, Hurricane Fran gouged numerous chunks out of N.C. 210. Photo: ECU

But, of course, it did.

Richard Peters bought land on the sound side of N.C. 210 in North Topsail Beach in 2000. He was about six months into construction of his home in 2003 when he started researching his flood insurance options. Homeowners who mortgage their houses are required to purchase flood insurance.

Peters found out his land and the home he was having built was in a CBRA zone and that he could not receive Federal flood insurance.

At the time, he would have paid an estimated $700 annually for flood insurance under the Federal program. Instead, he had to shell out about $7,300 a year.

“That’s a huge difference,” Peters said.

He eventually became an active party in the town’s efforts to change the CBRA zone in North Topsail Beach.

Whatever the results are in this fight, Godschalk said, lawmakers need to consider what may lie ahead for coastal property owners.

“Clearly the whole coastal development issue is not over with yet,” he said. “What we really need to do is some serious research that backs up the fact that we should be changing development regulations all up and down the coast. I think CBRA was good for it’s time, but it didn’t assume a lot of sea level rise. We know that’s going to be a serious issue in the future. This is like a rehearsal for that. If we don’t do something significant now, we’re going to have an even bigger issue.”

Local governments in coastal North Carolina paid hundreds of thousands of dollars in 2011 to lobby Congress for federal funds for their shore protection projects. Financial disclosures indicate that payments to lobby Congress by these same local governments have been made for years. However, a recent ban on “earmarks” means that more often than not shore protection project budgets are now set by the President’s administration and not by lawmakers. In recent years, funds for these projects dwindled as competition for shrinking federal funds becomes more intense even among beach communities.

According to 2011 Congressional lobbying disclosure,Howard Marlowe & Co. received more than $200,000 from local taxpayers to lobby for federal appropriations and earmarks for the upcoming fiscal year. His North Carolina coastal clients included:

Carteret County, $73,600; Brunswick Beach Consortium, $37,500; Beach, Inlet and Waterways Association, Inc., $35,000; North Topsail Beach, $20,000; Surf City, $20,000; and Topsail Beach, $20,000. Wrightsville Beach, Carolina Beach and New Hanover County paid Marlowe less than $5,000 each quarter.

Many of these local governments and associations have retained Marlowe for many years. Marlowe’s firm received more than $1.4 million from clients in 2011. However, since 2008, Marlowe’s overall income has declined each year from a high of over $2.2 million. Bucking a national trend, many of his clients in North Carolina continue to pay consistently for lobbying services, with the exception of New Hanover County, which curtailed its annual payments of $40,000 after 2009. Client payments by year can be seen here.

Rules Change

Lobbying Congress for money is an age-old pastime, but the rules of the game have changed dramatically in recent years. Now funding priorities for shore protection projects are mostly decided by the President and the Army Corps of Engineers, and not Congress.

That’s not the way it used to be. The President would release his budget in February, and Congress would approve a final budget by the beginning of the fiscal year that begins on October. The process has changed significantly.  Congress typically passes a defense bill quickly, and then stalls on everything else.

Instead, “continuing resolutions” are passed that temporarily provide base funding to keep government agencies and programs operating. Some of these resolutions allow agencies to spend what’s in the President’s proposed budget, or to spend at the previous year’s levels, or for projects that might have been included in any version of the Senate or House Energy and Water Development Appropriation bills. These instructions change from year to year, but the President’s budget rule seems to be the most consistent.

For shore protection projects that are eventually funded, Congress appropriates money either through the Energy & Water Development Appropriations bill, or wraps all the unfinished appropriation bills into an omnibus package (affectionately termed a “mega bill”).

In year’s past, the normal function of Congress was to consider each appropriation bill so as to add or cut what was in the President’s budget. For beach projects, the Corps’ entire budget was a series of earmarks. Each named project got a certain amount of dollars.  But when the Republican leadership in the House pledged in 2010 that there would be “no earmarks,” it made it almost impossible for any member of Congress to add anything into the budget and direct any particular agency what to do. The “no earmark” pledge by default allows the President to outline his spending priorities and Congress has in essence forfeited its ability to change them.

For fiscal year 2012, no stand-alone budget bill ever passed Congress. It eventually gave the Corps approximately $44.7 million for shore protection projects, and told it to develop a “work plan” for how that lump sum was to be spent. So instead of earmarking, Congress gave Corps the authority to set its own spending. The work plan is available here.

Little Flows Back

Small amounts of federal money for shore protection projects flowed back into North Carolina in fiscal year 2012. The Wilmington District of the Corps received $287,000 to investigate how to reduce storm damages in Surf City. More N.C. beach communities are proposed for funds in the President’s recommended $44.8 million shore protection budget for fiscal year 2013, but the total appropriations are meager compared to the communities’ wish list. Requests for N.C. projects in the President’s budget are listed below.

It is difficult to tell just how effective Marlowe & Co. actually is in helping its clients obtain federal funds for shore protection projects. The total amount of money available for shore protection projects from the federal budget has been stagnant in recent years under both Republican and Democratic Presidents, and those communities with long established Congressionally authorized projects tend to be first in line to receive these shrinking funds.  In fiscal year 2012, 93 percent of the federal funds for shore protection projects went to communities and organizations that Marlowe did not represent. Marlowe had 31 clients in 2011 that are all competing among themselves and with every other beach community for these limited project funds.

Marlowe has his own political action committee as part of his efforts to influence Congress. Most of his political donations go to Democrats. To see his giving history, go here.

Beach communities remain pretty inventive when it comes to getting federal dollars. Federally declared disasters have become a pipeline to “repair” shore protection projects that would otherwise not be eligible for federal dollars. That will be the subject of another blog in the future.

Corps Projects

Here’s the authorized shoreline protection protects at the Corps’ Wilmington District. This does not include appropriations for dredging projects.

Fiscal Year 2012

Investigations

Surf City         $287,000

Shoreline protection projects nationwide received $44,700,000. The actual appropriations for N.C. projects represented 0.6% of total appropriation.

Fiscal Year 2013

Investigations, President’s budget

Bogue Banks                                       $445.000

Surf City and North Topsail Beach         $225,000

Investigations Subtotal                      $675,000

Construction, President’s budget

West Onslow Beach (Topsail Island)     $200,000

Construction Subtotal                       $200,000

The president in his proposed budget recommends appropriating $44,800,000 for shoreline protection projects nationwide. The proposed $875,000 expenditure in North Carolina represents 1.9% of total appropriations.

First of two parts

RALEIGH — The annual round of grant applications to the state’s Clean Water Management Trust Fund topped out at 161 this year, just over the 160 requests in 2011.

They’re spread throughout the state: 53 in the western counties, 49 in the central and 57 in the east. Most would match local and, sometimes, federal government money. If all the requests were funded, the total amount of grants would be just shy of $125 million.

This tract along the Chowan River is among the thousands of acres along the coast that have been preserved with grants from the N.C. Clean Water Management Trust Fund. Photo: Clean Water Management Trust Fund

But next month when the trust fund’s board of directors settle down to decide what to fund, they won’t have anywhere near that amount of money to work with. State allocations to the fund have dropped precipitously over the past three years and for the second year in a row it is operating with the lowest annual allocation in its 16-year history, just $11.25 million of the $100 million annual contribution required in the statutes.

It was no surprise that the fund took a hit in the budget. Trust funds are an oft-used source when the legislature is looking to fill budget gaps. Early last year, one of the surest indications of what the newly constituted N.C. General Assembly might slice into was the governor’s budget proposal, which in many cases served as a starting point for deeper cuts and at the very least indicated the low-hanging fruit where the executive and legislative branches could find agreement.

Gov. Beverly Perdue’s proposal was similar to the prior biennium proposing to take half of the fund’s annual $100 million target, the same amount cut the previous year. Budget writers in the legislature had a different number in mind.

Cuts Draw Fire

When the $11.25 million annual appropriation was announced it drew considerable fire from the mountains to the coast, especially from conservation groups worried about the future of acquisition and protection of wetlands, critical waterways and shellfish habitats. Acquisition of critical lands for water quality often in tandem with conservation groups has been a major focus of the fund throughout its history, representing about half of its about 1,400 grants.

But conservationists weren’t the only people raising alarms. Local governments seeking trust fund grants to leverage local money for improvements to sewage treatment facilities and other water quality projects were also concerned, not just over the funding levels but whether it signaled a change in direction in state policy.

Writing in the UNC School of Government’s Economic Development blog after the budget passed, Jeff Hughes, director of the school’s Environmental Finance Center, said there’s a growing debate over who pays for water quality improvements — the local water system’s rate payers or the public at large.

“Whether the developments this summer have more to do with budget realities than philosophical debates about who should pay remains to be seen, but the trends are worth watching,” he wrote.

Richard Rogers

Richard Rogers, the trust fund’s executive director, said reductions in funding in tight budget years are a given, but the cut in this budget cycle is unprecedented and will greatly limit what the fund can do. If levels stay this low, the fund could be in trouble.

“I don’t think that the program can sustain itself with where we are now,” he said.

Getting funding back in the $40 million to $50 million range, he said, is a top priority, but just as important is getting legislators to allow the fund’s board more flexibility.

A provision included in the budget spelled out for the first time how and where the trust fund must spend its money. Of the $11.25 million, $3 million was to be spent on administration and debt service, $1.5 million on buffer acquisition around military bases and $6,750,000 on water infrastructure and conservation easements.

No Acquisitions

Last year, with 160 project application from all over the state, the trust fund board not only had to greatly winnow down the number of projects that could be funded, but also make sure they fit into the new criteria. Rogers said one result was that the cuts effectively halted almost all land acquisition except for areas near military property.

And of the 46 wastewater projects seeking roughly $67 million, only 16 made the cut at a total cost of $6.8 million. Of the $29 million in restoration and stormwater projects, $3.9 million were funded.

Rogers said the cuts have had a natural impact on staffing and he’s had to reduce his workforce by 43 percent. Beyond the numbers, he said, the reductions and the proscription for using funds substantially changed what the board could do. It ruled out larger projects and, most importantly, it limited the criteria.

“The provision took away the ability to assess projects’ impact on water quality,” Rogers said.

Since its inception, he said, the fund has used a competitive grant process and has looked for the most bang for the buck when it comes to protecting the state’s surface water. Acquisition of key lands, often in cooperation with conservation and outdoors groups, has been one of the most effective ways to accomplish that. The budget provision made that difficult if not impossible.

Rogers said this year, the focus has been on conservation easements, which are permitted under the provision, rather than outright acquisition. That’s led to a boost in funding to mini-grants,” which cover the administrative and legal costs landowners encounter when they want to donate land.

Going forward, Rogers said, the fund and its supporters are trying to win back its flexibility and some of the funds it lost, an effort that recently won the support of more than 100 sporting and outdoor groups statewide who urged legislators to restore the fund to at least $40 million.

Rogers said he sees some headway in convincing legislators, particularly as the new leadership in the legislature settles into its role.

He and fund supporters are also working to overcome some partisan perceptions of the trust fund’s work. Last year, he said, the trust fund unfortunately got caught up in some of the backlash against programs associated with former Senate President Pro Tem Marc Basnight, who championed the concept in the mid-1990s in the wake of disastrous fish kills in the Neuse River.

“We’re trying to dismiss the idea that this program was a Basnight program and we put money where he wanted us to put money,” Rogers said.

Wrong Direction

Bill Holman

Bill Holman, a former trust fund executive director, said Basnight may have been the fund’s champion, but notes that when it passed in 1996 the General Assembly was divided, with Democrats controlling the Senate and Republicans running the House. The way the fund was set up, he said, was designed to reduce the amount of politics involved.

“The genius behind the idea was the competitive grant process,” he said, “not the legislature proscribing what some community needs, but the community coming up with it, whether that’s wastewater, stormwater, land conservation or oyster bed restoration — whatever’s the high priority.”

Holman, who served as executive director from 2001 to 2005, said the fund has developed a careful set of criteria and a working knowledge of issues and needs throughout the state. To try and narrow what it can do now is the wrong course, he said.

“I think it was a mistake for the legislature to put in the provision,” Holman said.

At a time when water quality is probably more important now than it’s ever been and when water quantity is a growing concern, Holman said reducing the fund’s resources and its flexibility are  is the wrong directions.

“I really hope to see some new funding and also hope the legislature takes away the restrictions and lets them find the best projects,” he said. “What’s wrong with funding the best projects?”

Tuesday: Some coastal projects that the trust fund made possible.

• Increasing the trust fund’s budget is the federation’s top legislative priority 

Last of two parts

RALEIGH – Though Republicans who now control the N.C. General Assembly have vowed to cut through the regulatory red tape that is purportedly hindering businesses and job creation, don’t expect to see any immediate changes to coastal rules and regulations, said a leader in the state Senate.

Sen. Harry Brown

Senate Majority Leader Harry Brown, a Jacksonville Republican and co-chair of the committee that the legislature created last year to review all state regulations, said committee members are still trying to get a better understanding of rule-making and haven’t settled on any proposals for moving forward. He said he does not see any quick changes to coastal policy as a result of the committee’s review.

“Right now we’re still gathering information,” Brown said. “I don’t think any decisions have been made on what to do [on costal policy].”

Brown said the committee has focused on eliminating duplications and agency overlap and with trying to make rules easier to understand. Most of the complaints he and other legislators get aren’t so much about the rules and regulations themselves, he said, but in how they’re interpreted and how they impact projects. Sometimes agencies can be at odds over how certain rules should be implemented, Brown said, and those interpretations can be at odds with what legislators intended.

Everyone in the process, Brown said, “needs to understand them the same way.”

New Way on Rules

The legislature created Brown’s committee last year when it passed Senate Bill 781, a complicated and comprehensive package of steps for revamping how rules and regulations are written. Overseeing its implementation is the Joint Regulatory Reform Committee.

The bill tightens rule-making procedures and mandates a comprehensive review of rules in order to ferret out redundancy and inconsistencies. It also requires much more extensive studies of the cost of new rules to businesses, including an analysis of possible alternatives.

Though North Carolina has consistently ranked as having one of the top business climates in the country, Republicans in the legislature have contended that burdensome rules are stifling economic growth and killing jobs.

Environmental rules are a particular focus of S781. The law prevents new environmental rules from being tougher that any existing federal standard. The state Department of Environment and Natural Resources administers and enforces all state and federal environmental regulations. Its commissions devise rules meant to carry out federal or state laws. These include the Environmental Management Commission, Marine Fisheries Commission, Coastal Resources Commission, Wildlife Resources Commission, Commission for Public Health, Sedimentation Control Commission, Mining Commission and the state Pesticide Board.

By October 1, each of these were required to provide the new regulatory committee with a list of all permanent rules designating whether they were mandated by a federal regulation, analogous to one or neither.

While the bulk of the rules included in the department’s report were linked with enforcement of federal Clean Air and Clean Water acts and federal hazardous waste requirements, there was a considerable list of state-only rules. They included less controversial ones like those governing dam safety and some that have been fought over for years like the runoff rules in the Tar-Palmico and Neuse river watersheds.

Robin Smith, the department’s assistant secretary for the environment and its point person on regulatory reform, said so far there hasn’t been a response from the legislature on the list of rules it forwarded to the committee.

Changes Already

But that doesn’t mean that the legislature’s desire to change the way rules devised hasn’t had an impact already, she said. Other provisions in the law have reshaped the department’s approach to rules.

“Maybe the most noticeable impact is that it’s more complicated to do fiscal analysis,” she said.

Robin Smith says the new law has already affected the state’s environmental regulations.

The legislature lowered the cost threshold that triggers a detailed fiscal analysis, she said. A fiscal note is now needed if the cost of a new rule to an individual or business exceeds $50,000.

The law also requires the department to take a much harder look at alternatives.

One way that recently played out, Smith said, was a delay in new sandbag rules proposed by the N.C. Coastal Resources Commission after the State Budget Office, which reviews the fiscal notes, sent them back for further study of alternatives.

Smith said as a result of the additional scrutiny, the department has had to take on an economist and must do a much deeper policy analysis than before.

Another major hitch is the red flag raised by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency about a provision in S781 that changes how contested rules are decided. Such cases are first heard by judges in state’s Office of Administrative Hearings. Before the law was passed, those judges made recommendations as to the outcome, but the final decision rested with the commission that created the rule. The new law made the judges final authority. Once the state process plays out, aggrieved parties can file a civil lawsuit.

Shifting final authority in contested cases, the EPA has determined, is a major change to the way the state administers federal environmental laws like the Clean Water Act, Smith said. Since federal law gives the EPA the right to object to rulings in contested cases, agency officials want some clarification on how the EPA’s views will be heard. They also say they will have to sign off on the change since it isn’t part of the agreement EPA has with the state that allows state regulators to enforce federal environmental laws. EPA officials aren’t comfortable with the new process and want more information about the resources and processes of the state hearing office, Smith said.

State and federal officials will have to reach some agreement soon. Under S781 the change takes effect on June 1 with or without EPA approval.

CAMA Permits

The only specific change to coastal rules spelled out in S781 has yet to be tested. The law exempts applicants of major permits under the Coastal Area Management Act, or CAMA, from having to undergo a comprehensive assessment of potential environmentaleffects. Smith said the department was “not uncomfortable” with the change given what a major CAMA application requires. “It’s such a broad interagency review,” she said. “It’s the kind of review you’d get with an EIS (environmental-impact statement).”

The scope of an EIS is, in fact, more extensive than the usual review for a major CAMA permit. If required under the state’s Environmental Policy Act, an EIS is done before an applicant applies for any permits. The applicant must explore various alternatives to the project, describing all their potential direct and secondary environmental effects and any steps needed to lessen them. The review can take up to two years and usually requires public meetings that allow people to suggest issues that the EIS should cover. The applicant is then obligated to explain how those issues were addressed. The intent of an EIS to is anticipate environmental problems before a project begins.

A major CAMA review is much narrower in scope and is generally limited to ensuring that CAMA regulations are met. Though as many 14 state and federal agencies review the permit, CAMA has no requirement for public meetings. While people can submit written comments, the applicant is under no legal obligation to address them. By law, the review must be completed in 75 days — 150 days in exceptional cases.

Smith said as yet no project has been proposed that falls under the major permit classification.

While the regulatory reform committee and the processes set in motion under S781 will guide most of the structural changes to rule-making, look for some changes in environmental protections to be written directly into law, possibly even in the coming short session, which starts in May.

Dan Conrad

Dan Conrad, legislative counsel for the N.C. Conservation Network, said over the past few years he’s noticed a trend toward greater specificity in legislation, with laws now spelling out in great detail the types of things to be taken into consideration while drafting rules to implement them.

New proposals on air toxics rules emerging from the legislature’s Environmental Review Commission are another example of that trend, as well as one of the first attempts to rolls back state requirements to the federal standards.

Legislators have also shown a willingness to write around certain rules and sometimes at a very local level. Last year, after complaints about setback requirements, the General Assembly approved the reclassification of a single mountain stream, removing it from the list of waterways that are significant trout habitats and thus loosening setback requirements for construction projects along it. That kind of behavior is the most worrisome, Conrad said, because the law denied the facts.

“There was no science involved,” Conrad said. “None.”

First of two parts

RALEIGH — The term “red tape” has its origins in the centuries old practice of tying up legal documents in red ribbon. For just about as long, “cutting through red tape” has been synonymous with overcoming burdensome rules and bureaucracy.

But one person’s burden is often another’s protection, and as much as the cutting through analogy makes it sound easy, striking the balance between the two is an increasingly complicated process. North Carolina’s recent push to “reform” its regulations and rule-making processes is proving especially so.

Still, with initiatives by both the administrative and legislative branches in full swing, the state is poised for sweeping changes in how it approaches regulation, especially its environmental protections. These changes, driven by legislation passed last year, have yet to have a major impact on coastal rules but in the long run have the potential to significantly reshape current policies.

A Bit of History

Former state senator Wendell Murphy supported the old Hardison Amendments.

During last year’s debate on the state budget, there was considerable outcry over a provision that would have limited state environmental protections to federal standards. Opponents said the change would take us back to the days of the Hardison Amendments, a reference to state senator Harold “Bull” Hardison, a Lenoir County Democrat, who in the 1970s and ‘80s championed a series of amendments to limit state air and water quality protections to federal standards. Hardison and his supporters, including then state senator and future hog magnate Wendell Murphy, managed to hold sway until the amendments were repealed in 1991ushering in an era that saw the passage of key water quality and hazardous waste rules along with tougher air emission standards.

As the state adopted more rules as a result of policy initiatives and tightening federal requirements, the businesses, farmers and landowners pressed their case that the myriad of regulations were growing too complicated and too burdensome. In the past few years, as the economy slumped that argument began to win over a more policy makers and more voters.

In October 2010, Gov. Beverly Perdue launched an initiative to eliminate “outdated, unnecessary or vague” rules, improve rule-writing procedures and strengthen the review process for new rules. It covered every state entity that writes rules — from the Board of Cosmetology to the Coastal Resources Commission.

The following month’s legislative elections assured that when the N.C. General Assembly convened again both House and Senate would be in Republican hands and many of the people who had campaigned on a staunchly anti-regulation platform would ascend to leadership roles.

What the new GOP leadership termed “regulatory reform” was one of the first big initiatives of the new session. In a series of public hearings around the state early in the session it became clear that their desire to rewrite rules and regulations was on a fast track.

Dan Conrad of the N.C. Conservation Network outlined the path new rules must follow after passage of Senate Bill 781.

New Hardison Amendments

So as shocking as it was to many environmentalists that the budget included a provision that essentially rewrote the Hardison amendments into law, it wasn’t all that much of a surprise. And after both chambers voted to override Perdue’s veto of the budget, the provision temporarily became law.

Temporarily, because it was quickly repealed as part of Senate Bill 781, a much more comprehensive and complicated reform package. The bulk of the new bill, officially titled “An Act to Increase Regulatory Efficiency in Order to Balance Job Creation and Environmental Protection,” took effect on October 1and lays out the steps for revamping how rules and regulations are written.  Overseeing its implementation is the Joint Regulatory Reform Committee.

Like Perdue’s executive order, the bill tightens rule-making procedures and mandates a comprehensive review of rules in order to ferret out redundancy and inconsistencies. Unlike Perdue’s effort, the legislature required much more extensive studies of the cost of new rules to businesses, including an analysis of possible alternatives.

Most significantly, S781 added an extra focus on environmental rules and regulations set by the state Department of Environment and Natural Resources and all boards and commissions that enforce state and federal environmental regulations including the Environmental Management Commission, Marine Fisheries Commission, Coastal Resources Commission, Wildlife Resources Commission, Commission for Public Health, Sedimentation Control Commission, Mining Commission and the state Pesticide Board.

Sam Pearsall

By October 1, each of these were required to provide the new regulatory committee with a list of all permanent rules designating whether they were mandated by a federal regulation, analogous to one or neither.

When DENR’s 122-page report was released last fall it set off alarm bells among environmental advocates, who saw it as an indication of what protections might be at risk if the legislature were to start stripping out state-specific standards.

Sam Pearsall, director of the Southeast Land, Water and Wildlife Program for the Environmental Defense Fund, said at the time he was worried the document would become a kind of Christmas list for those legislators bent on jettisoning as many rules as possible.

“Everything is on the table,” he said.